that it is absorbed in its object and is unable to free itself
therefrom, there is also on the plane of _active life_ a distinct
purpose subserved by it, namely, to indicate that the individual is
not thus so exclusively preoccupied with the particular situation or
state of the emotions then uppermost, but possesses a fine and noble
nature superior to such conditions and able to assert its independence.
In passion soul-life is restricted and fettered to its own seclusion,
narrowed down to the point of concentrated heat, either thereby a
mute, an ejaculation of monosyllables, or the rage that vents itself
at random. Greatness of soul and intellectual power alike refuse to
submit to such limitations: they are wings which carry the soul in
a fine tranquillity over and above the storm of pathos that moves
it. It is this deliverance of the soul, which the simile primarily
expresses by the very mode under which it is asserted. In other words
it is only a really profound composure and strength which is able to
make itself the object of its pain and suffering, to compare itself
with something else, and by doing so to view itself impartially[108]
in a strange material; or it may be in a mood of the most terrible
scorn to set forth in the external thing the confronting image of its
own annihilation, and still persist in the repose of its own obdurate
forces. In epical poetry, as we before observed, it was the poet's
undoubted function to transmit to his audience, by means of those halts
by the way which his picturesque similitudes offered, that sense of
tranquillity which is essential to fine art. In dramatic art, on the
contrary, the _dramatis personae_ appear as themselves the _poets_
and _artists._ Here it is the characters who objectify their own
soul-life in that which they are powerful enough to imagine and inform,
thereby further manifesting to us the nobility of their receptive
faculties and the inherent force of their emotional resources[109].
For this absorption into something else that is external is now[110]
the deliverance of the world within from a purely practical interest,
or at least is that which lifts the immediacy of emotion to the level
of forms the soul may contemplate in freedom; and for this reason
every comparison instituted simply for the comparison's sake in the
way we have already observed it under the first aspect of the simile
discussed, is vindicated now in a much profounder sense than was then
possible; it can now only appear as a victory over the exclusive
obsession of passion and the release from its masterdom. In following
up the course of this liberating process we will now emphasize several
important distinctions to illustrate which we shall borrow exclusively
from Shakespeare.
(_αα_) Now in the first place we would observe that when we have a soul
set before us about to meet with a grave misfortune, by which it will
be shaken to its depths, and the pain of this inevitable cataclysm
is at length actually entered upon, it would be nothing less than an
indication of a nature essentially commonplace if it were there and
then to break out into the cry of horror, pain, and desperation, and so
make a clean breast of it. A strong and noble spirit on the contrary
holds its lamentation as such in reserve, keeps a hand of iron upon its
pain, and by this means preserves a free power to embody in far-distant
material imaginatively presented the profound sense of its anguish,
and to express its own tragic state under the image of that which is
remote. Thus man rises superior to his suffering; he is not utterly
with all that is in him bondman to it; rather he is as wholly distinct
from it as he is one with it; and consequently he can still pause
before that which is outside and beyond him, which he relates to his
emotion as an independent force cognate with his own. This will explain
to us those words of the old Northumberland in Shakespeare's "Henry
IV," when he inquires of the messenger who comes to inform him of the
death of Percy, what news he brings him of his son and his brother,
and, on receiving no reply, gives utterance to the composure of the
most poignant grief as follows:
/$
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness of thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;
But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy's death ere thou report'st it[111].
$/
This attitude of the soul, which spins about itself as it were
the garments of its pain, and yet retains the power throughout to
image itself under new modes of comparison, receives a particularly
striking illustration in the character of Richard II, where we find
him repentant over the youthful frivolity of his days of prosperity.
In fact there is no trait in this royal grief that is more touching
or suggestive of a child's simplicity than the fact that he always
expresses himself under the objective form of most pertinent images,
and in the play of this type of self-expression preserves his suffering
all the more profoundly. When, for example, Henry demands of him the
crown, he replies:
/$
Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin;
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs while you mount up on high[112].
$/
(_ββ_) The other aspect to which we would now draw attention is this,
namely, that a character which is already made one with its interests,
its sorrow, and its destiny, endeavours by means of the simile to
release itself from this immediate union, and makes this deliverance
obvious to us by the very fact that it shows itself still able to
deduce such similitudes. In "Henry VIII,"[113] for instance, the Queen
Katherine, on being forsaken by her royal consort, expresses the depth
of her desolation in the words:
/$
I am the most unhappy woman living!
Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;
Almost no grave allow'd me: like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.
$/
In a still more admirable manner in "Julius Caesar"[114] Brutus
exclaims to Cassius, to whose want of spirit he has vainly striven to
give the spur:
/$
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cool again.
$/
That Brutus in such a situation can find room for a simile is already
an excellent proof that he himself has thrust his scorn into the
background, and has begun to assert himself as master of it.
For the most part Shakespeare, by endowing his criminal characters
with greatness of soul in crime no less than in misfortune, exalts
them before he leaves them above their own evil passions: he will not
let them rest in the purely abstract assertion of crimes they are for
ever going to do, but never really commit, as is the French style, but
actually infuses them with the imaginative power, by means of which
they stand out before us as distinctly as any other personification
that is new to us. Macbeth, for instance, when his last hour has
struck[115], exclaims in the well-known words:
/$
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
$/
The same thing may be said of those last words of Cardinal Wolsey in
"Henry VIII,"[116] uttered at the close of his career when struck down
from the summit of his greatness:
/$
Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes: to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
$/
(_γγ_) In this impersonal relation of objective fact and its expression
of the comparative mode, the repose and substantial self-command of
character returns to itself; it is the means whereby the pain of a
great downfall is softened. So Cleopatra exclaims[117] to Charmian,
after she has already put the mortal aspic to her breast:
/$
Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle--
$/
The bite of the serpent relaxes her members so gently that Death is
himself deceived and holds himself to be Sleep. And this image may well
pass as itself a counterfeit of the mild and allaying influence of such
similitudes.
C. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART
_Didactic_, _descriptive poetry and the ancient epigram._
The conception we have in general terms formed of the symbolic type
of art is such that within it significance and expression are unable
to unite sufficiently to appear in complete and reciprocal fusion.
In unconscious symbolism the _incompatibility_ of these two aspects
remained a fact throughout, if not actually _declared_ as such; in the
Sublime on the contrary this inadequacy was _explicitly_ asserted:
the absolute significance, God, no less than His external reality,
the world, are expressly represented in this excluding relation to
one another. On the other hand, however, in all these types that
further aspect of symbolism, namely, the _affinity_ which obtains
between the significance and the external form, in which it is visibly
manifested, still retained its importance. In the original type of
symbolism this was exclusively the case, a type which did not as yet
set forth the significance in contrast to its concrete existence.
But in the Sublime, too, it remained an _essential_ relation, a type
which, in order to express the Supreme Being, if here under a wholly
inadequate mode, required as its means the phenomena of Nature, and the
events and exploits of God's chosen people. And finally it reappears
in the comparative type of art a personal relation and one that is
consequently amenable to _caprice._ This element of caprice, however,
albeit it is an entirely present fact and particularly so in the case
of the metaphor, image, and simile, is notwithstanding still hidden
away behind the _affinity_ between the significance and the image
utilized to express it, in so far as it selects the comparison simply
out of a regard for their mutual resemblance, a fundamental aspect of
which is not so much the _external_ form as just this _relation_ set up
between them by the activity of the soul and consisting in subjective
emotions, points of view and ideas and their cognate modes of
configuration[118]. When, however, it is not the notion of the material
itself, but simply a capricious use of the judgment, which brings
together the content and its artistic form, both can only be conceived
as posited in an entirely external relation to one another; their
association is now a juxtaposition without essential relation, simply
a dressing up, that is to say, of the one side by the other. For this
reason we have here to treat these last-mentioned and subordinate types
of art by way of supplement. They arise from the absolute collapse of
the essential phases in all true art-production; they bring before us,
in short, by their independence of the principle of relativity the
suicide of the symbolic type.
