[Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the aesthetic of the
sympathetic._
The doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded in
this by the capricious metaphysical and mystical Aesthetic, and by that
blind tradition which assumes an intimate connection between things by
chance treated of together by the same authors and in the same books),
has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of Aesthetic, a series
of concepts, of which one example suffices to justify our resolute
expulsion of them from our own treatise.
Their catalogue is long, not to say interminable: _tragic, comic,
sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic,
humoristic, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble,
decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac,
cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting,
dreadful, nauseating_; the list can be increased at will.
Since that doctrine took as its special object the sympathetic, it was
naturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of this, or any of the
combinations or gradations which lead at last from the sympathetic to
the antipathetic. And seeing that the sympathetic content was held to be
the _beautiful_ and the antipathetic the _ugly_, the varieties (tragic,
comic, sublime, pathetic, etc.) constituted for it the shades and
gradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of the
ugly surmounted._
Having enumerated and defined, as well as it could, the chief among
these varieties, the Aesthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem
of the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art_. This problem is
without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the
anti-aesthetic or inexpressive, which can never form part of the
aesthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its antithesis. But the question
for the doctrine which we are here criticizing was to reconcile in some
way the false and defective idea of art from which it started, reduced
to the representation of the agreeable, with effective art, which
occupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial attempt to settle what
examples of the ugly (antipathetic) could be admitted in artistic
representation, and for what reasons, and in what ways.
The answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be
_overcome_, an unconquerable ugliness, such as the _disgusting_ or the
_nauseating_, being altogether excluded. Further, that the duty of the
ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening the
effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of
contrasts, from which the pleasurable shall issue more efficacious and
pleasure-giving. It is, in fact, a common observation that pleasure is
more vividly felt when It has been preceded by abstinence or by
suffering. Thus the ugly in art was looked upon as the servant of the
beautiful, its stimulant and condiment.
That special theory of hedonistic refinement, which used to be pompously
called the _surmounting of the ugly_, falls with the general theory of
the sympathetic; and with it the enumeration and the definition of the
concepts mentioned above remain completely excluded from Aesthetic. For
Aesthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic In
their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of the representation.
[Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts belong to Psychology._
However, the large space which, as we have said, those concepts have
hitherto occupied in aesthetic treatises makes opportune a rather more
copious explanation of what they are. What will be their lot? As they
are excluded from Aesthetic, in what other part of Philosophy will they
be received?
Truly, in none. All those concepts are without philosophical value. They
are nothing but a series of classes, which can be bent in the most
various ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is sought to reduce
the infinite complications and shadings of the values and disvalues of
life. Of those classes, there are some that have an especially positive
significance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic, the solemn,
the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others have a
significance especially negative, like the ugly, the horrible, the
dreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the foolish, the extravagant;
in others prevails a mixed significance, as is the case with the comic,
the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic. The
complications are infinite, because the individuations are infinite;
hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in the
arbitrary and approximate manner of the natural sciences, whose duty it
is to make as good a plan as possible of that reality which they cannot
exhaust by enumeration, nor understand and surpass speculatively. And
since _Psychology_ is the naturalistic discipline, which undertakes to
construct types and plans of the spiritual processes of man (of which,
in fact, it is always accentuating in our day the merely empirical and
descriptive character), these concepts do not appertain to Aesthetic,
nor, in general, to Philosophy. They must simply be handed over to
Psychology.
[Sidenote] _Impossibility of rigoristic definitions of them._
As is the case with all other psychological constructions, so is it with
those concepts: no rigorous definitions are possible; and consequently
the one cannot be deduced from the other and they cannot be connected in
a system, as has, nevertheless, often been attempted, at great waste of
time and without result. But it can be claimed as possible to obtain,
apart from philosophical definitions recognised as impossible, empirical
definitions, universally acceptable as true. Since there does not exist
a unique definition of a given fact, but innumerable definitions can be
given of it, according to the cases and the objects for which they are
made, so it is clear that if there were only one, and that the true one,
this would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical
definition. Speaking exactly, every time that one of the terms to which
we have referred has been employed, or any other of the innumerable
series, a definition of it has at the same time been given, expressed or
understood. And each one of these definitions has differed somewhat from
the others, in some particular, perhaps of very small importance, such
as tacit reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became
especially an object of attention and was raised to the position of a
general type. So it happens that not one of such definitions satisfies
him who hears it, nor does it satisfy even him who constructs it. For,
the moment after, this same individual finds himself face to face with a
new case, for which he recognizes that his definition is more or less
insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of remodelling. It is necessary,
therefore, to leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or
the comic, the tragic or the humoristic, on every occasion, as they
please and as may seem suitable to their purpose. And if you insist upon
obtaining an empirical definition of universal validity, we can but
submit this one:--The sublime (comic, tragic, humoristic, etc.) is
_everything_ that is or will be so _called_ by those who have employed
or shall employ this _word_.
