THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FINE ART
BY
G. W. F. HEGEL
TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY
F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS
VOL. III
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1920
CONTENTS OF VOL. III
THIRD PART
THE SYSTEM OF THE PARTICULAR ARTS
INTRODUCTION
[Summary. Nature of the relation between the system of Art-types,
or the collective totality of ideal world-presentments, and their
objective realization in independent works of art. Nature of the
process in the evolution of the specific arts themselves, and of the
aspects identical in all. The origins of art. Grace, Charm, and severe
or agreeable Style]
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT
[The principle of differentiation as determined by the sensuous aspect
of the subject-matter, and the relation thereto of the human senses
of Sight, Hearing, and intellectual Conception. Insufficiency of such
a principle of classification. Alternative principle discussed and
illustrated of more concrete nature, in which the evolution of truth
as the reality of the Idea itself is presented]
SUBSECTION I
ARCHITECTURE
INTRODUCTION
[Of the beginnings of human art, and that of building in particular.
Of the nature of the subordinate classification of architecture viewed
as symbolic, classical and romantic]
Division of Subject
CHAPTER I
INDEPENDENT AND SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE
Introduction and Subdivision
1. Works of architecture erected in order to unite peoples
2. Works of architecture intermediate between the arts of building and
sculpture
(_a_) The influence of the generative activity of Nature on the form
of buildings
(_b_) Further modification of similar conceptions in the obelisks of
Egypt and other examples
(_c_) Temple enclosures, labyrinths, etc.
3. The transition from self-substantive architecture to the classical
type
(_a_) The nature of subterranean dwellings
(_b_) Construction raised to house the dead in Egypt and elsewhere.
The Pyramids
(_c_) Buildings that directly subserve a purpose as the point
of transition to the classical type. The ordinary dwelling. The
environment of the sculptured image. The adoption of the principle of
expediency. The abstraction of parts of a building from the organic
form, _e.g._, in the column
CHAPTER II
CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE
Introduction and Subdivision
1. The general character of classical architecture
(_a_) Serviceableness to a definite end
(_b_) The nature of the fitness or power of adaptation of such a
structure to such an end
(_c_) The relatively greater artistic freedom of such architecture.
Architecture as frozen music. The dwelling-house
2. The fundamental determinants of architectural forms in their
separation
(_a_) Buildings of wood and stone. The question of their historical
priority
(_b_) The specific forms of the parts of a temple-dwelling.
[(_α_) Features of support. The column
(_β_) The thing supported. The entablature, in its architecture,
cornice, etc.
(_γ_) That which encloses. The walls and partitions]
(_c_) The classical temple in its entirety
[(_α_) The horizontal rather than soaring-up character
(_β_) The simplicity and proportion
(_γ_) The nature of its elaboration]
3. The different constructive types of classical architecture
(_a_) The Doric, Ionian, and Corinthian types, compared
and contrasted
(_b_) The Roman type of building. The vault
(_c_) General character of Roman architecture
CHAPTER III
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE
1. General Architecture
2. Particular architectural modes of configuration
(_a_) As the basic form we have the wholly shut away dwelling-house
[(_α_) Relation of this form to the ideal character of the Christian
religion
(_β_) Exclusion of light and access to mundane life
(_γ_) The aspect of soaring in tower and pinnacle]
(_b_) The form of the exterior and interior
[(_α_) The figure of the square and rectangular roofing not
appropriate. Parallel between the vaulting of a Gothic church and a
roofing of forest trees. Distinction between piers and columns. The
pointed arch. Distinction between choir, transept, nave, and aisles.
The baptismal font and entrance
(_β_) In contrast to the Greek temple decoration and and general
coordination of parts determined from within outwards. The form of
Cross. The doors. Flying buttresses, pinnacles, and towers]
(_c_) The mode of decoration
[(_α_) Importance of ornament to Gothic architecture
(_β_) Lightness and delicacy a prevailing feature, especially on the
outside
(_γ_) Display of romantic imagination therein]
3. Different types of building in romantic architecture
(_a_) The pre-Gothic architecture distinct from it. The basilica
(_b_) Genuine Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century
(_c_) Secular architecture of the Middle Ages. The art of
garden-making
SUBSECTION II
SCULPTURE
INTRODUCTION
[Sculpture makes a direct use of the human form instead of accepting a
symbolical mode of expression merely suggestive of spiritual import.
Does not primarily express emotion or spiritual life in action or the
focus of soul-life. Absence of colour]
Division of subject
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE OF GENUINE SCULPTURE
1. The essential content of sculpture
[(_a_) The twofold aspect of subjectivity. The province of subjective
life as such to be excluded from sculpture. The Divine presented in
its infinite repose and sublimity
(_b_) Presents a spiritual content only as explicit in bodily shape]
2. The beautiful form of sculpture
(_a_) The exclusion of the particularity of the appearance. How far
relative
(_b_) The exclusion of incidental facial expression
(_c_) Substantive individuality
3. Sculpture as the art of the classical Ideal
CHAPTER II
THE IDEAL OF SCULPTURE
Introduction and division of subject
1. The general character of the ideal form of sculpture
(_a_) The free product of the genius of the artist. General content
borrowed from mythology, etc.
(_b_) The animation which results from the plastic perfection of the
integrated coalescence of the whole throughout its definition and
relief
(_c_) No mere imitation of Nature. The external shape must be suffused
with ideal content]
2. The particular aspects of the ideal form of sculpture as such
(_a_) The Greek profile. Contrast of the human mouth with that
of animals. The projection of the forehead. Position of nose.
Consideration of the human eye and ear. Beauty of the human mouth.
Treatment of the chin in sculpture, also the hair
(_b_) Position of other parts of the human body and the motion thereof
[(_α_) The nature of the relation under which the limbs are associated
in their contribution to spiritual ideality. The upright position
(_β_) The motion and repose of the same in their freedom and beauty
(_γ_) The type of position and motion adapted to a situation
(_habitus_) or bodily habit under which the Ideal is expressed]
(_c_) Drapery
[(_α_) Ethical origin and artistic justification of, in sculpture
(_β_) Treatment of it by Greek sculpture
(_γ_) Artistic principle as determining the right emphasis on ideal
significance. Contrast between antique and modern sculpture in the use
of it]
3. The individuality of the ideal figures of Sculpture
(_a_) Incidental attributes and style of drapery, armour, etc.,
treated by sculpture. Distinguishing symbolic accessories of Greek
gods
(_b_) Distinctions of age and sex in gods, heroes, human figures, and
animals
(_c_) Representation of particular gods
CHAPTER III
THE VARIOUS KINDS OF REPRESENTATION, MATERIAL, AND THE HISTORICAL
STAGES OF THE EVOLUTION OF SCULPTURE
Introduction and division of subject
1. Modes of Representation
(_a_) The single statue
(_b_) The group. Tranquil juxtaposition. Conflicting actions. Niobe.
Lacoon
(_c_) The relief
2. The material of sculpture
(_a_) Wood
(_b_) Ivory, gold, bronze, and marble
(_c_) Precious stones and glass
3. The historical evolution of sculpture
(_a_) Egyptian sculpture. Deficiency of ideal spontaneity. Position of
hands and arms. Position of eyes
(_b_) Sculpture of the Greeks and Romans
(_c_) Christian sculpture
SUBSECTION III
THE ROMANTIC ARTS
INTRODUCTION
[The principle of subjectivity as such. How it is accepted as the
essential principle by romantic art. The contrast presented by
romantic and classical art in the changed point of view. The effect
of such a change on both the subjective side of soul-life and the
external aspect of objective presentment. The process of the gradual
idealization of the external medium of art itself as illustrated by
the particular romantic arts and the necessity thereof]
CHAPTER I
THE ART OF PAINTING
Introduction and division of subject
I. General character of Painting
(_a_) Fundamental definition of the art. Combines the subject-matter
of architecture and sculpture. More popular than sculpture
[(_α_) Individuality must not be suffered to pass wholly into the
universality of its substance. Introduction of accidental features as
in Nature
(_β_) Greatly extended field of subject-matter. The entire world
of the religious idea, history, Nature, all that concerns humanity
included
(_γ_) A revelation further of the objective existence of soul-life.
Vitality of artist imported into his presentation of natural objects]
(_b_) The sensuous medium of Painting
[(_α_) Compresses the three dimensions of Space into two. Its greater
abstraction, as compared with sculpture, implies an advance ideally.
Its object is semblance merely, its interest that of contemplation.
The nature of its locale
(_β_) Its higher power of differentiation. Light its medium. This
implies, even in Nature, a movement towards ideality. The appearance
of light and shadow in painting intentional. Form is the creation of
light and shadow simply. This fact supplies rationale of the removal
of one dimension from spatial condition
(_γ_) This medium enables the art to elaborate the entire extent of
the phenomenal world]
(_c_) The principle of the artistic mode of treatment
[Two opposed directions in painting, one the expression of spiritual
significance by interfusion with or abstraction from objective
phenomena, the other the reproduction of every kind of detail as not
alien to its fundamental principle. Illustrations of the two methods
and their relative opposition, or reconciliation]
2. Particular modes in the definition of Painting
(_a_) The romantic content
[(_α_) The Ideal which consists in the reconciliation of the soul with
God as revealed in His human passage through suffering. The religious
content. The Love of religion
(_αα_) The representation of God the Father. Generally beyond the
scope of painting. The famous picture of Van Eyck at Ghent
(_ββ_) Christ the more essential object. Modes of depicting him in his
absolute Godhead or his humanity. Scenes of Childhood and Passion most
fitted to express religious aspect. Love of the Virgin Mary. Contrast
with Niobe
(_γγ_) The ideas of devotion, repentance, and conversion as such
affect humanity in general when included in the religious sphere. The
pictorial treatment of martyrdom
(_β_) The pictorial treatment of landscape
(_γγ_) The pictorial treatment of objects in natural or secular
associations. The vitality and delight of independent human existence.
Art secures the stability of evanescent phenomena. The influence of
artistic personality on the interest]
(_b_) The more detailed definition of the material of pictorial
representation
[(_α_) Linear perspective
(_β_) Accuracy of drawing of form. The plastic aspect of a pictorial
work
(_γ_) The significance of colour. Modelling. Of gradations of colour
and its symbolism. Of various schemes of colour. Colour harmony.
The painting of the human flesh. The mystery of colour The creative
impulse of the artist]
(_c_) Artistic conception, composition, and characterization
[Painting can only embody one moment of time. Concentration of
interest. The law of intelligibility. Religious subjects, their
advantage in this respect. Historical scenes as appropriate
to particular buildings. Unity of entire effect. Raphael's
Transfiguration. Of the treatment of landscape as subordinate.
The grouping of figures. The form of the pyramid. Comparison of
the characteristic in painting and sculpture. The treatment of
love's expression in religious subjects. The gradual elaboration of
the portrait. The situation which is itself a critical moment in
characterization]
3. The historical development of Painting
(_a_) Byzantine painting
(_b_) Italian painting. General review of its spirit in religious and
romantic subject-matter
[(_α_) Characteristic features of early type: austerity, solemnity,
and religious elevation
(_β_) The free acceptance of all that is human and individual. The
influence of Giotto. Later schools mark a still further advance in
naturalism. Masaccio and Fra Angelico. The pictorial representation of
secular subjects
(_γ_) Further advance in power of emotional expression. Leonardo da
Vinci, Perugino, Raphael, and Correggio.]
(_c_) The Flemish, Dutch, and German schools
[(_α_) The brothers Van Eyck. Innocence, naïveté, and piety of early
Flemish School. Contrast with Italian masters
(_β_) The emphasis by North German painting on ugliness and brutality
(_γ_) Dutch painting. Historical conditions of its appearance. General
characteristics of Dutch art]
CHAPTER II
MUSIC
INTRODUCTION
[Summary. The principle of subjectivity, as realized in painting,
contrasted with its complete emancipation in the art of music.
Annihilation of spatial objectivity. Motion with its resultant effect
in musical tone. Analysis of the twofold negation of externality in
which the fundamental principle of musical tone consists. The inner
soul-life exclusively the subject-matter of music. Addressed also in
its effect to such]
Division of subject
1. The General Character of Music
(_a_) Comparison of music with the plastic arts and poetry
[(_α_) Both affiliated to and strongly contrasted with architecture.
It resembles architecture in the nature of the configuration of its
content as based on rigorously rational principles directed by human
invention. It supplies the architectonic of the extreme of ideality
as architecture supplies that of the external material of sense. The
quantitative or measure relation is the basis of both
(_β_) Music further removed from sculpture than painting. This is
not merely due to the greater ideality of latter, but also to its
treatment of its medium. The unity realized by a musical composition
of a different kind to that realized by the plastic arts. In the
former case subject to the condition of a time-series
(_γ_) Most nearly related to poetry. Employ the same medium of tone.
Poetry possible without speech-utterance. Ideal objectivity of poetry
as contrasted with the independence of musical tone as the sensuous
medium of music. Music as an accompaniment of the voice]
(_b_) Musical grasp and expression of Content
[(_α_) Primarily must not minister to sense-perception. Must
make soul-life intelligible to soul. This abstract inwardness
differentiated in human feeling, of every description
(_β_) Natural interjections not music. They are the point of
departure. To music belongs intelligible structure, a totality of
differences capable of union and disunion in concords, discords,
oppositions and transitions. The nature of its relation to positive
ideas]
(_c_) Effect of music
[(_α_) The evanescent character of the objectivity of music. It
seizes on conscious life where it is not confronted with an object.
Its effect due to an elementary force. Appeal to man as a particular
person. The soul made aware of its association with Time. Analysis of
the notion of Time
(_β_) Must also possess a content. Orpheus. Incentive to martial
ardour and enthusiasm
(_γ_) Necessity of repeated reproduction. Personal relation of the
executive artist to the same. Excess of this influence]
2. The particular definition of the means of expression in music
(_a_) Time-measure, beat, and rhythm
[The relation of Time to the fundamental principle of subjective
life. Time-measure prevents the series being indefinite and devoid of
content, and further regulates by intelligible division the nature of
its advance. Time-beat possesses the same function as the principle
of symmetry in architecture. Coordinates a fortuitous variety.
Distinct kinds of time-measure. Rhythm gives vital significance to the
time-measure and beat. The accent. The rhythm of melody. The analogous
example of verse. Handelian music]
(_b_) Harmony
[(_α_) Difference of sound through different instruments of music.
Artificially made. Instruments which possess an oscillating column
of air, or a stretched string of gut or metal which vibrates. The
kettledrum and harmonica. The human voice. Can be employed in
separation or combination
(_β_)Tone in its own essential definition. The constitution of harmony
as such. The theory of intervals. The scales and keys. Numerical
relations of tones and their pitch. Accordant and discordant tones.
The octave and other intervals
(_γ_) The system of chords. The triad. Dissonant chords of the seventh
and ninth. The resolution of a dissonance. Transitions and modulations
of harmony]
(_c_) Melody
[(_α_) The more poetic aspect of music. Inseparable from the
theoretical means which creates it. No real surrender involved in its
subjection to rules of harmony
(_β_) Simple melodies. Folk-songs. Part chorales where each note of
melody represented by a chord. Musical composition as an illustration
of the conflict between the principles of freedom and necessity
(_γ_) General character of genuine melody. As such reflects free
self-consciousness of soul-life]
3. The relation between means of expression in music and its content
(_a_) Music as an accompaniment
[(_α_) The melodic expression of such music. Ought not to fall into
excess of tumult. Palestrina, Durante, Haydn, Mozart, etc. Beauty of
Italian music
(_β_) The differentiation of the mode of musical expression must
correspond with the nature of a specific content and its situation.
Such a content supplied by the libretto. Distinction from this of a
song. The recitative. Defective unity
(_γ_) The nature of the condition of concrete unity in the libretto
and declamatory recitative. A good libretto not wholly unimportant.
Must be stamped with self-consistency. The libretto of Mozart's
"Magic Flute." Comparison of the sustaining soul of music with the
fundamental beauty of Raphael's paintings. Different forms of music as
accompaniment. Church, lyrical, and dramatic music]
(_b_) Independent music
(_c_) The artist as Executant
[(_α_) The ordinary executant who simply executes what lies before
him. Comparison with the rhapsodist or reciter of Epos. Player must
lose himself in music and reproduce composer
(_β_) The virtuoso, who himself creates and makes the music a means of
personal display. Must not merely show eccentricity, but reveal the
life of music and the force of a personality]
THIRD PART
THE SYSTEM OF THE PARTICULAR ARTS
THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART
INTRODUCTION
The objects treated by our science in the _first_ part were the general
notion and the reality of beauty in Nature and art, in other words
beauty in its truth, and art in its truth, the Ideal in the as yet
undeveloped unity of its fundamental principles, independent of its
specific content and its distinguishing modes of envisagement.
This essentially genuine[1] unity of the beautiful in art, in the
_second_ place, unfolded itself within its own resources in a totality
of art-forms, whose determinate structure defined at the same time the
content which the art-spirit was impelled to fashion from itself in an
essentially articulate system of manifestations of beauty under which
the Divine and human is envisaged to the world.
What still is absent from both these spheres is the reality that is
present within the elementary substance of the _external_ phenomenon
itself. For although both in our examination of the Ideal as such, and
in that of the specific modes of symbolic, classical, and romantic
art, we throughout referred to the relation or complete mediation
which obtains between the significance conceived as an ideal principle
and its embodiment in the external or phenomenal _materia_, yet
this realization merely retained its validity as that which was
still exclusively the _ideal_ art-activity in the sphere of general
world-impressions[2] of beauty, in and through which it is diffused.
Inasmuch, however, as the fundamental conception of beautiful implies,
that it make itself objective for the immediate vision, that is to
say for the senses and sensuous perception as an external work of
art, so that what is beautiful becomes only then itself through such
a definite form appropriate to itself explicitly united with the
beautiful and the Ideal, we have in the _third_ place to review this
territory of the art-product as actually self-realized in the entirely
sensuous medium. For it is only through this final configuration that
the work of art is truly concrete, an individual entity which is at
once real, self-contained, and singular. The Ideal can only constitute
the _content_ of this third sphere of our aesthetic philosophy for
the reason that it is the idea of the beautiful, in the collective
totality of all its world presentments, which is thus self-realized
in objective form[3]. For this reason the art-product is still, even
up to this point, to be conceived as a totality articulated in
itself, nevertheless as an organism, whose organic parts, which--while
in the second part of our inquiry they were differentiated under a
collective concept of essentially disparate world-aspects--now fall
asunder as isolated members, every one of which becomes independently a
self-subsistent whole, and in this singularity is capable of bringing
into display the totality of the different art-types. Essentially and
in accordance with its notion it is quite true that the collective
result of this new reality of art belongs to _one_ single totality.
Inasmuch, however, as it is a portion of the realm of the sensuous[4]
present, in which the same is made real to itself, the Ideal is now
resolved into its phasal states as a process[5], and confers on them
an independent and self-subsistent stability, albeit they are capable
of coming into juxtaposition, essential relation, and reciprocal
reintegration with one another. And this real world of art is the
system of the _separate_ arts. Just as then the particular types
of art, regarded throughout as totality, expose intrinsically a
process, an evolution, that is, of the symbolical to the classical and
romantic types, we find also, on the one hand, a similar advance in
the particular arts, in so far as it is the very art-types themselves
which receive their determinate existence through these specific arts.
From another point of view, however, the particular arts have also
themselves within them a process, a progression, independently of the
art-types to which they attach an objective reality, a process which in
this its more abstract relation is _common to all._ Every art possesses
its spring-time of perfected elaboration as art, and on the one side or
the other a history that precedes or follows this period of full-bloom.
For the products of the arts collectively are spiritual products,
and consequently are not at once to hand in their own specialized
province respectively, as are the forms of Nature, but are subject to
a beginning, progression, completion, and termination, a growth, a
blooming, and a decay.
These more abstract differences, whose devolution we propose at
the very commencement of our inquiry briefly to indicate, since it
asserts itself equally in all the arts, are identical with that which
it is usual to define under the name of _rigorous_, _ideal_, and
_approved_ style, when indicating the specific styles of art in each
case, which are mainly related to the general mode of embodiment and
representation, partly as considered in its external shape, and its
possession or lack of spontaneity, its simplicity, its surfeit of
detail, briefly in all its various aspects, according to which the
definition of the content emerges in the external appearance; partly
no less in its aspect of the technical elaboration of its sensuous
material, in which the art in question gives determinate existence to
its content.
It is a common assumption that art finds its beginnings in what is
devoid of complexity and is _natural._ In a certain sense, no doubt,
we may accept this as true. In other words what is rude and barbarous
is without question, when contrasted with the genuine spirit of art,
something both nearer to Nature and less complex. What is, however,
natural, vital, and simple in art, regarded as fine art, is something
quite different to this. All beginnings which are merely simple and
natural, in the sense of uncouthness, do not as yet belong to the
province of art and the beautiful at all as, for example, in the case
where children scrawl simple figures, and with a few formless strokes
would indicate thereby a human form, a horse, and so forth. Beauty,
considered as a spiritual product, demands even from the start an
elaborate technique, implies a long series of experiment and practice.
Simplicity, when we refer to it as the simplicity of the beautiful,
its ideal proportions, is rather a result, which only succeeds in
overcoming the variety, medley, confusion, excess and incumbrance of
its matter, and in concealing and effacing its preparatory studies,
after much mediating work, so that at last Beauty, with all its
unfettered spontaneity, appears to us as though liberated in one
cast[6]. What we find here is very analogous to the behaviour of a
man of education, who, in all that he says and does, moves simply,
spontaneously, and with ease, albeit he did not by any means start in
the possession of such simple spontaneity, but rather has only secured
such as the result of a thorough self-training.
For this reason it is no less in accordance with the nature of the fact
than it is with the actual course of history that art in its beginnings
rather presents us the appearance of _artificiality_ and clumsiness,
running largely into incidental detail, and generally overloaded with
the elaboration of drapery and the environment of its subject-matter;
and precisely in the degree that this external material is more compact
and multifarious, to that extent that which is really expressive is
reduced to its baldest terms; in other words what is truly the free and
vital expression of Spirit in its forms and motion is that which is
here least in evidence.
In this respect consequently the primitive and most ancient
art-products in all the particular arts are the vehicle of a content
that is essentially most abstract, such as simple tales in poetry,
theogonies effervescent with abstract thoughts and their incomplete
elaboration, single objects of sacred association in stone and
wood and so forth, and the representation remains unaccommodating,
monotonous or confused, stiff and dry. More especially in plastic
art the facial expression is insipid with a repose which does not so
much express spirituality in its essential penetration as a purely
animal emptiness, or conversely is remorseless and exaggerated in its
emphasis on characteristic traits. In the same way the bodily forms
and their motion are devoid of life, the arms, for example, are glued
to the body, the legs are not divided, or are clumsily moved, or in
angular and constrained modes; and in other respects such figures are
ill-shaped, suffer from narrow compression, or are excessively lank
and extended. On the other hand we find that much more devotion and
industry is spent upon accessories such as drapery, hair, weapons,
and ornaments of a similar nature; the folds of the drapery remain
wooden and independent, without being able to accommodate themselves
to the limbs, just as we may often see for ourselves in images of the
Virgin and saints of early times, where they are in part run together
in monotonous regularity, and in part are continually broken up in
harsh corners, not flowing freely in their lines, but scattered about
with diffuseness over too wide a surface. And in the same way the
first attempts at poetry are full of breaks, devoid of connection,
monotonous, dominated in an abstract way by one idea or emotion, or
elsewhere wild, violent, the particular being obscurely assimilated,
and the whole as yet not bound together in a secure and ideal organic
unity.
It is only, however, after such preparatory work as the above that
the style which is the main subject of our present inquiry commences
with what is truly genuine fine art. In this it is no doubt in the
first instance at the same time still _austere_, but already moderated
with more beauty in its severity. This severe style is the more lofty
abstraction of the beautiful, which comes to a stop with that which
is of real importance, expresses and reproduces the same in its broad
outlines, still disdains all amiability and grace, suffers the main
subject-matter alone to assert itself, and preeminently expends very
little industry and elaboration on what is incidental. And in doing so,
this severe style also still adheres to the imitation of that which
is immediately given to sense. In other words, just as, in regard to
content, it takes its stand, so far as ideas and representation are
concerned, in what is given it, in the tradition, for example, of a
revered religion, so also, to take the opposite point of view, namely,
that of external form, it will merely render assured the fact itself,
and not its own invention. It is, in short, satisfied with the general
broad effect that is educed from the fact, and follows in expression
closely upon the growth and definite existence of this. In the same way
everything that is accidental is held aloof from this type of style, in
order that the caprice and spontaneity of the individual mind[7] may
not appear to be involved in it. The motives are simple, the objects of
representation few[8]; and for this reason no considerable variety in
the detail of configuration, muscles and motion, is apparent.
_Secondly_, the ideal, purely beautiful style hovers between the simply
substantive expression of fact and the fullest exposition of all that
immediately pleases. We may define the character of this style as the
highest degree of vitality compatible with a beautiful and reposeful
greatness, such as we admire in the works of Pheidias or Homer. It is
a living presentment of all traits, shapes, modifications of such,
motions, limbs, in which there is nothing without significance and
expression, but everything is instinct with life and action, and
testifies to the breath, or very pulse of free life itself on the
merest glance at the work of art in question; a vitality, however,
which essentially makes visible one totality, and only one, is the
expression of one content, of one individuality of action.
It is in such a truly vital atmosphere that we find moreover the
breath of grace poured forth over the entire work. Grace is indeed
a concession to the hearer and spectator, which the severe style
despises. At the same time, whenever Charis, that is Grace, is asserted
in the presence of an onlooker, if only as an acknowledgement, a
means of conveying pleasure, yet in the ideal style we find that
such a presence appears entirely divested of any craving to confer
merely pleasure. We may perhaps explain our meaning in more technical
language. The fact or subject-matter is here the substantive in its
concentration and self-absorption. During the process, however, that
it is manifested through the medium of art, and is, so to speak,
concerned to actually exist for others, to pass over, that is, from its
simplicity and essential solidarity to particularization, articulation,
and individualization, we may regard this development to an existent
form for others as at the same time a kind of complaisance on the part
of the predominant matter, in so far, that is, as it does not appear
to require this more concrete mode of existence, and yet is wholly
poured forth into it for us. Such a charm as this is only entitled to
assert itself in such a style so long as what is really substantive
also persists in undisturbed self-possession, as we may call it, over
against the grace of its manifestation, which blooms forth entirely in
outward guise as an original type of superfluity. This indifference of
the ideal or inner self-assurance[9] for its existence, this repose
of itself on itself is precisely that which constitutes the beautiful
negligence of the grace, which attributes no immediate value to this,
its mode of manifestation. And it is just in this that we must look
for the loftiness of the beautiful style. Beautiful free art is
careless in its attitude to the external form, in which it refuses to
let us see any peculiar movement of the mind, or any end or intention.
Rather in every expression, every modification, it points to one thing
only, and that is the idea and vital principle of the whole. It is only
by this means that the Ideal of the beautiful style asserts itself,
which is neither harsh nor severe, but already shows the softening
influence of the cheerful notes of the beautiful. Though no violence
is done either to any feature of expression, any part of the whole,
and every member appears in its independence, and rejoices in its own
existence, yet each and all is content at the same time to be only
an aspect in the total evolved presentment. This it is which alone
displays, alongside of the depth and determinacy of individuality and
character, the grace of Life itself. On the one side we have indeed
merely the substantial subject-matter predominant, but in the detailed
exposition, in the lucid, and at the same time exhaustive variety of
traits, which complete the definition of the appearance, and place it
before us in its transparent vitality, the spectator is at the same
time freed from the thing in its baldness, in so far as he possesses
and is wholly face to face with its concrete life. By virtue, however,
of the last mentioned fact, this ideal style, so soon as it carries
this modification in its external aspect to yet further lengths, passes
over into the so-called _agreeable_ or pleasing style. Here we have the
assertion of another intent than the mere vitality of the fact[10].
The giving of pleasure, the active elaboration in the direction of
externality is asserted as itself an object, and is a matter of
independent concern. As an example we may take the famous Belvedere
Apollo, not indeed as itself belonging to this latter style, but at
least marking the transition from the lofty style to that of sensuous
attraction. And inasmuch as in an art of this kind it is no longer the
single actuality itself to which the entire embodiment is referable,
the particular details become under this mode, even though in the first
instance still deducible from the central object itself and rendered
necessary by means of it, more and more for all that independent.
We feel that they are introduced, or interpolated, as ornaments,
intentional additions of episodical import. And yet for the very reason
that they are only related to the object accidentally and only receive
their essential definition in a personal relation to the spectator or
reader, they flatter the individual taste[11] of such, to which their
workmanship is primarily directed. Virgil and Horace, for example,
delight us in this respect by an educated style, in which we can trace
a variety of things aimed at, and an effort deliberately made to give
pleasure. In architecture, sculpture, and painting, owing to this
spirit of complaisance, simple and imposing effects of size disappear,
and we find on every side small pictures standing by themselves,
ornamentation, fineries, dimples on cheeks, elegant hair-dress, smiles,
all the varied folding of draperies, enchanting colours and shapes,
exceptional, difficult, but for all that unconstrained movements in
the pose of the figure[12]. In the so-called Gothic or German art of
building, where the same is carried in the direction of this spirit, we
find decoration elaborated without limit, so that the whole appears to
be little more than a collection of little columns with all the utmost
variety of ornamentations, diminutive towers, spires, and so forth,
which, in their isolation, please us, without, however, destroying
the impression of the larger connections of the whole and the still
insistent masses of the same.