If we view this stage generally as a whole we find on the one hand
already as wholly independent the elaborate but formless significance,
for the artistic shaping of which all that we can now supply is an
external ornament selected at caprice to set it off. On the other side
we have the external mode pure and simple. That is to say, instead of
being mediated in its identity with that on which it is imposed by the
fact that this is its own essentially cognate significance it can now
only be accepted and described in the aspect of its self-subsistence
over against this _centrum_ of significance, and consequently only
as mere externality. From the above contrasted aspects we may
differentiate in abstract terms _didactic_ from _descriptive_ poetry,
a distinction which so far at least as the didactic is concerned is
only to be made good under the poetic type for the reason that this
alone is able to bring before us the significance in its abstract
universality.
Inasmuch, however, as the notion of art does not consist in the
dissociation, but the identification of significance and form we find
even at this stage not only a complete separation, but also in line
with that, a relation asserted between the sides thus opposed. This
relation, however, now that the partition line of symbolism has already
been _crossed_, is no longer of a symbolic nature, and is therefore
an attempt to abolish the fundamental characteristics of that type,
namely, the incompatibility, and at the same time the self-subsistence
of form and content, a position that all the previous types were unable
to transcend. Owing, however, to the separation of the two sides,
which thus make for unity, being already presupposed by this type
this attempt can only be looked upon as a mere aspiration[119], to
completely satisfy which in all that it involves is reserved for a more
perfect type of art, namely, the classical.
We will now briefly glance at these supplementary forms, in order to
make our passage from them to the real type above mentioned more fully
intelligible.
1. THE DIDACTIC POEM
When a significance, which as such co-ordinates a homogeneous
_complexus_ of relations, is apprehended exclusively as significance,
yet does not receive the form strictly adequate to this content, but
is merely invested with the external ornamentation of art, then we
have before us the didactic poem. The didactic poem does not figure
among the genuine types of art. For in it we find on the one hand a
content already completely elaborated under a mode that is thereby
necessarily prosaic, while on the other we have the artistic form,
which is merely tacked to it in an external way, for this very reason
that it had already been accepted by the mind in a form stamped with
_prose_ throughout, and is merely exhibited to our common sense or
reflective faculties as instruction under this prosaic aspect, that is
to say, with an exclusive reference to the significance embodied in
its abstract and general terms. Consequently art, in this its external
relation to a content so essentially foreign to its real informing
process, can only recognize in the didactic poem its external aspects,
such as metre, exalted language, episodic matter, images, similes,
ebullitions of sentiment, points of acceleration and transition in
the march of ideas, aspects in short which do not give us the heart
of the content as such, but rather surround it as an incidental
accretion, with the object of alleviating and making more enjoyable the
serious and dry tone of the didactic material by means of their more
inspiriting atmosphere. That which is intrinsically, in the fundamental
conception of it, relegated to prose, cannot receive the poet's
mintage, though it may be the peg on which he may hang his mantle[120].
Just as we find, for example, that the art of gardening is in great
measure a purely external rearrangement of what is already presented us
by Nature, but not necessarily of that which is itself a truly lovely
locality; or as the art of building ameliorates by its ornament and
external decoration a locality which has been expressly devoted to
prosaic purposes and affairs.
In this way Greek Philosophy made a start under the mode of the
didactic poem. We may even adduce Hesiod as an example, albeit a
prosaic treatment of this kind in its strict sense is only fully
assured when the understanding is undisputed master of the subject
with its train of reflections, consequences, and classifications, and
instructs us from this standpoint alone in as pleasing and elegant a
way as it can. Lucretius, too, in his relations to the philosophy of
Epicurus, and Vergil, with the information he supplies on agriculture,
are in part examples of the same type. Despite all their artistic
adroitness they are unable to give their versification the genuine
spontaneity of the artistic form. In Germany the didactic poem is
new out of fashion; in France Delille, in addition to his previous
efforts entitled "Les jardins, ou l'art d'embellir les paysages," and
his "Homme des champs," has presented his compatriots with a further
example of the didactic poem, in which he has treated physical science
as compendiously through its forms of magnetism, electricity and the
rest.
2. DESCRIPTIVE POETRY
The _second_ type which we have to examine stands out in direct
contrast to the previous one. The point of departure here is not from a
significance already present before the mind in an independent form of
its own, but from external objects simply such as natural localities,
buildings, seasons of the year or periods of time, and the modes under
which they are presented to sense. But as we found in the didactic
poem the content persisted in formless _generality_ so far as its
essential character was concerned, so here, if in a converse manner,
the _external material_ is _independently_ set forth in the singularity
which pertains to it simply as phenomenon without being drawn within
the circle of the significances apparent to mind; and it is this
particularity which is depicted and described in its external aspect
precisely as it appears to the matter-of-fact consciousness. Such a
sensuous content has no relation to true art whatever, except under the
_one_ feature, namely, that of its external existence; and this can
only claim art's recognition in so far as it represents the natural
basis of _spiritual_ life and individuality, its actions and events,
the facts, that is to say, which constitute an environing world; as
merely external form separated by itself from all that pertains to such
life it has no such claim.
3. RELATION OF BOTH ASPECTS
On grounds deducible from the above, neither the instructive nor the
descriptive type is secured in the exclusive one-sidedness which would
obliterate every vestige of art, and we find in the one case that the
external reality is brought into appreciable relation with that which
is seized by mind as significance, just as conversely in the other the
abstract universal is related to its concrete mode of appearance.
(_a_) We have already explained how this is so in the case of the
didactic poem. Without depicting external conditions and particular
phenomena, without the episodical narration of mythological and other
illustrations we shall rarely find a genuine example of it. By means,
however, of a parallel series of this character in which the universal
for mind is thus laid alongside of the particular object of sense we
have merely a quite collateral relation set up instead of a union
carried out in every detail, a parallelogism, moreover, which does not
affect the entire content and its all-embracing artistic form, but
merely isolated aspects and traits.
(_b_) Such a modicum of true relation is particularly conspicuous in
the case of descriptive poetry, in so far as its delineations are
accompanied with such emotions as the sight of natural landscape, the
course of the days and seasons, a wooded hill, a lake, a babbling
brook, a church, a picturesquely situated village and the poor man's
peaceful cottage are likely to arouse. We find consequently in
descriptive poetry much as we do in the didactic poem episodes which,
although merely accessory, animate us, in particular through the
reflection of affecting emotions, such as a tender melancholy or little
touches of occasional experience taken from the more homely levels of
life. Such an association of spiritual feeling with the external facts
of Nature can still only too easily in this type of poetry remain
wholly external in its presentation. For the natural or local condition
is here assumed to be something which quite independently confronts
us. Man no doubt draws near to it; under its influence he entertains
this or that feeling, but there is nothing which essentially unites
moonlight, forests, valleys, landscape, and so on, with the emotions
of the soul they excite. I am not here either the interpreter or the
animating focus of Nature, but feel, as each happens to confront me,
a wholly indefinite kind of harmonious reciprocity establish itself
between the objects I face and the emotional life which they stimulate.
