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attentiveness, the awakening of the feelings) and to the aesthetic object (grace, intelligence, expressiveness, energy, sensuousness) are also fundamental constituents of a moral response to life.
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    In art, “content” is, as it were, the pretext, the goal, the lure which engages consciousness in essentially formal processes of transformation.
    This is how we can, in good conscience, cherish works of art which, considered in terms of “content,” are morally objectionable to us. (The difficulty is of the same order as that involved in appreciating works of art, such as The Divine Comedy, whose premises are intellectually alien.) To call Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will and The Olympiad masterpieces is not to gloss over Nazi propaganda with aesthetic lenience. The Nazi propaganda is there. But something else is there, too, which we reject at our loss. Because they project the complex movements of intelligence and grace and sensuousness, these two films of Riefenstahl (unique among works of Nazi artists) transcend the categories of propaganda or even reportage. And we find ourselves—to be sure, rather uncomfortably—seeing “Hitler” and not Hitler, the “1936 Olympics” and not the 1936 Olympics. Through Riefenstahl’s genius as a film-maker, the “content” has—let us even assume, against her intentions—come to play a purely formal role.
    A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot—whatever the artist’s personal intentions—advocate anything at all. The greatest artists attain a sublime neutrality. Think of Homer and Shakespeare, from whom generations of scholars and critics have vainly labored to extract particular “views” about human nature, morality, and society.
    Again, take the case of Genet—though here, there is additional evidence for the point I am trying to make, because the artist’s intentions are known. Genet, in his writings, may seem to be asking us to approve of cruelty, treacherousness, licentiousness, and murder. But so far as he is making a work of art, Genet is not advocating anything at all. He is recording, devouring, transfiguring his experience. In Genet’s books, as it happens, this very process itself is his explicit subject; his books are not only works of art but works about art. However, even when (as is usually the case) this process is not in the foreground of the artist’s demonstration, it is still this, the processing of experience, to which we owe our attention. It is immaterial that Genet’s characters might repel us in real life. So would most of the characters in King Lear. The interest of Genet lies in the manner whereby his “subject” is annihilated by the serenity and intelligence of his imagination.
    Approving or disapproving morally of what a work of art “says” is just as extraneous as becoming sexually excited by a work of art. (Both are, of course, very common.) And the reasons urged against the propriety and relevance of one apply as well to the other. Indeed, in this notion of the annihilation of the subject we have perhaps the only serious criterion for distinguishing between erotic literature or films or paintings which are art and those which (for want of a better word) one has to call pornography. Pornography has a “content” and is designed to make us connect (with disgust, desire) with that content. It is a substitute for life. But art does not excite; or, if it does, the excitation is appeased, within the terms of the aesthetic experience. All great art induces contemplation, a dynamic contemplation. However much the reader or listener or spectator is aroused by a provisional identification of what is in the work of art with real life, his ultimate reaction—so far as he is reacting to the work as a work of art—must be detached, restful, contemplative, emotionally free, beyond indignation and approval. It is interesting that Genet has recently said that he now thinks that if his books arouse