Emerson "What Is Infection..."

Art must be infectious says Tolstoy. 102 It must be immediate and whole and cannot segregate based on intelligence and education. 103 The goal of art is brotherly union. Emerson goes through the aestheticians opinion on Tolstoy, then Bakhtinian, Dostoevskian. 103 She then goes into the problems people find with thoughts and feelings that T talks about. Then about the various other problems that scholars have come up with when refuting t. 103 Then about the questions that come up with T's three criteria for ideally infectious art: Individuality, clarity and sincerity. Some of these may not lead to brotherhood. 105 Emerson aims to add on to Silbajoris and Morson who have done some revisionist writing on Tolstoy to bring him back to his aesthetics. 106 She wants to focus on the interaction between expression and infection. 106 Infection takes place immediately. 107 T's ideas on expression are more vague. Where there is honest feelings then it should be able to be transmitted to the person receiving it without problem. Emotions that are not immediate or are hard to determine are not real in terms of art. 107 Practice and teachers and anything that delays the individual espression of the soul is not real art even if through the years of practice and teachers the individual creates something of the soul that has all more impact to the listener because of its perfection. It is fake. 108 What does it mean in the face of T that himself had to practice his craft to reach the best examples? Does it fly in the face of his other writing that exclaim that with prolonged attempts to be conscientious we may attain grace - just not in art? 108 For T, only the folk arts that are simply and small are real art 109 Emerson then goes on to discuss the previous versions of the same treatise and to compare how they allow for greater process. 110 T has a different set of three criteria for determining art in his earlier drafts. 110 He allows for the work of making art to play a role in the artistic interpretation. T also does not insist on the brotherhood of man to take over as strongly. 112 T rails against Wagner as the end of art in Europe. 112 T also comments on the art of teacher and pupil. 113 Why? T may have been trying to make himself like Mozart and to show the simplicity of beauty as if it came easily. 113 T had too much going on around him and could only do with renouncing to make the space calmer. 114