Most of all are we Germans devoted to this type of picturesque
description, and along with it to every variety of exquisite feeling
and heart effervescence such natural scenery can possibly evoke. It is
a public high-road over which all may march in line. Even some of the
odes of Klopstock are tuned to its key.
(_c_) But _thirdly_, if we inquire whether there is not a profounder
relation between these opposed aspects of the internal feeling and
external object, we shall find our nearest approach to an answer in the
ancient _epigram._
(_α_) The very name of the epigram already expresses the original gist
of it. It is an _inscription._
Unquestionably we find, also here on the one hand an object, and on
the other we have a definite statement propounded as to this object;
but in the most ancient epigrams, among which Hesiod has preserved a
few examples, we do not have the picture of an object accompanied by
any reaction of feeling, rather we find, the matter of fact put before
us in two distinct ways. In the one the external existence, and with
it the meaning thereof and explanation, is concentrated in its form
as epigram on the keenest and most forcible of its characteristics.
This original characterization of the epigram, however, even among the
Greeks, later examples have already lost; and we find an increasing
tendency both to secure and apply the passing conceits of fancy,
whether ingenious, witty, or merely entertaining, to particular
incidents, works of art, people and so on, ideas in short which do not
so much set forth the object itself, as illustrate the condition of
personal feeling in reference to the same.
(_β_) The main point to observe here is this that, just in proportion
as the object itself fails as such to become the predominant factor
in this type of presentment to that extent it becomes less complete.
In this connection we may also in passing mention a few more modern
examples of an analogous nature. The novels of Tieck, for instance,
not unfrequently have to deal with specific works of art or artists,
or a definite gallery of pictures, composition of music and so forth,
and they have then some nice little romance attached. These particular
pictures, however, which the reader has never seen, these compositions,
which he has never heard, the poet obviously can neither bring before
our eyes nor ears. From this point of view the entire expression of his
art, in so far as it depends on objects of this nature, must remain
subject to this defect. In the same way in yet more important romances
writers have sought to embody as the real content of their work entire
arts, and their finest productions as Heinse, for instance, did with
that of music in his _Hildegard von Hohenthal._ But in every case
where we find that a work of art throughout is unable to reproduce
with essential adequacy its fundamental subject-matter, we can
only conclude that the primary cause of this defect arises from the
inadequacy of the type of art selected.
(_γ_) To remove the defects above adverted to two things are clearly
essential; the objective fact and the explanation of it which is
offered to mind must not be suffered to fall into absolute _severation_
as was the case in the type last considered, nor must the union when
effected, an equally important point, assume a character _identical_
with either the symbolical, sublime or purely comparative types. A yet
more genuine form of presentment must be sought for under a condition
in which we find that the fact in question supplies an elucidation
of its ideal content by means of its external mode of appearance,
and actually in this mode, a condition under which that which is of
spirit unfolds itself completely in the form of its reality, and the
corporeal and external presence is simply the adequate explication of
the spiritual and ideal. In order, however, to follow up this problem
to its complete _fulfilment_ we must bid farewell to the symbolic types
of art. For the essential character of symbolism consisted precisely in
this that the union of the animating principle of the significance with
its spatial embodiment always _stopped short_ of such completeness.
[Footnote 76: In other words everything created being posited as
unsubstantial apart from the One necessitated the conclusion that
all the Goodness, etc., there divulged was referable to that Supreme
Source.]
[Footnote 77: _Bewussten_, that is a symbolism conscious of its typical
character. I have above used the expression "premeditated," but
"conscious" is perhaps sufficient.]
[Footnote 78: I understand _auf solche Weise,_ "under such a mode as
expressed either by Symbolism or the Sublime."]
[Footnote 79: It is prosaic because it has no absolute root in reality.]
[Footnote 80: Lit., "As consciousness lays hold of the same in the
clear light of ordinary reason" (_seiner verständigen Klarheit._)]
[Footnote 81: _Theoretische_, that is personal, contemplative rather
than practical.]
[Footnote 82: Lit., "and his freedom secludes itself with a prophetic
instinct (_ahndend_) in itself."]
[Footnote 83: _Wie die Faust auf das Auge passt._ A proverbial
expression unknown to me. We should rather say "a beam in our eyes."]
[Footnote 84: As contrasted, that is, with the fable.]
[Footnote 85: An Indian dancing girl.]
[Footnote 86: Hegel uses the term in the plural, _Die Verwandlungen_,
possibly with reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses.]
[Footnote 87: _Standpunkt, i.e._, the form viewed relatively to the
general type.]
[Footnote 88: _Beseelung._]
[Footnote 89: Plastic must be taken here in the very loose and pregnant
sense of any art that deals with external material.]
[Footnote 90: _Ein grammatisches Subject._ Hegel presumably means that
it is merely subject under the mode of literary expression without
possessing the true determination of personality.]
[Footnote 91: _Aushöhlen muss._ We should rather say that the
allegorist is forced to attenuate (lit. hollow out) the substance of
subjectivity, etc. But I have left the more literal rendering.]
[Footnote 92: In the German _fassen_, _begreifen._]
[Footnote 93: _Einer konkreten Anschauung._ That is, a quality or
feature that belongs to the phenomena of the concrete world of
perception.]
[Footnote 94: Of course this is not so in the English equivalent, where
the primary sense is still material.]
[Footnote 95: Lit., "Of expressions in the strict sense of the term."]
[Footnote 96: _Ihr ruhiger vollständig ausgestaltender Sinn._ The
meaning that declares itself completely through the form in classic
repose.]
[Footnote 97: _Ausführliche_, explicit in all its detail.]
[Footnote 98: _Das Für-sich-seyn._]
[Footnote 99: I give the literal translation. I presume a more
intelligible one would be "but actual existence in its self-defined
concreteness." The passage is not easy to follow.]
[Footnote 100:
/$
Silent we pounded up carbon, saltpeter, and sulphur,
Set the train going. Good friend! How did our cracker find _you?_
Some as illuminate balls soared prodigious while others exploded,
Many we flashed in our fun simply the eye to delight.
$/
]
[Footnote 101: I find this analysis of the image more than usually
difficult to follow, I have therefore made my translation very literal.
I must confess that this distinction between the image and the metaphor
appears to me rather an example of hyper-subtlety on Hegel's part, or
as some might say, an effort to make what is virtually only a verbal
distinction correspond to a more real difference of idea.]
[Footnote 102: That is the emphatically personal.]
[Footnote 103: _Die Schwelgerei._]
[Footnote 104: In the German the sentence is continuous. Our version
clearly gives another reading to the Hebrew.]
[Footnote 105: May be a misprint for "thy presence," _deine_ instead of
_die._]
[Footnote 106: Chapman's translation.]
[Footnote 107: Chapman's translation, somewhat an extension of the
Greek it must be admitted.]
[Footnote 108: _Theoretisch_, _i.e._, in contemplative repose.]
[Footnote 109: Such I take to be the contrast implied in the words _den
Adel ihrer Gesinnung_ and _die Macht ihrers Gemüths. Gesinnung_ is the
sense-perception. _Gemüth_ includes the creative fertility.]
[Footnote 110: _Hier_, _i.e._, as contrasted with the first stage of
the discussion.]
