Good words and sentences about the aesthetic relationship between art and reality

Nikolai Chernyshevski (1828~ 1889) is a great Russian thinker, writer and critic. He has made outstanding contributions in philosophy, political economy, history and many other fields, and has always occupied a prominent position in the history of Russian literature with his theory of combat aesthetics, literary criticism and literary creation. As a Democrat, he resolutely opposed the reform, advocated the peasant revolution, and publicized the struggle idea of overthrowing all old rights. The novel "What should I do?" Prelude to the author and aesthetic papers.

The book "The Aesthetic Relationship between Art and Reality" puts forward the materialistic judgment that "beauty is life" according to the popular idealistic aesthetic viewpoint at that time, and requires literature to reproduce life, explain and judge life, be a "textbook of life" and play a positive social function.

Chernyshevski attacked the tendency of affectation, empty rhetoric and extravagance in art. He regards simplicity as one of the important standards to measure the value of artistic works. He listed a common feature of Pushkin's, lermontov's and Nikolai Nikolai Gogol's prose-concise and lively narration. Shakespeare deserves praise because he abandoned some complicated words in his best scenes. At this point, our classical novels and Lu Xun's creation also have our own valuable national traditions. From the death of belinsky in 1848 to the publication of Chernyshevski's aesthetic masterpiece "The Aesthetic Relationship between Art and Reality" in 1856, the darkest "seven-year night" in Russian history happened to be separated. Belinsky's untimely death marked the gradual decline of aristocratic intellectuals during the 1940s revolution, while Chernyshevski's first appearance in the literary world marked that civilian intellectuals stepped onto the historical stage and would dominate the revolutionary stage. The iconic work is not a panic masterpiece, nor a sharp political masterpiece, but an aesthetic paper with a thickness of less than 100 pages-the aesthetic relationship between art and reality-is no accident!

In today's view, Chernyshevski's aesthetic view is nothing more than excluding Plato's famous fantasy theory from the mysterious "rational form". "Beauty" has become the fantasy of "life"-Chernyshevski's "rational form", and life has become the birthplace of all concepts and images;

"Beauty is life: anything that we can see life according to our understanding is beauty, and anything that shows life or reminds us of life is beauty."

-This is the core idea of Chernyshevski's paper The Aesthetic Relationship between Art and Life. Needless to say, even Che himself admits that his aesthetics is just using Feuerbach's philosophical principles to build his great undeveloped career.

When discussing Russian realistic literary criticism, general literary works often combine Bie (), Che () and Du (Dubro Lyubov), and at the same time, regardless of their differences, cite their "realistic principles". I think this is a big fallacy: from the aesthetic point of view, don't be diametrically opposed to Du Fu and Che, and other aesthetic principles are exactly what Che attacked in his paper. As far as aesthetics itself is concerned, car's practical exploration of art is often boring, rigid and rough. Except Tolstoy's Great Genius in the Morning, nothing has been accomplished. In contrast, Biedu and Du are famous for their intuitive insight into beauty. From the 1940s to the 1960s, a large number of great novelists were born in Russia, which were praised and criticized. Even so, it is no accident that Che's Aesthetics was regarded as the mouthpiece of revolutionary democratic aesthetics that day.

When analyzing the value orientation of Russian modern social transformation, I think it is more appropriate to use karl popper's two social transformation engineering analysis models-utopian social transformation engineering and gradual social transformation engineering, rather than conservatism and radicalism. The symptom of Russian revolution is that the power of utopian social transformation project largely excludes social progressive project. Therefore, Chernyshevski, as the spiritual leader of the populist movement after herzen, naturally became a social gospel, which was more in line with the interests of young intellectuals.

