But in spite of
this circuit through our emotional responses the starting point lies
without and our attention is accordingly of the involuntary type. In our
daily activity voluntary and involuntary attention are always
intertwined. Our life is a great compromise between that which our
voluntary attention aims at and that which the aims of the surrounding
world force on our involuntary attention.
How does the theater performance differ in this respect from life? Might
we not say that voluntary attention is eliminated from the sphere of
art and that the audience is necessarily following the lead of an
attention which receives all its cues from the work of art itself and
which therefore acts involuntarily? To be sure, we may approach a
theater performance with a voluntary purpose of our own. For instance,
we may be interested in a particular actor and may watch him with our
opera glass all the time whenever he is on the stage, even in scenes in
which his role is insignificant and in which the artistic interest ought
to belong to the other actors. But such voluntary selection has
evidently nothing to do with the theater performance as such. By such
behavior we break the spell in which the artistic drama ought to hold
us. We disregard the real shadings of the play and by mere personal side
interests put emphasis where it does not belong.
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