[Footnote 111: "Henry IV, Part II," act i, scene I.]
[Footnote 112: "King Richard II," act iv, sc. 1.]
[Footnote 113: "King Henry VIII," act iii, sc. 1.]
[Footnote 114: "Julius Caesar," act iv, sc. 3.]
[Footnote 115: "Macbeth," act v, sc. 5.]
[Footnote 116: "Henry VIII," act iii, sc. 2.]
[Footnote 117: "Antony and Cleopatra," act V, sc. 2.]
[Footnote 118: The meaning is that the selection is not made merely
with reference to external resemblance, but is also based on relations
only existing in the soul of the artist and therefore to that extent
capricious, however much they appear to be essential.]
[Footnote 119: _Ein blosses Sollen,_ lit., a mere "should," a mere
movement in a given direction.]
[Footnote 120: This is implied in the contrast of the verbs _umstalten_
and _überkleiden._]
SUBSECTION II
THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART
INTRODUCTION
THE CLASSIC TYPE IN GENERAL
Thr central point[121] of art's evolution is the union, in a
self-integrated totality, carried to the point of its freest
expression, of content and form wholly adequate thereto. This
realization, coinciding as it does with the entire notional concept
of the beautiful, towards which the symbolic form of art strove in
vain, first becomes apparent in _classical art._ We have already, in
our previous consideration of the Idea of the beautiful and of art,
outlined the general character of classic art. The _Ideal_ supplies a
content and form to classical art, which in this adequate mode in which
it is embodied reveals that which true art is according to its notion.
To perfect this result, however, all the various phases of art, whose
evolution is the subject-matter of our previous investigations, are
contributive. For classical beauty has for its ideal substance[122]
free and _independent_ significance, that is to say, not the
significance of any particular thing, but a significance which
_declares itself,_ and thereby points to its substance. This is the
_spiritual_ substance, which in general terms is that which makes of
itself an object. In this objectification _of itself_ it possesses the
form of externality, which, as identical with its ideal character, is
consequently also on its own part the significance of itself, and is
made conscious of itself by this self-knowledge. It is true that in
our consideration of the symbolical our point of departure was that of
the unity of the significance and its mode of envisagement in the art
product; but this unity was _purely immediate_, and for this reason
inadequate.
For the real content either remained essentially the natural according
to its _substance_ and abstract _universality_, and consequently the
_isolated_ thing in the objective world of Nature[123], although it
was regarded as the real determination of that universality, was not
able to present the same in a mode adequate to it, or that which is
purely ideal, and only to be apprehended by spirit, in so far as it
was received in the artistic content, carried with it in that which
was foreign to its essential nature, namely the immediate individual
and sensuous thing, the mode of its appearance that was in fact
incongruent with it. And generally here significance and form only
stood in the relation of mere affinity and suggestion; and however
much in certain respects they could be brought together homogeneously,
they as clearly fell apart again in other directions. This original
unity was therefore torn asunder; this simple and abstract inwardness
or ideality was imaged for the Hindoo conception of the world on the
one side in the manifold reality of Nature, and on the other in finite
human existence; and the imagination, in the unrest of its impetuous
motion, was carried from the one to the other by turns, without being
either able to deliver the ideal in its essentially pure and absolute
self-subsistency, or to thoroughly infuse it with the phenomenal matter
as it was presented and informed, and so reproduce it throughout that
material in undisturbed union. The disorder and grotesque appearance,
which arose in the commingling of elements opposed to one another,
no doubt again vanished, but only to make way for an enigmatical
condition equally unsatisfying, which, instead of solving the problem,
was only able to prevent the problem's solution. For here, too, still
was lacking the freedom and self-subsistency of content, which only
thereby is rendered explicit in that the Inward is presented to
consciousness as in itself a whole, and by this means as that which
overlaps the externality which in the first instance is other than
itself and foreign to itself. This essential self-subsistency, cognized
as free and absolute significance, is self-consciousness, which has for
its content the Absolute, and for its form the subjectivity of Spirit.
In contradistinction to this self-determining, thinking, willing power
everything else is self-subsistent in merely a relative and momentary
sense. The material phenomena of Nature such as the sun, the heavens,
stars, plants, animals, stones, streams and sea have only an abstract
relation to themselves, and are in the eternal process of Nature bound
up with other facts of natural existence, so that they can only pass
as self-subsistent for the finite perception. The real significance of
the Absolute is not presented in them. Nature is indeed under a mode
expressed[124], but only under the mode of what is outside itself; its
inwardness is not as such for itself, but poured forth into the varied
show of its appearances, and consequently devoid of self subsistency.
Only in Spirit as the concrete, free and, infinite self-relation,
is the true and absolute significance actually disclosed, and
self-subsistent under the mode of its determinate existence.
On the way to this emancipation of the Idea from the immediately
sensuous medium and to its self-establishment we are confronted by
the _Sublime_ and the consecration of the imagination. The absolute
significance is, that is to say, in the first instance the thinking,
absolute and senseless[125] One, which is self-related as the Absolute,
and in this relation affirms that which it creates; Nature and finitude
generally, as the negative, thing, that which is essentially in itself
devoid of stability. It is the explicit and essential Universal,
conceived as the objective power over collective existence, whether
it be that this One be brought now to consciousness and represented
in its expressly negative attitude to the created, thing, or in its
positively pantheistic inherence in the same. The twofold defect of
this point of view, so far as it is connected with art, consists first
in this that this One and Universal which constitutes the fundamental
significance has not yet in itself arrived at the closer determination
and distinction, and by this means just as little at the point of
real individuality and personality in which it could be apprehended
as Spirit, and could be set before the sensuous perception in a form
which would be applicable to its spiritual content, according to its
own notion, and duly conformable therewith. The concrete idea of Spirit
on the contrary requires, that it both defines and distinguishes itself
in itself, and by the very act of making itself an object discovers
through this reduplication an external phenomenon, which although
material and present, nevertheless is throughout permeated by Spirit,
and consequently taken by itself expresses nothing at all, simply
permitting Spirit to declare itself as its inner core, the expression
and reality of which it is. _Secondly_, from the point of view of the
objective world the defect is bound up with this abstraction of an
Absolute to which the principle of self-determination is lacking that
now also the real phenomenon, being that which is essentially without
substance, is unable to set forth under any true mode the Absolute in
concrete shape. In contrast to those songs of praise and glory, those
celebrations of the abstract and universal majesty of God, we have
now in the passage we are making to a higher form of art to recall
to our minds that phase of negativity, change, pain, and progress
through life and death, which we discovered among other matter in the
conceptions of the East. We have here set before us the principle of
_self-distinction_ in its essential character under a mode which is
unable to unite with its conception the unity and self-subsistency of
that subjective principle. Both aspects, however, both the essential
and self-substantive unity, and the differentiation of that unity by
virtue of a self-defined content, are equally necessary to unfold a
true and free self-subsistency in its concrete and mediate totality.