In so far, however, as the province of art we have been discussing
in its entirety gives way to this activity of externalization, this
presentment of what is purely exterior, we may emphasize it in its
further generalization as the _effect_, which makes use of as a means
of expression what is unpleasing, strained, and colossal, the type
of uncouth contrasts such as the prodigious genius of Michael Angelo
often exploits to excess. The effect may be generally indicated as the
excessive leaning towards an ulterior public, which results in the
form no longer being asserted in its independent, self-sufficient and
buoyant repose. Rather it turns round, as it were, and makes an appeal
at the same time to the onlooker, and strives to place itself in a
relation to him by means of this manner of presentment. Both aspects,
namely essential repose and the address to the spectator, must no doubt
be present in a work of art; but these aspects should fall together
in complete equilibrium. If the work of art in the severe style is
wholly without qualification self-contained, without any appeal to the
spectator, it leaves him cold. If, on the other hand, the appeal is
made too directly to him, it creates indeed a sensuous pleasure, but
loses to that extent its substantive thoroughness[13], or it does so
without this thoroughness of content and the simple character of the
conception and delineation therein contained. This passage from itself
then merges in the accidental characterization of the appearance; as
a result the image itself shares this accidental character, in which
we no longer recognize the actual subject-matter and the form which
is imperatively rooted in itself, but rather the poet and artist with
his own personal designs, his peculiar type of production and skill.
And for this reason the public is entirely released from the essential
content of the work, finding itself by means of it placed in a personal
relation[14] to the artist, inasmuch as everything now wholly depends
on its seeing that which the artist through his art intended, that
is, the cunning and personal skill which is embodied in his grasp
of his subject and its execution. To be thus brought into personal
community of insight and critical acumen with the artist is for most
people a flattering concession; and our reader or audience, and very
possibly the spectator of plastic art, with even more readiness wonder
at their poet, musician, or painter or sculptor respectively; and the
vanity of such is all the better satisfied in proportion as the work
invites them to this personal criticism, and supplies them openly
with hints of such designs and points of view. In the severe style,
on the contrary, no such confidences are made over to the spectator
at all. What we have is just the substantive nature of the content,
which in its representation austerely, and even harshly, repulses the
purely personal quest. A repulse of this kind will often be no doubt
merely indicative of the spleen of the artist, who, after entrusting a
profound significance to his work, instead of making the exposition of
the same free, transparent, and buoyant, deliberately makes it hard to
follow. A trade in mysteries of this kind is also nothing but another
form of affectation, and a spurious alternative to the complaisance we
have criticized.
It is pre-eminently in the work of the French school that we find
this tendency to flatter, attract, and create effect, and they have
in this way elaborated this easy-going and complaisant attitude to
the public as the main object of their efforts. They seek to find
the real importance of their artistic work in the satisfaction such
affords others, whose interest they would arouse and whom they would
duly impress. This tendency is particularly marked in their dramatic
poetry. Marmontel, for example, gives us the following anecdote in
connection with the performance of his drama "Dénis, the Tyrant." The
crisis culminated in a question asked the Tyrant. Clairon, in whose
mouth this question was put, when the moment for asking it had arrived,
and when actually in conversation with Dionysius, made a forward step
in front of the audience and dramatically addressed them instead. By
this rhetorical effect the enthusiastic support of the entire piece was
assured.
We Germans, on the other hand, require too much a content in our works
of art, in the depths of which the artist finds a deliverance from
himself, without troubling himself about the public, who is just left
to look at it, take trouble over it, and help himself out with it, as
he pleases or is able.
DIVISION OF SUBJECT
Approaching now, after these general observations we have made with
reference to the distinctions of style common to all the arts, the
division of the third fundamental section of our inquiry we may observe
that the one-sided understanding has looked about in many directions
for various principles of differentiation in its classification of
the specific arts severally. The true division can, however, only
be deduced from the nature of the work of art, which in the entire
complexus of its forms[15] explicitly unfolds the totality of the
aspects and phases which are referable to its own notion. And the
first thing which asserts itself in this connection as important is
the consideration that art, in accordance with the fact that its
presentments now have definitely to pass into sensuous reality, becomes
on account of this also art for the _senses_, so that the definition of
this sense and the material medium which is applicable to it, and in
which the work of art is made objective, must necessarily furnish us
with the principles of subdivision in the several arts. Now the senses,
for the reason that they are senses, or in other words, are related
to a given material, a disparate exterior medium[16] and an essential
multiplicity, are themselves different, namely, feeling, smell, taste,
hearing, and sight. It is not our business in this place to demonstrate
the ideal necessity of this totality and its disparate parts; that is
the function of the philosophy of Nature. Our problem is limited to the
inquiry whether all these senses, or if not, which of them are capable,
by virtue of their notional significance, of being organs for the
reception of works of art. We have already at a previous stage excluded
feeling, taste, and smell. Botticher's mere feeling with the hand of
the effeminately smooth portions of statues of goddesses is not a part
of artistic contemplation or enjoyment at all. By the sense of touch
the individual merely comes, as an individual endowed with sense, into
contact with the purely sensuous particular thing and its gravity,
hardness, softness, and material resistance. A work of art is, however,
not merely a sensuous thing, but Spirit manifested through a sensuous
medium. As little can we exercise our sense of _taste_ on a work of
art as such, because taste is unable to leave the object in its free
independence, but is concerned with it in a wholly active way, resolves
it, in fact, and consumes it. A cultivation and refinement of taste is
only possible and desirable in connection with dishes of food and their
preparation, or the chemical qualities of objects. An object of art,
however, should be contemplated in its independent and self-contained
objective presence, which no doubt is there for the mind that perceives
it, but only as an appeal to soul and intelligence, not in some active
relation, and with none whatever to the appetites and volition. As for
the sense of _smell_ it is just as little able to become an organ of
artistic enjoyment, inasmuch as things are only presented to this sense
in so far as they are themselves in a condition of process, and are
dissolved through the air and its direct influence.
_Sight_, on the other hand, possesses a purely ideal relation to
objects by means of light, a material, which is at the same time
immaterial, and which suffers on its part the objects to continue in
their free self-subsistence, making them appear and re-appear, but
which does not, as the atmosphere or fire does, consume them actively
either by imperceptible degrees or patently. Everything, then, is an
object of the appetiteless vision, which materially exists in Space
as a disparate aggregate, which, however, in so far as it remains
unimpaired in its integrity, merely is disclosed in its form and colour.
The remaining ideal sense is _hearing._ This is in signal contrast to
the one just described. Hearing is concerned with the tone, rather
than the form and colour of an object, with the vibration of what is
corporeal; it requires no process of dissolution, as the sense of smell
requires, but merely a trembling of the object, by which the same
is in no wise impoverished. This ideal motion, in which through its
sound what is as it were the simple individuality[17], the soul of
the material thing expresses itself, the ear receives also in an ideal
way, just as the eye shape and colour, and suffers thereby what is
ideal or not external in the object to appeal to what is spiritual or
non-corporeal.
As a third accretion to these two senses we have the _sensuous
conception_, memory, the retention of images, which appear in
consciousness by means of the isolated perception, in this way
subsumed under universals, and become related and united to the same
by means of the imagination, so that now in one particular aspect the
external reality itself exists both as ideal and spiritual, while
that which is spiritual from another point of view accepts under the
imaginative conception the form of what is external, and is brought to
consciousness as a disparate and correlated aggregate.
This triple mode of seizing on reality offers art the well-known
division into _first_, the _plastic_ arts, which elaborate their
content for vision in the external form and colour of objects,
_secondly_, in the art of _sound, music_, and _thirdly_, into _poetry_,
which as the art of _speech_ uses tone merely as a symbol, in order,
by means of it, to address itself directly to what is ideal in the
contemplation, emotion, and imagination of our spiritual life. If we
rest satisfied with this sensuous aspect of our subject-matter, as the
final principle of its differentiation, we shall, in respect to our
first principles, find ourselves in a difficulty, because the grounds
of this division, instead of being deduced from the concrete notion of
our subject-matter, are merely borrowed from the most abstract features
of it. We have consequently to look about us once more for a principle
of division that has deeper roots, which has, in fact, already been
put forward in the introduction of this work as the truly systematic
mode of dividing this third section of it. The function of art is just
this and only this, namely, to bring before the grasp of the senses
truth, as it is in the world of spirit, reconciled, that is, in its
unity as a whole with objectivity and the sensuous material. In so far,
then, as this is possible at this stage in the element of the external
reality of the art-product to that extent the totality, which the
Absolute is in its very truth, breaks apart into the various modes that
differentiate it as a process.
The _middle point_, the truly substantive centrum, is given us here
in the representation of the _Absolute_, God Himself as God, in His
independent _self-subsistence_, not as yet developed to the point of
motion and difference, or advanced to the active operation of and
separation from what is His, but presented essentially self-absorbed in
supreme divine repose and stillness, briefly the Ideal embodied in a
form essentially adequate to itself, which persists in its determinate
existence in correspondent identity with itself. And in order that it
may appear in infinite self-subsistency the Absolute must be conceived
as Spirit, as conscious Subject, but as Subject which possesses
essentially itself its own adequate mode of external appearance.
As divine subject, however, which passes forth into actual reality,
it has confronting it an _external_ world for environment, which,
in conformity with the Absolute, must be built up to an appearance
harmonious with the same, an appearance permeated with the Absolute.
This environing world is then on one side the _objective_ as such,
the basis, the embrace of external Nature, which, taken by itself,
possesses no absolute significance for Spirit, nor any ideality such as
is present to individual consciousness[18], and consequently is only
able to express by suggestion the spiritual Ideal which its appearance
must seek to secure by embodying its embraced content in a world of
Beauty.
In opposition to external Nature we find the _ideal_ realm of
_consciousness_[19], the human soul as the medium[20] for the existence
and manifestation of the Absolute. Together with this subjectivity
is conjoined the multiplicity and differentiation of individuality,
particularization, distinction, action, and development, that is, in
general terms the full and varied world of the reality of Spirit[21],
in which the Absolute is known, willed, experienced, and actively
present. We may already infer from what we have indicated above that
the differences under which the total content of art is differentiated
are in essential consonance, both for our grasp and presentation of
them, with what we have previously in the second portion of our
inquiry examined as the symbolical, classical, and romantic types of
art. In other words symbolic art only carries the art-process to the
point of marking an affinity between content and form, instead of their
identity, of only suggesting the ideal significance in itself and the
content which that suggestion purports to express, in other words the
external appearance[22]. It furnishes consequently the fundamental type
to that specific art, whose function it is to elaborate the objective
world as such, Nature's environment in the beautiful conclusion
given by Art to Spirit (mind), and to image by suggestion the ideal
significance of what is spiritual in this external medium. The
classical Ideal, on the contrary, meets the case of the presentation
of the Absolute as such, in its self-subsistent external reality, its
essential self-repose, while the romantic Spirit (mind) type of art
is, both in content and form, identical with the internal life of the
soul, and the emotional life both in its infinite aspect and its finite
particularity.
It is, then, on a principle such as the above that the system of the
particular arts is differentiated as follows:
_First_, we have _architecture_, the beginning of all, whose
foundation reposes in the very nature of its subject-matter. It is
the commencement of art for this reason, that art at the start has in
general terms neither discovered for the presentation of its spiritual
content the adequate material, nor the forms that fully express it, and
is consequently compelled to rest content in the mere _search_ after
such true satisfaction, and to do so in the externality of its content
and its mode of presentation. The medium of this primary art is that
which is essentially unspiritual, gross matter, that is, only capable
of configuration according to physical laws of gravity. Its form is
the image of external Nature, united by its regularity and symmetry in
the whole of a work of art to express merely an external reflection of
Spirit.
The _second_ art is _sculpture._ Both for its principle and content it
possesses spiritual individuality under the mode of the classic Ideal
in the sense, namely, that the ideal and spiritual finds its expression
in the corporeal appearance pertinent to spiritual life, which it is
the function here of Art to present in existent artistic actuality.
It consequently still accepts for its material gross matter in its
spatial extension, without, however, shaping the same in conformity
to rule merely in respect to its gravity and its natural conditions
according to the forms of the organic or inorganic, or in relation to
its visibility in bringing it down to, and in all essential respects
particularizing it in, a simple repetition of the external appearance.
The _form_ which is here, however, determined by virtue of the content
itself is the actual life of Spirit, human form, and its objective
organism permeated with Spirit's own breath, whose function it is to
embody in adequate shape the self-subsistence of the Divine in its
supreme repose and unperturbed greatness, unaffected by the divisions
and limitations of human affairs, their conflicts and endurances.
_Thirdly_, we have to render intelligible in one final whole those
arts whose province it is to give form to the ideal content of the
individual soul-life.
The art of _painting_ marks the _beginning_ of this final totality.
It converts the external form itself entirely into an expression of
what is ideal[23], which within the limits of the environing world
not merely reproduces the ideal self-containedness of the Absolute,
but also brings to the vision the same as essentially a personal
possession[24] in its spiritual existence, volition, feeling, action,
in its activity and relation to another, and consequently also in
its sufferings, pain, death, in the entire series of passions and
satisfaction. Its object is for this reason no longer _God_ simply,
that is, as object of the human consciousness, but this consciousness
itself, God, that is, either in His reality present in the action
and suffering of individual life, or as spirit of the community,
as the spiritual related through feeling to itself, soul-life in
its resignation, its sacrifice of, or joy and blessedness in, life
and action within the limits of the natural world. As a means to
the presentation of this _content_ the art of painting is bound to
utilize the external phenomenon in respect to its form, not merely
the human organism, but also Nature in its simplicity in so far as
the same suffers what is of spirit to shine through with clarity. It
is, however, unable to utilize as material physical matter and its
spatial existence just as it is; it is compelled, in working it up into
its forms, essentially to idealize the same. The first step by means
of which the sensuous material is raised in this respect to confront
mind[25], consists, on the one hand, in the uplifting of the actual
sensuous appearance, whose visibility is converted into the mere _show_
by art, and on the other in _colour_ by means of the distinctions,
transitions, and modulations of which this transformation is effected.
The art of painting, consequently, in order to express the soul in
its ideality, resolves the three dimensions of space into that of
superficies as that which most intimately asserts the ideality of what
is external, and represents spatial distance and form by means of the
phenomena of colour. For painting is not concerned with producing
mere visibility in its general significance, but with that form of
visibility which, if it is ideally produced, is also quite as much
essentially particularized. In sculpture and the art of building forms
are visible by means of external light. In the art of painting, on the
contrary, the material which is itself essentially obscure possesses
intrinsically within itself its inward or ideal, light in short. It is
itself transfused in its own medium, and mere light is to that extent
essentially obscured. The unity, however, and blending of light and
dark is colour[26].
_Secondly_, the art of _music_ offers a contrast to that of painting
in one and the same sphere as the latter. Its real element is the
ideal realm as such, emotion in its formless independence, capable of
asserting itself not in externality and its reality, but purely through
the external medium which disappears immediately when it is expressed
and thereby cancels itself. Its _content_ consequently consists of
the internal life of Spirit in its immediate, essential subjective
unity, emotion simply; its _material_ is musical tone, its form and
configuration, the concord, discord, harmony, contrast, opposition, and
resolution of such tones according to the laws of their quantitative
intervals respectively and their artistically elaborated time measure.
Finally, in the _third_ place, after painting and music we get the
art of speech, _poetry_ in its general terms, the absolutely genuine
art of Spirit and its expression as such. For everything which the
human consciousness conceives and spiritually embodies in the chamber
of spirit speech is able to accept, express, and bring imaginatively
before us, and only speech is thus able. In respect to its content,
therefore, poetry is the richest and its boundaries are the widest.
But in proportion as it gains as the vehicle of Spirit it loses on the
side of the material object. In other words, for the reason that it
neither works for the perception of the sense as the plastic arts, nor
merely for the ideal emotion, as music does, but is concerned to create
its spiritual significances under the form of its own spiritual medium
merely for the conception and contemplation of mind, the _material_
through which its constructive activity is asserted only retains for
it the value of a _means_, however much it may be elaborated in an
artistic sense, by which Spirit is expressed for Spirit, and no longer
counts as a sensuous mode of existence, in which the spiritual content
is capable of finding a reality adequate to it. Such a means can in
the light of our previous consideration only be _tone_ regarded as the
still relatively most adequate material of spiritual expression. Tone
here, however, does not in the present case preserve, as was the case
with music, an independent validity of its own for which the unique
and essential aim of art could be exhausted in finding an artistic
form, but conversely is entirely steeped in the world of Spirit and the
definite content of conception and contemplation, and appears simply as
the external symbol of this content. So far as the _embodiment_ which
the poetry receives is concerned, in this respect poetry may claim to
include the whole field of art in the sense, that is, that it repeats
in its own province the modes of presentation adopted by the other
arts, which is only in a qualified degree the case with painting and
music.
In other words poetry gives, on the one hand, as epic poetry the form
of _objectivity_ to its content, which no doubt here does not, as in
the plastic arts, attain to an external existence. It is none the less
a world conceived by the mind in the form of the objective world and
represented as objective for the individual imagination. This it is
which constitutes human speech as such, which finds satisfaction in
its own content and its expression by means of speech.
On the other hand, however, poetry is conversely to an equal degree
speech of the soul, the _ideal_ medium, which, as that inward content
returns to itself, is _lyrical poetry_, which invokes the aid of music
in order to penetrate yet more deeply the world of souls and emotion.
Finally, to take the _third_ example, poetry proceeds through speech
within the limits of a self-contained _action_, which it at the same
time makes an object of its presentment, and consequently is able to
ally itself closely to music, gesture, mimicry, and the dance. This
is _dramatic_ art, in which man, in all that the term implies[27],
creatively presents the work of art which is the product of human life.
These five arts form the system of realized and actual art, essentially
determined by itself and differentiated as such. In addition to them
there are no doubt other incomplete arts, for example, the arts of
gardening and dance. These we shall only refer to incidentally as
the opportunity recurs. A philosophical investigation must perforce
restrict itself entirely to distinctions referable to the notion, and
develop and grasp these adequate and veritable modes of embodiment.
Nature and reality is not, it is true, confined to these circumscribed
limits, but is more liberal in its movement, and we not unfrequently
hear it made a matter of praise that in this respect the products of
genius are perforce compelled to expand themselves beyond just such
limitations. In Nature, however, transitional organisms of either
hybrid or amphibian type, instead of emphasizing the spontaneity and
excellence of Nature, merely demonstrate its inability to hold fast
to the essential differentiations of species which are rooted in that
process, or to prevent their deterioration before external conditions
and influences. The same thing may be affirmed in art with regard to
these intermediate forms, although the same are capable of producing
much, too, that delights us, is full of charm and utility, albeit not
in the highest class of perfection.
If we turn our attention now after these introductory remarks and
considerations to the more specific examination of the separate
arts, we shall find ourselves from another point of view in some
difficulty. For inasmuch as we have hitherto concerned ourselves
with art as such, the Ideal and the general types, under which its
evolution according to its _notion_ proceeds, it is imperative to
pass over into the concrete existence of art, and by doing so into
the world of experience. Here we find a condition very analogous to
that we observe in Nature, the provinces of which are readily grasped
in their generality and the necessary laws which distinguish them,
in whose actual material existence, however, the individual objects
and their species, not merely in the aspects which they present to
observation, but also in the form under which they exist, are of such
a wealth of variety that, as a part of the difficulty, they offer as
feasible every conceivable way of approaching them; and in addition to
this the philosophical notion, when we are desirous of applying the
standard of its simple lines of distinction, appears as insufficient
for this purpose and the mere grasp of thought incapable of taking in
the breath of such fulness. If, however, we merely rest satisfied with
mere description and superficial reflections we fall short no less of
the object we have set before us, that is, a development which is both
scientific and systematic. Added to which difficulties we have the
further one that nowadays every particular art makes the independent
demand for a special science, inasmuch as with the continuous growth of
connoisseurship in art the range of such special knowledge has become
ever more rich and extensive. This science of the connoisseur, or
dilettante, has, however, in our own times become fashionable under the
direct teaching of philosophy itself. It has, in short, been maintained
that it is in art we must look for real religion, the discovery of
truth and the Absolute, that, in short, it stands on a loftier pedestal
than philosophy for the reason that it is not abstract, but receives at
the same time the Idea in reality and for a contemplation and emotion
which are concrete[28]. And on the other hand it is regarded nowadays
as of august importance in art[29] to occupy one's attention with an
infinite superfluity of detail of this kind, in the interests of
which the demand is made from everyone that he should have observed
some novelty or other. Such critical labour is a kind of learned
trifling which may very readily be overdone. It causes, no doubt,
considerable pleasure to examine works of art, to grasp the thoughts
and reflections which such may suggest, to give currency to the points
of view, which others have pointed out, and by this means to become
judges and critics. The more rich, however, by this means, namely, that
everybody is intent on having discovered on his own account something
uniquely his own, a learning and process of reflection has become, the
more every particular art, nay, every branch of the same, now renders
necessary the completeness of a treatment of it from the individual's
standpoint. As a corollary the historical aspect of such a survey and
the criticism of works of art, which becomes inevitable, only add yet
further to the learning and range of the subject. It is, moreover,
essential before we take part in any discussion over the details of
matters of artistic import that we should already have seen much and
many times. Personally I have no doubt seen a considerable amount, but
by no means all that is necessary to enable me to discuss the material
of art exhaustively. All such difficulties, however, we may meet with
the simple response that it does not lie within the aim of the present
work to teach art-criticism, or to bring forward an historical review
of such learning, or only to the extent such is necessary to apprehend
on philosophical principles the essential and universal aspects of
our subject, and their relation to the idea of the beautiful in its
realization within the sensuous medium of art. If we keep this aim
before us the variety of artistic effects we above indicated need
cause us no embarrassment; for despite this complexity the essential
character of the subject-matter according to its notional idea is the
controlling factor; and although this is frequently lost in accidental
matter by virtue of the medium in which it is realized, points of view
are none the less in evidence, in which it is as clearly proclaimed. To
grasp these aspects, and to develop them in a scientific way, is the
very problem which it is the function of philosophy to elucidate.
FIRST SUBSECTION
ARCHITECTURE
Art, by enabling its content to attain a realized existence under a
definite form, becomes a _particular_ art. We may therefore now for
the first time refer to it as an actual art and find therein the
_real_ beginning of art. With this particularity, however, in so far
as it purports to bring before us the objectivity of the Idea of the
beautiful and art, we have presented to us at the same time in its
notional significance a _totality_ of what is particular. For this
reason when we now, in the sphere of the specific arts, begin our
examination of the same with the art of building this must not merely
be accepted in the sense that architecture asserts itself as the art
which, by virtue of its notional definition, is first presented to us
as such an object of inquiry, but we may equally accept as a result,
that it is also in relation to its _existence_ the art first to be
considered. In supplying, however, an answer to the question, what
the mode of origin was, which fine art, relatively to its notion and
realized form, has received, we must exclude the experience of history
no less than reflections, conjectures, and ordinary conceptions, which
merely have reference to objective history, and are so readily and in
such variety propounded. In other words, men are ordinarily actuated
by an impulse, to bring before their mental vision anything in its
original mode of appearance for the reason that the beginning is the
simplest mode, under which the fact asserts itself. And connected with
this impulse we have present behind it the covert conviction that
the simple mode of appearance informs us of the fact in its notional
significance and real origin, and the further amplification of such
a beginning to the actual point in the process which only really
concerns us is further with a like readiness conceived under the
trivial mode of thought, that a process so understood has _gradually_
brought art forward to the crucial stage above indicated. A beginning,
however, of this simplicity is, if we look at its content, something
which, taken by itself, is so unimportant, that for philosophical
thought it can only appear as wholly accidental, albeit it is for the
ordinary consciousness only just in such a way that the origin can be
readily grasped. For example, we have the story, as an explanation of
the origin of the art of painting, told us of a maiden who followed
the dim outline of the shadow of her sleeping lover. In the same way
we have sometimes a cave and sometimes a hollow tree adduced as the
point of departure in the art of building. Beginnings of this kind are
so intelligible in themselves that further comment on the fact appears
unnecessary[30]. In particular the Greeks invented many charming
tales to explain the origins not merely of fine art, but also ethical
institutions and other conditions of life, all of which satisfied the
primary need to make such beginnings visible to the _imagination._ Such
beginnings are not substantiated by history, and yet they do not aim at
making the manner of origin intelligible directly as a process involved
in the _notion_, but purport to confine their explanation to the field
of objective history.
DIVISION OF SUBJECT
We have, then, in such a way to establish the beginning of art from its
notional significance, that the first problem of art is made to consist
in giving form to that which is essentially objective, the ground, that
is, of Nature, the external environment, and by doing so to make that
which is without ideal import to conform both to significance and form,
both of which still remain external to it, for the reason that they are
not either the form or significance inherent in the objective material.
The art, which has set before it this task is, as we have seen, an
architecture which has already discovered its first elaboration under
the modes of sculpture, or painting and music[31].
If we now direct our attention to the most primitive origins of the art
of building, we find at the earliest stage that we can accept for such
a beginning the hut, regarded as the human dwelling, and the temple,
as the exterior enclosure of the god and his community. With a view
to define this commencement more closely a dispute has been raised
with reference to the nature of the _material_ employed for building,
whether, that is to say, it originated in buildings of wood, which
is the opinion of Vitruvius, and is supported by Hirt in a similar
reference, or rather from those of stone. This contrast of original
material is no doubt of importance, for it does not merely concern its
external quality as one might at first sight suppose, but rather the
architectonic character of fundamental forms; for instance, the kind of
decoration united with it is essentially bound up with this external
material. We may, however, entirely set aside the distinction as a
purely subordinate aspect of the matter rather referable to what is
accidental and empirical, and devote our attention to a point of more
importance.
In other words, in dealing with houses, temples, and other buildings we
are confronted with the essential condition, to which we attribute the
fact that buildings of this kind are merely _means_ which presuppose
an external end. Hut and house of God alike presuppose those who dwell
in them, and for whom they have been erected, men and the images of
gods. Man is also prompted by a desire to leap and sing; he requires
the mediacy of human speech; but speech, leaping, shouting, and singing
are not as yet poetry, the dance and music. And when within the
architectonic adaptation of means to ends in order to satisfy specific
needs, in part referable to daily life and in part to the religious
cultus or the state, the impulse in the direction of artistic form and
beauty asserts itself, we find at the same time a _division_ apparent
in the kind of building above mentioned. On the one hand we have man,
thinking man, or the image of the god as the essential _object_, for
which, from the other point of view, architecture merely supplies the
_means_ of environment and covering. With such a divided point of view
we are unable to constitute our beginning, which is in its nature the
_immediate_, and simple, not a relativity or essential relation of this
sort; rather we must look for a point of departure, where a distinction
of this kind does not yet arise.
In this respect we have already at an earlier stage stated that the art
of building corresponds to the _symbolic_ type of art, and in a unique
degree gives realization to the principle of the same as particular art
because architecture generally is adapted to suggest the significances
implanted in it purely in the external framework of the environment.
If the distinction, then, above referred to between the object of
the external cover independently presented in the living man, or the
temple's image, and the building regarded as the fulfilment of such
an object, is to be absent from our earliest stage, we shall have to
look about us for buildings which precisely, as works of sculpture,
do stand up in _independent_ self-subsistence, which in short carry
their significance in _themselves_ rather than in some _other_ object
or necessity. This is a point of the highest importance, which I have
never found raised hitherto, although it goes to the root of the
matter, and alone is capable of disclosing the manifold nature of
external forms, and of supplying a thread to conduct us through the
maze of architectonic configuration. A self-subsistent art of building
of this kind will also to a similar degree differ from sculpture
on this ground, namely, that it, as architecture, does not create
images, whose significance is that which is essentially spiritual and
personal, and which itself intrinsically possesses the principle of
an appropriated embodiment throughout adequate to its ideal import,
but builds up works which, in their exterior form, can merely give an
impress of the significance in a symbolic way. And for this reason
this type of architecture, both in respect to its content and, its
presentation, is really of a _symbolic type._
All that we have said with reference to the principle of this stage
of art applies equally to its mode of _presentation._ Here, too, we
find that the mere distinction between buildings of wood and stone is
not sufficient, in so far as the same points to a means of limiting
and enclosing a defined space for a specific religious or other human
purposes, as is the case with dwellings, palaces, and temples. Such a
space, may be obtained either by hollowing out essentially solid and
stable masses, or conversely, by preparing walls and roofs to enclose
it. We can make our beginning of the art of building with neither of
these alternatives, which we should consequently define as an inorganic
form of sculpture; such a type no doubt piles up independently stable
images, but while doing so does not in any way make the end of free
beauty and the manifestation of Spirit in the bodily form commensurate
with the end it pursues, but in general terms sets up a purely symbolic
form, which purports in itself to indicate and express a particular
idea.
Architecture is, however, unable to remain standing at such a point of
departure. Its function indeed consists just in this, namely, to build
up external Nature as an environment which emanates from Spirit itself
through the gates of art under the forms of beauty, and to build it
for the independently present life of mind, that is mankind, or for
the images of the gods that are set up and clothed by man in objective
form, and to build up the same as that which no longer carries its
significance in itself, but discovers the same in another, that is
man, and his necessities and objects of family and State-life, culture
and so forth, and by so doing surrenders the self-subsistency of such
buildings.
Regarded under this aspect we may assume the _advance_ of architecture
to consist in this, that it suffers the above indicated distinction
between end and means to appear in separation, and constructs for man,
or the individual human form of gods, which is the work of sculpture,
an architectural dwelling, palace, or temple analogous to the
significance of the same.
And, thirdly, the _termination_[32] unites both phases in the
process, and appears within this aspect of division as at the same
time self-subsistent. These points of view present to us, as the
classification of the entire art of building, the following heads of
division, which essentially comprehend the notional distinctions of the
matter in question no less than the historical development of the same.
_First_, we have the genuine _symbolic_ or _self-subsistent_ type of
architecture.
_Secondly_, there is the _classical_ type, which gives independent form
to spiritual individuality, divesting on the other hand the art of
building of its self-subsistency, and degrading it in the intent to set
up an inorganic environment under the forms of art, for the spiritual
significances which are now on their part independently realized.
_Thirdly_, _romantic_ architecture, in other words the so-called
Moorish, Gothic, and German, in which, it is true, houses, churches,
and palaces are also merely the dwellings and places in which civic
and religious needs and activities are concentrated; which, however,
conversely are also shaped and raised without let or hindrance for the
express object of emphasizing their self-subsistency.
