the Inauguration (instauration)
of the Aesthetic Experience
[posted on
Though the linguistic speculations, philosophies
and traditional arts of
Moreover, for a long time in the Western tradition, aesthetics has been considered at best a side issue in philosophy, a discipline lacking a really scientific approach, and dealing mainly with the wide and ambiguous concept of beauty. This situation, a certain distrust with regard to the field of aesthetics, may have also contributed towards the insufficient interest shown in the Indian theory of art.
Yet, the scope of the instructions on dramaturgy and literary criticism contained in the N�tyaz�stra, amplified by the remarkable commentaries of Abhinava, is sufficiently wide-ranging to reveal, over and above the foundations of a true philosophical theory of art, the expression of a universal thought.
Today, the introspective attitude of some Western aestheticians, who recently proclaimed the ontological reality of the work of art, discovering there in the process a real activity of knowledge, fortuitously encounters the thought of Abhinava, for whom the pedagogic value of art consists first of all in promoting the human being towards the knowledge of the Self (�tman).
This
paper is an attempt to show how the general idea of Abhinava's aesthetic theory
seems to be so close to the new considerations laid down regarding
art by these Western thinkers, among whom Etienne Souriau was undoubtedly one
of the most distinguished, and ultimately to highlight the contours
of a universal value in the philosophy of art. Looking at the huge
work of
Abhinava
is indisputably one of the most illustrious minds and mystics that
Starting from the initial explanations contained in the 'chapter on aesthetic emotion' (ras�dhy�ya) of the N�Tyaz�stra, the fullness of the aesthetic experience is described as a particular state of consciousness revealing itself through the delight taken in the work of art, an experience that consequently culminates in a non‑ordinary state of the world reality. The essential nature of the work of art that is to be tasted like a flavor, is perceived through a direct and immediate apprehension, giving to the aesthetic experience an authentic value as a mode of knowledge.
In the Abhinavabh�rat�, Abhinava establishes the existence of a special state of consciousness, relating the imaginative experience of rasa to the knowledge of the ultimate reality which, in the Vedic tradition, is nothing else than the knowledge of the universal Self. He also claims and glorifies the existence of a ninth rasa, that had been previously often denied (V. Raghavan, 1940:67, 75), Z�nta rasa, the peacefulness and tranquility of a supreme experience that is, according to him, close to the level attained by the Yogi in the ecstatic 'joy of the self abiding in itself' (�tm�nanda) (Masson & Patwardhan, 1969:161; K. Krishnamoorthy 1979:255).
Abhinava who was the first author to create a new philosophical theory of art, associates every artistic discipline with the essential nature of the world, and connects this theoretical aspect with the universality of a unique principle from which the world proceeds and is the picture. He discloses his rasa theory as a real philosophy, that of aesthetics. The deep influence of texts like the Vij��na-bhairava and the Yoga-vasiSTtha-mah�r�m�yaNa led him to describe the aesthetic experience of rasa as an immediate grasping of the Self by consciousness (Gnoli, 1985, 82‑83). The connoisseur, lost in the enjoyment born from this pleasure, dissociates himself from the dualism of daily life and perceives only an extraordinary state of pure wonder.
Abhinava insists at great length on the autonomous nature of the work of art, the non-ordinary state of the aesthetic experience as well as its sui generis nature (Gnoli, 1985, xxxv). He specifies art to be a pure creation, totally devoid of any practical goal, and compares this unconstrained and self-sufficient creation to that of Shiva, omnipresent and sovereign in his sublime cosmic dance, through which he reveals himself as the consciousness of the universe and also reveals the human being as his spontaneous projection (Masson & Patwardhan, 1969, 51‑52).