In this connection we may incidentally, together with this reference
to the Sublime, mention that further conception which at the same
time entered on its process of explication in the East. It is that
apprehension, in opposition to the substantiality of the one God,
of internal freedom, self-subsistency and innate independence of the
individual, so far as the elaboration of this impulse was permitted
to Eastern nations. The main source of this attitude we must seek for
among the Arabs, who in their deserts, upon the infinite sea of these
expanses, with the clear heavens over their heads, in a nature such as
this have emphasized their own courage and the bravery of their hand,
as also the means of their self-preservation, whether it be camel,
horse, lance, or sword. Here we find the more stubborn independence
of personal character asserting itself in its contrast to the Hindoo
softness and lack of individuality, as also to the more recent
pantheism of Mohammedan poetry, and opposing also to the objective
world its circumscribed, securely defined and immediate reality. With
this incipient stage of the independence of the individual we must also
associate free friendship, hospitality, and august nobility, but at
the same time an insatiable lust of revenge and the inextinguishable
memory of a hate, which is insistent and will have satisfaction with
an unsparing passion and an absolutely remorseless cruelty. None
the less all that happens on this soil is wholly within the circle
of humanity. We have here deeds of revenge, conditions of love,
traits of self-sacrificing nobility from which the fantastic and the
wonderful have vanished; everything is carried forward in the secure
and determinate shape which the causative connection of the facts
necessitate. A similar conception of real objects which are referred
to their determinate basis of actuality[126], and are made visible
in their free power, not merely in that which conserves an exterior
purpose[127], we discovered in an earlier stage of our investigations
among the Hebrews. The more assured independence of character, the
savagery of revenge and hate lie, too, at the root of the original
Jewish nationality. But the difference is at once pronounced, that in
this case even the most powerful images of Nature are depicted less
for their own sake than for that of the glory of God, as related to
which they at once again lose their self-subsistency; and furthermore
even hate and persecution are not merely a personal matter affecting
persons, but are embraced in the service of God as national vengeance
against whole peoples. As, for example, the later Psalms and yet more
the prophets frequently only are able to desire and plead for the
misfortune and overthrow of other nations, and not unfrequently find
the main strength of their utterance in curses and imprecations.
No doubt the elements of true beauty and art are presented to each of
these points of view above noticed; but they are in the first instance
brought together in haphazard and confused fashion, and are set in a
false relation to each other, instead of being referred to a genuine
principle of identity. For this reason the purely ideal and abstract
unity of the Divine is unable to bring forth any entirely adequate
art-product in the form that is characterized by real individuality;
and at the same time Nature and human individuality either are
manifestly not, whether we consider their inward principle, or their
external mode of appearance, permeated by the Absolute, or at least
not positively pervaded by it. This _externality_ of significance,
which is thus made the essential content, and the determinate mode of
appearance under which it is generally reproduced is finally and in the
_third_ place exemplified in the _comparative activity_ of art[128].
In this type both sides have become wholly independent, and the unity
that binds them together is merely the invisible subjectivity which
compares. For this very reason that which is defective in such an
external presentment returned in ever more emphatic degree and betrayed
itself as that which was for the genuine art representation merely
negative or, rather, entirely subversive. And when this dissolution is
really effected the significance can no longer remain the inherently
_abstract_ ideal, but the inherently determinate and self-defined
ideal principle, which in this its concrete totality possesses quite
as essentially the other aspect thereof, that is, the form of an
inherently exclusive and determinate appearance; and consequently in
its external existence, as that which is its very own, merely expresses
and signifies itself.
1. This essentially free totality which remains constant to itself
throughout each successive self-determination in something other than
itself, this ideal principle, which in its objectivity is self-related
is the essentially true, free, and self-subsistent, which in its
determinate existence unfolds nothing other than itself. In the realm
of art, however, this form is not present in its form of infinitude,
is not, that is, the _thinking_ of itself, as the essential, absolute,
which is made an object for itself in the form of ideal universality,
and makes itself, wholly explicit, but is still in immediate natural
and sensuous existence. In so far, however, as significance is
self-substantive, it must in art borrow its form from its own resources
and inherently possess the principle of its externality. It must
consequently, it is true, repair to Nature, but as predominant over
that which is external, which, in so far as it is itself an aspect of
the totality of this ideal realm, no longer exists as purely natural
objectivity, but being without its own self-subsistence, simply serves
as the expression of Spirit. In this interpenetration consequently the
natural form and externality, which is modified by Spirit contains out
and out on its part, as immediately given, its significance in itself,
and no longer points to this as to something separate and different
from the corporeal appearance. And this is that identification of
the spiritual and natural which is appropriate to the notion of
Spirit, which, that is, does not merely proceed no further than the
neutralization of the two opposed aspects, but raises that which is
spiritual into the higher totality, in which it is able to preserve
itself in its own Other, to bring the natural within its own ideal
range and to express itself in and relatively to the natural. It is on
this type of unity that the notion of classical art is based.
(_a_) This identity of significance and bodily form may be approached
yet more closely under the view of it that no separation of these
opposed aspects[129] takes place within their consummated union;
and consequently the ideal principle does not, as _purely inward
spirituality_, return upon itself from out of the corporeal and
concrete reality, under a process which would give us once more the
distinction of these aspects in opposition. And inasmuch as the
objective and external, in which Spirit is made visible as an object
of sense, according to the very notion of it, is at once throughout
_defined_ and _separate_, mind which is free, and which it is the
function of art to elaborate in the form of reality truly commensurate
with it, can only be that spiritual individuality which is not merely
_defined_ but essentially _self-consistent_ in its natural form.
For this reason it is the _human_ which constitutes the centre and
content of true beauty and art; but as content of art--we have already
developed the subject in discussing the notion of the Ideal--it is
brought under the essential determination of concrete individuality and
the external appearance adequate thereto, which in its objectivization
has been thus purified from the imperfection of the finite condition.
(_b_) Under such a consideration of the matter it is at once obvious
that the classical mode of representation, if we take it for what
it _essentially_ is, can no longer be of the _symbolic_ type in the
strict sense of the term, however much now and again we may find along
with it the play of that which belongs to symbolism. Greek mythology,
for example, which, in so far as art asserts its mastery over it,
belongs to the classical Ideal, is, if we grasp it in its fundamental
character, not of a beauty which is symbolical, but unfolded under
the genuine character of the Art-ideal, albeit there may be certain
remnants of symbolism which adhere to it, as we shall shortly see.
If we now proceed to ask ourselves what, then, is the nature of the
determinate form, which can thus enter into this unity with Spirit
without offering merely the suggestion of its content, we shall find it
determined for us in the conception that in classical art both content
and form must be adequate, must, that is, in the aspect of form meet
the demands of totality and essential self-subsistency. For it is a
prime condition of the free self-subsistence[130] of the whole, which
constitutes the fundamental determination of classical art, that either
of these aspects, the ideal form no less than its external embodiment,
should be essentially a totality which goes to make the notion of the
whole. Only by this means is either side _essentially_ identical with
the other, and consequently their difference reduced to the purely
formal differences of one and the same, through which also the totality
appears now as free, the adequacy of both of its aspects being now
fully displayed, inasmuch as it declares itself in either of them and
is one and the same in both.