Although on the grounds already advanced architecture in respect to
its fundamental character remains of a symbolic type, yet the artistic
types known as the truly symbolic, classical, and romantic constitute
the closest means of defining it, and are here of greater importance
than in the other arts. For in sculpture the classical, and in music
and painting the romantic, penetrates so profoundly to the entire
root-basis of these arts respectively, that for the elaboration of
the type of the other arts[33], to a more or less degree, but little
room is left for other aspects. And, finally, in poetry, though it is
the fact that it gives the most complete impress in its art-products
of the entire series of art-types, we shall find it necessary to
make our classification not by means of the distinction between
symbolic, classic, and romantic poetry, but according to the specific
differentiation applicable to poetry as a particular art in epic,
lyrical, and dramatic poetry. Architecture is, on the other hand, art
in its immediate relation to the external medium, so that in this case
the essential differences consist in this, whether this external matter
receives its significance intrinsically, or is treated as a means for
an object other than it, or finally asserts itself in this subservience
as at the same time independent. The first case is identical with
the symbolic type simply, the second with the classical, the real
significance attaining here an independent presentation, and in doing
this the symbolic is attached as an environment wholly external to it,
a type which is exemplified in the principle of classical art. The
union of these two types is coincident with the romantic, in so far,
that is, as romantic art makes use of the exterior medium as a means of
expression, yet withdraws itself into itself out of this reality, and
is consequently able once more by doing so to let objective existence
stand forth in self-subsistent embodiment.
[Footnote 1: _Gediegene_ here seems to mean that the unity is a real
one throughout all its manifestations--it is one of sterling efficacy.]
[Footnote 2: By the words _die innere Produktion der Kunst_
is meant apparently "the creative activity of art-production
as ideally conceived in a series of general world-impressions
(_Weltanschauungen_)." The main contrast between the theoretic
apprehension of such an evolution of art as a series, held in its
broad generic outlines by mind, and its practical realization
as differentiated in the _actual_ products of different arts is
sufficiently clear. The difficulty remains, however, as to how far
Hegel regarded these _Weltanschauungen_ in their universality to have
themselves an _objective_ significance no less than a _subjective_
one--how far, in other words, are they merely abstract concepts of the
observer, the schemata of scientific generalization, or do actually
unfold an objective, if ideal process--how far is the thought one with
the revelation of the Absolute itself. It is, of course, a difficulty
not unknown to the student of Hegel in other directions. At least,
as translator, I must content myself, as an excuse for obscurity in
this and other passages, with drawing attention (_a_) To the main
contrast which is quite clear, and (_b_) To the fundamental difficulty
which remains. As a rule the word _Weltanschauung_ is generally used
rather in the sense of a world-outlook as from the point of view
of an observer. In this passage, and still more obviously a little
lower down, the sense appears to be rather world-presentment or
manifestation--and the emphasis certainly on the objective aspect.
Thus the Ideal of Beauty is defined as "the collective totality of
its _Weltanschauungen._" How far within such, which have previously
been called exclusively _ideal_ (_innere_) can be incorporated the
positive concrete embodiments of definite works of art is for myself
the difficulty, which I do not profess myself to be able to solve. I am
in fact not entirely clear as to the entire meaning of Hegel myself.
The mere statement that the one is made objective by the other does
not appear to me to remove the difficulty; for, to mention no other
objection, a particular work of art is not exclusively either concrete
or objective in the sense that an ideal process is so, or an Ideal
which combines the ideal stages or moments in such a process.]
[Footnote 3: _Welche sich objectivirt._ See note above.]
[Footnote 4: The present, that is, which is objective to sense.]
[Footnote 5: _So löst sich das Ideal in seine Momente auf._ According
to this it would appear that the process is wholly identified with the
system of the particular arts. But the universal world-presentments are
surely equally a process or at least an abstract of such a process. And
this is in fact affirmed lower down.]
[Footnote 6: A favourite metaphor of Hegel. The idea is that the metal
is all one infusion producing a result that is like the appearance of
Athene from the brow of Zeus.]
[Footnote 7: _Der Subjektivität._ The mind of the artist.]
[Footnote 8: A misprint. _Der_ should be _die._]
[Footnote 9: _Zuversicht._ Confidence in itself.]
[Footnote 10: _Die Sache._ The fact, the artistic object primarily
treated.]
[Footnote 11: _Die Subjektivität._ What is personal in the perception
of judgment.]
[Footnote 12: A fine illustration of this passage is to be found in
Miss Harrison's description of the Praxiteles Hermes in her admirable
"Introductory Studies in Greek Art" (see chap, VI), a work every
student of Greek Art should peruse.]
[Footnote 13: _Gediegenheit._ Sterling solidity. To understand all that
is implied the above cited work of Miss Harrison is the clearest and
most useful I know.]
[Footnote 14: _In Unterhaltung._ Finds himself, so to speak, directly
conversing with him.]
[Footnote 15: _Der Gattungen, i.e._, specific types.]
[Footnote 16: _Das Aussereinander._ A differentiated exteriority.]
[Footnote 17: _Subjektivität_, the ideal unity that is--not so much as
soul or personality.]
[Footnote 18: _Kein subjektives Inneres._ No ideal content that implies
a unifying subject.]
[Footnote 19: Same expression as last note. An ideal realm in its
aspect of relation to an individual soul.]
[Footnote 20: _Als Element._]
[Footnote 21: Or reason (_Geist._)]
[Footnote 22: As such content.]
[Footnote 23: This must be taken subject to qualifications which appear
further on.]
[Footnote 24: _An sich selbst subjektiv._ As essentially appertinent to
the individual soul.]
[Footnote 25: _Sich entgegenheit dem Geist_, _i.e._, raises itself as
a medium opposed to--or, as we should say, subservient to.]
[Footnote 26: This is obviously a reference to the false theory of
light advanced by Goethe and accepted by Hegel.]
[Footnote 27: _Das ganze Mensch._ The entire man with all his
faculties.]
[Footnote 28: This is a reference, of course, to the Art Philosophy of
Schelling.]
[Footnote 29: _Zum vornehmen Wesen._ Ironical, of course. It is part of
the aristocratic pretensions of the connoisseur.]
[Footnote 30: He means that as an explanation they are obvious provided
the facts are true, which he then points out in such cases is not so.]
[Footnote 31: I am not sure I follow the sense here. I presume the
meaning is that, as _notionally_ considered, we have to commence
with an architecture to which other arts are already subservient.
The process of elaboration has already been carried beyond mere
architecture. And in this sense he calls sculpture an elaboration
(_Ausbildung_) of architecture. But the addition of painting and music
as such elaboration is, to say the least, an unnecessary obscurity.
Such an elaboration of a primitive form of music is suggested lower
down. But the conception appears to me rather confusing.]
[Footnote 32: That is the final phase, romantic architecture.]
[Footnote 33: Other than architecture.]
CHAPTER I
INDEPENDENT SYMBOLICAL ARCHITECTURE
The primary and original necessity of art is this, that a conception,
a thought emanate from mind, be produced and emphasized by man as
the result of his activity, just as in speech there are simple ideas
which man communicates thereby and makes intelligible to others. In
human speech, however, the means of communication is accepted merely
as a sign, and for this reason is an entirely arbitrary mode of
externalization. The function of art, on the contrary, is not only
to make use of the mere symbolic sign, but, in contrast to this, to
supply a sensuous presence correspondent to significances. On the one
hand, therefore, the sensuous product, which art presents to us, must
afford lodging for an ideal content; on the other it has to represent
this content in a manner which enables us to see that it is itself
as its content not merely a realization of immediate reality, but an
actual product of human conception and its spiritual activity. If I
see, for example, an actually living lion I deduce from the unique
presentment of the same the concept of lion precisely as I should in
the case of a picture of it. In the picture, however, we find something
more than this. It demonstrates to us that the form has been conceived
in the mind, and has found the origination of its existence in the
human spirit and its productive activity, so that now we not only
receive the idea of an object, but the idea of a human conception of
that object. There is, however, no original artistic necessity that
either a lion, merely as such[34], a tree, or any other single object
be added for the success of such reproduction. We have seen, on the
contrary, that art, and pre-eminently plastic art, proceeds with the
presentation of such objects in order to affirm in them the dexterity
of the counterfeit from the artist's own point of view. The interest
in its first origination is directed to bringing before the vision of
the artist himself and others the primary impressions of the objective
facts, and the universal or essential thoughts thus stimulated. Such
popular impressions are, however, in the first instance abstract and
in themselves of indefinite character, so that man, in order that
he may present them to the imagination, lays hold of that which is
essentially just as abstract, the material medium as it is--which is at
once massive and ponderous--a material which is no doubt capable of a
definite, but not of an intrinsically concrete and veritably spiritual,
content. The relation between content and sensuous reality, by virtue
of which the content is to pass from the concipient world into that
of imagination, can consequently only be of a symbolical type. At the
same time, however, a building, which purports to declare a general
significance for others, stands there for no other purpose save that
of essentially expressing this loftier aspect, and is consequently an
independent symbol of a thought that goes straight to its essential
import, and is of universal validity, a kind of speech which is
present to spiritual life on its own account, however much it may not
be expressed through sound. The products, therefore, of this type of
architecture are necessarily stimulating to thought of themselves, and
arouse universal concepts, albeit they fail to be the mere envelope and
environment of significances which otherwise possess independent form.
For this reason, however, the form which permits a content of this kind
to appear through it cannot perforce merely pass as symbolic sign, as,
for example, in the case when we raise a cross to a deceased person,
or erect stones in memory of battles. For signs of this character are
doubtless qualified to stimulate ideas, but a cross, or a pile of
stones, do not suggest, in virtue of their own nature, the idea which
it is our object to awake, but are just as able to remind us of much
else entirely different. This distinction constitutes the general
notion of the stage now discussed[35].
With regard to this it may be affirmed that entire nations have known
how to express their profoundest requirements in no other way than by
the arts of building, or at least pre-eminently in an architectonic
way. This has been, however, to an essential degree only in the East,
as will appear from what we have already seen when we were called on
to discuss the symbolic type of art. To an exceptional degree we may
say that the constructions of the more ancient art of Babylonia, India,
and Egypt--which we have now before us to some extent only in ruins,
ruins which have been able to defy all ages and their revolutions, and
which excite our wonder and astonishment as much on account of what is
wholly fantastic in their forms as in virtue of their extraordinary
proportions and mass--either completely bear this character, or in
great measure are derived from it. They are works whose construction
enlists at certain periods of history the entire activity and life of
nations.
If, however, we inquire more closely into the _classification_ proposed
by this chapter and the heads of subject-matter comprised in it, we
shall find that the point of departure in this kind of architecture
is not, as in the case of the classic or romantic type, from definite
forms similar to that of the house. In other words we have here no
independently secure content, and with it no secure mode of embodiment,
advanced as the principle thereof, which is forthwith related in its
further development to the entire range of the different constructions.
Rather the significances which are accepted as content remain, as in
the case of the symbolic type generally, likewise inchoate and general
conceptions, elementary, in many respects separated and interfused
abstractions of natural life mingled with thoughts of spiritual
activity, without being, ideally concentrated to a focus as the evolved
states of _one_ mind[36]. This aspect of dissolution gives them the
appearance of the greatest variety and change, and the object of
such architecture merely consists in emphasizing in its presentation
first one aspect and then another, in making such symbolical, and, by
means of human labour, making such symbolism apparent to us. Before
a multiplicity of content such as this we cannot pretend in this
discussion to be either exhaustive or systematic. I shall limit myself
to an attempt, so far as this is possible, to bring simply that which
is of most importance into connection with a rational classification.
The prominent features of such a survey may be thus briefly enumerated.
As content our demand was for modes of view of a wholly general
character, in which peoples and individuals possess an ideal
resting-place, a point, a unity for consciousness. The _proximate_
object, therefore, of such independent and self-substantive
construction is simply to raise some work, which forms the _unity_ of
a nation or nations, a place in which its life may be concentrated.
We may also find along with this the further object more nearly
associated, to present by means of this very embodiment, that which
generally unites mankind, in other words the religious ideas of
nations, by virtue of which works of this kind receive likewise a more
definite content for their symbolical expression.
Furthermore, in the _second_ place, such an architecture is unable to
remain fixed within the limits of this incipient determination of its
_entire_ content; the symbolical images tend to become _isolated_; the
symbolical content of their signification is more closely defined, and
by this means we find that the distinctions of their forms tend to come
into more assured prominence, as for instance we see in the case of the
Lingam columns, obelisks, and other examples of this kind. From another
point of view the art of building, in the spirit of such isolated
self-subsistency, presses forward in its passage to _sculpture_, its
acceptance of organic animal forms or human figures, its enlargement of
either and association of both of them, however, on a prodigious scale,
in its further addition of walls, doors and passages, and throughout
in its treatment of what is adapted to sculpture in such objects in
an entirely architectonic manner. The Sphinxes, Memnons, and enormous
temples of Egypt come under this category.
_Thirdly_, this symbolical art of building begins to present the
transitional stage to the classic type. In other words it excludes
sculpture from its immediate province, and sets about constructing
itself as a receptacle for other significances, which are themselves
not merely expressed under an architectonic mode. That the reader may
better understand the process thus indicated I will recall to memory a
few famous examples of such buildings.
1. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS ERECTED WITH THE OBJECT OF UNITING PEOPLES
"What is holy?" is a question raised by Goethe in a certain distich,
and the answer he gives is: "that which binds together many souls."
In this sense we may affirm that what is sacred, together with the
end expressed in the above association, and as such association, has
actually formed the primary content of self-subsistent building and
the art of such. The earliest example of this we may take from the
story of the building of the tower of Babylon. In the broad expanse
of the Euphrates valley we are told that mankind erected an enormous
architectural work. It is built by the labour of a community, and
this public character of its construction is at the same time the end
and content of the work itself. And what is equally true is this,
that this foundation of an association of communal labour is no mere
unity of a patriarchal stamp; on the contrary we find here that the
mere unity of the family is precisely that which is set on one side,
and this building, which is raised to the heavens, is the objective
presentment of the dissolution of the more primitive type of unity and
the realization of another of more expansive range. The collective
activity of peoples belonging to that age worked in it; and, in
proportion as they came together in order to accomplish a building of
prodigious size, the product of their activity came to be the band,
which, on the ground and soil they had thus selected, and by means of
the accumulated mass of stone and the architectural construction on the
land--just as in our case morality, custom, and the lawful constitution
of State-life--bound them in unity together. A building of this kind is
in consequence also symbolical for the reason that it merely suggests
the band of unity which it is, because it is only able, by means of
its form and content, to express the sacred unity which unites men in
an external way. It is also equally a part of this tradition that the
communities have once more split apart from the centre of attraction
which united them on a work of this external character.
A further and yet more important building, which has, too, already
a more reliable historical basis, is the temple of Belus, of which
Herodotus informs us[37]. We will not here inquire in what relation
this stands to that of Biblical tradition. It is impossible to call
this structure, taking it as a whole, a temple in any ordinary meaning
of that term; rather we should call it a temple enclosure in the form
of a square, each side of which was two stadia long, with brazen gates
for means of entry. In the centre of this sacred place, according to
Herodotus, who had actually seen this colossal work, a tower of thick
walls (with no interior, solid throughout, in other words a πέργος
στερεός) was built, both in length and breadth a stadium: on this
was placed yet another, and again another on that, and so on, eight
towers in all. On the outside of this a roadway was made to the top;
and it appears that halfway up to the summit was a place of rest with
benches on which all who ascended could rest themselves. On the summit,
however, of the last tower there was a huge temple, and in the temple
was a great bench, well cushioned, and before it stood a gold table.
No statue, however, was placed in the temple. No one was permitted
to be there at night with the exception of the attendant women, who,
according to the statements of the Chaldaeans, the priests of this god,
were selected by him pre-eminently for service. The priests further
maintained (_c._ 182) that the temple was visited by the god, who
rested on the bench made for him. Herodotus, it is true, also states
(_c._ 183) that below within this sanctuary there was yet another
temple, in which was placed a great image of the god of gold, together
with a huge golden table before it, and at the same time refers to two
great altars outside the temple on which the sacrifices were made.
Notwithstanding these facts it is impossible to picture this gigantic
building as a temple either in the Greek or modern sense of the term.
For the first seven cubic towers are solid throughout, and it is only
the eighth one at the summit which serves as a resting-chamber for the
invisible god, who received therein no obeisance either from priesthood
or the community. His image was below outside the building, so that the
entire construction was raised in really independent and self-contained
form, and did not subserve the objects of religious ritual, although
it is no longer a purely abstract point of unity that we find here
but a sanctuary. The form remains no doubt subject to accidental
causes, or it receives its determinate character purely on account
of the material security of the cube form; at the same time we have
evidence of a demand which seeks for a significance which may supply
a determinate relation to it more directly symbolical and applicable
to the work taken as a whole. We must look for this, though this is
not a point expressly adverted to by Herodotus, in the number of the
massive floors. There are seven of them with an eighth superposed for
the nightly abode of the god. This number of seven in all probability
symbolizes the seven planets and spheres of heaven.
We find also in Media cities built in accordance with such a symbolism.
There is, for example, Ecbatana with its seven encircling walls, of
which Herodotus[38] states that in part by virtue of the height of
the elevation on the slope of which the city was built, and in part
intentionally and by artificial means, they were higher one than the
other, and their battlements were coloured differently. White was
on the first, black on the second, purple on the third, blue on the
fourth, red on the fifth; the sixth, however, was coated with silver,
and the seventh with gold, and within this last stood the royal
stronghold and its treasure. "Ecbatana," remarks Creuzer, in his work
on Symbolism, when referring to this type of building[39], "that Median
city, and its royal stronghold in the centre, with its seven circles of
walls and its battlements of seven different colours, represents the
spheres of heaven which enclose the stronghold of the sun."
2. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN THE ARTS OF BUILDING AND
SCULPTURE
The first point we have to consider in the further development of
our subject consists in this, that architecture accepts for its
content significances that are more _concrete_, and aims at their
more symbolical presentation in accordance with _forms_ that are
similarly _more concrete_, which, however, whether we take the case of
their insulation[40], or collective accretion in gigantic buildings,
they do not make use of in the way sculpture makes use of them, but
architectonically in their own independent province. In the case of
this present type we have to direct our attention to more specific
facts, although all that we advance can put in no pretension to
completeness, or an _a priori_ development for the reason that art in
so far as it proceeds in its products to embrace the full range of the
actual, that is the historical ways of comprehending the world and its
religious conceptions, is lost in aspects of a contingent character.
The fundamental definition of the type is simply this, that we have
a confused blend of sculpture and architecture, albeit the art of
building is that which permeates all and predominates.
(_a_) We had occasion before, when discussing the symbolic type of art,
to mention the fact that in the East it is frequently the universal
living force of Nature, that is, not the spirituality and might of
consciousness, but the productive energy of generation, which is
emphasized and revered. More particularly in India this religious
attitude was universal; also from its sources in Phrygia and Syria
under the image of the great goddess, the fructifyer, a conception
was derived which the Greeks themselves accepted. Still more closely
considered this conception of the universally productive energy of
Nature was represented and held sacred in the form of the organs of
sex, Phallus and Lingam. This cultus was in the main promulgated in
India, albeit also, as we learn from Herodotus, it was not wholly
foreign to Egypt. At any rate we meet with something of the kind in the
festivals of Dionysus. According to the statement of Herodotus, "they
have invented other puppets as substitutes for the phalli of an ell's
length, which the women draw about with a string, on which we find
the sexual member no smaller in size than the rest of the body." The
Greeks accepted a similar ministration, and Herodotus expressly informs
us (_c._ 49) that Melampus had knowledge of the Egyptian sacrificial
festival of Dionysus, and had introduced the phallus which was carried
about in honour of the god. It was in India especially that the worship
of the energy of generation assumed the exterior shape and significance
of the organs of sex. Enormous columnar images were in this respect
raised of stone as massive as towers and broadening out at the base.
Originally they were themselves independently the aim and objects of
such worship; only at a later time it became customary to make openings
and hollow chambers within them and deposit in these divine images,
a custom which was maintained in the Hermes figures of the Greeks,
little temple shrines that could be carried. The point of departure,
however, in India was the phallus pillars, which had no such hollows,
and which only at a later date were divided into a shell and kernel,
growing thus into pagodas. For the genuine Indian pagodas, which should
be distinguished essentially from later Mohammedan or other imitations,
do not originate in the form of the dwelling, but are narrow and lofty,
and receive their fundamental type from these columnar constructions.
We find a similar significance and form also once more in the
conception of the mountain Meru as expanded by Hindoo imagination,
which is conceived as twirling stick in the sea of milk, and is the
creative source of the world. Herodotus mentions similar columns, some
constructed in the shape of the male, others in that of the female
organ. He ascribes their construction[41] to Sesostris, who erected
them everywhere on his military expeditions against all the peoples he
conquered. The majority of such pillars no longer existed in the days
of Herodotus. It was only in Syria that the historian[42] had himself
seen them. However, the fact that he ascribes them all to Sesostris is
merely based on the tradition he adopts. Moreover, his explanation is
wholly Greek in its colour; he converts the natural significance into
one of ethical import and in this sense informs us: "In cases where
Sesostris during his expedition crossed nations which were brave in
battle, he set up pillars in their land together with inscriptions,
which gave his own name and nation, and indicated that he had subdued
these peoples. Where, on the contrary, he overcame without opposition,
he indicated on such pillars the female organ of sex without attaching
an inscription in order to declare the fact that these nations had been
cowards in battle."
(_b_) We find further constructions of a similar nature, intermediate,
that is, between sculpture and architecture, principally in Egypt. With
these we may include, for example, the _obelisks_, which do not, it is
true, borrow their form from the living organisms of Nature, such as
plants, animals, or the human form, but are of a form wholly subject to
geometrical rule, yet at the same time no longer constructed expressly
as subservient to the human dwelling or temple, but are erected in
free and independent self-subsistency, and possess the symbolical
significance of the solar rays. "Mithras," maintains Creuzer, "the Mede
or Persian, rules in the solar city of Egypt[43], and is there prompted
by a dream to build obelisks, that is to say solar rays in stone, and
to inscribe on them letters which are known as Egyptian." Pliny had
already attached this import to obelisks[44]. They were dedicated to
the sun's divinity, whose rays they were intended to catch and at the
same time to reflect. Also we find that in the images set up in Persia
we have rays of fire which ascend from columns[45].
After obelisks we should mention as most important the sculptured
_Memnons._ The huge statues of Memnon of Thebes, of which Strabo was
still able to see one fully preserved and made from a single stone,
while the other, which uttered a sound at setting of the sun, was
already in his day mutilated, possessed the human form. They were
two seated colossal human figures in their grandiose and massive
proportions rather inorganically and architectonically designed than in
the strict sense sculptured, as also appears in the case of the linear
arrangement of the Memnon columns, and, inasmuch as they are only
valid in such equable order and size, they wholly digress from the aim
of sculpture and are subject to the art of building. Hirt[46] refers
the colossal melodious statue, which Pausanias states the Egyptians
regarded as the image of Phamenoph, not so much to deity as to a king,
who possessed in it his monument, as Osymandyas and others in a similar
way. It is, however, quite possible that these imposing images supplied
a more definite or indefinite conception of something universal. Both
Egyptians and Aethiopians worshipped Memnon, the son of the Dawn,
and sacrificed to him on the first appearance of the solar rays by
means of which the image greeted with its vocal sound the worshippers.
Producing as it did vocal sound it is not merely in virtue of its form
of importance and interest, but by reason of its nature as a living,
significant and revealing thing, albeit the mode of revelation is
purely one of symbolic suggestion.
This relation we have pointed out in the case of these statues of
Memnon is equally true in that of the _Sphinxes_, which we have already
discussed in our reference to their symbolic significance. We find
these Sphinxes in Egypt not merely in extraordinary numbers but also
of stupendous size. One of the most famous of them is the one which is
situated in close proximity to the Cairo group of pyramids. Its length
is 148 metres, its height from the claws to the head is 65 metres; the
feet that repose in front, measured from the breast to the points of
the claws, are 57 metres, and the height of the claws 8 metres. This
enormous mass of rock, however, has not in the first instance been
excavated and then carried to the place now occupied by it. On the
contrary, the excavations which have been made to its foundations prove
that the foundation consists of limestone, and in a manner which showed
that the entire huge work was hewn from one rock of which it only forms
a portion. This enormous image more nearly approaches, it is true,
genuine sculpture in its colossal proportions; it is, however, equally
true that the Sphinxes were also set side by side linearly in passages,
in which position they, too, receive a wholly architectonic character.
(_c_) Such independent figures are, as a rule, not only to be found in
isolation, but are supplemented by the construction of large buildings
resembling the temple type, labyrinths, subterranean excavations
of every kind, or amongst other things are utilized in masses and
surrounded by walls.
The first thing we may remark with regard to the temple enclosures
of Egypt is this that the fundamental character of this huge type
of architecture, detailed information as to which we have latterly
received in the main from French writers, consists in this that they
are constructions open to the day, without roofing, doors, passages
between partitions[47], and above all, between columned halls, entire
forests of columns. They are works, in short, of the greatest range
and variety of interior construction which, without serving as the
habitation of a god, or a communion of worshippers, independently
by this self-consistent operation appeal to the wonder of our
imaginations quite as much in the colossal size of their proportions
and masses, as through the fact that their isolated forms and images
make an independent and exclusive claim to our interest. Such forms
and images are in truth placed there as symbols for significances
which are strictly universal in their import, or in the position
they occupy as representing literature, in so far, that is, as they
declare such significances not through the manner of their form, but
by means of writings, works of imaginative form which are engraved on
their surfaces. We may in part describe these gigantic buildings as
a collection of sculptured images; for the most part, however, these
appear in such a number and with such repetition of one and the same
form, that the arrangement becomes one of a series, and it is only in
this kind of line and order that they receive what is precisely their
architectonic definition, which becomes, however, once more an object
in itself, and does not merely mean beams and roofing and nothing
beyond them.
The larger constructions of this type start with a paved passage, one
hundred feet broad, according to Strabo's statement, and three or four
times as long. On either side of this approach (δρόμος) stand Sphinxes,
in rows of fifty to a hundred, in height from twenty to thirty feet.
After this comes an imposing and splendid portal (πρόπυλον), narrower
at the top than at the base, with piers and columns of enormous bulk,
ten or twenty times higher than the height of a man; partially isolate
and independent, and in part fixed in walls and gorgeously decorated
structures[48], which also stand up perpendicularly in independence
to the height of from fifty to sixty feet, broader at the bottom
than at the top, without being connected with transverse walls, or
carrying entablatures[49], and so constituting a dwelling. On the
contrary, what we find is that, in contrast to vertical walls, which
rather suggest they are built to support a weight, they belong to the
independent mode of architecture. Here and there Memnon images lean
against these walls, which also constitute passages, and are entirely
covered with hieroglyphics and enormous pictures on stone, so that they
appeared to the Frenchmen who recently saw them like printed calico.
We may regard them as so many leaves of books, which by means of their
spatial and limited superficies arouse unlimited astonishment, feeling,
and reflection in the human soul. Doors follow at frequent intervals,
and alternate with each series of Sphinxes; or we find an open spot
engirt throughout by a wall with columned passages to these walls.
After that we get a covered place, which does not serve as a dwelling,
but is a forest of pillars, the columns of which have no roofing but
carry slabs of stone. After these Sphinx passages, series of columns,
and structural walls over-flowered with hieroglyphics, after them a
frontage building with wings, before which obelisks are erected and
lions couched; or also, after forecourts, or a cincture of yet more
narrow approaches, we reach the culmination of the entire construction,
the real temple, the sanctuary (σηκὸς), according to Strabo of moderate
proportions, which either contained no image of the god, or merely an
animal image. This dwelling of godhead was now and again a monolith,
as Herodotus, for example, narrates[50] in respect of the temple of
Buto. This temple was worked out of one piece of stone to a length
and breadth, which in each of its walls of equal size measured forty
cubits, and as final roof to the same was placed a single stone with a
cornice of four cubits' breadth. In general, however, these sanctuaries
are so small, that no communion of worshippers could find room inside.
Such a communion, however, is an essential concomitant of a temple;
otherwise the same is merely a box, a treasury, a place where sacred
images are conserved.
To such an extent buildings of this type run on for miles with their
rows of animal figures, their Memnons, their immense doors, their walls
and colonnades of the most stupendous dimensions, some of greater
breadth, some of less, their isolated obelisks and much else, that
while we wander within works so huge and so calculated to excite our
surprise, which in part possess merely a more restricted purpose in
the diverse activities of the system of culture to which they belong
the question is irresistible, what these masses of stone have to tell
us of the Divine they secrete. For on closer inspection symbolical
meanings are everywhere in-woven in these constructions in that the
number of Sphinxes and Memnons, the position of columns and passages
have relation to the days of the year, the twelve signs of the Zodiac,
the seven planets, the great periods of the lunar cycle and other
phenomena. To some extent we find here that sculpture has not yet
freed itself from architecture; and in some degree again the really
architectonic aspect of measure, interval, number of columns, walls,
steps, and so forth is so treated, that the real object of these
relations is not to be found in their own intrinsic character, that
is, in their symmetry, harmony, and beauty, but is referable to their
symbolical definition. And in this way all this work of construction
asserts itself independently as an object in itself, as itself a
cultus, in which both nation and king are united. Many works, such as
canals, the lake Maeotis, and generally waterworks have a particular
relation to agriculture and the floods of the Nile. An example of this
we have in the statement of Herodotus[51] to the effect that Sesostris
had the entire country, which up to this time had been ridden and
driven over, cut up into canals to provide drinking-water, and in this
way made horses and wagons useless. The main constructions, however,
remained those buildings with a religious purpose, which the Egyptians
instinctively piled up much as the bees do their cells. Their property
was regulated[52], their other social conditions equally so, the soil
of the country was extraordinarily fruitful, and required no laborious
cultivation, so that we may almost say their agriculture merely
consisted in sowing and harvest. We hear little of other interests and
exploits, such as are common to nations, and, with the exception of the
tales of the priesthood with reference to the maritime undertakings of
Sesostris, we have no account of sea voyages. Speaking generally, the
Egyptians restricted their efforts to this work of construction within
their own country. It is, however, what we have called self-substantive
and symbolical architecture which forms the fundamental type of their
imposing works and for this reason that the human ideal, the spiritual
in its aims and external forms, has not as yet come to self-knowledge,
or constituted itself the object and product of its free activity.
