Fruits of art are immortal

The texts in this collection reveal limpid vision on art (literature, painting, music) Balzac. They allow you to compare it with other ideological attitudes, critical, aesthetic, moral or recent sociological to this important human activity.

Art and Censorship
As John Milton (Aeropagitica) and Oscar Wilde (The Critic as Artist) have so well said, an artwork, once published, lives its own life. It can express ideas other than those of its author. This is why those in power in this world is fiercely distrustful and have always used the infernal instrument of censorship or tried to muzzle the free and independent voices.

Two opposing visions on art
In general, there are two diametrically opposed views on art: his enslavement (L. Tolstoy, G. Lukács) or independence.
Among those who defend an independent art, there portraitists who want that art is a copy as consistent as possible to reality (Akinari), and the performers who want reality to be attacked in an original and who believe that true artists are those that reveal hidden aspects, undetected or unsuspected reality (A. Schopenhauer, Mr. Kundera).

A servile art
For Tolstoy, art is to preach the universal message of peace and love among all peoples and all human beings (What is it art?).
For the Marxist ideologist, G. Lukács, art should serve a portion of the human population: the proletariat. Art must be a weapon in the class struggle. Art must be realistic in the sense that it must put the characters on stage subtypes, which represent a definite social class (Studies in European Realism). A épigone G. Lukács, is the German commentator T. Adorno with his ideological attack (dialectical) of scandalous greatest composer of the 20th century, Igor Stravinsky (Philosophie der neuen Musik).
Finally, there is the `vision 'long arms (the secret service) of those who hold power. For them, art should say anything at all and confined to Tyrolean or produce color spots, as in the abstract expressionism (FS Saunders: `Who leads the dance The CIA and the Cultural Cold War? '). Even the pop terrified him (`All I am Saying, give peace a chance ').

An independent art
As Gide has so well said, `without freedom, art loses meaning and value '. (Back in the USSR Touching on my return from the USSR)
For Akinari, art is to copy as closely as possible to reality. His ideal is expressed in a recital of `Tales of the Moon wave after the Rain ', where a rooster gives paw to a supposed rival (a rooster painted on a table).
For A. Schopenhauer, and reveals the true art should be even (H. Broch, M. Kundera) unexpected aspects, hidden or originals of reality (A. Schopenhauer: The Art of Literature, Mr. Kundera: The Art of Roman). The real art creates moving sensations, disturbing or `crazy 'in the viewer, the reader, the listener. It must be the comfort of former Dionysian (F. Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy).

Balzac and art
Balzac could not be more clear in a letter to Mr. Schlesinger (published in this collection): `I'll always be attached to the seditious and incorrigible party that proclaims freedom of eyes and ears in the republic of arts'.
In `The unknown masterpiece 'the protagonist believes that' the mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. We have to grasp the spirit, the soul, the face of things and beings. ' And in Gambara `'` an artwork must live, excite the viewer.'
For Balzac, a real 'artist changes the face of things, it casts a mold revolution, it weighs on the globe, it shapes it.' (Artists)
For him, the pinnacle of art is music, particularly that of Rossini: `science has disappeared, the sole inspiration dictated this masterpiece (Moisè in Egitto), he came out of the soul as a cry of love. '

Even if the news in this collection (`The Unknown Masterpiece 'and paralytic effect of perfection;` Gambara' and the dichotomy between theory and practice; `Massimila Doni and complex of the Madonna) does are not the best works of Balzac, they reveal his fundamentally independent spirit and remarkable vision of his own writing profession.

It is quite amazing that Balzac was the type `example 'of the realistic author G. Lukács (` Balzac and French realism') that as a servant of totalitarian oligarchy, wanted vassalize art a modern political and artistic tyranny.
Reading this book is highly recommended.