The proposition that "beauty is life" publicizes the realistic value of beauty, and requires artists to imitate life consciously in their creation, and continue to criticize aestheticism's painful indifference to life along belinsky's road, which coincides with the attitude of Russian revolutionaries and their desire for social outlet. Its side effect also lies in standardizing aesthetics with a rigid framework and demanding aesthetic creation from the utilitarian point of view. It is utilitarian aesthetics to position the value of beauty purely on whether it is powerful to society. Car aesthetics really highlights the truth of life and ignores the truth of beauty itself, leading aesthetics into a narrow dead end. In the eyes of a large number of intellectuals eager to save the country that day, it was no accident that Pushkin and Leonardo da Vinci were among the broken and useless artists. It is precisely because in their view, only art that adapts to reality can become art, and the aesthetic principle of cars actually contributed to the pure empirical philistinism that pervaded Russia in the second half of the19th century!

After the October Revolution, the aesthetic thought of cars can still be popular in socialist countries. On the one hand, it is because revolutionary instructors Marx, Engels and Lenin praised the car and its theory during their lifetime, and the main reason is that the aesthetic theory of the car is actually a utilitarian aesthetics. Therefore, after the October Revolution, cars were still regarded as authentic aesthetics, while Balzac and Goethe, two masters of realism, or Tolstoy, a Russian prophet, were put aside to eat cold pork!

Aesthetic relationship is established by stimulating the physiological and psychological mechanism of the subject through the image form of "flowers" and other things to meet the potential or instinctive needs of the subject. Whether an individual can establish a pre-cultural aesthetic relationship with the object depends entirely on whether the physical and psychological mechanism of the subject is sound and whether the image form of the object can attract or arouse the good feelings of the subject. If the subject's physiological and psychological functions are incomplete, such as color blindness and deafness, then any gorgeous flowers and harmonious melody have no beautiful charm for him; If the image of an object is ugly and unbalanced, such as blind or lame, then it will not have a beautiful charm for any voice subject. In this pure pre-cultural aesthetic relationship, any rational concept of beauty is meaningless. Even if people praise each other, color-blind people are indifferent to flowers; Even if a blind person is outstanding in character, his external image is not commendable. This shows that in pre-cultural aesthetics, the internal physiological and psychological mechanism of human's different preferences and feelings for beauty and ugliness can only be found in the evolutionary history of human animals; Human's pre-cultural aesthetic ability is obtained without cultural literacy or aesthetic education, and its corresponding aesthetic feeling is not essentially different from the mechanism of animal pleasure generation. Of course, generally speaking, pure pre-cultural aesthetics is not dominant in realistic aesthetics. Like the so-called "meaningful form" in art, it contains rich cultural factors and does not belong to pure pre-cultural aesthetics.

Insist that art must be closely integrated with reality, and art must serve the interests of the people. This is the highest principle of Chernyshevski's aesthetics. He is one of the outstanding heritages of human culture. We should study hard to see what beauty is in reality, what is our definition of beauty, and what kind of beauty is really worth appreciating and pursuing.

In Russia in the 1940s, many scholars showed great interest in German philosophy. At that time, they discussed a wide range of philosophies, such as Hegel's philosophy, Feuerbach's book Death and Eternal Life, and a series of works were all inspiration to an idea at that time. The aesthetic relationship between art and reality is a general conclusion inferred from facts, which can only be confirmed by general references to facts. When I first came into contact with philosophy, I always felt very empty and it was difficult to understand what real art was. This book chooses a relatively broad theme, demonstrates it from a big perspective, gives examples and the like, and has factual basis, which cannot and must not be false. What tells people is the definition of beauty, art, art that has always existed around us, and art that we have been exposed to. What is beauty and what is its definition? Everyone has a different view on one thing. If you look at it from all angles, it is another story. At the beginning of the article, the author gives a rough definition of beauty, thinking that this concept is completely manifested in individual things and itself contains real illusions. Such a seemingly broad definition is beauty. In the popular aesthetic system, beauty has developed. This is a limited concept, a concept that our concept endows individual things with sensibility. So beauty is the perceptual expression in our consciousness, and everything is conveyed through our thinking, that is to say, ideas affect the way we look at things. The reason why we can think about what is beauty formed in our own ideas and what is our own definition of beauty is because when we see the appearance of an image, we will naturally form a definition of beauty in our minds, which is the embodiment of a kind of perceptual thinking in a specific image. The unity of ideas and images, beauty exists in our life, and we can't ignore them, because with their concrete images, our imagination will blossom and bear fruit. A real image exists in our minds through our brains, and we give him a concrete impression. This is the influence of the beauty of things on our image. However, there are always different views on beauty. From our own point of view, we always hope that the beauty in our eyes is the best. This is a hope and a real yearning.