Self-consciousness has not as yet ripened in the fruit, is not yet
independently secured, but is restless, seeking, surmising, ever for
producing without absolute satisfaction, and consequently without
repose. It is only in the form that is commensurate with Spirit
that mind essentially at home with itself finds satisfaction and
finds its true definition in what it produces. The symbolical work
of art on the contrary remains more or less indefinite. Among such
creations of the Egyptian art of building we may include the so-called
_labyrinths_, courts with columned approaches, circumambient paths
between partitions, which entwine about in a mysterious fashion, but
whose confusing intricacy is not constructed with the puerile object
to make the means of exit a problem, but to create for the senses an
intricate mode of motion that is dominated by mysteries of symbolical
import. For these paths, as we have already indicated, imitate in
their course that of the heavenly bodies and embody the same for
imagination. They are in part constructed above the ground and in part
underneath it, and in addition to their passages are furnished with
chambers and halls of enormous size, whose walls are covered with
hieroglyphics. The largest labyrinth which Herodotus himself saw was
not far from the lake Maeris. He affirms[53] that its size exceeded his
powers of description, and it surpassed the pyramids themselves. The
building he ascribes to the twelve kings, and he describes it in the
following terms. The entire building surrounded by one and the same
wall consisted of two stories, the one above and the other beneath
the level of the ground. Taken together they enclosed three thousand
chambers, each story containing fifteen hundred. The upper story which
alone Herodotus was able to see was divided into twelve adjacent
courts[54], with doors placed opposite to each other, six facing the
North and six the South, and every court was engirt with a colonnade,
constructed of white and carefully worked stone. From these courts,
Herodotus continues, you have ingress to the chambers, and from these
into the halls, and from the halls into other chambers, and from these
chambers into the courts. According to Hirt[55] Herodotus only so far
defines this latter relation to the extent that he places in the first
instance the chambers in juxtaposition to the courts. With regard to
the labyrinthine passages, Herodotus states that the numerous passages
through the roofed-in chambers and the multitudinous incurvations
between the courts had filled him with infinite astonishment. Pliny[56]
describes them as obscure and tedious for a stranger on account of
their windings, and when their doors were opened there was a noise
in them like thunder; we also learn from Strabo, an evidence of
importance, for he was an eye-witness no less than Herodotus, that the
labyrinthine passages encircled the court spaces. It was the Egyptians
who mainly built such labyrinths: but we find in imitation of Egypt a
similar one in Crete, though of smaller extent, and also, too, in the
Morea and Malta. Taking into consideration the fact, however, that,
on the one hand, an art of building of this kind in its chambers and
halls already approximated to the dwelling type, while, on the other,
according to the delineation of Herodotus, the subterranean portion
of the labyrinth, an entrance into which was forbidden him, had for
its definite object the sepulchre of the founders of the building and
sacred crocodiles--so that here the essential characteristic of the
labyrinth was entirely the symbolic import in an independent sense--we
may find in such works a point of transition to the form of symbolical
architecture, which in its own constituent parts begins already to
approach the classic type of building.
3. THE TRANSITION FROM SELF-SUBSTANTIVE ARCHITECTURE TO THE CLASSICAL
TYPE
However stupendous in size the construction we have just considered are
the subterranean architecture of Oriental peoples such as the Hindoos
and Egyptians, which offer many features of resemblance, are still
more imposing and calculated to excite our wonder. Whatever aspect of
grandeur and nobility is in this respect discoverable above ground
presents no parallel to that which among the Hindoos is presented us
beneath the earth in Salsette, which faces Bombay, and in Ellora, that
is, in Upper Egypt and Nubia. In these extraordinary excavations what
we have in the earliest examples exposed is the immediate necessity of
an _enclosure._ The fact that mankind have sought protection in caves,
and made their dwelling there and that entire peoples have possessed no
other mode of dwelling is due to the compelling force of their needs.
Caves of this kind existed in the land of Judaea, where in works of
many stories there was room for thousands. There were also in the Harz
mountains in the Rammelsberg near Goslar chambers, into which men crept
for cover, and used to bring their provisions for safety.
(_a_) Of an entirely different type, however, are the Hindoo and
Egyptian subterranean constructions to which we have alluded. In some
degree they served as places of assemblage, subterranean cathedrals,
and are constructions whose object was to excite religious wonder and
concentrate the communion of spiritual life; they are united to designs
and suggestions of a symbolical character, colonnades, sphinxes,
Memnons, elephants, colossal images of idols, which, hewn from the bare
rock, were as fully left a component growth of the formless stone as
the columns in such excavations were made to stand out in isolation
from it. In front of the walls of rock these buildings were here and
there wholly exposed to the light, in other parts they were entirely
devoid of it, and illuminated merely with torches, while in other
portions light was introduced from above.
Relatively to the super-terranean constructions these excavations
appear as prior in time, so that we may regard the enormous spaces
laid out above the soil as an imitation and efflorescence of similar
tracts of land beneath it. In excavations there is no positive
building, but we have rather a given material taken away. And to nest
thus in the ground, to excavate is more natural to man than to seek for
a material, and with it to construct and inform a mass of buildings.
In this respect we may assume the cave to be utilized prior to the hut
or dwelling. Caves are the extension of spatial covering instead of
a limitation of such, or an extension which grows up as a limit and
enclosure, in which the enclosure is already present. The subterranean
construction consequently inclines to start with what is already
present, and, in so far as it leaves the fundamental material as it
finds it, is not erected with the freedom applicable to a configuration
raised above the surface of the soil. In our view, however, these
constructions already belong to a further stage of the art of building,
however much they may also have features of a symbolical type, because
they no longer are placed there as independently symbolical, but
already possess the aim or purpose of an enclosure, a partition, a
roof, within which more symbolical figures as such are set up. That
which is connoted under the conception of temple and dwelling, both in
the Greek and more modern use of the terms, we have here in their most
natural form.
We may include in the above class the caves of Mithras, although we
find them in a very different locality. The worship and ritual of
Mithras originates in Persia. A cultus, however, of a similar kind was
also promulgated in the Roman Empire. In the Paris Museum we find a
very famous bas-relief, which represents a youth in the act of striking
an ox with a steel weapon. It was discovered in the Roman Capitol in
a deep grotto beneath the temple of Jupiter. In these Mithras caves
vaults are also met with, and passages which on the one hand appear
definitely to symbolize by suggestion the course of the stars, and from
another point of view also (precisely as still in our own time takes
place in our free-mason lodges, where people are conducted through
many passages and have to see dramatic scenes and much else) the ways,
which the soul must pass through in its purification, albeit it may be
true enough that this fundamental meaning is more fully and directly
expressed in sculpture and other work than in architecture simply. In
a connection somewhat similar we may also mention the Roman catacombs,
the fundamental idea of whose construction was certainly something
quite other than that of being subservient to aqueducts, sepulchres or
any system of drainage.
(_b_) In the _second_ place we may seek for our present use a more
definite point of transition from the architecture of independent
type in those constructions which have been raised as _housings of
the dead_, partly in the form of excavations beneath the ground, and
partly as buildings above it. More particularly among the Egyptians
this kind of construction, whether subterranean or super-terranean,
was associated with a realm of the dead, just as in general among the
Egyptians it is a realm of the invisible which in the first instance
receives a habitation and is placed before us. The Hindoo burns his
dead, or suffers their bones to lie and moulder on the earth. According
to the Hindoo's point of view mankind are, or become, god or gods,
whichever way one cares to put it, and we are unable to find in
their case this assured distinction between the living and the dead
regarded as dead. Hindoo constructions, consequently, so far as they
do not originate in Mohammedanism, are not dwellings for the dead,
and appear generally to belong to an earlier period as we assumed
was true of the astonishing excavations described. In the case of
the Egyptians, however, the contrast between living and dead asserts
itself predominantly. That which is spiritual begins to separate itself
essentially from what is material. We have here the resurrection of
spirit in concrete individuality, the movement of that process. The
dead are therefore retained fast as personality[57], and are secured
and preserved securely above the conception of dissolution into Nature,
that is into universal evanescence, flood and extinction. Singularity
is the principle of the spiritual in its notion of independence,
because spirit is only able to exist as individuality, that is
personality. Consequently this honour paid to and preservation of the
dead can only appear to ourselves as a first and important element in
the definition of the existence of spiritual individuality, since
it is here that singularity is asserted as maintained rather than
abandoned, inasmuch as the body at any rate is treasured and respected
as this Nature's own mode of individuality. Herodotus assures us, a
fact we have already noticed, that the Egyptians were the first to
declare that the souls of men were immortal, and despite the fact that
the grasp on spiritual individuality is in their case very incomplete,
in so far as in their view the deceased must for three thousand years
pass through a whole series of animals belonging to land, water, and
air, yet for all that in this conception, and in the embalming of the
body, we find fixedly the notion of bodily individuality, and of the
independent self-existence as separate from that body.
It is therefore also of importance in the arts of building that
in these the separation of the spiritual, no less than the ideal
significance, which[58] is independently represented, be carried
into effect while the corporeal shell is set round it as a purely
architectonic environment. The dwellings of the dead of the Egyptians
constitute for this reason the earliest examples of the temple type.
The essential feature, the central core of worship is a subject,
an individual object which appears of significance by itself, and
expresses itself as distinct from its dwelling, which is thereby
interpreted as purely a subservient covering. And no doubt it is not
an actual man, for whose requirements a house or palace had to be
built, but deceased objects that are without such needs, kings, sacred
animals, around whom immeasurable constructions are enclosed.
Just as agriculture fixes the wandering of nomads in the stable
possession of a definite locality, we may say that generally
sepulchres, monuments, and the service of the dead unite mankind, and
even offer to those who possess no States, no limitations of property,
a place of _rendez-vous_, sacred places which they defend and refuse
to have taken away from them. As an illustration we may cite the case
of the Scythians, a nomad people, who retired everywhere, according to
the narration of Herodotus[59], before Darius. And when Darius sent an
embassage to them with the message that if their king deemed himself
strong enough to offer resistance he should come forth to battle, but
if he did not he ought to recognize Darius as his lord, Idanthyrsus met
the same with the reply that they possessed neither cities nor tilled
land, and had nothing to defend for the reason that Darius had nothing
to ravage; if, however, Darius made a point of having a fight they
possessed the sepulchres of their fathers, let him therefore dare to
advance against these, he will then discover whether they will fight
for their sepulchres or not.
The most ancient and imposing monuments erected to the dead we find
in Egypt. They are the Pyramids. What most excites our wonder at
first sight of these astonishing constructions is their extraordinary
magnitude, which at once makes us reflect upon the duration of time,
the variety, superabundance and persistence of human energies which is
inseparable from the completion of such colossal buildings. From the
point of view of form there is nothing in them to protract attention:
in a few minutes we have surveyed and taken in the entire effect.
With this simplicity and uniformity of their form in view their
object has ever been a subject of controversy. It is true that even
the ancients, as for example Herodotus and Strabo, adduced the aim,
which they subserved; but for all that both in former and more recent
times, travellers and writers have contributed much that is fabulous
and unwarranted in their reflections. The Arabs endeavoured to effect
entrance by force, hoping to discover treasure in the interior of
the Pyramids; such assaults, however, beyond disturbing much, have
failed in their object to reach the actual passages and chambers.
Europeans of a later date, among whom we may mention in particular
for distinction, Belzoni, a native of Rome, and Caviglia of Genoa,
have at last succeeded in ascertaining more accurate information
with respect to the interior of these fabrics. Belzoni discovered
the royal sepulchre in the Pyramid of Chephren. The entrances to the
Pyramids were closed in the securest way by square blocks of stone,
and it appears that Egyptians endeavoured in their construction so to
effect matters that the entrance, even when discovered, could only be
followed up and opened with the greatest difficulty. This proves to us
that the Pyramids remained closed and could not be again used. Within
their interior explorers have found chambers, passages, which point by
suggestion to the ways, which the soul undertakes after death in its
course and transmigration, great halls, channels beneath the earth at
one time descending, at another mounting up. The royal sepulchre of
Belzoni runs on in this way hewn out of the rock for a mile. In the
principal hall stood a sarcophagus of granite, sunk in the ground;
but all that was discovered in it was the remains of animal bones of
a mummy, probably that of an Apis. The whole, however, proved beyond
a doubt that the object in view was that of being a dwelling for the
dead. The Pyramids differ in age, form, and size. The most ancient
appear to be stones piled on one another in a more or less pyramidal
shape. The more recent ones are constructed with uniformity; some are
somewhat flattened out at the summit, others run up entirely to a
point. On others have been found deposits, an explanation of which may
be gathered from the description Herodotus[60] gives us when referring
to the Pyramid of Cheops of the manner in which the Egyptians carried
out such works, so that Hirt includes such among the Pyramids which
remained unfinished[61]. In the older Pyramids according to the latest
evidence of Frenchmen the chambers and passages are more winding;
in the more recent ones they are simpler, but entirely covered with
hieroglyphics, to interpret which throughout will take several years.
In this way the Pyramids, despite all the wonder they arouse of their
own accord, are really nothing but crystals, mere shells, which
enclose a kernel, that is a departed spirit, and serve as custodians
of his still consistent bodily presence and form. In this departed
and deceased person, who secures an independent reproduction, we fail
to find consequently any significance[62]; the architecture, however,
which up to this point independently possessed its significance in
itself as architecture, is now divided in its aim, and in this division
is _subservient_ to something else, whereas sculpture receives the
function to give body to the genuine ideal aspect, although in the
first instance the individual figure in its unique and immediate
natural shape is retained. We find consequently, on a general survey
of the Egyptian art of building, on the one hand, the self-subsistent
symbolical buildings; on the other, however, and more particularly
in everything which is attached to the monuments of the dead, the
specific determination of architecture to be an enclosure and nothing
more, already clearly asserts itself. It is an essential concomitant
of this, that architecture not only be limited to the construction of
excavations and caves, but attest itself as an inorganic Nature built
by human hands on the spot where men have actual need of it, and for a
definite purpose will it to be.
Other nations have raised monuments of the same kind, sacred buildings
as dwellings of the dead bodies, over whom they happen to be erected.
As examples we may instance the mausoleum in Curia, and of more recent
date that of Hadrian, the still existing Englesburg in Rome, a palace
of careful construction raised in honour of a dead person, all of which
were even in antiquity famous works. According to the description of
Uhden[63] we may also mention in this connection a type of mortuary,
which in its arrangement and environment imitated in its smaller
aspects temples dedicate to gods. A temple of this kind possessed a
garden, arbours, a spring, a vineyard, and moreover chapels, in which
portrait statues of gods were placed. More particularly in the time of
the Roman Empire were such monuments to the dead built with statues
of the deceased under the image of gods such as Apollo, Venus, and
Minerva. Figures like the above, no less than the entire construction,
consequently received during that age the significance of an apotheosis
and a temple in honour of the dead man, just as also among the
Egyptians the process of embalming, the emblems placed thereby, and
the sarcophagus attest that the deceased was treated as a god-like
Osiris[64].
The most imposing and least complex constructions of this kind,
however, are the Egyptian Pyramids. In this type we have the peculiar
and essential line of the art of building, that is the straight one,
and in general terms the uniformity and abstract simplicity[65] of
forms. For architecture, as merely enclosure and inorganic Nature,
or Nature that is not itself vitally and essentially suffused by the
indwelling spirit in an independent mode, is unable to possess form
except as one which is external to itself; external form, however,
is not organic, but abstract and purely referable to the organs of
sense[66]. However much the Pyramid already begins to receive the
determining characteristics of the dwellings, yet the rectangular
principle is still not throughout predominant, as it is in a real
dwelling-house; it has still an independent determinacy, which is
not merely of service to the purpose for which it is erected, and
consequently closes up of itself by a process of gradation directly
from the foundation to the apex.
(_c_) It is from this point that we may make the transition from the
independent type of building to that of an art of construction, which
is serviceable of a _purpose._
There are two points of departure to this later type. There is on the
one hand _symbolic_ architecture, and on the other practical necessity
and the _impulse of purpose_ to subserve that necessity. In the case
of symbolical forms, as we have already had occasion to observe,
architectonic purpose is merely an incidental feature, merely an
external mode of co-ordination. The dwelling-house, on the contrary,
erected as necessity itself, requires posts of wood, or just walls
standing up straight with beams, which are laid across them at right
angles, and a roofing, and constitutes, the other extreme. There can be
no question that the necessity of this real and effective expediency
makes its appearance as the result of its own demand. The distinction
that may be raised, however, in answer to the question, whether genuine
architecture--as we shall shortly have to consider it as the classic
art of building--takes its rise solely in this necessity, or is to
be deduced from independent and symbolical works, which conducted us
of their own accord to buildings devoted to service, is the point in
essential dispute.
(_α_) It is the force of circumstances which brings to the fore forms
in architecture which are wholly stamped with a useful purpose, and
the abstract deductions of science, such as the rectilinear line, the
right angle, and the smooth surface. For in serviceable architecture
that which constitutes the real object, is, in its independence, as
a statue, or more closely as human individuals, that is community, a
people, brought together for objects of general significance, which no
longer have as their aim the satisfaction of physical wants, but are
such in a religious and political sense. In a special degree the need
asserts itself to shape an enclosure for the image, the statue of the
gods, or generally for that which is independently placed before us and
actually present as sacred. Memnons, Sphinxes, and the like stand up in
the open, or in a grove, that is in the external environment of nature.
Images of this kind, however, and still more human images of gods,
are borrowed from another realm than that of immediate Nature. They
belong to the world of imagination, and come into existence through the
artistic powers of mankind. The purely natural environment is therefore
not sufficient; they require for their external frame a ground and an
enclosure, which shall be derived from the same source as their own,
in other words, such as are the product of the imagination, and have
received their form by means of artistic effort. It is only in an
environment created by art that the gods find themselves at home[67].
In such a case, however, this external frame does not possess its
object in itself, but it subserves something other than itself, and is
subject to the principle of purpose or expediency.
If, however, these, in the first instance, purely serviceable forms are
exalted to an expression of beauty they are unable to persist in their
original abstract mode, and are forced to accept, in addition to what
is merely symmetrical and harmonious, that which is organic, concrete,
essentially itself conclusive and varied. And because this is so men
are forced to reflect over distinctions of determinating form, no less
than the express emphasis to be made on certain aspects of form, which
is wholly superfluous where the question is only one of a definite
purpose to be attained. A beam, for example, is from one point of view
that which is carried forward in a straight line; at the same time,
however, it terminates at both extremes. In the same way a post which
has to support either rafter or roof stands on the ground and reaches
its terminating point where the rafter rests upon it. The architecture
of service asserts distinctions of this kind and gives form to them by
means of art; an organic design, on the contrary, such as a plant, or
a human being, ay, whether we look at such above or below, but in any
case throughout, has to be organically embodied, to be differentiated
in the latter case consequently by feet and head, or in the former by
roots and corona.
(_β_) Conversely symbolic architecture takes its point of departure
more or less from organic forms of this kind, as we see is the case
with sphinxes, memnons, and so forth; yet it is also unable wholly
to exclude in its walls, doors, beams, obelisks, and the rest, the
principle of the straight line and uniformity, and is generally obliged
to accept the assistance of such principles appertinent to the genuine
art of building as equality of size, interval of relative position,
rectilinear progression of rows, in short, order and regularity when
it proposes to place in a series and to set up in accordance with
architectural design the colossal sculptured figures to which we
have referred. By doing so it unites in itself both principles[68],
whose union brings for result an architecture, the beauty of which is
promoted along with the object to which it is subservient, albeit in
the symbolic type these two aspects[69] still lie in separation side by
side instead of being fused in unity.
(_γ_) We may therefore so conceive the transition that on the one side
the art of building, hitherto self-subsistent in type, is forced to
modify under scientific principles[70] the forms of organisms in the
direction of regularity, and to pass into the province of proposed
expediency; while conversely what is entirely such intended purpose in
the form moves in opposition to the principle of the organic world.
Where these two extremes come together, and mutually pass into one
another, we get what is really beautiful classic architecture.
We may recognize this union, as it actually arises, clearly in the
transformation now introduced of that which we already have met with in
the architecture which was anterior under the form of columns. In other
words, it is true that from one point of view walls are necessary to
make an enclosure; but walls, too, can stand up independent, as we have
already proved with examples, without making the enclosure complete, to
which a roofing, no less than an enclosure of the sides, essentially
contributes. But a roofing of this kind has to be supported. The
simplest way of doing this is by columns, whose essential and, at
the same time exclusive, rationale consists here in being simply
_supports._ For this reason walls are really a superfluity is so far
as it is only a question of support. For supporting is a mechanical
relation, and belongs to a province of gravity and its laws. And in
this[71] gravity the weight of a particular body is concentrated in
its point of gravity, and must be assisted at this centre in remaining
horizontal without a fall. This is precisely what the column does, so
that with it the power of support appears to be reduced to the minimum
limit of exterior means to effect this. What a wall at great cost[72]
effects, is equally effected by a few columns. It is a very beautiful
characteristic of classic architecture not to set up more columns than
are actually necessary to carry the weight of the rafter and that which
reposes thereon. In genuine architecture columns, for purposes of mere
decoration, are not truly beautiful. For the same reason also columns
which stand up entirely alone do not perform their true function. No
doubt triumphal columns have been erected, such as the famous ones
in honour of Trajan and Napoleon: but these, too, are really but a
pedestal for statues, and moreover covered with sculptured reliefs to
commemorate and glorify the hero, whose image they carry. In the case
of the column, then, it is of exceptional importance to see how in the
course of architectural development it is compelled to divest itself
of the concrete form of Nature before it can secure its more abstract
form, the form, that is, which is as compatible with a definite object
as it is with beauty.
(_αα_) Independent architecture, on account of the fact that it starts
with organic images, makes use of human shapes, as, for example, we
find in Egypt figures in some measure at least human, such as Memnons
and the like, are utilized. This is, however, a mere superfluity, in
so far, that is, as a definition of this character is not the true
medium of support. We find among the Greeks that Caryatides are used
in another mode and under a more severe obedience to rule to support
superimposed weight, but such cannot be extensively employed. Moreover,
we can only regard it as a misuse of the human form to crush it
together under such burdens, and it is for this reason that Caryatides
receive the character of the oppressed; their drapery suggests a state
of slavery under which it is a degradation to carry such burdens.
(_ββ_) The more natural organic form for pillars and supports which
have to bear a weight is consequently the tree, plant-life generally, a
stem, a thin stalk which strives upwards in a vertical direction. The
hole of a tree already carries of its own nature its crown of branches,
the blade of corn the ear, the stem the flower. These forms, too, the
Egyptian art of building, which has not as yet attained the liberty of
viewing them in their abstract intension, borrows directly from Nature.
In this respect the grandiose quality which we discover in the style
of Egyptian palaces or temples--the colossal proportions of its rows
of columns, the huge number of them, and withal the imposing mutual
relations of the entire structure, has ever filled the spectator with
wonder and astonishment. In these colonnades we do not find that all
columns have the same form; they alternate between one, two, or three
types. Denon, in his work on the Egyptian expedition, has collected
a great number of such types. The combined effect is not as yet any
uniform shape based on abstract principles of selection; rather the
foundation is the shape of an onion, a reed-like efflorescence of leaf
from the bulb, or, in other examples, a compression together of the
root-leaves according to the manner of several kinds of plant. From
this base, then, the thin stem breaks upwards straight, or mounts
as column with twisted coils, and the capital is also a separation
of leaves from branches which suggests the process of a flower. The
imitation, however, is not true to Nature, but the plant-like forms are
drained off under the architectural impulse, and made to approximate to
circular, geometrical, and regular forms, or straight lines, so that
such columns, in their entirety, resemble what are usually described as
arabesques.
(_γγ_) This is not the place to enter into a general discussion of
the _arabesque_ for the reason that notionally it marks precisely
the transition from the architecture which adopts as its basic form
the natural organism to that which by its adoption of a more severe
regularity is more strictly architectonic. When, however, the art of
building has become free in its definitive character it relegates
arabesques to the function of decoration and ornament. They are then
preeminently forms of plants strained off, so to speak, or forms which
originate from plants together with entwined forms of animals and
human beings, or forms of animals in their passage over to plant-life.
In so far as they purport to authenticate a symbolical significance
the transitional passage between the different spheres of the animal
kingdom hold good for it. Apart from such an interpretation they are
simply the play of the imagination in the selection, combination and
articulation of the most diverse forms of Nature. For architectural
ornamentation of this kind, in the invention of which the imagination
finds scope for its activity in the most varied creations of every
kind, not even excluding utensils and drapery, the fundamental
determinant and type is this, that whether it be plants, leaves,
flowers, or animals, all are made to approximate to the abstract
figures of science, in other words the inorganic. For this reason
we frequently find arabesques to be stiff, untrue to organic life;
and it is on this account that they are not unfrequently condemned
and art is blamed for the use of them. This is exceptionally true of
painting, though Raphael himself did not scruple to paint arabesques
in great profusion, characterized with the highest charm, nobility of
feeling, variety, and grace. No doubt arabesques are an antithesis to
nature, whether we compare them with organic forms or the rigid laws of
mechanics; but an opposition of this kind is not merely a right of art
generally, but even an obligation under which architecture is bound.
It is only by this means that living forms in other respects unfitted
for the art of building are made adaptable to the truly architectural
style and brought into harmony with it. Such an adaptability is
offered in an exceptionally close degree by vegetable Nature, which
is also in the East utilized to an extravagant extent in arabesques;
in other words plants are not as yet individual objects which possess
feeling, but naturally present themselves as adapted to architectural
design, by virtue of the fact that they form coverings and protection
against rain, sunlight, and wind, and, generally speaking, do not
possess the free oscillation[73] of lines which breaks forth from the
regularity of scientific conceptions[74]. Architecturally used the
regularity of leaves already present is yet further subjected to rule
in the definition of rondure and straight line, so that by this means
everything which it is possible to regard as distortion, unnaturalness,
or stiffness in the plant-forms is fundamentally to be considered as
a transformation adapted to the requirements of what is genuinely
architectural.
In some such way in the column the real art of building passes from
that which is purely organic imitation to the definite purpose of
scientific rule, and from this to a position which again approximates
to the organic result. We find it necessary to draw attention to
this twofold point of departure from the actual necessities and the
purposeless self-subsistency of architecture, because the true type
unites both principles. The beautiful column originates in the natural
form, which is then transformed into the post, that is, it submits to
the uniformity and scientific precision of form.
CHAPTER II
CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE
The art of building, when it has attained the position peculiarly
its own and adequate to its notional content is subservient in its
products to an end, and a significance which it does not itself
essentially possess. It becomes an inorganic environment, a whole that
is co-ordinated and built conformably to the laws of gravity, whose
configurations are subject to that which is severely regular, straight,
rectangular, circular, the relations of definite number and quantity,
that which is essentially limited measure and strict conformity to
rule. Its beauty consists in this very relation to purpose, which,
in its freedom from direct[75] admixture with what is organic,
spiritual, and symbolical, and despite the fact that it subserves an
end, nevertheless combines in an essentially exclusive totality, which
suffers its own aim to appear through all its modifications, and in the
harmonious co-ordination of its relations clothes that which is purely
adapted to purpose in the forms of beauty. Architecture, however, at
this stage[76] corresponds to its real notion, for the reason that it
is not in a position to endow that which is in the most explicit sense
spiritual with a fully adequate existence, and is consequently only
able to inform what is external and devoid of spirit in its contrasted
appearance with that which is spiritual.
We propose, in our consideration of this art of building, in which the
relation of service is as truly a characteristic as that of beauty, to
adopt the following course of argument.
In the _first_ instance we have to establish the _general notion_ and
character of the same.
_Secondly_, we shall have to adduce the _particular_ fundamental
determinants of the architectonic types which are deducible from the
ulterior purpose which the classical work of art is erected to subserve.
_Thirdly_, we propose to survey the concrete reality which results from
the development of classical architecture.
I do not, however, propose in discussing any of the above relations
to enter into detail, but will limit myself to points of most general
significance, a restriction more easy to observe in the present case
than it was in that of the symbolical type of building.
1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE
(_a_) In conformity with the principle I have already more than once
adverted to the fundamental idea of the genuine art of building
consists in this, that the spiritual import is not exclusively reposed
in the work of construction itself, which by this means becomes an
independent symbol of ideal signification[77], but, with the converse
result, that this significance secures its free existence outside the
limits of architecture. This existence may be of a twofold character,
to the extent in other words that another art of extensive range--I
refer, above all, to the art of sculpture of the true classical
type--sets before us and gives independent form to the significance,
or the individual man in himself receives and gives effect to the
same in the active verity of his life. Apart from this[78], these
two aspects may still appear together. When, therefore, the Oriental
architecture of the Babylonians, Hindoos, and Egyptians, on the one
hand, gave symbolical form, in images of independent consistency, to
that which was reckoned among these people as the absolute and true,
or, from another aspect, enclosed, despite its external natural form,
that which was conserved after death--in contrast to this what we
find now is--whether we regard it relatively to art's activity, or
to the life of actual existence--that the spiritual is _separated_
from the work of construction in _independent guise_ for itself,
and architecture becomes the _vassal_ of what is spiritual, which
constitutes the real significance and the determinating end. This end
is consequently predominant. It controls the entire work; it determines
the fundamental form of the same no less than its external skeleton,
and neither suffers the material nor the individual's imagination and
caprice to assert their independence in a self-substantive way, as was
the case in symbolical architecture, or to develop, over and beyond
the true purpose of the work, a superfluity of manifold parts and
configurations, as is the case in the romantic type.