Abhinava re‑establishes a fundamental idea of the N�Tyaz�stra (1, 107): art is the medium which enables a direct relation between man and the supreme principle of the universe (Gnoli, 1985, 93‑101). He elaborates a reductionist thought focused on the Absolute, revealing thereby all the strength of his religious faith. Grounding an equivalent relation between the natural flow of bliss which emanates from (the dancing) Shiva and the one occurring in the rasa experience, Abhinava accepts the idea of his predecessor Bhattan�yaka (Gnoli, 1985, 48), who associates the aesthetic experience (ras�sv�da) with the mystic state of beatitude (brahm�sv�da), but nuances his own opinion by differentiating minutely between these two experiences (Masson & Patwardhan, 1969, 161‑164).
The basis of this homologation, as Abhinava points out in his Locana (Masson & Patwardhan, 1969, 154‑158), resides in the identity of the communication process. Rasa cannot be object of knowledge in the same way we apprehend things in ordinary worldly life. Imbued with the different monistic systems of which he became the prominent exponent, Abhinava emphasizes once more the intimate and extraordinary experience of rasa (Gnoli, 1985, 102‑114). This experience, essentially subjective, carries away the connoisseur (sahRdaya) inwards within himself, releasing for a short moment (for the duration of the rasa enjoyment) the impediments of his own ties to daily life (Masson & Patwardhan, 1970, 29,33). It is precisely when the connoisseur perceives the rasa that he discovers simultaneously the presence of his real self, identical to Brahman.
Abhinava's philosophy of aesthetics had a great and immediate influence on his disciples and later writers. His achievement is unique, not only because he succeeded in rescuing artistic thought from the intellectual constructions and formal conventions into which it had fallen before him, but also because, above and beyond this, he rediscovered within the free spontaneity of the imaginative experience, the original insight of the N�Tyaz�stra: art is primarily a means of knowledge through pleasure and enjoyment.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century the aesthetic fact in the West is the matter of many schools and theories (positivist, Bergsonian, phenomenological, sociological aesthetics, etc.). Nowadays, the peculiar considerations of certain philosophers and aestheticians has considerably widened its research field, but it is still true that for many people this discipline only evokes the science of beauty (Baumgarten) or the idea of the judgment of taste (Kant). Whence other admitted ideas, frequently spread (down to some scientific circles) and according to which the object of the aesthetician is to be situated in the hazy speculative thoughts applied to art, thoughts which have neither the support nor the rigor of an adequate methodology.
Yet, many thinkers, since
Today, the nature of new investigations on art
offers a very different vision.
This world is also the one mentioned by the
philosopher
Adding to the scope of the attentive consciousness
the depth of a receptivity that touches the very substance of the manifestation
contained in the world, the profound insight of
Thus, through this vision, the knowledge of the world is invested with an ontological nature manifested in all phenomena and that evokes an active response from the individual, a response determined by his own experience generative of thought. It is in the obviousness of this personal experience that a real knowledge of an unconstrained nature occurs, and the sublimated character of which primarily exists in the one who contemplates it: "The obviousness of a flower in the grass�it blossoms in the spiritual content of the moment, so totally unwanted by me that it is a surprise as a witness... A god (for say) tells me about this moment under species he all contains and about which I am obviously irresponsible" (Souriau, 1955, 102‑103). This aesthetic attitude, the experience of which reveals a higher mode of existence of the phenomenal world, is a way that enables the sensitized individual to evolve from himself and to be implicated differently in the worldly life. The realization of this experience leads in this way to a continuity that E. Souriau, in his very personal idea of aesthetic morality,[1] asserts to be a new manner of "seeing" and thus of living.
The mindful considerations shared by E. Souriau and some other thinkers on the work of art, looking at it from a philosophical and metaphysical point of view, gives credit to an aesthetic attitude close to that of Abhinava. The deep truth that springs from all these Western and Indian reflections, though unconnected due to tremendous temporal, historical and cultural barriers, incontestably bears witness to the same vision of art, of its value and its function.