The lack of this free reduplication of itself within the same unity
carried with it in the symbolic type precisely this absence of freedom
in the content and with it also in the form. Spirit was here not
clear to itself, and for this reason declared its external reality
not as that which belonged to itself, set forth in its explicit
significance through and in it. Conversely the form had no doubt to
be significant, but its significance only lay partly and on one side
in it. The external existence gave here primarily to what passed for
its ideal aspect, though still under a mode that was external, merely
_itself_ instead of a significance which declared an ideal content;
and in attempting to show that there was something further which it
suggested its power was necessarily put under a constraint. In this
distortion it neither remained true to itself, nor was it the Other,
that is significance, but declared nothing save that which was a
problematical connection and confusion between incompatible things, or
tended to be the purely co-adjutant attire and external adornment of
what was simply the glorification of the one absolute significance of
all things whatever, until it was finally obliged to surrender itself
to the purely subjective caprice of comparison with a significance
which was far removed from it and indifferent to it. If this relation
of unfreedom is to find a release the form must already inherently
possess its significance, or, to speak more definitely, must possess
the significance of mind or Spirit itself. This form is essentially
the _human_ form because the externality of this form is alone capable
of revealing the spiritual in sensuous guise. Human expression in
countenance, eye, pose, and carriage is, it is true, material and
therein not that which the spirit is; but within this corporeal frame
itself the human exterior is not merely alive and a part of Nature as
the animal is, but it is the bodily presence which reflects Spirit
to itself. Through the human eye we look into the soul of a man just
as through the entire presentment of him his spiritual character is
expressed. When consequently the body belongs to Spirit, as _its_
determinate presence, Spirit is also that ideal principle which is
appropriate to the body, and is no form of ideality which is foreign
to the external form in the sense that materiality still inherently
possesses a significance other than that to which it testifies or
suggests. It is quite true that the human form still carries within
it much of the universal animal type, but the fundamental distinction
between the human and the animal body consists simply in this, that
the human is obviously, by virtue of its entire conformation, declared
as the dwelling, nay, we may add the only possible dwelling-place of
Spirit. And for this reason also it is only in the body that Spirit
is immediately present to others. This is, however, not the place
to discuss the necessity[131] of this association and the peculiar
reciprocity of soul and body. We must here assume this necessity. We
have, of course, many indications on the human figure of death and
ugliness, that is, of other influences and defects which are traceable
to their source. When we find this to be the case it is the function
of art to expunge the divergence between the purely natural and the
spiritual, to exalt the external bodily appearance to a form of beauty,
that is, a form throughout dominated and suffused with the animation of
Spirit.
We have seen, then, that in this type of representation symbolism is
no longer presented by the external relation, and everything that
partook of effort, strain, distortion, and perversion is eliminated.
For when Spirit has grasped itself as Spirit it is at once explicit
and clear; and on the same ground is also its association with the
form adequate to it from the side of externality, something which is
essentially ready to the hand and a free gift, which does not require,
as a means for its declaration, a bond of connection introduced by the
imagination, and contrasting with that which is immediately presented.
Just as little is the classical form of art exhibited as a purely
material and superficial personification. It is Spirit in its entirety,
in so far as it is intended to make it the content of the art-product,
which passes into that bodily shape, and is able to identify itself
completely with it. From this point of view we may considerer
the conception that art has followed the human figure by means of
imitation. According to the common view, however, this acceptance of
the human figure as the model of imitation appears as a matter of
accident, whereas we should rather maintain the art which has arrived
at its maturity is obliged to reveal its substance by a necessary
law in the form of man as he appears to sense perception, because
Spirit alone obtains in it the existence fitting to it in the sensuous
material of Nature.
All that we have here observed relatively to the human body and
its expression applies also to human emotions, impulses, actions,
experiences, and occupations. The externalization of these is also, in
classical art, not merely characterized as a part of Nature's life,
but as that of Spirit; and this ideal aspect is brought into full and
adequate identity with that which is external appearance.
(_c_) Inasmuch, then, as classical art comprehends free spirituality
as determinate individuality, and immediately envisages the same in
its bodily presentment, it frequently falls under the reproach of
anthropomorphism. Even among the Greeks, to take an example, Xenophanes
ridiculed the presentation of Gods by means of the sensuous image in
his famous remark, that if lions had been sculptors they would have
given their gods the external shape of lions. Of a similar tendency
is that piece of French wit: God made men according to His image,
but man has returned Him the compliment by creating God in the image
of man. If we consider the matter relatively to the form of art that
follows, the romantic, we may in this respect observe that the content
of the classical form of beauty is no doubt defective precisely as
the religion of art is so; but so little does the defect consist in
anthropomorphism as such, that we may rather maintain, on the contrary,
that though classical art is certainly sufficiently anthropomorphic for
art, for the higher form of religion it is not enough so. Christianity
has carried anthropomorphism to far greater lengths; for, according
to Christian doctrine, God is not merely individuality in a human
form, but a real and singular individual entirely God, and entirely
a real man who has entered into all conditions of existence, and is
no mere Ideal of beauty and art created by man. If our conception of
the Absolute is limited to an abstract Being essentially without any
characterization then, no doubt, every kind of representation vanishes,
but if God is Spirit he must appear as man, as individual subject,
not as ideal human being, but as actual participator in the entire
externality of temporal conditions[132] which pertain to immediate
and natural existence. In other words, from the Christian point of
view, the infinite movement is carried to the extremest verge of
opposition, and only returns to the absolute unity as the resolution of
this separation. The man-becoming of God is incident to this phase or
significant moment of separation; as real and individual subjectivity
it is involved in the difference between unity and substance in its
bare extension, and in this common sphere of temporal and spatial
condition creates the consciousness in and pain of division in order
through the ultimate resolution of such contradiction by the same
means to arrive at eternal reconciliation. And this essential point
of passage in the process, according to the Christian conception, is
inherent in the nature of God Himself. As a matter of fact, God is here
apprehended as absolute and free Spirit, in which Nature and immediate
singularity is indeed proferred us as a phasal moment of a process,
but, at the same time, as one which is necessarily transcended[133]. In
classical art, on the contrary, the material medium is neither killed
nor suffers death, but for this reason also we cannot wholly find in it
the resurrection of Spirit. Classical art and its religion of beauty
does not consequently wholly satisfy the depths of Spirit. However
essentially concrete it may be, it still remains abstract for humanity
because, instead of movement and reconciliation obtained by the
contradiction we have adverted to of that infinite subjective process,
it merely possesses as its life that undisturbed harmony of the free
individuality determined in its adequate existence, this repose in its
reality, this happiness, this content and greatness in itself, this
eternal blitheness and bliss which even in unhappiness and pain does
not lose its secure reliance on itself. Classical art has not worked
its way to the full contradiction which is fundamentally involved in
the notion of the Absolute and overcome that contradiction. For this
reason it does not recognize the aspect which is in close relation
to this contradiction, that is the essential obduracy of the subject
as opposed to that which is ethical and of absolute significance,
namely, sin and evil, no less than the waste of individual life in its
own subjective aims, the dissolution and incontinence of that world
which we may summarily describe as that of the entire sphere of its
divisions, which is productive on the side both of sense and spirit of
distortion, ugliness, and the repulsive. Classical art fails to cross
the pure territory of the genuine Ideal.
2. In so far as the _historical_ realization of classical art is
concerned, it is hardly necessary to observe that we must seek for
that among the Greeks. Classical beauty, with its infinite range of
content, material and form, is the gift bestowed on the Greek people;
and this folk is entitled to our respect on the ground that it has
produced art in its highest form of vitality. The Greeks, if we regard
the form of their realized life immediately presented us, lived in
that happy middle sphere of self-conscious and subjective freedom and
substantive ethical life. They did not persist, on the one hand, in the
unfree Oriental unity, which is necessarily bound up with a religious
and political despotism for the reason that the individuality of the
subject is overwhelmed in a universal substance, or, in some particular
aspect of the same, because it has essentially as personality no
right, and consequently no ground to stand on; neither, on the other,
did they pass beyond to that subjective penetration, in which the
particular subject separates itself from the whole and the universal,
in order to make itself more explicit in its ideality; and only through
a higher return to the ideal totality of a purely spiritual world,
succeeds in its final purification of the substantive and essential.