(_b_) In considering a construction of this character we have, then,
first to ask ourselves not merely what are the circumstances under
which it was erected, but what is its aim and purpose. To make its
construction compatible with such considerations, to have a due regard
for climate, position, and the environing landscape, to create a
whole, one in spontaneous co-ordination, by a regard for all these
aspects as subservient to one purpose, this is the task stated
broadly, in the entire fulfilment of which the instincts and genius
of the artist will appear conspicuous. Among the Greeks we find that
it is public buildings, temples, colonnades, and halls utilized for
the ordinary rest and commerce of the day, approaches, such as the
famous ascent of the Acropolis in Athens, which are pre-eminently the
objects of the builder's art. Private residences, on the other hand,
were of a very simple character. With the Romans, on the contrary,
it is the luxurious character of private houses, especially villas,
which becomes prominent; and we may say the same thing of imperial
palaces, public baths, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts,
and springs. Buildings of this type, however, the utility of which
throughout remains the commanding and directing principle, are merely
able to accept beauty in a more or less decorative sense. The object
most compatible with freedom of treatment in this sphere is that of
religion--the temple-house as the enclosure of an individual which
itself is appropriated by fine art, and placed before us by sculpture
as the statue of the god.
(_c_) In the pursuit of aims such as those above mentioned, then,
genuine architecture appears to be more free than the symbolic type
of the previous stage, which seizes on the organic forms from Nature,
nay, more free than sculpture, which is compelled to accept the human
form it finds, and unites itself with them and their general relations
as presented it. Classical architecture rather invents its forms and
their configuration, so far as the content is concerned, from ends of
spiritual import and in respect to form from human reason without any
prototype. This greater freedom must, in a relative sense, be admitted;
but the province in which it is exercised remains restricted, and the
treatment which belongs to the classical art of building, on account of
the rationality[79] of its forms is, taken as a whole, somewhat of an
abstract and dry character.
Frederich von Schlegel has described architecture as a frozen music;
and in truth both these arts repose on a harmony of relations, which
admit of being referred to number, and are consequently readily grasped
in their fundamental characteristics. In our own case the fundamental
determinant for these essential traits and their simple, more serious
and imposing, or more charming and elegant relations is supplied by the
dwelling-house, that is, walls, columns, beams brought together in the
wholly crystalline forms of scientific deduction. What the relations
are we are not permitted to reduce to the bare determinants of number
and measure. But an oblong, quadrilateral figure with right angles
is more pleasing than a square, because in the case of the oblong we
are more thus affected both by equality and inequality[80]. If the
one dimension, namely breadth, is half as large as the other, we have
a relation which pleases; with an oblong which is long and narrow
the reverse is the case. Along with this the mechanical relations
of support and being supported must likewise be maintained in their
genuine measure and law; a heavy entablature, for instance, cannot rest
on slender and delicate columns, or conversely great structures be
prepared in order after all to lay on them something very light. In all
these mutual relations, such as that of the breadth to the length and
height of the building, the height of the columns to their thickness,
the intervals and number of the columns, the character and variety or
simplicity of decorations, the size of many plinths, borders, and so
forth, a secret principle of rhythm[81] prevails among the ancients,
which the instinct of the Greeks before all others has discovered; from
which he may no doubt now and again deviate in points of detail, but
the fundamental relations of which he is in general bound to preserve
in order that he may not fall away from beauty.
2. THE FUNDAMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF ARCHITECTURAL FORMS TAKEN SEVERALLY
(_a_) We have already alluded to the old controversy whether the
material of wood or stone is to be accepted as the point of departure
in building, and whether also it is from this difference of material
that the architectural types proceed. For the real art of building at
least, in so far as it lays emphasis on the aspect of ultimate purpose
and elaborates the fundamental type of the dwelling on the lines of
beauty we may accept wood as the more original of the two.
This is the conclusion of Hirt, following in this respect Vitruvius,
and his conclusion has been much disputed. I will in a few words offer
my own view on the matter in dispute, In the ordinary course of such
reflections we seek to discover the abstract and simple law for a
concrete result assumed as already present. It is in this way that
Hirt looks for the basic model of Greek buildings, in like manner
the design[82], the anatomical framework, and finds it, so far as
form and the material connected with it is concerned, in the dwelling
and building of wood. No doubt a house as such is built mainly as a
dwelling, a protection against storm, rain, weather, animals, and
human beings, and requires an enclosure that is complete, in order
that a family or a larger community of men may collect in independent
seclusion and may look after their necessities and pursue their
avocations in such seclusion. The house is a structure throughout with
a definite purpose, a creation of mankind for human objects. For this
reason we find him occupied upon it in many ways and with many objects,
and the structure is articulated in an aggregate pile of all kinds of
mechanical ways of mutual interlacement and imposition[83] in order to
hold in position and secure, according to the laws of gravity, what
men are compelled to look after, that is, the making stable what is
erected[84], the closing it in, the support of what is superimposed,
and not merely in the way of support, but, where the structure rests
horizontally, the preservation of it in such a position, and, further,
the uniting of all that clashes together at nooks and corners and so
on. Now it is quite true that the house makes it necessary that the
enclosure should be complete; and for this walls are most serviceable
and safest; and from this point of view the building of stone appears
most to answer the purpose. We may, however, with equal ease construct
our fence with posts standing in juxtaposition, upon which then beams
will rest, which at the same time both bind together and secure the
perpendicular posts. Finally we come to the cover of all and roofing.
In the temple house, moreover, the fact of enclosure is not the main
fact of importance, but the feature of support and being supported. For
this mechanical result the wooden structure is obviously the nearest
to hand and the most natural. For the post, as that which supports,
which at the same time requires a means of conjunction, and suffers the
same to weigh on it in the shape of the cross-beam, constitutes here
all that goes to the root of the matter. This essential division of
parts and connection as well as the association of these aspects for
a definite purpose belongs to the very nature of a wooden structure,
which has its necessary material directly supplied it by the tree. In
the tree we find already, without working upon it to any considerable
or laborious extent, both post and beam, in so far as, that is, the
wood already by itself possesses a definite form and consists of
separate lengths, more or less in the straight line, lengths which
can be brought together into rectangular corners no less than those
which are acute or obtuse, and in this way provide corner pillars,
supports, cross-beams and roof. Stone, on the contrary, never at any
time possesses a form so definite. In contrast to the tree it is a
formless mass, which first must be intentionally isolated and worked
upon, in order that it may fit in juxtaposition to or superposition
on other pieces and so once more be brought together with such. It
requires, in short, several processes before it receives the form and
serviceableness which wood already possesses independently. Moreover,
stone material, when it is used in great masses, invites rather
excavations and generally speaking, being _ab initio_ relatively
formless, is capable of every kind of form, for which reason it is
rather the congenial material for the symbolical as also the romantic
types of building, while wood, by reason of its natural form of
straight stems, is demonstrably without mediation more serviceable
to that more severe type of purpose and observance of rule, which
is the fountain-head of classical architecture. In this respect the
structure of stone is mainly predominant with the self-substantive type
of building, although even among the Egyptians, in their colonnades
bordered with plinths, other considerations supervene, which the
structure of wood is able more readily and in the first instance
to satisfy. Conversely we do not find that classical architecture
restricts itself entirely to buildings of wood, but, on the contrary,
where it is elaborated in conformity with beauty, executes its
buildings in stone; but in such a way, however, that we are from a
certain point of view still able to recognize in the architectural
forms the original principle of the wood structure, if also from a
further one definite relations attach which do not belong to that kind
of building as such.
(_b_) The points of fundamental importance, which emphasize the
dwelling-house as the basic type of the temple, may be in all essential
particulars enumerated as follows. If we consider with closer attention
the house in its mechanical relation to itself we shall find, in
accordance with what we have already stated, on the one hand, masses of
architectural form which serve as _support_ and, on the other, those
that _are supported_ both being united for stability and security.
Thirdly, we have before us the definite aspect of enclosure and
limitation according to the three dimensions of length, breadth, and
height. A construction, moreover, which, by the fact of its being a
mutual correlation of definite aspects distinct from each other, is a
concrete whole, is bound to declare this unity in its constitution. So
we find here that essential differences arise which perforce assert
themselves no less in their division and specific elaboration than they
do in their rational _connexus._
(_α_) Of first importance in this respect to consider is the aspect
of service in the way of _support._ When we speak of masses that
support we commonly, under the influence of every-day needs, think of
the wall as the most secure and reliable means of support. Support
as such, however, as we have already seen, is not the exclusive
principle of the wall; for the wall serves essentially as a means of
enclosure and connection, and for this reason is a predominant feature
in the romantic type of building. What is the peculiarity of Greek
architecture is this, that it gives direct form to the principle of
support by itself, and for this object employs columns as a fundamental
contribution to the purpose and beauty of its architecture.
(_αα_) The aim of the column is to support and only this; and although
a series of columns set up in a straight line make a boundary, such
an enclosure falls short of a secure wall or partition, and is, in
fact, expressly cancelled by the genuine partition and placed in a
position of free independence. Owing to this exclusive object of
support which pertains to the column, it is of first importance that it
should display the aspect of such a purpose relatively to the weight
which rests upon it. Consequently it should neither be too strong nor
too slender, nor again too compressed, not mount upwards to such a
height and with such ease as though the weight upon it was not treated
seriously.
(_ββ_) And just as this column is thus differentiated from the
enclosing wall, or fence, it is further from another point of view
distinct from the mere _post._ In other words, the post is fixed
directly in the ground and ceases with like directness at the
precise point where a weight is reposed upon it. For which reason
its determinate length, its commencement and termination equally
appear as a negative limitation by means of something else, as a
determinacy which is the result of chance, which it does not possess
in its own right. Commencement and termination, however, are defining
characteristics, which are part of the very notion of the supporting
column, and consequently must declare themselves in it as the
conditions[85] of its own substance. This is the ground of the fact
that architecture, in the elaboration of its beauty, assigns to the
column a base and a capital. In the Tuscan order, no doubt, we find no
base; the column springs immediately from the ground. This being so,
however, the length appears to the vision as something accidental. We
are ignorant whether the column has not been to some undefined extent
driven into the soil by the superimposed weight. In order that its
commencement must not expose this undefined and accidental appearance
it must with intention have the foot assigned to it, on which it
stands, and which expressly enables us to recognize the commencement
as in reality such. Art will therefore affirm as part of its function
that the column begins at a certain place and for the rest it will make
the security, and stable subsistence obvious to the eyes, and set the
vision at rest in this respect also. For similar reasons our column
should terminate in a capital, which is quite as much evidence of the
real function of being a support as it is an affirmation of the fact
that the column terminates here. This conception of a commencement
and conclusion which are both deliberate is what affords us, in fact,
the profounder explanation of base and capital. An analogous case is
that of a cadence in music, which requires a secure resolution, or
that of a book which should terminate without a full stop, or should
start off without a capital letter, in the making of which, however,
especially in the Middle Ages, large illuminated letters have been
employed, with similar decorations at the work's conclusion, in order
to bring prominently before the mind the facts of commencement and
termination. However much, therefore, both base and capital appear
to exceed what is obviously required we must not regard them as a
decorative superfluity, or think of simply deducing them from the
example of Egyptian columns, which still imitate the type of the
vegetable kingdom. Figures of organic design, such as are represented
by sculpture in animal and human form, begin and terminate in the free
outlines they themselves present, for it is the rational organism
itself, which gives outline to the form working thereon from its
own intrinsic nature. Architecture, on the contrary, possesses for
the column and its shapes nothing beyond the mechanical relation of
support, and the spatial distance from the ground to the point where
the weight that is supported terminates the column. Art, however,
is bound to emphasize and disclose the particular aspects which lie
together in this determinate relation for the reason that they are
essential features of the column. Its precise length and its twofold
boundary both above and below, that is, no less than its relation as
support, must consequently not appear as coming to it incidentally and
by virtue of something else, but must also be represented as immanent
in its very being.
With respect to the form of column other than its base and capital, it
is in the first place round, circular-shaped, for it has to stand up
in free and independent self-seclusion. The most essentially simple,
securely exclusive, rationally defined[86], and most regular line is
in fact the circle. For this reason the column already proves from its
shape that it is not adapted to form an even surface when placed in
adjacent rows, as is the case with adjacent posts which are squared to
the rectangular corner, and so present walls and partitions, but it has
merely the object to offer a support under its own self-limitation.
Moreover the columnar structure is ordinarily reduced in size
gradually, as it ascends from one-third of its height, it becomes less
in circumference and thickness, because the portions beneath have
to carry that above, and it is felt necessary to emphasize and make
obvious also this mechanical relation of the several parts of the
column itself. Finally, we frequently find that columns are grooved;
the reason of this is twofold, first, essentially to diversify the
simple form, and secondly to make the columns appear more thick by
means of such a division where this is necessary.
(_γγ_) Although, then, the column is set up in independent isolation
it has none the less to make it appear evident that it is not placed
there for its own sake, but as subservient to the mass which it is
erected to support. In so far as the house requires a boundary on every
side the singular column is therefore not sufficient, but others have
to be placed adjacent to it, in other words we come upon the definite
conception of a diversity of columns placed in a _series._ And when
several columns support the same weight this common service is at the
same time that which determines the equal height which they all possess
and which unites them together, in other words the beam. This marks the
transition from the aspect of support to the opposed object supported.
(_β_) That which columns support is the _entablature_ superimposed.
The relation of most importance to be considered here is that of
_rectangularity._ Not merely in its relation to the ground, but also in
that to the entablature the supporting structure must be rectangular.
For the horizontal position is by the laws of gravity that which is
alone intrinsically the most stable and fitting, and the right angle
the only definitely secure one. The acute and obtuse angles are, on the
contrary, indefinite, and both vary in their degree and are subject to
contingency.
We may differentiate between the component parts of the entablature as
follows:
(_αα_) The _architrave_, that is, the main beam, rests immediately upon
the columns which stand adjacent in a direct line of equal height;
this unites the columns together and places on them a weight shared
equally. As beam, and nothing more, it merely requires the form of four
level surfaces mutually related as rectangular in all three dimensions
and their abstract regularity. Owing to the fact, however, that the
architrave as to one part of it is supported by the columns, and in
another constitutes the stay of the rest of the entablature, and it
is from this latter again that itself receives the necessary relation
of being a support, progressive architecture also places in external
relief this twofold aspect of the main beam by emphasizing in the
upper portions of the aspect of support by means of jutting plinths and
so forth. In this respect therefore the main beam is not merely related
to the columns which support it, but in like degree to other burdens
which repose upon it.
(_ββ_) These in the first instance constitute the _frieze._ The border
or frieze consists in one part of it of the tops of the joists[87],
which rest on the entablature, in another part of the spaces between
the same. For this reason the frieze contains more essential
differences than those distinguishing the architrave, and is bound to
emphasize them more sharply, especially in the case where architecture,
although executed in stone materials, follows more stringently the
fundamental type of the wood construction. This is supplied us by the
distinction between triglyphs and metopes. In other words triglyphs are
the tops of the beams which are divided into three spaces, the metopes
are the rectangular spaces between the separate triglyphs. In former
times they were in all probability left bare, in later, however, they
are filled up[88], nay, even covered over and decorated with reliefs.
(_γγ_) The frieze, moreover, which rests on the entablature, carries
the _wreath_ or _cornice._ The function of this is to support the
roof, which completes the whole upwards. Here we at once meet with
questions of what form this final limitation is to be. For we may
have in this respect two kinds of termination, either the horizontal
and rectangular, or the one inclined to an acute or obtuse angle. If
we look at the mere question of natural necessity we shall see that
Southerners, who suffer little from rain and storm, merely require
protection from sunlight; in their case a horizontal and rectangular
roofing of house is likely to suffice. Northerners, on the contrary,
have to protect themselves against inevitable showers of rain, against
contingency of snow, that the weight may not prove too great; they
require inclining roofs. At the same time, in the case of a fine art of
building, mere necessity is not only of account; as art it has also to
satisfy the profounder requirements of what is pleasing and beautiful.
What mounts upwards from the ground must be conceived with a base, a
foot, on which it stands and which serves it for _support_; and in
addition to this columns and the partitions of genuine architecture
supply us visibly with the _means of support._ That which closes all
above, the roofing, has no longer to support a weight, but merely to
be supported, and is bound to declare in itself this definite aspect
that it no longer supports anything. In other words, it must be so
constructed that it is actually unable to support, and consequently
fine down to an angle, whether it be acute or obtuse. Ancient temples
have in consequence no horizontal roofing, but two roof surfaces which
meet at obtuse angles, and it is out of consideration for beauty
that the building is thus terminated. In short, roof surfaces that
are horizontal do not give us the appearance of a building entirely
complete; a horizontal flat may always add further weight to its
height; this the line in which inclining roof surfaces terminate is no
longer able to do. To take an analogous case in the art of painting, it
is the pyramidal form in the grouping of figures which best satisfies
artistic taste.
(_γ_) The final determining factor which we have to consider is that
of the _enclosing_, the _walls_, and _partitions._ Columns no doubt
support and form a boundary, but they do not enclose; they are, on the
contrary, as such boundary, incompatible with the interior which is
hemmed in by walls. If we require such an absolute enclosure we must
have also thick and solid dividing walls erected. This is actually the
case in temple construction.
(_αα_) We have nothing further to add with respect to walls except
the fact that they must be built in a straight and even line and
perpendicularly for the reason that walls that rise obliquely to acute
and obtuse angles present the threatening aspect of collapse, and
possess no direction once and for all securely defined; it can merely
appear as a matter of chance that they are reared in whatever more
acute or obtuse angle it may happen to be. The demand of scientific
rule and purpose alike is here also once more for the right angle.
(_ββ_) Owing to the fact that walls act as enclosures no less than
as means of support, while we restricted the true function of the
column to that of mere support, we approximate to the conception that
where we have to satisfy these two distinct needs of support and
enclosure columns may be set up and may be united to one another by
means of thick walls in such partitions; it is thus that we get _half_
_columns._ In this way, for example, Hirt, following Vitruvius, makes
a start in his original type of construction with four corner-posts.
If the necessity of an enclosure is to be satisfied no doubt our
columns, if we are obliged to include such, must be walled up and it is
not difficult to prove that half columns date from remote antiquity.
Hirt, for instance[89], affirms that the employment of half columns
is as old as the art of building itself, and deduces their origin
from the circumstance that columns and piers supported and carried
the roofing and other superimposed structures, but at the same time
rendered partition walls necessary as a protection against sun and
inclement weather. Since, however, the columns already supported the
main building in a sufficient manner, it was not necessary to erect
partition walls of either so thick or firm a material as the columns,
and consequently this latter, as a rule, abutted on the exterior of
the building. This theory of their origin may be correct, but for all
that half columns are repugnant to a rational view of them; we have,
in short, here two ends standing side by side in _opposition_, and
essentially _confounding each other_, without any law of necessity
being disclosed. It is of course possible to defend half columns, if
the point of departure in considering even the column is so strictly
that of the structure of wood, that we regard their essential function
to be that of an enclosure. Placed in thick walls, however, the column
has lost all its significance; it is degraded to the mere post. The
true column is in its nature round, essentially complete, and expresses
by this very trait of exclusiveness in a visible way that it is
antagonistic to an even surface, and, consequently, every inclusion
in a wall. If, therefore, we desire to have the support of walls such
must be even, not circular columns, but surfaces which can be extended
evenly in a wall.
As far back as 1773 Goethe exclaimed with spirit to the like effect
in his youthful essay, "On the German Art of Building": "What does it
matter to us, you philosophical art-critic of the latest French school,
that original man, spurred on by his needs to invent, drove into the
ground four trunks, then fastened four poles on top and covered the
whole with branches and moss. And after all it is wholly false to say
that this hut of yours was the first begotten on earth. Two poles that
cross each other at their ends, two behind and one stuck diagonally
above in forest fashion is and remains, as you may any day see for
yourself in the huts of the fields and the vineyard slopes, a far
earlier discovery from which it is quite impossible for you to deduce
a principle for your pig-stye." In other words Goethe seeks to prove
that columns enclosed in walls placed in buildings whose essential
object is that of mere enclosure have no meaning. This is not because
he would not recognize the beauty of the column. On the contrary, he is
loud in its praise. "But take good care," he adds, "not to employ them
improperly: it is their nature to _stand up free._ Woe to the wretch
who has soldered their slender growth in blockish walls." It is from
such a point of view that he proceeds to consider the building art of
the Middle Ages and our own time and affirms: "The column is of no
value as a constituent feature of our dwellings: it rather contradicts
the essence of all our buildings. Our houses do not consist of _four
columns_ in four corners; they consist of _four walls_ on four sides,
which stand _in the place of all columns_, totally exclude such, and
where they are thrust in they are a burdensome superfluity. This
applies to our palaces and churches, subject to one or two exceptions,
which it is not necessary to particularize." We have in the above
statement, which is the result of independent observation of the facts,
the principle of the column correctly expressed. The column must place
its foot down in front of the wall and appear in complete independence
of it. In our more modern architecture no doubt we find pilasters
freely used; architects, have, however, regarded them as the repeated
adumbration of previous columns, and made them flat rather than round.
(_γγ_) From this it is clear that though no doubt walls may serve as
support, yet, for the reason that the function of support is already
independently performed by columns, they must, on their part in
finished classical architecture be accepted as essentially having for
their object the enclosure. If they are taken as columns are taken, to
provide means of support, the essentially distinct defining functions
of these latter are not, as is most desirable, performed also as by
distinct constituent parts of the building[90], and the conception of
what walls ought to provide is impaired and confused. We consequently
find even in temples that the central hall, where the statue of the
god was placed, to enclose which was the main object, is often left
open in the upper part. If, however, a roofing is required, the claims
of the lofty style of beauty made it necessary that the same should
be supported independently. In other words the direct imposition of
entablature and roof on the enclosing walls is purely a matter of
necessity and need; it is not appertinent to free architectural beauty,
because in the art of classical buildings we require as means of
support neither partitions nor walls, which would be rather derogatory
to the design in so far as--we have already noticed the fact--they
put together contrivances and a wall-space of greater extent than is
actually necessary.
These would be the main distinguishing features which in classical
architecture we have to keep apart.
(_c_) Although we may then, on the one hand, declare it as a principle
of first importance that the distinctions which have been summarily
indicated must appear with their _differences_ emphasized, it is
equally necessary on the other that they should be _united in a whole._
We will shortly, in conclusion, draw attention to this union which in
architecture will be rather and simply a juxtaposition, association,
and a thorough eurhythmy of the entire construction. Generally speaking
the Greek temple buildings present an aspect which both satisfies, and
if we may use the expression, sates us to the full.
(_α_) There is no soaring up, but the whole just expands on the broad
level and is extended without particular elevation. In order to view
the building's face it is barely necessary to raise the sight with
intention; it is, on the contrary, allured to the bare expanse, while
the building art of Germany in the Middle Ages strives up almost
without mass and soars. Among the ancients breadth, regarded as secure
and convenient foundation on the earth, is the main thing. Height is
rather borrowed from the height of man, and merely is increased in
proportion as the building increases in breadth and width.
(_β_) Furthermore, embellishments are so effected that they do not
impair the impression of simplicity. For much also depends on the mode
of decoration. The ancients, more particularly the Greeks, preserve
here the finest sense of proportion. Extensive surfaces and lines
of entire simplicity, for instance, do not appear so large in this
undivided simplicity as in the case where some variety, somewhat
that destroys this uniformity is introduced, by which at once an
extension of more definite outline is presented to the vision. If this
subdivision, however, and its adornment is wholly elaborated in detail,
so that we have nothing before us but a variety and its details, even
the most imposing relations and dimensions appear to be crumbled away
and destroyed. The ancients, therefore, as a rule are actuated in their
works neither to let the same and their proportions by such means
appear in any way greater than they actually are, nor do they break up
the whole by means of interruptions and embellishments to the extent
that--because all parts are small and a unity is absent which shall
once more bring everything together and fuse it throughout--therefore
the whole also shall appear as insignificant. To quite as little an
extent are their works of beauty in their perfection merely piled up
as mere weight on the ground, or tower up out of all relation to their
breadth to the skies. They preserve in this respect, too, the mean
of beauty, and offer at the same time in their simplicity necessary
scope to a duly proportioned variety. Above all, however, the dominant
feature of the whole and its simple particularities appear to permeate
in the most transparent way through all and everything, and overmasters
the individuality of the configuration precisely in the way that in the
classical Ideal the universal substance retains its power to control
what is accidental and particular, in which the same receives its
living form, and to bring it into harmony with itself.
(_γ_) With regard to the disposition and articulation of the several
parts of a temple we find, on the one hand, a very marked graduation of
elaboration, and on the other much that is purely traditional. The main
distinctions that have an interest for us in this inquiry are limited
to the temple precinct (ναὸς), enclosed by walls containing the image
of the god, also the dwelling in front (πρόναος), that in the rear
(ὀπισθόδομος), and the colonnades that encircle the entire structure.
A dwelling in front and behind with a series of columns before it had
originally the typical form, which Vitruvius calls ἀμφιπρόστυλος; to
this was afterwards added a row on either side of the building, that
is the περίπτερος; finally we have the completest form of elaboration
in the δίπτερος, where this row of columns is doubled throughout the
circuit, and in the ὔπαιθρος colonnades detached from the walls, and
which it is possible to pass round, as in the case of the colonnades
above, are added in double rows with the interior of the ναὸς itself.
For such a type of temple Vitruvius instances as an example the
eight-columned temple of Minerva at Athens, and the ten-columned one of
Olympian Jupiter[91].
We will pass over in this place the more detailed consideration of the
number of columns no less than the nature of the intervening spaces
between themselves and the walls, and merely draw attention to the
unique significance which such colonnades and forecourts, or halls
possessed in general for the Greek temple. In these prostyles and
amphiprostyles, that is, these single and double colonnades, which
brought you direct into the open sunshine, we observe that men can
move about openly and free and can group themselves as they choose, or
according to the chance of the moment. Columns are, in short, not an
enclosure, but a limitation through which you can always pass, so that
you can be partially within and without them at once, and at any rate
can everywhere step from them into the open day. In the same way the
long walls at the back of the columns do not permit of any pressure to
one central point, whither our sight may instinctively turn when the
passages are crowded. On the contrary the eye is rather diverted from
such a point of unity in every direction; and instead of the conception
of a congregation brought together for One purpose we observe a
tendency outwards, and merely receive the impression of a means of
spending the time devoid of seriousness, light-hearted, idle, and
provocative of chatter. Within the enclosure no doubt we have suggested
a profounder aim, but even here we find surrounding features[92],
which more or less indicate that we are not to take such a purpose too
seriously. Consequently the impression of such a temple, though no
doubt simple and imposing, is at the same time gay, open, and pleasing
to the sense; the entire building, in short, is rather arranged as a
place for standing about in, strolling round, for ingress and egress
than in order to enable an assembly of persons to concentrate their
numbers in one spot shut off from the rest of the world.
3. THE DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTIVE TYPES OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE
Casting our glance now on the different forms of construction which
offer us the predominant examples of distinctive type in classical
architecture we may emphasize the following as most important.
(_a_) What first arrests our attention in this field are those kinds
of building whose lines of distinction are most noticeable in their
_columns_; for this reason I shall myself, too, limit myself to a
statement of the pre-eminently characteristic traits of the various
types of column.
The most famous among the orders of columns are the _Doric_, _Ionic_,
and _Corinthian_, over whose architectural beauty and adaptation to
definite purpose, neither the research of earlier times nor our own
has been able to add anything. For we may assume that the Tuscan,
or, according to Hirt[93], the ancient Greek type of building belongs
in its undecorative crudeness to the original and simple type of wood
structure, not to the architecture of beauty, and the so-called Roman
order of columns is of no real moment, being merely an increase in the
decorative character of the Corinthian. The important points in this
inquiry are the relation of the height of columns to their thickness,
the type of base and capital to be distinguished in each case, and,
finally, the greater or less intervening spaces between the columns.
With regard to the first, if the column is not of a height four times
as large as its diameter it appears too bulky and depressed; if its
height, however, exceeds such a proportion by being ten times as
large, the column will appear too slender to the eye, and too slim as
a means of support. The respective intervals between the columns must,
however, be considered in close relation to the above facts; if the
columns appear more stout they should be placed nearer to one another,
if on the contrary the impression they produce is one of slightness
and lankness the intervals have to be larger. It is a matter of equal
importance, and this is so whether the columns have a pedestal or not,
whether the capital is of higher or less ample size, is without or with
decoration, for it is by this means that the entire character of the
column is altered. With regard to the column's shaft, however, the rule
obtains that it should be smooth and devoid of decoration, although it
does not rise throughout of the same thickness, but is appreciably more
slender at the top than it is midway and at the base, and the change
is such that there is a swelling which, though barely perceptible, is
none the less present. In more recent times no doubt, notably in the
Middle Ages, when the antique types of columns were converted to the
use of Christian architecture, the smoothness of shaft was found to be
too cold, and for this reason wreaths of flowers were entwined round
them, or columns of spiral form were permitted no doubt on similar
grounds; this, however, is inadmissible and opposed to the best taste,
because the true function of the column is simply that of support,
and to carry this out they ought to rise in a secure and straight
line and be self-subsistent[94]. The only divergency from the rule in
columnar structure which the ancients admitted was that of the groove,
a variation which, as Vitruvius points out, made such appear broader
than when their surface is wholly smooth. Such grooving we find carried
out very extensively.
I will now indicate more closely the main distinguishing features of
the Doric, Ionian, and Corinthian order of columns respectively.
(_α_) In primitive buildings _security_ of structure is the fundamental
characteristic beyond which architecture fails to go; consequently
it does not as yet dare to risk relations of a slender kind with the
bolder lightness which belongs to them, but rests satisfied with forms
of greater bulk. This is the case in the Doric type of building. We
find here that the material aspect with its onerous weight still
is that which is most influential, and is particularly apparent in
the relations of breadth and height. When a building is erected in
lightness and freedom the burden of heavy masses is overcome; if on the
contrary its disposition is one which suggests mainly breadth and a low
elevation the prevailing impression, as in the Doric style, is that of
stability and solidity, subservient to the dominant force of gravity.
Consistently with this character Doric columns, if contrasted with
the other two orders, are the broadest and lowest. The more ancient
examples do not rise above a height which is six times their diameter,
and not unfrequently they are merely four times that breadth; for this
reason they give, by virtue of their unwieldiness, the impression of an
earnest, simple, and unadorned manliness, such as we have exemplified
in the temples at Paestum and Corinth. The later examples of the Doric
order, however, extend their columns to a height of seven times this
unit of measure, and, for buildings other than temples, Vitruvius adds
yet another half diameter. More generally, however, the distinctive
character of the Doric type consists in this that it approximates most
nearly to the primitive simplicity of the wood building, although it is
more receptive than the Tuscan to decorative work and embellishments.