The religious tradition of
Through the ludic activity of art, the consciousness proceeds towards the same object of knowledge now contained in its work which virtually bears a universe as real as the physical one. And this is the last point of Abhinava's aesthetic considerations: the concordance of the ecstatic and rasa experiences is true to some extent only because they are both a means of access to the reality of a cosmic order of the universe�� Within the work of art presence, lies this reality which justifies in the Indian tradition the exceptional feature of drama, conceived from the very beginning as a total art, substratum from which other arts proceed. For the connoisseur who is able to grasp this presence in the depth of a sound, in the evocation of a verse or the delicacy of a color, the privileged moment of this intimate experience enables him to discover, within the enjoyment of the rasa the very nature of his own existential flavor.
This dialectic of art expressed to the higher point by Abhinava, meets the subtle judgment associated to the most rigorous methodology of Souriau's thought. His comparative study of the arts[2] not only induced him to consider the work of art as a world, with its part of presence and mystery, but also to bring out its initially metaphysical nature: "We cannot escape to this idea that the real content of a work of art (much beyond the so‑called content which is supposed to be grasped through the imperfect and trivial opposition of the matter and the manner) is a metaphysical content ... What is metaphysical is not less real (maybe the contrary) than what is not (Souriau, 1969, 311).
Besides this allusion to the extraordinary value
of art content, feature of highest importance in the Indian conception, it is
with the support of a meticulous criticism analysis that
This last sentence illustrates the constant care of Abhinava who claims a different nature of the constituents involved in art. The quality of determinants (bh�va)� constituting the drama substance (causes and effects), is different from the one met in daily life. It is precisely because the reality of these determinants is more "veritas in assendo" that they are able to bring out an advent in the consciousness of the connoisseur.
The rasa experience reveals the work of art universe and its reality which Souriau names the work of art presence. In his ontological view of art, he meets one more time Abhinava's thought when he says: "To arrive to this kind of communication and identification, we must go to the last level. the level of transcendence which overcomes and crows any work of art worthy of this name...But to describe it (this level) aren't we reduced ‑ according to the resources of mystics and "negative theology ?Ito express what it is not? ... And undoubtedly, there is something common to the mean of the mystic thought in this mysterious presence" (Souriau, 1969, 309‑310).[3]
Again
in these statements, the foundational and constituting ('instaurative')
quality of art that guides the individual towards an ontological plenitude, encounters
the main concern of Abhinava's philosophy of aesthetics. Like the universal
precepts of the N�Tya-z�stra that specify the unique nature
of art, as source of pleasure and source of knowledge, E. Souriau concludes his
work with the idea of a secret presence of the work of art that goes beyond the
merely representative or evocative value of art, "...leading to a more
direct art, more intimate, more immediate, more human ‑ perhaps more
precious, but more difficult ‑ and which could be nothing else than the
art of life" (Souriau, 1969, 313).
Sketching,
on an aesthetic basis, the rough draft of a founding ('instaurative')
morality that is still to be defined, an ethics "...situated at the base
of every human life promotion, everywhere the logic of imagination is going
on" (Revue d'esth�tique, 3‑4,
1980, 92), E. Souriau embraces the ultimate goal of the instructive values
contained� in the artistic tradition of
India: The education of the individual and his instauration to a full existence
within a cosmic scheme of reference wherein dwell the secret norms of the
reality of things.
‑
DUFRENNE, Mikel. Esth�tique et philosophie. Ed. Klincksieck, Paris 1967.
‑ GNOLI,
Raniero. The Aesthetic Experience according to
- KRISHNAMOORTY, Keralapura. Studies in Indian Aesthetics and Criticism. D.V.K. Murthy, Mysore, 1979.
‑ MASSON, J.L. & PATWARDHAN, M.V. Aesthetic Rapture,
Vol. I & II.
Santarasa &
‑ Revue d'esth�tique. L'art instaurateur. Colloquium
10/18, Paris 1980. U.G.E.
‑
SOURIAU, Etienne. La correspondance des arts. Ed. Flammarion,
Science de l'Homme, Paris 1969.
L'ombre de dieu. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1955.