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What did Tolstoy mean when he called art an ‘infection’?

Brian Otieno Ouma Fellow
· 5 replies
Beauty & artModern EuropeanLeo Tolstoy#expressivism#infection#sincerity#what-is-art
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Last week one of the men in my prison class read out a verse he'd written in his cell and asked: "Is this art, or only feelings?"

Someone suggested I look at Tolstoy, who apparently said that art is "infection" with the artist's feeling. That word bothers me; it sounds like a disease. And I've heard Tolstoy rejected Shakespeare and even most of his own novels, which seems mad.

Can someone explain his theory simply? I'd like to bring it back to the class honestly, including where it's weak.

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5 answers

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  1. Sasha Kovalenko

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    The book is What Is Art?, published in 1897–98, late in his life.

    His definition, roughly: art is the activity by which one person, having felt something, deliberately passes that feeling on to others through outward signs (words, sounds, colours, movements), so that they are "infected" by it and feel it too. He means infection in the sense of contagion, catching a feeling, not illness.

    The test of genuine art is whether the infection happens, and its strength depends mainly on sincerity: whether the artist really felt what she's transmitting. Then, separately, he judges good art by the feelings it spreads: the best art unites people in feelings of brotherhood.

    Yes, he dismissed much of the high art of his time as insincere and exclusive, and he wrote a separate essay attacking Shakespeare. And yes, he placed his own earlier fiction among bad art, with a couple of exceptions he names, including a short story, "God Sees the Truth, But Waits".

    For your class: that story is about a man imprisoned for decades for a murder he didn't commit, and what happens when he meets the real murderer. Tolstoy thought it was art of the kind he meant. Your student's verse, if felt and if it reaches others, is art by Tolstoy's standard.

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Other answers

  1. Brian Otieno Ouma

    Fellow

    Sasha, thank you. I didn't know the story. A man wrongly imprisoned, and forgiveness. I don't think I could choose a better text for that room.

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  2. Claire Dubois

    Fellow

    The weak point, since Brian asked for honesty: sincerity can't be the test. A cynical writer can manufacture a feeling she doesn't have and infect thousands; a sincere one can fail to move anyone. And a lot of great art isn't mainly about transmitting a feeling: it's about form, or thought, or play. Tolstoy's theory explains why your student's verse matters. It doesn't explain why a cool, ironic novel can be great.

  3. Brian Otieno Ouma

    Fellow

    Report back. We read "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" over two sessions. One man refused to accept the ending, said it was too easy. Another said the ending was the only part that was true. They argued for an hour. If Tolstoy is right, that argument was the infection working.

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  4. Keisha Monroe

    Fellow

    Brian, a companion text for your class: W. E. B. Du Bois's 1926 essay "Criteria of Negro Art", where he says, famously, that all art is propaganda. He and Tolstoy agree that art is judged partly by what it does to people and to society, and they'd disagree sharply about what it should do. Reading them together might give your men a second argument to have.

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