The columns, however, have almost without exception no distinctive
base; they stand up directly on their foundation[95], and their
capitals are arranged in the simplest way out of ovolo ornament and
plinth. The shaft is sometimes left smooth, sometimes grooved with
twenty drills, which frequently were flat for one third of the way
from the base, and hollowed out in circular form the rest of the
way[96]. As regards the interval between the columns, according to
the older monuments, the breadth is twice the diameter of a column,
and only a few exceed this by a width between two and two and a half
diameters. Another peculiarity of the Doric type of building in which
it approaches the type of wood construction consists in triglyphs and
metopes. In other words triglyphs indicate in the frieze the tops of
the beams of the entablature with which the architrave culminates
inserted there by means of prismatical incisions[97], while the metopes
fill up the spaces between one beam and another, and in the Doric
construction still retain the form of the square[98]. As a decoration
they are frequently covered with reliefs, while beneath the triglyphs,
which rest on the architrave, and as a culmination to the surfaces of
the cornice on their lower side, we have for embellishment six small
conical bodies, technically known as drops.
(_β_) In the Doric style we are already made aware of an advance in
the characteristics of a solidity which affects us with pleasure. In
Ionic architecture this upward progress is further emphasized in a
type notable for its slenderness, charm, and grace, if still expressed
in a simple way. The height of the columns varies between that of
seven and ten times the width of the diameter at the base, and is
determined, according to the conclusions of Vitruvius, pre-eminently
by the breadth of the intervening spaces of the columns, that is to
say, where they are wider the columns appear thinner, and consequently
more slender, where they are more narrow, however, they appear stouter
and of less height. For this reason the architect is forced, in order
to avoid an excess of thinness or bulk, in the first case to reduce
the height, and in the second to increase it. In the case, then, where
the intervals exceed three diameters the height of the columns will
merely carry eight of such, where there is an interval of two and a
quarter rising to three, the height will rise to eight and a half
diameters. If the columns, however, are separated only by the width of
two diameters, the height must be extended to nine and a half times
the unit, and in the extreme case of an interval of but one and a half
times, such height will even rise to ten times the breadth of diameter.
However, cases such as these latter ones appear very seldom, and, in so
far as we may judge from such monuments of the Ionic type of building
that have come down to us, the ancients made very scanty use of those
relations which necessitated the more lofty columns.
The Ionic type is further distinguished from the Doric in this that
the Ionic columns do not rise directly with their shaft from the
substructure, but are set up on a variously articulated pedestal, and
then in unobtrusive rejuvenescence rise lightly in their slender height
to their capitals with a deeper hollowing out than in the Doric type,
a broad grooving of four and twenty grooves. It is especially in this
characteristic that the Ionic temple at Ephesus is distinguishable
from and in contrast to the Doric at Paestum. In the same way we find
an increase of variety and grace in the Ionic capital. It has not only
a carved coussinet[99], little ledge and plinth, but receives both to
the right and left a spiral winding, and at the sides a decorative kind
of cushion, from which is derived its title of the pulvinated capital.
The volutes at the end of the pad or cushion indicate the end of the
column, which, however, may rise to a still greater elevation, but in
this possible increase makes itself essentially a curve.
Compatibly with this slender character of the pleasing decoration of
its columns the Ionic type of building requires a less bulky weight in
its beams, and is concerned in this way too to secure an increase of
grace. By doing so it no longer suggests as a predecessor as the Doric
does the wood construction, and consequently suffers triglyphs and
metopes to fall away in the flat frieze, introducing in their place as
its principal means of decoration, heads of sacrificial animals united
with flowery coils, and, instead of the suspended mutule[100] tops, we
find tooth-like ornamentation[101].
(_γ_) Finally, to come to the _Corinthian_ order, we find it is
in fundamentals composed upon the Ionic, only that with a similar
slenderness it is elaborated in more tasteful luxuriance, and unfolds
the consummate finish of adornment and embellishment. Like it content
to possess the definite and various divisions of its structure as
a legacy from the wood building, it emphasizes the same without
permitting their origin to be conspicuous by means of its decorative
work, and expresses, in its manifold ledges and borders on cornice
and beam, on its weather moulds, its moulding flutes, its variously
articulated pediments and its more luxuriant capitals, a multiplicity
of pleasing features.
The Corinthian column, it is true, does not exceed in height the Ionic,
rising as a rule with a grooving of similar character, merely eight
times or eight and a half times as high as the diameter of the lower
portion of the column, but it appears more slender and above all more
exuberant by virtue of a loftier capital. For the capital's height
is one and an eighth times the diameter beneath, and has at each of
its four corners more slender volutes which suffer the pulvination of
the previous type to fall off, while the part below is decorated with
acanthus leaves. The Greeks have a charming tale relative to this. A
maiden of exceptional beauty, they tell us, died. Her nurse collected
her playthings in a little basket and placed it on her grave, where an
acanthus plant sprang up. The leaves very soon embraced the basket, and
it was this which suggested the thought of the capital of a column.
Of other points of difference between the Corinthian and the Ionic and
Doric orders, I will only further mention the delicately curved mutules
under the cornices, and the projection of the water moulding, and the
indentations and corbel-heads on the cornice[102].
(_b_) We may, _secondly_, regard the _Roman_ type of building as
an intermediate form standing between that of Greek and Christian
architecture, in so far as here we find mainly the application of arch
and vaultings. It is not possible to determine with accuracy the time
when the construction of arches was first discovered; it appears,
however, certain that neither the Egyptians, despite the great progress
they made in the arts of building, nor the Babylonians, Israelites, and
Phoenicians were cognisant of the _ogive_ or the _vault._ The monuments
of Egyptian architecture at any rate only show us that when it was a
question of superimposing a roof over the interior of a building the
one means the Egyptians had at their disposal was that of placing
huge slabs of stone across like beams in horizontal position. If it
was required to arch up broad entrances, or cross arches they knew
of no other way of doing this than letting one stone on either side
project forward, with another still more projecting one above it, so
that the side walls gradually approached upwards until they reached
a point where only one stone was necessary to close the remaining
space between. Where such an expedient was not necessary they covered
the spaces with huge slabs of stone arranged across in the manner of
rafters.
Among the Greeks we do, I believe, find monuments in which the arch
construction has already been adopted, but they are rare; and Hirt,
who has written with most authority over the building and the history
of the building of antiquity, affirms that among such monuments we
can rely on none with security as dating from a time previous to
that of Pericles. In other words, in Greek architecture the features
which are characteristic and elaborated are the column and beam in
horizontal position, so that we find here the column very little used
in a relation which lies apart from its true function, namely that
of supporting beams. Moreover the arch that is vaulted from two
piers or columns, and the knob-like formation, connotes a yet further
feature, for we find here that the column already begins to forsake its
determinate attribute of support. For the circular arch in its rise,
its flexure and its declivity is related to a centre which has nothing
to do with the column as a means of support. The separate parts of
the circular arch are carried in mutual opposition; they support and
prolong each other in a way that shows them far more remote from the
direct assistance of the column than is the horizontally superimposed
beam.
In _Roman_ architecture, then, as stated, the arch-construction and
vaulting is of very common occurrence, or rather we have certain
remains which we can only attribute to the age of the Roman kings, if
we may fully believe the evidence of later times. Of this type are
the catacombs and cloaca, which were vaulted, but must be regarded
as works of a more recent restoration. The most probable discoverer
yet suggested of the vault is Democritus[103], who occupied himself
in a variety of ways with mathematical problems and is held to be the
discoverer of lithotomy.
One of the most famous buildings of Roman architecture, in which the
circular arch appears as fundamental type is the Pantheon of Agrippa
dedicated to Jupiter Ultor, which, in addition to the statue of
Jupiter, contained colossal images of gods in no less than six other
niches, namely, Mars, Venus, the deified Julius Caesar as well as three
others whose identity we cannot fix with accuracy. In either side of
these niches stood two Corinthian columns, and the whole was vaulted
with one majestic vault in form of the half globe and corresponding
to the vault of heaven. With reference to the material of this vault
we may note that it is not a stone one. In other words the Romans, in
the majority of their vaultings, in the first instance carried out a
construction of wood, and covered the same with a composition of chalk
and puzzolana cement, which was made of the dust of a light kind of
tufa and broken tile shards. When this composition was dry the whole
was formed into a mass so that the wooden scaffolding could be removed
and the vaulting, by virtue of the lightness of its material and
the stability of its consolidation, exercised only an insignificant
pressure on the walls.
(_c_) The architecture of the Romans possessed moreover generally, and
apart from this novel employment of arch construction, an entirely
different scope and character than that of Greece. The Greeks
distinguished themselves, while carrying throughout their work its
main purpose, and by virtue of their perfection as artists, in the
nobility, the simplicity no less than the airy delicacy of their
decorations. The Romans on the contrary are, as artists, at least on
the mechanical side of construction more rich and more ostentatious,
but at the same time of less nobility and grace. Add to this in their
architecture we meet with a variety of intention which was unknown to
the Greek. As I have already observed the Greeks entirely devoted the
splendour and beauty of art to public objects. Their private dwellings
remained insignificant. Among the Romans, however, not only do we find
an increase of public buildings, whose main purpose of construction
was splendidly embellished in theatres, spaces for animal combats and
other means of public sport, but architecture received a deliberate
impulse in the direction of private use. More especially after the
civil wars villas, baths, colonnades, flights of steps were constructed
with the imposing character of the most luxurious extravagance, and by
this means a new opening was made for the arts of building, which also
included that of gardening, which was perfected in a way that evinced
very considerable talent and taste. The villa of Lucullus is a striking
example.
This type of Roman architecture has in many respects rendered service
as a model to Italians and Frenchmen of t more recent times. Among
ourselves we have for a long time to some measure followed in the
steps of the Italians, and also to some extent in those of the French;
finally men have once more devoted their attention to the Greeks, and
have accepted as an object of imitation the antique in its purer form.
CHAPTER III
ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURE
The Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages, which constitutes here the
characteristic centre of the truly romantic type, has for a long time,
more especially since the popularization and predominance of the French
taste, been regarded as something rude and barbarous. In recent times
it was Goethe who mainly, in the first instance, and in the youthful
freshness of his own nature and artistic outlook, brought once more the
Gothic type to its place of honour. Critical taste has been more and
more concerned to appreciate and respect these imposing works as giving
effective expression both to the distinctive purpose of Christian
culture, and the harmonious unity thereby created between architectonic
form and the ideal spirit of Christendom.
I. GENERAL CHARACTER
In so far as the general character of these buildings is concerned,
in which religious architecture is that which is most prominent, we
discovered already in our introduction to this part of our inquiry
that in this type both those of _independent_ and _serviceable_
architecture are _united._ This unity, however, does not in any way
consist in a fusion of the architectural forms of the Oriental and
the Greek, but we must look for it in the fact that, on the one hand,
the house or _dwelling-enclosure_ furnishes yet more the fundamental
type than in the Greek temple construction, and, on the other, mere
_serviceableness_ and purpose is to that extent _eliminated_, and
the house is emphasized apart from it in its _free independence._ No
doubt these houses of God and other buildings of this type appear to
the fullest extent as constructed for definite objects, as already
stated, but their true character is precisely this, that it reaches
over and beyond the determinate aim and presents itself in a form of
self-seclusion and positive local independence. The creation stands
up in its place independent, secure, and eternal. For this reason
the character of the entirety is no longer to be deduced from any
purely scientific or theoretical relation. Within the interior the
box-like envelope of our Protestant churches falls away which are built
simply that they may be filled with men and women, and do not possess
church pews as stalls; in their exterior, the building soars in its
roofing and pinnacles freely upwards, so that the relation of purpose,
however much it be also present, tends again to disappear, leaving
the impression of the whole that of a self-subsistent existence. Such
a building is entirely filled up by nothing expressly; everything is
absorbed in the grandeur of the whole: it possesses and declares a
definite object, but in its grandiose proportions and sublime repose
it is essentially and with an infinite significance exalted[104]
above all mere intentional serviceableness. This exaltation over
finitude and simple security is that which constitutes the _unique_
characteristic aspect of it. From another point of view it is precisely
in this type that architecture finds the greatest opportunity for
_particularisation_, diversion of effect and variety, without
permitting, however, the whole to fall into mere details and accidental
particulars. The imposing character of the art we are considering
restores, on the contrary, this aspect of division and dismemberment
in the original impression of simplicity. It is the substantive being
of the whole which is set in division and dismemberment in an infinite
multiplicity throughout the entire complexus of individual and varied
distinctions; but this unbounded complexity is subdivided in a simple
way, is articulated according to rule, broken into parts symmetrically
by the same substance, which is the motive and constitutive principle
throughout in a harmonious co-ordination which entirely satisfies, and
which combines without let or hindrance the mass of detail in all their
length and breadth in securest unity and most perspicuous independence.
2. PARTICULAR ARCHITECTURAL MODES OF CONFORMATION
If we pass now to a consideration of the particular forms in which
romantic architecture receives its specific character we shall find,
as we have already above noticed, that our entire discussion will be
confined to what is genuine Gothic architecture, and mainly that of the
church buildings of Christendom, in their contrast to the Greek temple.
(_a_) As fundamental form underlying all the rest, we have here the
_wholly shut off dwelling-house._
(_α_) In other words, just as the Christian spirit withdraws itself
within an ideal realm, the building is the place essentially delimited
on all sides for the congregation of the Christian community and the
gathering together of spiritual life. It is the concentration of
essential soul-life which thus encloses itself in spatial relations.
The devotion of the Christian heart, however, is at the same time
and in the same degree an exaltation over finitude, so that this
exaltation, moreover, determines the character of God's house.
Architecture secures thereby as its significance, independently of the
object which renders it necessary as a building, this exaltation to
the Infinite, a significance which it is forced to express through the
spatial relations of architectural forms. The impression, therefore,
which art is now called upon to emphasize is, in one aspect of it,
and in contrast to the open gaiety of the Greek temple, that of the
tranquillity of the soul which, released from external nature and
worldly conditions, retires wholly into self-seclusion; in the other
aspect of it it is that impress of a solemn sublimity, which strains
and soars over and beyond all rational limits. If, therefore, the
buildings of classical architecture as a rule offer the expansion of
breadth, we find in contrast to this that the romantic character of
Christian churches asserts itself in the growth upwards from the soil
and a soaring to the skies.
(_β_) In this oblivion of external Nature and all the diverting
occupations and interests of finite existence, which is to be effected
by means of such seclusion, the open forecourts and colonnades and the
like, which are in direct communication with that world, furthermore
and of necessity fall away, or only receive an entirely modified
representation within the interior of the building. And in like manner
the light of the sun is either excluded, or glimmers in broken rays
through windows of painted glass, which, to prevent total immersion
in darkness, are perforce admitted. What humanity needs here is not
the gift of external Nature, but a world created through it and for it
alone, for its devotion and the activity of its soul-life.
(_γ_) We may fix as the pervading type by which the house of God is
generally and with particular reference to its sections characterized
that of the free rise and running up into _pinnacles_, whether they
be built up by means of the arch or straight lines. In classical
architecture, where we find columns and piers with superimposed beams
is the fundamental form, rectangularity and the office of support is
the feature of importance. For the construction superimposed at right
angles marks in a definite way that it is supported. And even though
the beams do in their turn carry the roofing, the surfaces of this
latter portion incline to one another in an obtuse angle. In such a
construction we find no trace of a genuine tendency to points and a
soaring up: we find simply repose and support. In the same way, too,
a circular arch, which extends in a continuous and equally gradated
incline from one column to another, and is referable to one and
the same centre, rests on its substructure of support. In romantic
architecture, however, we no longer find the relation of support
simply and rectangularity the fundamental form, but rather we have
before us the fact that all that is enclosed either on its interior or
exterior side independently springs upward, and, without the secure and
express distinction between the relationship of weight and support,
concentrates in a point. This pre-eminently free striving upwards and
tendency to inclines that run to culminating points is what constitutes
here the essential determinant, by virtue of which either acute-angled
triangles with a more slender or broader base or pointed arches appear,
both of which aspects stand out most obviously in the characterization
of Gothic architecture.
(_b_) Moreover, the obligations of spiritual devotion and exaltation,
regarded as a cultus, bring before us a variety of definite conditions
and features which cannot be fully met on the exterior of the building
in the open halls or forecourts of a temple, but can only be satisfied
within the house of God itself. If, therefore, in the case of the
temple of classical architecture it is the external form which is of
most importance, and we find it remaining by means of the colonnades
more independent of the interior construction, romantic architecture
presents a contrast to this not merely in the fact that the interior
of the building is more essentially important, for the reason that
the whole purports to be simply an enclosure, but also in this, that
the interior permeates the very form of the exterior throughout, and
determines its specific shape and mode of articulation.
In this connection we will, in order to examine the matter more
closely, first make an entrance into the interior, and working outwards
therefrom endeavour to elucidate the exterior.
(_α_) The definition I have already adduced as best describing the
_interior_ of the church is that of a certain place set apart and
enclosed in all its aspects, whether it be in opposition to the
inclemency of the weather or the distractions of the outer world, for
the community and its spiritual worship. The space of the interior
is consequently an enclosure in the completest sense, whereas Greek
temples, apart from the presence of open passages and halls in the
environment, not unfrequently possessed open cells.
Inasmuch as, moreover, Christian worship is an _exaltation_ of the soul
above the limitations of natural existence and a reconciliation of the
individual with God, we find in this fact a mediation of points of view
which are separably _distinct_ in one and the same essentially concrete
unity. At the same time romantic architecture receives the function
in the form and co-ordination of its building to make the above
content of spiritual life, to enclose which is the prime object of its
construction, so far as this is architecturally feasible, shine through
and determine the actual shape both of the exterior and the interior.
The following points will assist our understanding of the nature of
this problem.
(_αα_) The space of the interior will have to be no abstractly
undifferentiated and empty one, which possesses no essentially defined
features or links that relate them respectively. It must have a
concrete form, one, that is, which presents differences in respect
to all the mutual relations of length, breadth, height, and the mode
of such dimensions. The form of the circle, the square, the oblong,
with the equality of enclosing walls and roofing which is necessary to
these figures, will not be suitable here. The movement, severation, and
mediation of soul-life in its exaltation from that which is of earth to
that which is eternal, to the far-off and the more lofty, would fail to
find apt expression in this bare equality of a square figure.
(_ββ_) It is only a corollary to this that in the Gothic style the
substantial _purport_ of the house, both in respect of its enclosing
form of sidewalls and roof, and in that of its columns and beams
relatively to the _configuration_ of the whole and its parts, becomes
a matter of subordinate importance. And with this disappears, on the
one hand, as we have already noticed, the strict distinction between
burden and support, as on the other we find no longer rectangularity
is emphasized as essential to the building's purpose. Recourse is made
once more to an analogous form of Nature, namely, one that prefigures
a solemn place of assemblage and enclosure which freely soars upwards.
If we step into the interior of a cathedral of the Middle Ages we have
brought before us not so much the stability and mechanical purpose
of supporting piers and a vault that rests upon it. We are rather
reminded of the arches of a forest, whose rows of trees incline with
their branches to one another and form an enclosure by this means.
A crossbeam requires a secure centre of gravity and the horizontal
position. In Gothic architecture, however, the walls mount up freely
and independently, and in the same way the piers, which then expand
above in several directions apart from one another, and coalesce as
though by accident. In other words their function, to support the
vaulting, is, although the same in truth reposes on the piers, not
expressly emphasized and independently set forth[105]. The effect is
as though they did not carry such, just as in the tree the branches
do not appear as though supported by the stem, but rather in their
airy incurvation as a continuation of the stem, and with the branches
of other trees, form a roof of leaves. A roofing of this kind, which
is thus fixed upon as the cover of the life of Spirit, this awful
environment, which invites us to contemplation, it is which the
cathedral presents us, in so far as the walls and among them the forest
of piers freely coalesce in their summits. But for all that we do not
actually assert that Gothic architecture has accepted trees and woods
for the actual exemplar of its forms.
While the sharpening to a point offers us generally the basic type in
Gothic we find in the interior of churches this tendency take the more
specialized shape of the _pointed arch._ By this means the _columns_ in
particular receive an entirely fresh significance and appearance.
The broad Gothic churches require a roofing to close them in, a roofing
which on account of the breadth is a severe burden and renders support
unavoidable. Here, therefore, the columns appear to be in their right
place. For the reason, however, that the straining upwards is precisely
that which converts support into the appearance of free soaring-up
columns are unable to be employed here with the significance they
possess in classical architecture. They become, on the contrary, piers
which, in lieu of the cross-beam, carry arches in a manner whereby
they appear as simply a continuation of the pier and coalesce together
without definite object in a point. We may, no doubt, conceive the
unavoidable termination of two piers that stand apart from one another
as analogous to a gut-roof that rests on corner posts; but taking
into consideration the surfaces at the sides, although they, too,
are planted on piers in entirely obtuse angles, and incline to one
another in an acute angle, we find in the latter case none the less
the conception on the one hand of burden, and on the other of support.
The pointed arch, on the contrary, which apparently in the first
instance mounts up in a straight line, and only by imperceptible and
slower degrees leans forward in order to incline to the opposite side,
presents for the first time the complete idea as though it was just
nothing but the continuation of the pier itself, which forms an arch
with another. Piers and vaulting appear, in their contrast to columns
and the beam, as one and the same image, although the arches rest upon
the capitals from which they spring. The capitals, too, in specific
cases, such as occur in Netherland churches, keep away altogether, and
by this means the inseparable unity above-mentioned is made expressly
visible to the eye.
Moreover, on account of the fact that this striving upwards is declared
as the fundamental character, the height of the piers exceeds that of
the breadth of their base in a proportion that we cannot calculate at
sight. The piers are thin, slender, and soar up so high the sight is
unable to take in the entire form at a glance, and is compelled to
rove about in its upward flight until it attains repose at last in the
gently inclined vaulting of the uniting arch, much as the soul moving
with restlessness in its devotion from the ground of finitude uplifts
itself and finds rest in God alone.
The final point of distinction between piers and columns consists in
this, that the piers which are distinctively Gothic, and, where they
are elaborated in their specific character, do not, as columns do,
remain in the circular form, essentially secure in that, and one and
the same cylinder, but to begin with at their base in a reed-like way
constitute a convolute, a bundle of fibres, which break into varied
distinction as the pier mounts and radiate forth on all sides under
various modes of continuation. And, while we find already in classical
architecture that the column represents an advance from that which is
merely subject to laws of gravity, from the solid and simple to that
which is more slender and more adorned, so, too, we find much the same
change visible in the pier, which, in this more slender upgrowth, ever
withdraws itself more from the mere service of support, and freely
soars upward albeit shut in at its summit.
The same form of piers and pointed arches is repeated in windows and
doors. More particularly the windows, not merely the lower ones of the
side aisles, but also in a still higher degree, the upper ones of the
transepts and choir, are of colossal size in order that the glance,
which rests upon their lower portion, may not at once take in the upper
part as well and may be uplifted as in the case of the vaultings. This
adds to the restless motion of the upward flight which it is intended
to communicate to the spectator. Add to this the window panes, as we
have already remarked, are with their coloured glass only partially
transparent. Sometimes they present sacred histories and sometimes they
are merely panes of varied colour with the object of increasing the
twilight effect and permitting the light of the wax candles to shine
forth. For in these buildings it is another daylight than that of
Nature which illumines.
(_γγ_) Finally, as regards the _entire articulation_ of the interior
of Gothic churches we have already seen that it is imperative that the
particular parts of such should be differentiated in their breadth,
height, and length. The primary distinction to consider in this respect
is that of _choir, transept_, and _nave_ from the _encircling aisles._
These latter are constructed on the sides external to the fabric by
means of walls which enclose it, and from which piers and arches are
carried, and in their separation from the interior by means of piers
and pointed arches, which present openings toward the nave, having no
partition walls between. They receive therefore the converse aspect to
that of the colonnades in Greek temples, which are open on the outside
and are enclosed towards the interior, whereas the aisles in Gothic
churches permit free passage between the piers to the nave. In certain
examples we find two such aisles in juxtaposition; in fact, Antwerp
cathedral is an example which possesses three of them at either side of
the nave.
The _nave_ itself soars up by means of enclosing walls on either
side, at different degrees of elevation, according to various modes
of disposition, above the aisles, broken by colossal windows in such
a way that the walls themselves at the same time have the appearance
of being slender piers, which everywhere separate in pointed arches
and build up vaultings. There are, however, churches in which the
side aisles have the same height as the nave, as, for example, in the
later choirs of the Sebaldus Church in Nuremberg, which offers the
impression of an imposing, free, and capacious type of slenderness
and delicacy. In this way the whole is divided by means of rows of
piers, which are brought together at their summits like a forest in
flights of branching arches. Attempts have been made to discover in
the _number_ of these piers, and generally in the relations of number
much _mystical_ significance. There can be no question but that at
the period of the finest efflorescence of Gothic architecture, that,
for example, of Cologne Cathedral, a great significance was attached
to the symbols of number, the as yet more gloomy presentiment of
what is rational falling in readily with an insistence on external
traits of this kind. But despite this fact the artistic productions
of architecture, which are carried through by means of that which
is always to a greater or less degree merely the capricious play
of a symbolism of subordinate rank, is neither of the profoundest
significance, nor of the most exalted form of beauty, for the reason
that the genuine spirit of these is expressed in entirely different
forms and modes than those applicable to the significance of numeral
distinctions. We must therefore be especially cautious not to carry
such investigations too far. To attempt to go to the root of everything
and in every direction to desire to discover a deeper meaning will tend
quite as much to contract our horizon and destroy our thoroughness of
search as is common with all short-sighted learning which passes over
the depth which is clearly expressed and presented without grasping it.
In respect to the more detailed distinction between _choir_ and nave,
I will in conclusion emphasize the following points. The high-altar,
this real centre of the ritual, is placed in the choir, which is
thus dedicated as the place for the priesthood as distinct from the
community, whose proper place is that of the nave, where we find the
pulpit for the preacher. A flight of steps, which varies in its height,
conducts us to the choir, so that this latter section and all that
takes place in it is visible everywhere. In the same way this choir
section is relatively to decoration more ornate, and, moreover, in its
distinction from the more prolonged nave, even where the vaultings in
both cases are of equal height, is more serious, solemn, and sublime.
Above all we find here that the entire building is finally enclosed
with piers of greater thickness and more closely, by means of which the
breadth tends to disappear, and the entire effect is one of greater
stillness and height, whereas the transepts and the nave through their
towers still provide with their means of entrance and exit a connection
with the outside world. According to the points of the compass the
choir is placed to the east, the nave lies in a westerly direction,
and the transepts stand towards the north and south. We find, however,
churches with a double choir, in which the two choirs lie respectively
in the direction of morning and evening and the main entrances are
placed in the transepts. The stone font for baptism, that is, for the
sanctification of human entry into the Christian community, is placed
in a porch by the main _entrance_ into the church. And, finally, we may
note that, while the more express worship is provided for by the entire
building, and notably the choir and nave, there are also small chapels
which form in each case a fresh and independent church.
This must suffice as a description of the articulate structure of the
whole. In a cathedral of this type there is space enough for an entire
people. For here it is the intention that the community of a city and
district do not congregate round the building, but within the same.
And for this reason all the varied interests of life which in any way
come into contact with religion have, too, a place assigned them. No
fixed divisions of seats placed in rows divide and diminish the broad
space, but everyone comes and departs in peace, engages for himself
or takes a seat for immediate use, kneels down, offers his prayer and
removes himself once more. If it is not the hour of high mass the most
various things take place at the same time, and there is no confusion.
In one portion a sermon is delivered, in another a sick man is brought
in; between these points we may find a slow procession; at one spot,
we have a baptism, at another a deceased person is carried through
the church. Or we may find in one place a priest delivering mass or
celebrating the marriage services and in every direction the people in
broken groups kneel before altars and sacred images. All such things
are embraced by one and the same building. But this very variety and
individualization disappears, nevertheless, with its alternations
when contrasted with the expanse and size of the building. Nothing
completely fills up the whole, every incident passes by; individuals
with all that they do are lost and dispersed as points in this
grandiose whole. What happens at a given time is merely visible in its
passing flight, and over and above all the huge and almost measureless
spaces soar up in their secure and immutable form and construction.
Such, then, are the fundamental characteristics of the interior of
Gothic churches. We must not look here for any definite purpose as
such, but rather an object for the private devotion of the soul in
its self-absorption in every detail of the spiritual life[106], and
its elevation over all that is isolated and finite. For this reason
these buildings are cut off from Nature by spaces enclosed on all
sides, built up in the atmosphere of gloom and at the same time to
the smallest detail in a spirit that strives upwards sublime and
immeasurable.
(_β_) If we direct our attention now to the _external_ aspect we shall
find, as we have already above observed, that in contrast to the
Greek temple the exterior configuration in Gothic architecture, the
decoration and co-ordination of the walls and all else is determined
from within outwards, the exterior having to appear simply as an
enclosure of the interior.
In this connection we have good reason to emphasize the following
points:
(_αα_) In the _first_ place in the form of the _cross_ which we find
dominates the whole exterior we cannot fail to recognize in outline a
similar construction as that which obtains within, a form which cuts,
the nave and choir in two, and supplies, moreover, the distinctions of
height which obtain between the aisles, the nave and choir.
On closer inspection we find that the _principal façade_, as the
external form of the aisles and nave, corresponds in the _portals_
to the particular construction within. A more lofty principal door,
by which we pass direct into the nave, stands between the smaller
entrances into the aisles, and suggests by means of the contraction in
perspective that the exterior must draw together, grow more narrow,
and disappear in order than an entrance may be thereby provided. The
interior is the background already visible, into the depths of which
the exterior is carried, just as the soul is constrained to grow more
profound as ideality when it enters its own intrinsic wealth. Over
the doors at the sides extend in the most direct connection with the
interior colossal windows, just as the portals rise up to similar
pointed arches, in a way similar to that in which they are employed
as the particular form for the vaultings of the interior. Between
these doors over the principal portal a large circular window branches
out, the rose-window, a form which is, we may add, the exclusive and
peculiar possession of this type of building, and only fitted to it.