So what is beauty in people's eyes? In real life, people are always pursuing perfection. What kind of standard is it? Before we criticize the various requirements for beauty in reality, we can boldly say that the beauty in reality, regardless of all its shortcomings, no matter how big those shortcomings are, will always be true beauty and can completely satisfy a healthy person. Natural, meaningless fantasies may always say: "this is not good, that is not enough, that is redundant"; However, we must admit that this insatiable fantasy is a morbid phenomenon. A healthy person sees many things and phenomena in real life, and there is no hope in his mind that they are not like this or better. The idea that people must be "perfect" is absurd. If we understand "perfection" as a form of something that integrates all possible advantages without any shortcomings, then it can only be seen by people who are indifferent or tired of doing nothing. In my opinion, "perfection" is something that can make me completely satisfied. A healthy person can find many such phenomena in reality. When a person's heart is empty, he can let his imagination gallop; But once there is a slightly satisfactory reality, imagination will fold its wings. Generally speaking, fantasy can dominate us only when our real life is too bad. When a person sleeps on a bare wooden board, his mind sometimes imagines a rich bed, a bed made of rare wood, a duck down quilt made of cotton wool, a lace pillow made of Brabai, and a curtain made of exquisite Lyon materials. -But if a healthy person has a bed that is not rich but soft and comfortable enough, will he still have such fantasies? People will "enough is enough". If a person must live in the moss area of Siberia or the salt marsh area on the left bank of the Volga River, he may dream of a magical garden with trees, coral branches, jade leaves and ruby fruits that are not found in the world. However, if he moves to Kursk and can walk freely in a small but passable garden with apples, cherries and pear trees, the visionary will probably forget not only the garden in The Arabian Nights, but also the lemon grove in Spain. When there are not only good houses, but also simple huts to live in, imagination will build castles in the air. When emotions have no destination, imagination is stimulated; Poverty in real life is the root of imaginary life. When real life is a little passable, we feel that all fantasies become dull in front of it. The so-called "human desire is endless", that is, "no reality can satisfy human desire" is wrong; On the contrary, people will not only be satisfied with "the best things that can be found in reality", but also with ordinary real life. We must distinguish between what we really feel and what we just said. Only when there is a complete lack of hygiene or even simple food can desire be stimulated to a fiery degree by fantasy. This is a fact proved by the whole human history, and it is also a fact that everyone who has lived and observed by himself has experienced. This is an example of the general law of human life: the abnormal development of enthusiasm is only the result of the abnormal situation of people who indulge in enthusiasm, and this will only happen when the natural and truly appropriate requirements that cause this or that kind of enthusiasm are not met for a long time, and it is normal but by no means excessive. There is no doubt that the human body doesn't need and can't stand too much desire and satisfaction; At the same time, there is no doubt that a healthy person's desire is compatible with his physical strength. Let's turn from this general problem to a special one.