On the contrary, in the ethical life of Greece, the individual was
self-substantive and essentially free, without disengaging himself
from the general interests of the realized State immediately visible
to him and the positive immanence of spiritual freedom in the temporal
condition. The universal of morality and the abstract freedom of
personality, both in its ideal and external aspect, remains in
accordance with the principle of Greek life in undisturbed harmony,
and during the time in which, even in real existence, this principle
asserted itself in still unimpaired purity, the self-substantiality of
the citizen did not stand forth in relief in contrast to a morality
which was to be distinguished from it: the substance of political life
was so far merged in the individual, as he on his part sought his own
liberty absolutely in the universal ends of the entire civic life.
The feeling for beauty, the significance and spirit of this joyous
harmony interpenetrates all productions, in which the freedom of Greece
is self-conscious, and in which she has made visible to herself her
being. Consequently her view of the world is just the midway ground
on which beauty commences its true life and breaks open its serene
dominion; the intermediate realm, that is, of free vitality, which is
not merely a fact at once immediate and natural, but one which is the
creation of a spiritual point of view revealed by art, the realm, that
is, of a culture of reflection, and at the same time of an absence of
reflection, which neither isolates the individual nor on the other
hand is competent to bring back again its negativity, pain, and
unhappiness to a positive unity and reconciliation--a realm, however,
which, just as in the case of Life itself, is at the same time only
a point of passage, however true it be that it scales at this point
the summit of beauty, and in the form of its plastic individuality is
so spiritually concrete and rich, that all tones have their interplay
within it, and also, too, that which is for its own standpoint what
lies behind it, albeit it is no longer present as an absolute and
unqualified principle, is nevertheless felt as that which accompanies
it--a kind of background to it. In this sense the Greek nation has
also, in the representation of its gods, made its spirit visible to the
perceptions and the imaginative consciousness, and bestowed on them,
by means of art a determinate existence, which is entirely conformable
with their true content. By virtue of this homogeneous form, which
is alike consistent with the fundamental notion of Greek art and
Greek mythology, art became in Greece the highest expression for the
Absolute, and Greek religion is the religion of art itself, whereas
romantic art, which appeared later, although it is undoubtedly art,
suggests a more exalted form of consciousness than art is in a position
to supply.
3. In establishing the position, as we have just done, on the one
hand, that essentially free individuality is the content of classical
art, and, on the other, that a like freedom is the equally requisite
determinant of the form, we have already assumed that the entire
blending of both together, however much it may be presented in the
immediate form, is nevertheless no original unity such as Nature's,
but is necessarily an _artificial_ association made possible by the
subjective spirit. Classical art, in so far as its content and its
form is spontaneity[134], originates in the freedom of the Spirit
that is clear to itself. And for this reason also we may say that in
the _third_ place the artist occupies a position different from that
of his predecessors. That is to say his production declares itself
as the spontaneous _product_ of a man in the full possession of his
senses[135], who as truly _knows_ what he wills as he is _able_ to
accomplish such a purpose; who is consequently obscure to himself
neither in respect to the significance and substantive content of that
which he has resolved to make visible in the form of art, nor finds
himself hindered by any defects of technique from executing the result
aimed after.
(_a_) If we look more closely at this change in the position of the
artist we shall in the first place find this freedom announced to
us relatively to the _content_ in this way, that he does not feel
compelled to seek for it with the restless process of symbolical
fermentation. Symbolic art remains the captive of its travail to
bring to birth and make clear its form to its own vision, and this
embodiment is itself only the original form[136], that is, on the
one side Being in the immediate guise of Nature, and on the other
the ideal abstraction of the universal, unity, conversion, change,
becoming, origination, and passing away. In this original form of
the artistic process, however, art does not come to its rightful
possessions. Consequently, these representations of symbolic art, which
should be expositions of content, remain still themselves riddles and
problems, and merely testify to the struggle after clarity and the
effort of Spirit, which on and on seeks to discover without obtaining
the rest and repose of discovery. In contrast to this troublous
search the content must for the classic artist be presented him as
something _already there_ in the sense that as a thing essentially
positive, as belief, popular opinion, or as an actual event either
of myth or tradition, it is determined for his imagination in all
its essential character. Relatively to this objectively determined
material the artist is placed in the freer relation that he does not
himself undertake the process of production and fermentation, and
pass no further than the impulse after the real significances of
his art, but rather that for him a completely explicit and unfolded
content lies before him which he accepts and freely reproduces from
himself. The Greek artists received their material from the popular
religion in which already that which had been brought over to Greece
from the Orient had begun to receive a form of its own. Pheidias
borrowed his Zeus from Homer, and other tragedians also did not create
the fundamental groundwork of that they represented. In the same way
the artists of Christianity, Dante and Raphael, have only reclothed
what was already to hand in the doctrines of their faith and their
religious conceptions. This is also, it is true, from a certain point
of view in like manner the case in the art of the Sublime, but with
this difference, that here the relation to the content, as the _one_
substance, does not permit subjectivity to come by its just claims, and
allows to it no self-substantive finality. The comparative form of art,
on the other hand, no doubt starts with the selection of significances
as images which it makes use of, but this initiative of selection
remains at the disposition of _subjective_ caprice, and on its part
dispenses with all substantive individuality, which constitutes the
notion of classical art, and for this reason must rest with the
personality which creates it.
(_b_) The more, however, an explicitly unfolded content is present
for the artist in popular beliefs, myth, and other actual facts, the
more his energy is concentrated upon the object of endowing such a
content with the _external embodiment_ of art fitting to it. While
in this respect symbolic art dissipates its resources in a thousand
forms, and with unbridled imaginative power lays about it for material
that it fails either to measure or define in order to adapt forms that
are never really conformable to the significance it is seeking after,
the classical artist in this respect is possessed of an aim that is
at once resolute and definite. That is to say, the free form is with
the content itself defined through that content, and is essentially
pertinent to such content, so that the artist only appears to execute
what is already accordant with the fundamental conception of what is
presented him. While, therefore, the symbolic artist strives in his
imagination, to suit the form to significance or _vice versa_, the
classic artist _adapts_ significance to plastic shape by means of the
process of freeing the external phenomena which are already presented
from that part of them which is merely an incidental product. In this
activity, however, although all that is purely his caprice is excluded,
his productive power not merely follows or is not merely limited to a
bare type, but is at the same time _creative_ throughout the whole.
Art which, to start with, is forced to seek out and discover its true
form neglects for that reason the very aspect of form; but where, on
the contrary, the building up of form is made the essential interest
and the main task there we find the content also receives its plastic
shape by imperceptible degrees through the process of the reproduction,
precisely as we have hitherto found in a general way that form and
content proceed hand in hand during the process, wherein they are
completed. In this respect the classic artist elaborates the result
also where it is a religious world that is presented him; he throughout
develops in the free and buoyant medium of his art the material and
mythological ideas which he receives.