Where such rose-windows are absent we find substituted for them a still
more colossal window with pointed arches. The façades of the transepts
are divided in a similar way while the walls of the nave, the choir,
and the aisles in their windows and their form, no less than in the
position of the solid walls between, repeat in all respects the form of
the interior and set the same forth on the outside.
(_ββ_) In the _second_ place, however, the exterior begins to make
itself at the same time intelligible to itself[107] in this close
association with the form and subdivision of the interior for the very
reason that it has its own peculiar tasks to fulfil. In this connection
we may mention the _flying buttresses._ They represent the position
of the many piers within the building and are necessary as points of
support for the elevation and security of the whole. At the same time
they further make apparent on the outside, so far as interval, number,
and other features are concerned, the rows of piers on the inside,
albeit they do not exactly reproduce the shape of the interior piers,
but the higher they mount up become reduced in the strength of their
springing buttresses.
(_γγ_) Inasmuch as, however, in the _third_ place, it is only the
interior which has to be one essentially complete enclosure, this
feature is lost in the form of the exterior and makes way in every
respect for the all-prevailing characteristics of continuous elevation.
And for this reason the exterior receives at the same time a form
independent of the interior, which asserts itself mainly in a tendency
to strive upwards on all sides into points and pinnacles, breaking
out in them one on the top of another. To this fundamental feature
belong the lofty uplifted triangles which, independently of the pointed
arches, soar upwards over the portals, pre-eminently the principal
façade, though also over the colossal windows of the nave and choir,
and in a similar way the slenderly pointed shape of the roof, whose
gable-end is especially prominent in the façades of the transepts. Add
to these the flying buttresses, which everywhere terminate in little
pointed pinnacles, and in this way, just as the rows of piers within
the building create a forest of stems, branches, and vaultings, on
their part on the exterior stretch up heavenwards a forest of points.
With most independence and most emphatically, however, it is the
_towers_ which rise upwards in their sublime summits. In other words
we find that the entire mass of the building concentrates among other
things itself in them, in order that thus in its main towers it may be
without hindrance uplifted to an incalculable height without thereby
losing its character of repose and stability. Such towers are either
placed in the principal façade over the two side entrances, while a
third and broader main tower springs up at the point where the vaulting
of the transepts, choir, and nave meet, or one single tower constitutes
the principal façade and is raised above the entire breadth of the
nave. Such are at any rate the positions which are most usual. In
direct connection with the worship such towers have belfries, that is,
to the extent that the ringing of bells properly applies to Christian
services. This merely indefinite tone of the bell is a solemn stimulus
of the soul-life, though in the first instance one that as yet prepares
the worshipper only on the outside of the building. The articulate
tone, on the other hand, wherein a definite content of feelings and
ideas is expressed, is the song which is only to be heard within the
church. The inarticulate clang of the bell finds its right place on the
outside and only there and is sounded forth from the towers that its
peal may pass forth as from some pure height far over the land.
(_c_) As to the mode of decoration I have already pointed to the main
features of determinate character.
(_α_) The _first_ point we have to emphasize is the importance of
ornament generally for Gothic architecture. Classical architecture
preserves as a rule a wise mean in the adornment of its constructions.
Inasmuch as, however, it is the main interest of Gothic architecture
to make the masses which it places in position appear larger and
considerably more lofty than they in fact are it is not satisfied with
plain surfaces, but subdivides the same throughout; and, moreover,
breaks them up with forms which themselves suggest on their part a
striving upwards. Piers, pointed arches, and triangles, which rise
above them with their pinnacles, occur, too, as decorative work. In
this way we find that the simple unity of the great masses is impaired,
and the elaboration is carried to the point of every conceivable
detail, leaving the entire effect, however, involved in the most
flagrant contradiction. On the one hand we cannot fail to observe the
most obvious outlines in a clearly defined co-ordination, on the other
we have fulness and variety of delicate embellishment impossible to
follow with the eye, so that the most motley particularity is directly
set up in contrast to what is most universal and simple, just as the
soul, in the opposition implied in Christian worship, is deeply engaged
in finite things, and indeed carries its life into the mere detail and
the trifle. This very opposition acts as a stimulus to contemplation,
this striving up invites to a like action. For what is of paramount
importance in this style of decoration is this that it do not, by
the mass and alternation of its ornament, destroy or cover up the
fundamental outlines, but rather suffer them completely to make their
way through such variety as the essential feature of importance. Only
when it can do this, and I speak in particular of Gothic buildings,
is the solemnity of their imposing seriousness kept intact. Just as
religious devotion has to permeate all particular experiences of
soul-life, the life-conditions of every type of humanity, has further
to engrave indelibly on the heart its universal and incommutable ideas,
so in the same way the simple and fundamental architectural features
should have strength sufficient to recall the most varied articulation,
diversity and embellishment of the structure once more within the
fundamental impression of those outlines and wholly thus absorb them.
(_β_) A _further_ aspect in decorative work is bound up in the same way
with the romantic type of art in general. The romantic has on the one
hand for its principle Ideality, the return of the Ideal to itself.
On the other the Ideal has to reappear in that which is external, and
then withdraw itself into itself from the same. In architecture it is
the sensuous, material mass in relations of Space, in which the most
Ideal essence itself is, so far as that is possible, to be presented in
visible shape. With a material such as this to deal with there is no
other alternative possible than that of not suffering this material
to assert itself with power in its materiality, but to break up and
dismember its masses in every direction, and to wrest from the same the
appearance of its immediate coherence and self-subsistency. In this
connection the ornamentation, more particularly that of the exterior,
which has not to display the fact of enclosure as such, assumes the
character of a net-work[108] carried in every direction, or rather
interwoven over the surfaces; and we have no example of an architecture
which, taking into account the enormous and heavily weighted masses of
its stone and their secure coherence, nevertheless has preserved to
such a complete extent the character of lightness and delicacy.
(_γ_) We have only further and _thirdly_ to remark with reference to
such embellishments that in addition to pointed arches, piers, and
circles, the forms once more call to mind those of the real organic
world. The fretwork and working out of the mass already carries a
suggestion of this. Regarded in more detail, however, we actually find
leaves, rosettes of flowers, and, in entwining work of an arabesque
character, human figures and those of animals partly realistically
and partly fantastically linked together; the romantic imagination,
in short, even in architecture, displays its wealth of imaginative
creation, and its power to unite in unexpected ways heterogeneous
elements, although from another point of view, at any rate during the
period of the purest type of Gothic architecture, even in the matter of
ornament, as, for example, in the pointed arches of the windows, we may
observe a decisive return to simple forms.
3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF BUILDING IN ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURE
The last point on which I have a few observations to make is that of
the principal types followed by romantic architecture in its course of
development at different periods. I must, however, add the premise that
in this work no attempt can be made to supply a history of this branch
of the art.
(_a_) We must wholly distinguish from Gothic architecture, such as I
have above described it, the so-called pre-Gothic, whose development
originated in Roman architecture. The most ancient form of Christian
churches is that of the _basilica._ These originated out of the public
buildings of the Empire, huge oblong halls, with the frame-work of
their roofing of wood, such as Constantine placed at the disposal of
Christians. In buildings such as these there was a tribune, on which,
during congregational religious services conducted by priests, there
was singing and an address delivered, or merely reading aloud. The
conception of the choir may have originated with this. In the same
way Christian architecture accepted other of its forms such as the
use of columns with circular arches, the rotunda and the modes of
classical embellishment throughout, more particularly in the western
Roman Empire, while in the eastern section it appears to have remained
constant to this type until the time of Justinian. Even buildings
erected by the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy retained essentially
the fundamental Roman type. In the more recent architecture, however,
of the Byzantine Empire several modifications made their appearance.
A rotunda supported on four great piers forms the centre, to which
different constructions were attached to meet the particular objects of
Greek as distinct from the Roman ritual. We must not, however, confuse
this genuine architecture of the Byzantine Empire with that which,
in its general relation to architectural types, goes by the name of
Byzantine, and which was employed in Italy, France, England, Germany,
and other places up to the close of the twelfth century.
(_b_) In the thirteenth century was evolved the Gothic architecture
in the distinctive form whose main characteristics I have above
described in detail. It is nowadays denied that it is the work of
Gothic architects, and the name given it is that of Deutsch or German
architecture. We may, however, retain the more customary and ancient
nomenclature. In other words we find in Spain very ancient indications
of this type of construction, which suggest an association with
historical circumstances under which Gothic kings, forced back into
the mountains of Asturia and Galicia, retained their independence in
such localities. Under such conditions, no doubt, a close affiliation
of Gothic and _Arab_ architecture appears probable, yet both may
be essentially distinguished. For the characteristic trait of Arab
architecture in the Middle Ages is not the pointed arch, but the
so-called _horseshoe_ form. Moreover, these buildings, which are
constructed for an entirely different ritual, exhibit an Oriental
wealth and splendour, embellishments resembling plant-life and other
forms of decoration, which, in an external form, mix together what is
of Roman ancestry and that which belongs to the Middle Ages.
(_c_) On parallel lines with this evolution of religious architecture
we find, too, the course of _civil construction_, which from its
particular point of view imitates and modifies the character of
ecclesiastical buildings. In an architecture directed to the uses of
citizen life, however, art has less opportunity for display inasmuch
as here objects of more restricted character, combined with a great
variety of requirements, are more strict in the range of satisfaction
presented, and do not suffer beauty to pass beyond mere decoration.
Except for the general harmonious disposition of its forms and masses,
art is in the main merely able to assert itself in the embellishment of
façades, staircases, windows, doors, gables, towers, and the like, and
has to do this throughout subject to the condition that the practical
purpose of the building is what finally determines everything. In
the Middle Ages it is pre-eminently the tower-like form of secure
dwellings, which is the fundamental type of structure not merely
for particular declivities and summits but also within the towns,
where every palace, every private dwelling, as in Italy for example,
received the form of a small fortification or keep. Walls, doors,
towers, bridges and the like are executed as necessity dictates, and
are decorated and embellished by art. Stability and security coupled
with a grandiose type of splendour and a vital individuality of single
forms and their connecting links constitute the determining factors,
to enter into the detail of which would carry us beyond our present
purpose. By way of supplement we may in conclusion briefly allude to
the art of _gardening_, which does not only create under a wholly
novel form an environment for spirit, we may call it a second exterior
Nature, but draws the landscape of Nature itself within the operation
of its constructive purpose and treats the same architectonically as an
environment of buildings. I will only take as an example of what I mean
the famous and exceedingly imposing terrace of Sans-souci.
In our examination of the genuine art of gardening it is most important
to distinguish the _painter's_ point of view of it from that of the
_architect._ All that pertains to mere park construction, for instance,
is not truly architectonic, no building, that is, with freely disposed
natural objects, but an artist's portrayal[109], which leaves the
objects in their natural form and aims at imitating wide Nature in its
freedom. Everything is here suggested in turn, which finds its glad
place in a landscape--whether rocks and the huge rough masses which are
their substance, or dales, woods, pastures, meandering brooks, broad
streams with their animated banks, still lakes, wreathed round with
trees, rushing waterfalls, and everything else of the kind, and is
brought together with one total effect. In this way the gardening art
of the Chinese embraces entire landscapes together with their islands,
rivers, expanding views, and rockeries.
In a park of this kind, particularly in modern examples of such,
everything is, on the one hand, intended to hold intact the freedom
of Nature, while, on the other, it is artificially elaborated and
constructed and conditioned by the locality where it is situated. This
involves a contradiction which is never satisfactorily disposed of.
In this respect, for the most part, it is impossible to instance an
example of worse taste than such an attempt to make visible in all
directions a studied purpose in that which is without purpose, and to
force that which refuses to be compelled. Add to this the fact that
here the genuine character of what is strictly a garden disappears,
in so far, that is, as a garden is primarily adapted for strolling
about in at pleasure and conversation within a certain place, which
is no longer simply Nature, but a Nature remodelled by man to meet
his desire for an environment created by himself. A huge park, on the
contrary, particularly if it be garnished with Chinese temples, Turkish
mosques, Swiss châlets, bridges, hermitages, and any other conceivable
foreign importation, makes an independent claim on our interest as
spectator. It offers an independent pretension of being and signifying
something. A charm of this sort disappears as soon as it arises; we
do not care to see it twice, for an addition like this spreads before
our sight no suggestion of infinity, nothing that possesses a really
existent vitality[110], and is further only wearisome and tedious for
conversation as we pass through it.
A garden, strictly speaking, should be only a cheerful environment and
simply an environment, which will not pass for something independently
valid and withdraw men from their own life and concerns. It is here
that architecture, with its scientific lines, order, regularity, and
symmetry, is in its proper place and co-ordinates natural objects
themselves architectonically. The art of the Mongols on the other side
of the great wall, in Tibet, the paradise of the Persians, already
adapt themselves more closely to this type. They are no parks in the
English sense, but halls with flowers, springs, courts, and palaces,
which have in the form of a retreat in Nature been arranged on a
splendid, grandiose, and extravagant scale for the needs of mankind
and their convenience. But we find the architectural principle most
thoroughly carried out in the French art of gardening, which, as
a rule, borders upon great palaces, plants trees in the strictest
conformity of line in long avenues, prunes them, builds up straight
walls from trimmed fences, and in this way converts Nature herself into
a broad dwelling beneath the open sky.
[Footnote 34: Simply as a physical object.]
[Footnote 35: That of symbolic architecture.]
[Footnote 36: _Als Momente eines Subjektes._ That is as the constituent
parts of the mind of one individual.]
[Footnote 37: Herod. I, _c._ 181.]
[Footnote 38: I, _c._ 98.]
[Footnote 39: I, p. 469.]
[Footnote 40: As in obelisks, Memnons, etc.]
[Footnote 41: II, _c._ 162.]
[Footnote 42: _c._ 106.]
[Footnote 43: Symb. (2nd ed.), p. 469. The solar city of Heliopolis.]
[Footnote 44: XXXVI, 14, and XXXVII, 8.]
[Footnote 45: Creutzer I, p. 778.]
[Footnote 46: "History of Architecture," vol. I, p. 69.]
[Footnote 47: _Wandungen._ I presume this refers to every kind of
subdivision no less than boundary walls.]
[Footnote 48: _Pracktgewänden._ Presumably this refers to the isolated
structures in which the columns are built--having flat surfaces like
walls.]
[Footnote 49: _Balken._ The word would suggest perhaps that Hegel means
here beams of any kind.]
[Footnote 50: II, _c._ 155.]
[Footnote 51: Her. II, _c._ 108.]
[Footnote 52: Herodotus dwells on this in the above passage.]
[Footnote 53: II, _c._ 148.]
[Footnote 54: Commentators of Herodotus point out that we have no
direct evidence here of their number, which, comparing this with
Strabo's account, is doubtful, and still more so the number of the
chambers (οἱκήματα). Strabo says there were twenty-seven courts. The
connection between the halls was not an architectural one but by means
of the chambers and colonnades (παστάδες). See Blakesley's notes, vol.
I, pp. 279-80. Neither from Herodotus nor Hegel is it very easy to form
a clear notion of the building.]
[Footnote 55: "History of Ancient Building," vol. I, p. 75.]
[Footnote 56: XXXVI, 19.]
[Footnote 57: _Ein Individuelles._ Lit., An individual entity.]
[Footnote 58: The relative pronoun refers to the separation of both
aspects.]
[Footnote 59: II, _c._ 126-7.]
[Footnote 60: Her. II, _c._ 125.]
[Footnote 61: _Geschichte der Baukunst der Alten_, I, S. 55.]
[Footnote 62: Symbolical significance.]
[Footnote 63: Wolff's and Buttmann's Mus., B. I, p. 536.]
[Footnote 64: Hegel uses the coined word _osirirt_ I presume in this
sense.]
[Footnote 65: _Abstraction._ Abstract in the sense of possessing no
ideal complexity.]
[Footnote 66: _Verständig._ Comes under the categories of the
Understanding.]
[Footnote 67: Lit., "Find the element that is congenial."]
[Footnote 68: That is, the principle of geometrical design and that of
organic structure.]
[Footnote 69: That is the beauty and the ulterior aim of utility.]
[Footnote 70: _Verständig._ See note above.]
[Footnote 71: The sphere of mechanical gravity.]
[Footnote 72: I presume _Aufwande_ means expense here; it would be more
reasonable perhaps to say "waste of room," columns being only too often
so much more expensive for their size.]
[Footnote 73: That is, the free treatment of line under scientific
forms of abstraction rather than limited to specific modes of organic
form in Nature.]
[Footnote 74: _Der Verständigen Gesetzmässigkeit._ The principle of
scientific architecture.]
[Footnote 75: Immediate imitation, that is.]
[Footnote 76: Of classical art.]
[Footnote 77: _Symbol des Innern._]
[Footnote 78: That is, apart from the classical type.]
[Footnote 79: That is, the scientific reason of abstract principle or
rule.]
[Footnote 80: _Weil beim Oblongum in der Gleichheit und Ungleichheit
ist._ That is, more pleasure is derived from contrast than mere
similarity. He then qualifies or explains the general principle.]
[Footnote 81: _Eurhythmie_, that is, eurhythmy or a rhythmic movement
between the several parts.]
[Footnote 82: I presume this is the meaning of _die Theorie_ here.
That is the purposeful motive of the architectural skeleton of the
fabric--what explains it rationally.]
[Footnote 83: _Schiebens._ It is possible that Hegel uses the word in
its primary sense of "shifting."]
[Footnote 84: The idea is slightly confused in the course of the
sentence. It is not the necessity (_des Bedürfnisses_) to build a
stable house which has to be held in position, etc., but the structure
which that necessity forces men to construct in a certain way.]
[Footnote 85: _Ihre eigenen Momente._ "Its unique traits" is possibly
adequate here.]
[Footnote 86: Hegel probably has in his mind when using the expression
_verständig bestimmte_ the close analogy between the self-exclusive
concreteness of reason and the completeness of the circular figure.]
[Footnote 87: It is not quite clear what Hegel means by the _Köpfen der
Deckenbalken._ The technical word that corresponds to _Deckenbalken_ is
"joists"; here, according to the words that follow, it would appear to
mean either the last horizontal line of the architrave or the entire
growth of the triglyph. As he uses the word _Zwischenraümen_ after we
appear to be driven on the latter alternative. The frieze, of course,
was the entire space between cornice and architrave, including both
triglyphs and metopes.]
[Footnote 88: Called _femora._ They were divided by two gutters or
drills. The triglyph slightly projected and united perpendicularly
cornice and architrave.]
[Footnote 89: _Die Baukunst nach den Grunds. der Alten_, Berlin, 1808,
S. III.]
[Footnote 90: He means that the distinct functions are not assigned
to those features of the building to which they are naturally or most
essentially related.]
[Footnote 91: Hirt, _Geschichte der Baukunst_, III, S. 14-18, and II,
S. 151.]
[Footnote 92: He refers to the columns placed round.]
[Footnote 93: _Gesch. d. Bauk._ I, S. 251.]
[Footnote 94: By _sebstständig_ Hegel means apparently that there must
be nothing in their external form that would divert attention from
their essential character.]
[Footnote 95: _Auf dem Unterbau._ I presume this means generally that
portion beneath the ground.]
[Footnote 96: I presume what is meant is that in one case the drills
or grooves are hollowed in round shape and towards the base in square
shape.]
[Footnote 97: What is precisely meant by the expression _durch
prismatische Einschnitte_ I frankly do not know. The expression
_Balken_ is evidently used to mark the association between the slabs of
stone and beams or rafters.]
[Footnote 98: That is, the spaces between the lower part of the cornice
and the uppermost slab of the entablature.]
[Footnote 99: The _coussinet_ is that part of the Ionic capital between
the abacus and quarter round, which serves to form the volute. There
are four volutes or spiral scrolls in the Ionic capital.]
[Footnote 100: The _mutule_ is the projecting block worked under the
corona of the Doric cornice.]
[Footnote 101: Hirt, _Gesch. der Baukunst_, I, S. 254.]
[Footnote 102: This must, I think, refer to the main moulding of the
architrave immediately resting on the column.]
[Footnote 103: Seneca, Ep. 90.]
[Footnote 104: Lit., "Is raised to infinitude."]
[Footnote 105: As it is, for example, by Greek capitals.]
[Footnote 106: Lit., "In its penetration into the most spiritual
(_innerste_, ideal) particularity."]
[Footnote 107: _Sich verselbstständigen._ Hegel means that the main
purpose of the exterior is expressed on the face of it.]
[Footnote 108: I presume the word _Durchbrechen_ is here used in its
specific architectural sense.]
[Footnote 109: _Ein Malen._]
[Footnote 110: _Keine in sich seyende Seele._ I presume Hegel means
that being an artificial fragment of Nature's landscape it lacks the
infinite horizon and the living relation to the whole.]
SUBSECTION II
SCULPTURE
INTRODUCTION
Over against the inorganic nature of Spirit, in the form we find given
it by art in architecture, Spirit opposes itself directly in the sense
that the work of art receives and displays spirituality as its actual
content. The necessity of this advance we have already adverted to. It
underlies the notion of Mind, which differentiates itself under the
twofold aspect of subjective self-substantive[111] existence and pure
objectivity. In this latter form of externality the ideal substance,
it is true, makes its appearance by virtue of the architectonic
treatment; such, however, does not amount to a complete transfusion
of the objective material, or a conversion of it into an entirely
adequate expression of Spirit (Mind), such as suffers it, and only it,
to appear. Consequently art withdraws itself from the inorganic realm,
which architecture, under its yoke of the laws of gravity, has striven
to bring nearer as a means of Spirit's expression, to that of the
Ideal, which forthwith then independently asserts itself in its more
lofty truth without this intermingling with what is inorganic. It is
during this, return passage of Spirit to its own native realm[112] from
out of the world of masses and material substance that we come across
_sculpture._
The first stage, however, in this new sphere is, as yet, no
withdrawal of mind into the completely _ideal_ world of subjective
consciousness[113], so that the representation of what is of Spirit
would require what is itself a purely ideal mode of expression.
Rather Spirit grasps itself, in the first instance, only in so far as
it is still expressed in _bodily_ shape, and therein possesses its
homogeneous and determinate existence. The art which accepts for its
content this attitude to the possessions of Spirit will consequently
have, as its due function, to clothe spiritual individuality as a
manifestation under _material_ conditions, and we may add, in what is
actually material to the senses. For discourse and speech are also
indications[114] which Spirit assumes under the form of externality,
but they belong to a mode of objectivity, which, instead of possessing
the attributes we attach to matter in its immediate and concrete sense,
is merely as tone, motion, the undulation of an entire body and the
rarified element, the atmosphere, a communication of such Spirit. What
I call immediate corporeality, on the contrary, is the spatial mode of
material substance such as stone, wood, metal, or clay, wholly spatial
in all three dimensions. The form, however, which is adequate to Spirit
is, as we have already seen, the unique bodily form which belongs to
it; and it is through this that sculpture makes what is of Spirit
actual in a whole which is subject to the spatial condition.
From this point of view sculpture stands on the same plane as
_architecture_[115] to the extent, namely, that it gives form to the
sensuous material as such, or what is material according its _spatial_
condition as matter. It is, however, to a like extent distinguishable
from architecture by virtue of the fact that it does not work up the
inorganic substance, as the opposite of Spirit, into an environment
created by Spirit and endowed with its purpose in forms to which a
purpose is attached which is exterior to it; rather it sets before us
spirituality itself in the bodily shape which, from the standpoint
of the notion, is adequate to Spirit and its individuality. In other
words its efficient function and independent self-subsistency brings
indivisibly before our sight both aspects, body and spirit, as one
whole. The configuration of sculpture, therefore, breaks away from the
specific function of architecture, which is to serve Spirit merely as
an external Nature and environment, and assumes a really independent
position. Despite, however, this separation the image of sculpture
remains in essential relation to its environment. A statue or group,
and yet more a relief, cannot be made without considering the place
in which such a work of art is to be situated. One ought not first to
complete a work of sculpture and then consider where it is likely to
be put, but it should in the very conception of it be associated with
a definite exterior world, and its spatial form and local position. In
this respect sculpture retains a specific relation to the architectural
aspect of space. For the primary object of statues is that of being
temple images and being set up in the shrine of the sanctuary, just
as in Christian churches painting supplies images for the altar, and
Gothic architecture also attests a similar connection between works of
sculpture and their local position. Temples and churches, however, are
not the only place for statues, groups of statuary and reliefs. In a
similar way halls, staircases, gardens, public squares, doors, single
columns and arches of triumph receive an animation from the forms
of sculpture; and every statue, even though placed in dissociation
from such a wider environment, requires a pedestal of its own to mark
its local position and base. And here we must conclude what we have
to say as to the association of sculpture with or distinction from
architecture.
If we further compare sculpture with the other arts we shall find
that it is more especially _poetry_ and _painting_ which will engage
our attention. Small statues no less than groups present to us the
spiritual form in complete bodily shape, man, in short, as he exists.
Sculpture therefore appears to possess the truest means of representing
what is spiritual, whereas both painting and poetry have the contrary
appearance of being more remote from Nature for the reason that
painting makes use of the mere surface instead of the sensuous totality
of the spatial condition, which a human form and all other natural
things actually assume; speech, too, to a still less degree, expresses
the reality of body, being merely able to transmit ideas of the same by
means of tone.
However, the truth of the matter is precisely the reverse of this. For
although the image of sculpture appears no doubt to possess from the
start the natural form as it stands, it is just this externality of
body and nature reproduced in gross material which is not the nature of
Spirit as such. If we regard the essential character of it its peculiar
existence is that expressed by means of speech, acts, and affairs which
develop its ideal or soul-life, and disclose its true existence.
In this respect sculpture has to yield the place of honour and
pre-eminently when contrasted with _poetry._ No doubt clarity of
outline[116] is superior in the plastic arts, in which the bodily
presence is placed before our sight, but poetry too can describe the
exterior figure of a man, such as his hair, forehead, cheeks, size,
dress, pose and so forth, though of course not with the precision and
sufficiency of sculpture. What it loses, however, in this respect is
made up by the imagination, which, moreover, does not require for the
mere conception of an object such a fixed and definite outline, and
before everything else brings before us man in his _action_, with
all his motives, developments of fortune and circumstance, with all
his emotions, discourses, everything that discovers the soul-life or
throws light on external incidents. This sculpture is either wholly
unable to do, or only in a very incomplete way for the reason that it
neither can present to us the individual soul[117] in its particular
inward life and passion, nor as poetry a sequence of expressed results,
but only offer us the general characteristics of individuality, so
far as the body expresses such, and whatever happens together in one
particular moment of time, and this too in a state of repose without
the progressive action of real life. In these respects, too, it is
inferior to painting. For the expression of spiritual life receives
in painting an emphatically more defined accuracy and vitality by
means of the colour given to the human face and its light and shadow,
not merely in the sense in which it satisfies generally the material
substance of nature, but pre-eminently in the way it expresses
physiognomy and the phenomena of emotion. It is possible, therefore,
at first to entertain the view that sculpture requires merely for its
greater perfection to associate the further advantages of painting with
that itself possesses in the spatial totality, and to regard it as a
mere act of caprice that it has made up its mind to dispense with the
palette of the painter, or, as indicating a poverty and incapacity of
its execution, that it entirely restricts its effort to one aspect of
reality, namely, that of the material form, and withdraws its attention
from that, much as the silhouette and the engraving may be set down as
mere makeshifts[118]. We are, however, not warranted in thus applying
such a term as "caprice" to genuine art. The form such as it is in the
object of sculpture, remains in fact merely an _abstract_ aspect of the
concrete human bodily presence. Its presentments receive no variety
from particularized colours and movements. This is, however, no defect
due to accident, but a limitation of material and manner of presentment
itself pre-supposed in the notion of art. For Art is a product of
mind, and we may add of the more exalted and thoughtful mind. A
work of this order claims as its object a content of this defined
character, and consequently implies a mode of artistic realization
which excludes other aspects. We have here a process similar to that
observed in the different sciences where we find, for example, geometry
exclusively adopts space as its object, jurisprudence law, philosophy
the explication of the eternal Idea and its determinate existence
and self-identity in the facts of experience, wherein each of the
above mentioned sciences develops these objects by differentiation
out of their differences, without one of them actually presenting to
consciousness in its completeness that which we are accustomed in
ordinary modes of thought to call concrete real existence.
Art then, as a creative informing activity of spiritual origination,
proceeds step by step, and separates that which in the notion, in
the nature of the thing, albeit not in its determinate existence, is
separated. It retains such stages consequently in their self-exclusive
finity, in order to elaborate them according to their distinct
peculiarities. And what contributes to this notional distinction
and exclusive separation in the spatial material substance, which
constitutes the element of the plastic art is corporeality in its
aspect of spatial totality and its abstract configuration, in other
words bodily form simply, and the more detailed particularization of
the same relatively to the variety of its _colorization._ We find at
this first stage the art of sculpture so placed relatively to the
human form, which it treats as a stereo-metric body, merely, that is,
according to form which it possesses in the three spatial dimensions.
The work of art, whose process is in and through the sensuous material,
must no doubt have an existence for another[119], with which forthwith
the particularization commences. The primary art, however, which is
concerned with the human bodily form as an expression of spiritual
life, only proceeds so far in this "being for another" to the point
of its first, or rather the still universal mode of Nature's own
existence, that is to the point of mere visibility and existence in
light generally, without uniting with the same in its presentment the
relation of the latter to darkness, in which that which is visible is
particularized in its own medium[120] and becomes colour. And the art
occupying such a position is that of sculpture. For plastic art, which
is unable as poetry to bring together the totality of the phenomenon
in one equal element or world of idea, inevitably breaks up this
totality[121].