As we all know, our senses will soon be tired and bored, that is, satisfied. This applies not only to our lower senses (touch, smell and taste), but also to our higher vision and hearing. Aesthetic feeling is inseparable from hearing and vision, and it is unthinkable to leave hearing and vision. When a person loses the desire to appreciate beautiful things because of boredom, the need to appreciate that kind of beauty cannot but disappear. If a person can't look at paintings (even Raphael's) every day in January without getting bored, then there is no doubt that not only his eyes, but also his aesthetic feeling itself will feel satisfied and bored for a while. When applied to the intensity of appreciation, the continuity of appreciation is also correct. Under the condition of normal satisfaction, the enjoyment of beauty is limited. Occasionally, the situation of exceeding the standard is usually not the result of internal natural development, but the result of some special circumstances with contingency and abnormality. For example, when we know that we will get along with a beautiful thing soon, the fact seems beyond doubt: our sense of beauty, like all other feelings, has its normal limits in continuity and tension. In these two senses, we can't say that our aesthetic feeling is unsatisfied or infinite. Aesthetic sense also has its limitations in discrimination, sensitivity and perfection or so-called perfect desire-and it is quite narrow. We will have the opportunity to explain many things that are not beautiful at all in the future, which can actually meet the aesthetic requirements. Here we just want to point out that in the field of art, aesthetic feeling is actually very tolerant in identification. For some strength, we can forgive hundreds of shortcomings of a work of art; As long as it's not too outrageous, we don't even pay attention. It is enough to take most Roman poems as an example. Only people who lack aesthetic feeling will not appreciate Horace, Virgil and Ovid. However, how many weaknesses these poets have! To tell the truth, they can't do anything except one thing-the delicacy of language and the development of ideas. The content is either completely absent or insufficient; No originality; Neither fresh nor simple; In Virgil and Horace's poems, sincerity and enthusiasm are almost completely absent. However, even if critics point out all these shortcomings, it is necessary to add that these poets have raised the form to a high degree of perfection, and this benefit alone is enough to satisfy our aesthetic feeling and enjoy it. However, all these poets have great shortcomings even in exquisite form: Ovid and Virgil almost always drag on for too long; Horace's ode poems are often the same; These three poets are all monotonous; Their affectation often makes people extremely unhappy. But it doesn't matter, there are still some benefits for us to appreciate. Contrary to these exquisite poets who pay attention to appearance, we can cite folk poetry as an example.

In our life, beauty is everywhere. Outstanding is beautiful, so what is outstanding? We always see the brightest and brightest among the flowers, not because she is so tall that we can see it at a glance, nor because of their charming communication, but because of their own attraction that people can't help but pay attention to them. That kind of natural beauty, the freshest fragrance, can really make us fall for it. This is their unique beauty. Good things must include all good things in the same kind, and there is nothing good in the same kind that is not included in good things. Human nature has what we often say is beauty, and everything has its own beauty. These are typical and what we want to pursue. It is hard to imagine that the beauty of human beings is completely condensed in one person, and what kind of imbalance it should be. Beauty can be divided into artistic beauty and realistic beauty, but in real society, we often find beauty with artistic value, which is often called the unique beauty of art, and we think and understand it from the perspective of reality. Is this the combination of thought and image that the author wants to talk about? However, after putting forward a series of thoughts, the author said this sentence, which is actually "beauty is life." It is difficult for us to understand such a broad definition. Following the author's thinking, let's first understand how his beauty is expounded in life. Everything we see in it should live like this according to our understanding, which is beautiful; Anything that shows life or reminds us of life is beautiful. This definition seems to explain all the examples that evoke good feelings in our hearts. Beauty is actually life. What a simple word it is. Yes, in real life, we are all pursuing a better life. Our family pursues the beauty of daily necessities, our friends pursue the beauty of career, and we pursue the beauty we think. The definition of beauty is broad. What is the beauty in our life? Everyone will hear such a sentence in life, that is, no matter where you go, you will always be called a beauty when you buy something. Hehe, it seems really happy, but to be realistic, as we all know, this is just a modern and contemporary title and a courtesy to people. So let's take a look at what is the beauty in people's eyes on this topic. Must it be that kind of beauty? Must be the one with a good figure? Or other requirements? There are different definitions in different parts of the world. In our country, they are well-fed and hard-working, so farm girls are strong, which is also a necessary condition for rural beauty. But in the eyes of those beautiful women in the upper class, this is definitely not beautiful, but it is more vulgar and less attractive. Whether strong or light, each has its own beauty. Beauty is broad because its definition comes from different places. Different places can bring us different aesthetic feelings. Good scenery is beautiful, good people are beautiful, and beautiful is fun. Beauty is actually everything you look like, so he is beautiful in your eyes.