[Sidenote] _Examples: definitions of the sublime, the comic, and
the humoristic._
What is the sublime? The unexpected affirmation of an ultra-powerful
moral force: that is one definition. But that other definition is
equally good, which also recognizes the sublime where the force which
declares itself is an ultra-powerful, but immoral and destructive will.
Both remain vague and assume no precise form, until they are applied to
a concrete case, which makes clear what is here meant by
_ultra-powerful_, and what by _unexpected_. They are quantitative
concepts, but falsely quantitative, since there is no way of measuring
them; they are, at bottom, metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical
tautologies. The humorous will be laughter mingled with tears, bitter
laughter, the sudden passage from the comic to the tragic, and from the
tragic to the comic, the comic romantic, the inverted sublime, war
declared against every attempt at insincerity, compassion which is
ashamed to lament, the mockery not of the fact, but of the ideal itself;
and whatever else may better please, according as it is desired to get a
view of the physiognomy of this or that poet, of this or that poem,
which is, in its uniqueness, its own definition, and though momentary
and circumscribed, yet the sole adequate. The comic has been defined as
the displeasure arising from the perception of a deformity immediately
followed by a greater pleasure arising from the relaxation of our
psychical forces, which were strained in anticipation of a perception
whose importance was foreseen. While listening to a narrative, which,
for example, should describe the magnificent and heroic purpose of a
definite person, we anticipate in imagination the occurrence of an
action both heroic and magnificent, and we prepare ourselves to receive
it, by straining our psychic forces. If, however, in a moment, instead
of the magnificent and heroic action, which the premises and the tone of
the narrative had led us to expect, by an unexpected change there occur
a slight, mean, foolish action, unequal to our expectation, we have been
deceived, and the recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant of
displeasure. But this instant is as it were overcome by the one
immediately following, in which we are able to discard our strained
attention, to free ourselves from the provision of psychic energy
accumulated and, henceforth superfluous, to feel ourselves reasonable
and relieved of a burden. This is the pleasure of the comic, with its
physiological equivalent, laughter. If the unpleasant fact that has
occurred should painfully affect our interests, pleasure would not
arise, laughter would be at once choked, the psychic energy would be
strained and overstrained by other more serious perceptions. If, on the
other hand, such more serious perceptions do not arise, if the whole
loss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight, then the
supervening feeling of our psychic wealth affords ample compensation for
this very slight displeasure.--This, stated in a few words, is one of
the most accurate modern definitions of the comic. It boasts of
containing, justified or corrected, the manifold attempts to define the
comic, from Hellenic antiquity to our own day. It includes Plato's
dictum in the _Philebus_, and Aristotle's, which is more explicit. The
latter looks upon the comic as an _ugliness without pain_. It contains
the theory of Hobbes, who placed it in the feeling of _individual
superiority_; of Kant, who saw in it a _relaxation of tension_; and
those of other thinkers, for whom it was _the contrast between great and
small, between the finite and the infinite_. But on close observation,
the analysis and definition above given, although most elaborate and
rigorous in appearance, yet enunciates characteristics which are
applicable, not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; such
as the succession of painful and agreeable moments and the satisfaction
arising from the consciousness of force and of its free development. The
differentiation here given is that of quantitative determinations, to
which limits cannot be assigned. They remain vague phrases, attaining to
some meaning from their reference to this or that single comic fact. If
such definitions be taken too seriously, there happens to them what Jean
Paul Richter said of all the definitions of the comic: namely, that
their sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to produce, in reality,
the fact, which they vainly try to define logically. And who will ever
determine logically the dividing line between the comic and the
non-comic, between smiles and laughter, between smiling and gravity; who
will cut into clearly divided parts that ever-varying continuity into
which life melts?
[Sidenote] _Relations between those concepts and aesthetic concepts._
The facts, classified as well as possible in the above-quoted
psychological concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond
the generic that all of them, in so far as they designate the material
of life, can be represented by art; and the other accidental relation,
that aesthetic facts also may sometimes enter into the processes
described, as in the impression of the sublime that the work of a
Titanic artist such as Dante or Shakespeare may produce, and that of the
comic produced by the effort of a dauber or of a scribbler.
The process is external to the aesthetic fact In this case also; for the
only feeling linked with that is the feeling of aesthetic value and
disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. The Dantesque Farinata is
aesthetically beautiful, and nothing but beautiful: if, in addition, the
force of will of this personage appear sublime, or the expression that
Dante gives him, by reason of his great genius, seem sublime by
comparison with that of a less energetic poet, all this is not a matter
for aesthetic consideration. This consists always and only in adequation
to truth; that is, in beauty.