For this reason we get on the one hand _objectivity_, which in so far
as it is not the unique configuration of spirit, stands over against
it as inorganic Nature. It is this relation of bare objectivity which
converts architecture into a mere suggestive symbol, which does not
possess its spiritual significance in itself. The point of extreme
contrast to objectivity as such is _subjectivity_, that is the
soul[122], emotional life in the entire range of all its particular
movements, moods, passions, exterior and interior agitations and
actions. Between these two we are confronted with the spiritual
individuality which no doubt has a definite structure, but which
is not as yet deepened to the extent of the essential ideality
of the individual soul; in which, instead of the full personal
singularity, the substantive universality of Spirit and its objects
and characteristic traits is the prevailing factor. In its generality
it is not as yet absolutely withdrawn into its own exclusive domain
to the point of purely spiritual unity; rather it comes before us as
this midway point[123] still hailing from the objective side, that is
the side of inorganic Nature, and consequently even carries as part of
itself corporeality, as the particular form of existence appropriate
to spirit, in the body that not merely is its own, but also discloses
it. In this mode of externality, which no longer remains something
simply opposed to what is ideal, spiritual individuality has now
to be displayed, not, however, as living form, that is to say as
corporeality continuously referred back to the point of unity implied
in the singularity of spiritual life, but rather as form set forth and
manifested in its external guise, into the mould of which Spirit has no
doubt been poured, without, however, being from this outward bond of
association, made visible in the sense that it is so when it withdraws
into its own essential and ideal domain[124].
From the above observations the two points to which we have already
drawn attention become more clear, namely, first, that sculpture
makes use of the human form directly, which is the actual existence
of spiritual life, instead of accepting a mode of expression which
is symbolical with a view to promoting the spiritual import of
modes of appearance that are merely _suggestive._ At the same time,
secondly, it is content, as the manifestation of that mode of
subjectivity which does not express emotion and the soul essentially
unparticularized[125], with _form_ and _nothing more_, where the
focus of subjectivity is dissipated[126]. This is also the reason
why sculpture does not on the one hand present Spirit in action, in a
series of movements, which both possess and testify to one aim nor in
undertakings or exploits, wherein a certain character is made visible,
but rather as persisting throughout in one objective way, and for this
reason preeminently in the repose of form, the movement and grouping
of which is merely a first and obvious commencement of action, not,
however, in any sense a _complete_ presentment of the subjective life
as agitated by all the conflicts that assail it whether within or
without, or as its development is variously affected in contact with
the external world. Consequently what we also miss in the figures of
sculpture is precisely this revealed focus of the subjective life, the
concentrated expression of soul as _soul_, namely, the glance of the
eye, a fact upon which we shall have something further to say later.
We miss it because such a figure presents to our sight Spirit embedded
in corporeality, and Spirit, too, which has to show itself visible in
the entire form. From another point of view an individuality, which
is not as yet essentially separated into its component parts, that
is, the object of sculpture, does not as yet require the painter's
charm of colour as means to display it, a charm which is as capable of
making visible, through the fine gradations and variety of its nuances,
the entire wealth of particular traits of character, the absolute
manifestation of spiritual presence, its ideal significance[127], as
by means of the vital flash of the eye it will concentrate in a point
all the vigour of the soul. Sculpture must not, in other words, accept
a material which is not rendered necessary by its fundamental point of
view. It only makes use of the spatial qualities of the human figure,
not the colouring which depicts it. The figure of sculpture is in
general of one colour, hewn from white not vari-coloured marble. And
in the same way metals are used as the material of sculpture, this
primitive substance, self-identical, essentially undifferentiated,
a light in fluxion, if we may so express it, without the contrast
and harmony of different colours[128]. The Greeks are indebted to
their unrivalled artistic insight[129] for having grasped and firmly
retained this point of view. No doubt we find, too, in Greek sculpture,
to which we must for the main part confine ourselves, examples of
coloured statuary; we must, however, take care in this respect to
distinguish both the beginning and end of this art from that which is
created at its culminating point.
In the same way we must discount that which is admitted by art in
deference to traditional religion. We have already found it to be
true in the classical type of art that it does not forthwith and
immediately set forth the Ideal, in which its function is to discover
its fundamental lines of definition, but in the first instance removes
much that is inconsonant with it and foreign; it is the same case
precisely with sculpture. It is forced to pass through many preliminary
stages before it arrives at its perfection; and this initial process
differs very considerably from its supreme attainment. The most ancient
works of sculpture are of painted wood, as, for example, Egyptian
idols; we find similar productions among the Greeks. We must, however,
exclude such examples from genuine sculpture when the main point is to
establish its fundamental notion. We are therefore in no way concerned
to deny that there are many examples at hand of painted statues. It
is, however, also a fact that the purer art-taste became, the more
strongly "sculpture withdrew itself from a brilliancy of colour that
was not really congenial, and with wise deliberation utilized, on
the contrary, light and shadow in order to secure for the beholder's
eye a greater softness, repose, clarity, and agreeableness[130]." As
against the uniform colour of the bare marble we may no doubt not
merely instance the numerous statues of bronze, but also in still
stronger opposition the greatest and most excellent works, which,
as in the case of the Zeus of Pheidias, were artificially coloured.
But we are not here discussing absence of colour in such an extreme
abstract sense. Moreover, ivory and gold are not primarily the use of
colour as the painter employs it; and generally we may add that the
various works of a definite art do not ever in fact retain fixedly
their fundamental notion in so abstract and unyielding a way, inasmuch
as they come into contact with the conditions of life subject to
aims of all kinds; they are placed in different environments, and
are thereby associated with circumstances of an external kind, which
inevitably modify their real and essential type. In this way the images
of sculpture are not unfrequently executed in rich material such as
gold and ivory. They are placed on magnificent chairs or stand on
pedestals which display all the extravagance and luxuriousness of art,
or receive costly decorations, in order that the nation, when face to
face with such splendid works, may likewise enjoy the sense of its
power and wealth. And sculpture in particular, for the reason that
it is essentially, taken by itself, a more abstract art, does not on
all occasions hold fast to such exclusiveness, but, on the one hand,
introduces incidentally much that is of a traditional, scholastic,
or local character as a contribution from its history, while, on the
other, it ministers to vital popular necessities. Active humanity
demands for its diversion variety, and seeks in diverse directions for
a stimulus to its vision and imagination. We may take as an analogous
case the reading aloud of Greek tragedies, which also brings before us
the work of art under its more abstract form. In the wider field of
external existence we have still to add, to make a public performance,
living actors, costume, stage scenery, dancing, and music. And in like
manner, too, the sculptured figure is unable to dispense with much that
is supplementary on its own stage of reality. We are, however, only
concerned here with the genuine work of sculpture as such; external
aspects such as those above adverted to must not be permitted to
prevent us bringing before the mind the notion of our subject-matter in
its most ideal and exclusive sense of definition.
Proceeding now to the more definite _heads of division_ in this
section we may observe that sculpture constitutes the very centre of
the _classical_ type of art to such a degree that we are unable to
accept the symbolical, classical and romantic types as distinctions
which affect throughout and form the basis of our division. Sculpture
is the genuine art of the classical Ideal simply. It is quite true
that sculpture has also its stages in which it is in the grasp of
the _symbolical_ type, as in Egypt for example. But these are rather
preliminary stages of its historical evolution, no genuine distinctions
which essentially affect the art of sculpture when notionally
considered, in so far, that is, as these exceptional examples, in
the manner of their execution and the use that is made of them,
rather belong to architecture than are strictly within the aim and
purpose of sculpture. In a similar way, when we find the _romantic_
type thereby expressed, sculpture passes beyond its rightful sphere,
and only receives with the qualified imitation of Greek sculpture
its exclusively plastic type. We must therefore look about us for a
principle of division of another character.
In agreement with what we have just stated we shall find that it
is from the particular way in which the _classical Ideal_ means of
sculpture acquires a form of reality that most fully expresses it that
the focus of our present inquiry is derived. Before, however, we are
in a position to make an advance in this evolution of the ideal figure
of sculpture we must by way of introduction demonstrate what kind of
_content_ and _form_ are pertinent to the point of view of sculpture
regarded as a specific art, and the course it follows by virtue of both
until the point is reached where the classical Ideal is fully unfolded
in the human form permeated by spiritual life, and in its shape as
subject to spatial condition. From another point of view the classical
Ideal stands, and falls with an individuality which is unquestionably
substantive, but also to an equal degree essentially particularized, so
that sculpture does not accept for its content the Ideal of the human
form in its _generality_, but the Ideal as _specifically defined_; and,
by virtue of this fact, it is variously displayed under forms distinct
from each other. Such distinctions partly originate in the conception
and _representation_ simply, in part are due to the _material_ in which
such is realized, and which further, according to the way it affects
execution, introduces points of severation on its own account, to both
of which finally, as the last ground of difference, the various stages
are related in the _historical_ development of sculpture.
Having made these observations we will indicate the course of our
inquiry as follows.
In the _first_ place we have merely to deal with the _general_
determinants of the essential _content_ and _form_, such as are
deducible from the notion of sculpture.
_Secondly_, as a further step, we have to differentiate more
closely the nature of the classical Ideal, in so far as it attains a
determinate existence in its most artistic form.
_Thirdly_, and finally, we shall find that sculpture avails itself of
various types of presentation and material, and expands to a world
of productions, in which, either under one aspect or another, the
symbolical or romantic types also definitely assert themselves, albeit
it is the classical which constitutes the true point of centre between
them in plastic art[131].
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE OF GENUINE SCULPTURE
Sculpture, to put the matter in general terms, conceives the astounding
project of making Spirit imagine itself in an exclusively material
medium, and so shape this external medium that it is presented to
itself in such and recognizes the presentment to be the objective form
adequate to its ideal substance.
In this respect our inquiry will take the following directions.
_First_, we have the question what kind of _spiritual life_ is capable
of being reproduced in this material of a form entirely sensuous and
spatial.
_Secondly_, we have to ask in what manner the _forms_ of the spatial
condition have to be modified in order to permit us a recognition of
the spiritual in the bodily shape of beauty.
What we have generally to consider here is the unity between the _ordo
rerum extensarum_ and that of the _ordo rerum idearum_, the primal fair
union of soul and body, in so far as spiritual ideality is expressed by
sculpture exclusively in its bodily existence.
This union, _thirdly_, corresponds to what we have already found to be
the Ideal of the classical type of art; and for this reason the plastic
forms of sculpture are nothing less than the very art itself of the
classical Ideal.
1. THE ESSENTIAL CONTENT OF SCULPTURE
The elementary medium, in which sculpture realizes its creations is,
as we have seen, the elementary, still universal material subject
to spatial condition, in which no further particularization can
be utilized for an artistic purpose than the universal spatial
dimensions, and the more detailed[132] spatial forms which are
compatible with these dimensions under their most beautiful
configuration. Now what most exceptionally corresponds as content to
this more abstract aspect of the sensuous material is the _objectivity_
of Spirit which reposes on its own resources, in so far, that is, as
Spirit has neither differentiated itself in contradistinction to its
universal substance, nor to its determinate existence in its bodily
presence, and consequently is not as yet withdrawn as independent
self-subsistency into its own subjective world. There are two points we
would draw attention to here.
(_a_) Spirit as Spirit[133] is no doubt always subjectivity, that is
ideal knowledge of the Self, the Ego. This Ego can, however, separate
itself from everything that constitutes, whether in knowledge,
volition, conception, feeling, action, or achievement, the _universal_
and eternal content of Spirit, and can concentrate its hold on that
aspect of _individual_ experience which is unique and contingent. It
is then _subjectivity as such_ which we have before us, which has
let go the truly objective content of Spirit, and is self-related
formally, and without content. In the case of self-satisfaction, for
example, I can no doubt view myself from a certain standpoint in an
entirely objective way and remain satisfied with myself on account of
moral action. I do, however, as thus self-satisfied, already withdraw
myself from the content of such action. I separate myself as a distinct
person, as this particular Ego, from the universality of Spirit, in
order to compare myself with it. The sense of unison of myself with
myself through this comparison produces this self-satisfaction, in
which this determinate Ego, as this core of unity, rejoices in itself.
No doubt this personal Ego is involved in all that a man knows, wills,
or carries out; but it makes an immense difference whether, in-dealing
with knowledge and action, the matter of concern is the man's own
unique Ego, or that in which the essential content of consciousness
consists; whether, in other words, a man sinks himself and his
self-identity in this content, or lives in the unbroken seclusion of
his subjective personality.
(_α_) In this exaltation over what is substantive[134] the subjective
life passes into the abstract and disrupt world of personal
inclination, the caprice and contingency of emotions and impulses,
owing to which, in the changes to which it is subject in particular
acts and undertakings, it grows dependent upon particular circumstances
as they happen to arise, and is unable generally to dispense with this
association with something else. In such a condition of dependence the
individual life is nothing but _finite_ subjectivity as contrasted
with a real spirituality. And if this personal state essentially
persists through the volition and knowledge which characterizes it in
this contradiction of its conscious life, it can only further become
involved--to put on one side the mere emptiness of its imaginings and
self-conceits--in the deformity of character and its evil passions, in
crime and moral offence, in malice, cruelty, obstinacy, envy, pride,
insolence, and every other kind of the reverse side of human nature and
its insubstantial finiteness.
(_β_) This province of the subjective life must be excluded in its
entirety and without hesitation from the content of sculpture. The art
is exclusively co-extensive with the objectivity of Spirit. And by
the term objectivity we mean in this connection what is substantive,
genuine, not transitory, the essential nature of Spirit, apart from
its involvement in that which is accidental and evanescent, for which
the individual person is responsible simply in his unmediated state of
self-relation.
(_γ_) Spirit, however, even in its truly objective sense, can
only realize itself as Spirit when associated with _explicit
self-identity._ Spirit is only Spirit as self-consciousness[135]. The
position, however, of this aspect of individual consciousness in the
spiritual content of sculpture is of such a character that it is not
independently expressed, but displays itself as throughout interfused
with this substantive content, and not formally reflected back upon
itself apart from it. We may consequently affirm that though such a
mode of objectivity possesses a type of self-subsistency, yet it is a
self-knowledge and volition which is not released from the content it
fulfils, but forms an inseparable unity with it.
The presentment of Spirit in this complete and independent seclusion
of what is essentially substantive and true, this unperturbed and
unparticularized being of Spirit, is that which we name divinity in
its contrast to finitude, which is the process of disruption into
contingent existence, a world that is broken into complex forms and
varied movement. From this point of view the function of sculpture is
to present the Divine simply in its infinite repose and sublimity,
timeless, destitute of motion, entirely without subjective personality
in the strict sense and the conflict of action or situation. And
in proceeding to the more detailed definition of our humanity in
shape and character, it must, nevertheless, exclusively rivet its
attention on what is unalterable and permanent, in other words what
is truly substantive in its characterization, and merely select such
aspects for its content, passing over what it finds there of an
accidental or evanescent nature; and it must do so for the reason
that the objectivity which it presents does not rightly include
a differentiation of this fluctuating and fleeting kind, and one
which comes into being by virtue of a subjective consciousness whose
conception of itself is that of pure insulation. In a biography, for
instance, which gives an account of the motley incidents, events, and
exploits of some individual, we find as a rule the course of varied
developments and fortuities finally closed by a character sketch which
summarizes the entire breadth of detail in a few general qualities
such as goodness, honest dealing, courage, exceptional intelligence,
and so forth. Characteristics such as these we may term the permanent
features of a personality; the remaining peculiarities it possesses
are merely accidental features in the impersonation. It is just this
stable aspect of life which it is the part of sculpture to present
as the unique being and determinate substance of individuality. Yet
we must not suppose that it creates allegories out of such general
qualities. It rather builds up true individuals, which it conceives and
informs as essentially complete and enclosed within their objective
spiritual presence, in their self-subsistent repose, delivered thereby
from all antagonism as against external objects. In the presentment
of an individuality of this character by sculpture what is truly
substantive is throughout the essential foundation, and neither purely
subjective self-knowledge and emotion, nor a superficial and mutable
singularity[136] must be permitted in any way to be predominant, but
what is eternal in the godlike and our humanity should, divested of all
the caprice and contingency of the particular self[137], be set before
our eyes in its unimpaired clarity.
(_b_) The further point we would draw attention to consists in this,
that the content of sculpture, for the reason that its material
requires an external presentment in the complete form of the three
spatial dimensions, is also unable to be a _spiritual content_ as such,
that is, the ideality self-enclosed within and absorbed into itself,
but rather in the sense that it is only _explicit_ in its opposed
factor, in other words, the _bodily form._ The negation of what is
external is already implied in the ideal subjective consciousness,
and can therefore have no place here, where what is divine and human
is accepted as content with exclusive reference to its objective
characteristics. And it is only this self-absorbed objective aspect,
which does not comprise ideal subjectivity in the strict sense[138],
that gives free play to an externality conditioned in all its three
dimensions, and is capable of being associated with such a spatial
totality. For these reasons it is incumbent on sculpture that it only
accept out of the objective content of Spirit that which admits of the
fullest expression in external and bodily shape; if it do otherwise
it simply selects a content which its specific material is unable to
assimilate or to unite with an adequate mode of exposition.
2. THE BEAUTIFUL FORM OF SCULPTURE
We must now inquire into the nature of the bodily _forms_ which are
adapted to give an impression of a content of this kind.
Just as in classical architecture the dwelling-house is the anatomical
skeleton framework which art has to inform with its accretions, in
like manner sculpture, on its part, discovers the _human form_ as
the fundamental type for its figures. Whereas, however, the house is
already a piece of human workmanship, though not as yet elaborated
artistically, the structure of the human form, on the contrary, appears
as a product of Nature unaffected by man. The fundamental type of
sculpture is consequently _given_ to it, that is, does not hail from
human inventiveness. The expression, however, that the human form is a
part of Nature is a very indefinite one, which we must submit to closer
analysis.
In Nature it is the Idea, which is given there, as we have already
found when discussing natural beauty, its primary and immediate mode of
existence, receiving in animal life and its complete organic structure
the _natural_ existence adequate to its notion. The organization of
the animal frame is therefore a birth of the notion in its essential
totality, which exists in this corporeal mode of being as soul, yet, as
the principle of merely animal life, modifies the animal frame in the
most varied classifications, albeit too every specific type continues
to be subject to the general notion[139]. The fact that notion and
bodily form, or more accurately, soul and body, correspond to one
another--to fully understand this is the problem of natural philosophy.
We should have to demonstrate that the different systems of the animal
frame in their ideal[140] structure and conformation no less than
their association, and the more definite organs in which the bodily
existence is differentiated are in general accord with the phasal steps
of the notion's movement, so that it becomes clear, to what extent we
have here presented to us as real only the particular aspects of the
soul-life which are necessary. To develop this exposition, however,
does not lie within the scope of the present inquiry.
The human form is not, however, as the animal form, merely the
corporeal framework of the soul, but of _Spirit._ In other words,
spirit and soul are essentially to be distinguished. For the soul
is merely this ideal and simple unity of self-subsistence attaching
to the body in its _corporeal_ aspect[141], whereas Spirit is the
independent selfness of conscious and _self-conscious_ life together
with all the emotions, ideas, and aims of such a conscious existence.
In contemplating the immense difference which separates merely animal
life from spiritual consciousness, it may appear strange that the
bodily frame attaching to the _latter_, the human body, is nevertheless
so clearly homogeneous with that of animal life. It will tend, however,
to decrease such an astonishment if we recall to mind the definition,
which Spirit itself has authorized us to make in accordance with its
own notion, that it is a mode of life and essentially therefore itself
also a _living soul_ and _natural existence._ As such living soul the
life of conscious spirit, by virtue of the same notion that is inherent
in the animal soul, is entitled to accept a body, which fundamentally
in its general lines runs parallel to the organic structure of animal
life. However superior to mere animal life Spirit may be it is evolved
through[142] a corporeal frame whose visible appearance receives an
identical articulation and principle of life with that which the
notion of animal life in general underlies. Inasmuch as, however, and
furthermore Spirit is not merely the _Idea_ as _determinate existence_,
that is, the Idea as Nature and animal life, but the Idea which secures
independence in its own free medium of ideality as Idea, the spiritual
principle elaborates for itself its own specific mode of objectivity
over and beyond that of animal life, simply, in other words, science,
the reality of which is exclusively that of thought itself. Apart from
thought, however, and its philosophical and systematized activity,
Spirit is involved within an abounding life of feeling, inclination,
idea, imagination, and so forth, which is fixed in a more direct or
less immediate association with its vital being[143] and bodily
frame, and consequently possesses a reality in the human body. In this
reality, which is part of its own substance, Spirit asserts itself
also as a principle of life, shines into it, transpierces it, and is
made manifest to others by means of it. Consequently, in so far as the
human body remains no purely natural existence, but has asserted itself
also in its configuration and structure as the natural and sensuous
existence of Spirit, it is, nevertheless, regarded as the expression of
an ideality more exalted than that compatible with the purely animal
body to be distinguished from it, despite the fact that the human body
in its broad lines is in harmony with it. For this reason, however,
that Spirit is itself soul and life, that is, an animal body, it is and
can only be modifications, which the indwelling Spirit of one living
body attaches to this corporeal form. As a manifestation of Spirit
consequently the human shape is distinct from the animal by virtue of
these modifications, albeit the distinctions of the human organism
from the animal are as much the result of the unconscious creation
of spiritual activities, as the soul of the animal kingdom is the
informing though unconscious activity of the body that belongs to it.
We have thus reached the precise point of our present departure. In
other words, the human body is present to the artist as Spirit's
expression. What is more, he discovers it as such not merely in a
general way, but also in particular characteristics it is presupposed
to be the type which, in its form, its specific traits, its position
and general habit, reflects the ideality of Spirit.
We shall find it a difficult matter to fix in clear terms of thought
the precise nature of the association between spirit and body in
their relation respectively to feeling, passion, and other spiritual
conditions. It has, no doubt, been attempted to develop the same
scientifically both from the _pathognomical_[144] point of view and
the _physiognomical._ Such attempts have hitherto not met with much
success. For ourselves the science of physiognomy can only be of
importance in so far as that of pathognomy is exclusively concerned
with the mode under which definite feelings and passions are physically
located in particular organs. It has been stated, for example, that
the seat of anger is in the gall, of courage in the blood. Such
statements, we may remark incidentally, are erroneous in their manner
of expression. For even assuming the activity of particular organs
corresponds to specific passions, we cannot say that anger, for
instance, has its local position in the gall bladder, but, in so far
as anger is corporeally related, the gall is pre-eminently that in
which its active appearance asserts itself. In our present inquiry
this pathognomical aspect does not, as already stated, concern us,
because sculpture has merely to deal with that which passes over from
the ideal side of Spirit into the external aspect of _form_ permitting
Spirit thus to be visible in the physical environment. The sympathetic
interaction between the internal organism and the feeling soul is no
object of sculpture; indeed, we may add, it is unable to accept much
which appears on the external surface itself, such as the tremble of
the hand and the entire body in an outburst of anger, the movement of
the lips, and others of like nature.
With regard to physiognomical science I will limit myself to this
observation. If the work of sculpture, which has as its fundamental
basis the human form, has to exhibit the way in which the bodily
presence as such manifests not only the divine and human aspect of
Spirit in its broadest and most substantive features, but also the
particular character of a definite individuality in this divine
presence, we are no doubt compelled to discuss what parts, traits, and
conformations of the body are fully accordant with any specific mode of
ideality. We are indeed forced upon such an inquiry by the sculpture
of antiquity, which we must as a matter of fact admit includes the
expression of individual god-like characters with that of divinity
generally. Such an admission does not, however, amount to an assertion
that the association of spiritual expression with bodily form is
merely a matter of accident and caprice rather than the creation of a
figure of self-subsistent actuality. In this connection every organ
must, in a general way, be looked at from two points of view, as a
mode of expression that possesses its physical side no less than its
spiritual. We need hardly caution our readers that the method of Gall
in conducting such an inquiry is inadmissible. This writer reduces
Spirit to what is little better than a Calvary.
(_a_) The advance of sculpture, in respect to the content which its
function is to declare, is limited to the investigation how far the
substantive and at the same time individual condition of spiritual life
is made vital in bodily form, receiving therein determinate existence
and form. In other words, through the content adequate to genuine
sculpture the contingent _individualization of the external appearance_
is from one point of view excluded, and this applies both to the
spiritual and physical aspects of the presentment. Only that which
persists, and is universal and according to rule in the human form is
the object of a work of sculpture. And this is so albeit we have the
additional necessity to individualize the universal in such a way that
not only the abstract law but an individual form, which is brought into
the closest fusion with it, is placed before our eyes.
(_b_) From another point of view it is necessary that sculpture,
as we have seen, be kept unaffected by purely contingent _personal
life_[145], and all expression of such in the independent ideal mode
under which it asserts itself. For this reason an artist, in dealing
with physiognomical characteristics, is not entitled to move in the
direction of individual manner[146]. For a facial manner is simply
just this appearance on the surface of an individual idiosyncrasy and
some particular aspect of emotion, idea, and volition. A man by his
chance expressions of countenance expresses the feelings he has as
some particular person, whether it be in his exclusive relation to
his own life, or in his self-relation to exterior objects, or other
persons. One sees, for example, on the street, more particularly in
little towns, in many, or rather the majority of men, that they are
exclusively preoccupied, in their demeanour and expression of face,
with themselves, their dress and attire, in general terms, that
is, their purely personal particularity, or, at least, matters of
momentary importance, and any unforeseen or accidental features thus
presented. Countenances which express pride, envy, self-satisfaction,
depreciation, and so forth, are of this nature. Moreover, the feeling
and contrast of substantive being with my personal idiosyncrasy may be
responsible for such alterations of expression. Humility, defiance,
threats, fear, are expressed in this way. In a felt contrast of
this kind we find already a separation between the individual in
the subjective sense and the universal asserted. Reflection on what
is truly substantive continually leans in the direction of merely
personal considerations, so that it is the individual rather than the
substantive character which is predominant in the content. The form,
however, which remains severely true to the principle of sculpture
ought neither to express this severation nor the predominance of the
personal aspect above adverted to.
In addition to definite expressions of countenance[147] physiognomy
presents us with much that merely passes momentarily across the
features and indicates the human mood. A sudden smile, an instantaneous
outburst of anger, a quickly repressed expression of scorn, are a
few of many examples. In particular, the mouth and eyes possess most
mobility and resource in seizing and making apparent every shifting
mood of soul-life. Changes of this character, which are compatible
with the art of painting, the sculptor must exclude. Sculpture
must rather concentrate its attention on the permanent traits of
spiritual expression, and retain and disclose such in the posture and
configuration of the body no less than in the face.
(_c_) The task of sculpture, then, essentially consists in this, that
it implants that which is of substantive spiritual import in that form
of individuality which is not yet essentially particularized in the
narrow subjective sense within the figure of a man, and contributes to
the same such a harmony, that it is only that which is universal and
permanent in the _bodily shapes_ correspondent with the life of Spirit
which is made to appear therein, while that which is accidental or
mutable is brushed aside, albeit a certain mode of individuality is not
absent from its forms.
An accord of this complete nature between what is ideal and what
is external, the goal of sculpture, in short, offers us a point of
transition to the _third_ point which we have still to discuss.
3. SCULPTURE AS THE ART OF THE CLASSICAL IDEAL
The conclusion that most immediately follows upon the above
observations is this, that sculpture in a way, and to an extent
unrivalled by any other art, remains constant to the Ideal[148]. In
other words, from one point of view it is free of the symbolical
type both by virtue of the translucency of a content, which clearly
grasps itself as Spirit, and on account of the fact that it is able
to disclose such a content with absolute mastery. And so, too, from
another it refuses as yet to enter into the subjective aspect of the
personal life, to which the external form is indifferent. Consequently
it forms the focus of classical art. No doubt both the symbolical and
romantic types of architecture and painting were shown to be adapted
to classical ideality; but the Ideal, in its genuine sphere, is not
the supreme principle of these types of art, inasmuch as they do not,
as is the case with sculpture, take for their object self-subsistent
individuality, character, that is, throughout objective, in other
words, the beauty that is both free and inevitable[149]. The
configuration of sculpture must, however, entirely proceed from the
pure spiritual energy of an imagination and thought that denudes its
content of all the haphazard features of personal life and bodily
presence; it must have no leanings for idiosyncrasies, or any place
for the mere emotion, desire, and variety of accidental impulse and
pleasantry[150]. What the artist has at his disposal for his most
elevated creations is simply, as we have seen, the bodily presentment
of Spirit in what is exclusively the general configuration of the
organic structure of the human form. His invention is therefore
restricted to promoting on the broadest lines the harmony between
what is ideal and what is external, and partly to making, in however
an inobtrusive way, the individuality of the presentment accommodate
itself to and interfuse with the truly substantive character of his
design[151]. Sculpture must give form, just as the gods create in
their own sphere according to eternal ideas, within what is in other
respects the world of reality, but exclude as rejected residue all
licence and mere selfness from its creations. Theologians make a
distinction between the acts of God and all that man in his folly and
capriciousness accomplishes. The plastic Ideal is, however, exalted
above such questions. It stands at the very centre of this blessedness
and free necessity for which neither the abstraction of the universal
nor the caprice of the particular are valid or significant.
This insight into the consummate plastic union of the divine and human
was pre-eminently native to Greece. We fail to grasp Greece at her
heart and centre in her poets and orators, historians and philosophers,
unless, as the key to our problem, we are already possessed of an
insight into the Ideal of sculpture, and can contemplate from the
standpoint of plastic art both the figures of her epic and dramatic
heroes and her actual statesmen and philosophers. For characters in
her practical life, no less than poets and thinkers, possessed also in
the palmy days of Greece, this plastic, universal, and yet individual
character, stamped with one mint, whether we look at its external or
more personal features. They stand up big and free, a self-subsistent
growth, on the basis of their essentially substantive individuality; a
growth of their own making, built up into that which they ultimately
became and intended to be. In particular the period of Pericles was
rich in such characters. Pericles himself was one of them. We may add
Pheidias, Plato, and pre-eminently Sophocles. So, too, Thucydides,
Xenophon, and Socrates, everyone with his own type, not one of them
impairing the quality of the rest; all are out-and-out artistic
natures, ideal artists in the work of self-creation, personalities of
one mould, works of art, which stand before us like figures of immortal
gods, in whom we can detect no taint of Time and mortality. We may find
a similar plastic subsistency in the artistic perfections of the bodily
frames of the victors at the Olympic games; nay, even in the apparition
of Phryne[152] herself, who, as the fairest woman, came from the sea
naked before all the world.