Everything has advantages and disadvantages, so let's take a look at the author's private reasons why a person is ugly, and some people will become ugly because of that person's appearance. This is called ugliness. This ugliness is also divided into two aspects, one is congenital, that is, deformity, which is inherent in itself and an unsatisfactory factor left over from the initial development. But an ugly person is also deformed, but to a lesser extent. The reasons for ugliness are the same as those for deformity, but to a lesser extent. For example, it is only his misfortune that a person is born with a hunchback, but rickets is also a hunchback, only to a lesser extent, for the same reason. In a word, an ugly person is deformed in some ways. His appearance is not a life, not a good development, but a bad development and bad situation. There is also the acquired, that is, the unfortunate things that happen in life, such as a sudden car accident, which makes you disabled, then this is the acquired deformity, which is a natural natural disaster. This is the misfortune of fate. In people's eyes, the body of animals is based on the fresh and energetic life concept. As human beings, we always measure everything around us according to our own standards. Of course, we will still compare these with animals and think that as long as animals are cute, everything looks elegant, but if it is not so rude, it can also be defined as beauty. In fact, lovely animals are our favorite. These animals always look so docile in our eyes. We always want to hold them in our arms and caress them. We really want to take care of them like children. But when we face such fierce animals as tigers and lions, there is always some fear in our hearts, and we always retreat three feet. In fact, this is just a psychological effect. Animals are actually the same as us humans. They all have their own families and lives. Maybe we humans are like monsters in their eyes. Anything is possible. As for plants, we like bright colors, lush and diverse forms, because it shows exuberant life, withered plants are not good, and plants lacking life fluid are not good either. This is a vibrant and beautiful "landscape". Beauty is the kind of life in which life first reminds us of people and their lives. We don't think it is necessary to explore this idea in detail from all fields of nature. The beauty that constitutes nature will remind us of the beauty of people. The beautiful things in nature are meaningful only as human hints.

True beauty does not come from the beauty of art in life, but from the depths of people's hearts, which cannot be described in words, and can only be proved by our own actions. It is not the beauty created by art, but the eyes we have to find beauty, which is an explanation of reality and an inquiry. This real beauty from real life is what we are really looking for. The beauty and ugliness of phenomena in nature are more obvious. The relationship between beauty and ugliness in the phenomenal world is relative. As early as "Zhuangzi's Theory of Everything", there was a saying that "Li and Yes, Tao and the Same". Moreover, beauty and ugliness in the phenomenal world can be transformed. "Precious pearls are from mussels, and beautiful jade is from ugliness." So what is the relationship between reality ugliness and artistic beauty? It is not difficult to see from Aristotle's Poetics that "the imitation object of comedy is a person who is worse than the average person": the ugliness of reality can enter art and be accepted by artistic beauty; Lessing also put forward the view that "ugliness can enter poetry" in laocoon. The research facts of predecessors have caused me to think like this: What is the status of reality ugliness in art? What is the aesthetic relationship between reality ugliness and artistic beauty? This paper attempts to explain the aesthetic mechanism of "turning ugliness into beauty" from the acceptance and elimination of realistic ugliness by artistic beauty, so as to promote the expression of realistic ugliness as an important source of artistic beauty. And further explain the one-way transformation of realistic ugliness and artistic beauty, and the unique aesthetic relationship between them.

Accept and solve

Looking back on the development of western aesthetics, we can see that traditional aesthetics rejects reality ugliness. The ancient Greeks once proudly declared: "We are people who love beauty!" There is no doubt that they refuse ugliness. Therefore, they do not hesitate to explicitly stipulate in the law: "Don't be ugly!" . China seems to have attached importance to ugliness from the beginning: there are images of "old tree", "withered vine" and "faint crow" in his poems; In calligraphy, there are words such as "spirit", "quaint" and "Gu Zhuo". Obviously, art has accepted ugliness again. The fundamental reason why western traditional aesthetics does not accept the ugliness of reality is rationalism refusal. When Kant's On the Sublime can be regarded as the bud of ugliness, when the field of aesthetics in Nietzsche's era declared the death of beauty, ugliness was born. In the 20th century, it has become inevitable for Ye Chou to enter the art palace.

Judging from the manifestations of human aesthetic activities, sublimity and beauty are generally called value or positive value, while ugliness and inferiority are called negative value or negative value. Both positive value and negative value are manifestations of beauty. When I was young, Ou Mo was very beautiful and could be described as "beautiful Ou Mo", while when I was old, Ou Mo could be described as "ugly Ou Mo". Gesell praised Rodin's sculpture as "too ugly". This compliment can show that ugliness is an advanced aesthetic form of beauty. There is no doubt that the acceptance of ugliness by art is the need of art communication itself and human beings themselves. Man's transcendence consists of two instincts: creativity and destructiveness. The ugliness of reality corresponds to the destructiveness here. Once human life activities need them to fight against the perceptual existence such as terror, evil, madness, maggots, diseases and cancer. It is necessary to have a virtual insight and struggle against the ugliness of reality. In the Middle Ages, when people saw themselves from the Oracle that "God is beautiful", they found that the whole society was ugly and everything was "the son of God". During the Renaissance, when people realized their falsehood, they found that "man is God and man is his own God". Contemporary people say when they have insight into themselves: "Man is his own hell". It can be said that people's acceptance of ugliness is the necessity of human self-development. Therefore, reality ugliness will inevitably become the source of artistic beauty creation.

How the accepted ugliness disappears into the beauty of reality requires the artist to reconstruct the content and form of the ugliness of reality. The nutritional elements of artistic beauty depend on the artist's deconstruction of reality ugliness. Lessing said: "Ugliness becomes beneficial after artistic imitation." The "advantage" here is reconstructed through artistic imitation. As far as formal construction is concerned, artistic beauty mostly dispels natural ugliness. For example, people often dislike barking dogs and pigs in life, but some people applaud this dislike on the art stage. The so-called ugliness in nature can be transformed into beauty in art, which is a subjective effort to dispel the ugliness in reality; As far as content construction is concerned, artistic beauty mostly dispels social ugliness. The "Ah Q" in Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q can be described as social ugliness, but this work shines with the aura of the social and ideological value of typical characters. Of course, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the form and content of reality ugliness by artistic beauty is not isolated. Mao Zedong wrote in Bodhisattva Bharti: "The village wall in front of the bullet hole decorates this mountain." Originally, the bullet hole after the fierce battle was naturally a sad and withered image, but under the refraction of "the setting sun after the rain, the sky turns around", it was able to "decorate the mountain", that is, the ugly bullet hole in nature was integrated with the ugly Kuomintang in society to reconstruct a beautiful landscape that is "better now". However, "ugliness" means a form of decadence and a decline in content. Why is it dissolved into a source by artistic beauty? First of all, we should look at the formal characteristics of reality ugliness. It is distorted, damaged and miscellaneous, morbid and decadent, and its fundamental feature is anti-patterning, denying the inherent pattern and structure. However, from the perceptual form, it is recognized that "ugliness shows the exuberance of vitality and exudes a vicious and abused pleasure", which is an irrational perceptual existence released by realistic ugliness in artistic beauty. Judging from the social content of realistic ugliness, realistic ugliness shows the existence of a kind of negative thinking, which tends to have negative aesthetic value and focuses on revealing the finiteness and incompleteness of reason. Whether it is the form of reality ugliness or the content of reality ugliness. All these provide the inevitability for acceptance and settlement. We must formalize them.