(_c_) The same applies to the technique of art. In the case of the
classic artist the ingredients must be already to hand; the sensuous
material through which the artist labours must already be disengaged
from all brittleness and extreme stubbornness, and yield directly to
the aims of the artist, in order that the content, conformably to
the notion of the classic type, may make its free and unfettered way
through this external medium. To classical art, consequently, belongs
from the first a high level of technical ability, which has subjected
the sensuous material to an apt subservience. Such a technical
perfection, if it is really to carry out all that is required of Spirit
and its conceptions, is presupposed by the complete elaboration of all
that pertains to craftsmanship in art, that is, in especial degree
of that which makes itself visible within the plastic forms of the
religion to which we now refer. The religious view of things, such
as the Egyptian, for example, discovers, that is, definite external
forms, idols, colossal constructions whose type remains fixed, and,
further, in the usual similarity of forms and shapes, supplies a
considerable field for elaboration in the treatment of it by the
steadily progressive executive powers. This adaptability to the talents
of the craftsman must already have been presented in that which is of
an inferior and distorted type before the genius of classical beauty
can associate these powers of mechanical facility with the forms
of technical perfection. Then, at last, when that which is purely
mechanical work is confronted with no further insuperable difficulty,
is art enabled to proceed in the elaboration of a form, the practice in
working out which is at the same time an elaboration which is in the
closest relationship to the progressive advance of both content and
form.
So far as the _division_ of classical art is concerned it is usual
in the more general sense of the term to call every complete work
of art classic, whatever the particular character it may otherwise
carry, whether symbolic or romantic. We have no doubt thus accepted
it in the particular sense of art perfection, but with this important
qualification, that this perfection must be based on the thorough
interpenetration of ideal and free individuality and external
definition. We consequently differentiate the classic form expressly
from the symbolic and romantic, whose beauty in content and form is
entirely of another kind. And along with the classic, regarded in its
usual and more indefinite significance, we have as little to do here at
this early stage with the particular arts in which the classical ideal
is represented, as, for example, sculpture, the Epic, definite forms
of lyrical poetry and specific types of tragedy and comedy. These
particular types of art, although classic art is imprinted upon them,
will be first discussed in the third portion of the division of our
subject in the explication of the several arts and their grades[137].
What we approach more immediately now is the classic in the sense we
have secured for the term, and as bases of our subdivision we can only
therefore seek out the grades of evolution, which proceed from this
notion of the classical ideal itself. The essential phases of this
development are as follows.
The _first_ point to which we would direct our attention is this, that
the classical type of art is not to be apprehended as was the case with
the symbolic type as immediately primary, as art's _commencement_, but,
on the contrary, as its _result._ We have evolved it, consequently,
in the first instance from the course of the symbolic modes of
representation, which it presupposes. The essential feature on which
this process turned was the concentration of content in the elucidation
of an essentially self-conscious individuality, which can neither
employ for its expression the mere natural form, whether it be that of
the elements or animals, nor the defective and confused personification
of the human figure with it, but receives its expression in the
animation of the human body permeated throughout with the breath of
Spirit. Inasmuch, then, as the essence of freedom consists in this,
to be that which it is through its own resources, that which in the
first place appeared purely as the presupposition and condition of its
origin outside the sphere of classical art must take its place within
the circle peculiar to the same in order to make really visible the
true content and the genuine form by means of the subjection of what
is unconformable to and the negation of the Ideal. This process of
conformation through negation, this process by means of which, whether
we view it relatively to content or form, the genuine type of classical
beauty begets itself from its own substance is consequently our point
of departure, and we shall treat of that in our _first_ chapter.
In the _second_ chapter, on the other hand, we have reached by means of
this process the true Ideal of the classical type of art. We find here
as the central fact the fair and novel world of the gods of Greece,
which it will be incumbent on us to develop exhaustively from within,
both in its aspects of spiritual individualization, and those which are
related to the bodily form with which such individuality is immediately
associated.
In the _third_ place, however, the notion of classical art implies
conversely, along with this becoming of the beauty which springs from
itself, also the dissolution of that creation, which will carry us into
a further sphere, namely, that of the romantic type of art. The gods
and human individuals of classic beauty just as they rise so, too, pass
away once more from the art-consciousness, which in part turns round
in opposition to the aspect of Nature that still persists, in which
Greek art, in fact, had elaborated itself in the full perfection of
beauty, in part transcends an undeific[138], defective, and vulgar mode
of reality in order to reveal that which is false and purely negative
therein. In this dissolution, whose artistic activity we shall take as
the material of our third chapter, the specific phases in the process,
which created the truly classical type in that harmony presented by
the perfect fusion of immediate beauty, fall apart. The ideal essence
is made explicit on the one side in its independence of the external
mode of its existence on the other. Subjectivity withdraws into itself,
for the reason that it fails now to find an adequate realization in
the forms hitherto employed, and is constrained to enlarge itself with
the fuller content of a new spiritual world of absolute freedom and
infinity, looking about for novel means of expressing this profounder
grasp of its substance.
[Footnote 121: The central point, that is, in the entire evolution of
the types of art, classical art being intermediate between symbolic and
romantic art and in a certain sense marking a point of culmination.]
[Footnote 122: _Zu ihrem Inneren_, _i. e._, that which unites it as a
whole rather than is the purely external form. The Inward of man is the
notion of man, not the mere fact that he has a head and arms, etc.]
[Footnote 123: The "Nature-existence," as Hegel calls it.]
[Footnote 124: _Die Natur ist freilich heraus._ Nature is there
explicitly before us, but not all that is implied in Nature is made
explicit in the material world.]
[Footnote 125: _Sinnlichkeitslos_, "senseless" as devoid of or
abstracted from all sense.]
[Footnote 126: _Auf ihr festes Maas zurückgeführt._ To their own proper
standard or measure that strictly applies to them.]
[Footnote 127: I think this must be the meaning of _nützlich_ here. But
the passage is not an easy one.]
[Footnote 128: That is, the comparative type of art discussed at the
conclusion of the preceding section.]
[Footnote 129: That is, the Inward or ideal principle and the natural
externality.]
[Footnote 130: _Selbstständigkeit._ Self-consistency or independence
are perhaps better words here.]
[Footnote 131: That is, I suppose, the causal necessity as part of
natural evolution.]
[Footnote 132: _Bis zur zeitlichen gänzlichen Äußerlichkeit._]
[Footnote 133: These words contain no doubt the epitome of Hegel's
"Philosophy of Religion" and are involved in its difficulties.
The reference to the historical facts of Christianity under ideal
conceptions is obvious. I have translated the words _das Moment des
Natürlichen_ ... _zwar vorhanden seyn_ as a phasal moment of "a
process," but I am well aware that no mere amplification of this sort
can in itself make the words clear.]
[Footnote 134: _Das Freie._]
[Footnote 135: _Des besonnenen Menschen_, _i.e._, the man of clear
intelligence, sound sense, as we say.]
[Footnote 136: The words _dieser Gehalt ist selber nur der Erste_ would
seem to refer back to the expressions _Keine Erste und somit natürliche
Einheit._ But the sense is not very clear.]
[Footnote 137: _Deren Gattungen,_ their specific types.]
[Footnote 138: _Entgöttert_--a mode from which the Divine is removed.]
CHAPTER I
THE COMING INTO BEING OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL
In the notion of free Spirit is contained immediately that aspect of
the process of intelligence we may describe as self-introspection,
return upon the self, of being explicit as an object existing for the
self and in a determinate place, although this penetration into the
realm of subjectivity, as we have already observed, does not either
necessarily proceed to the length of making the subject essentially
self-substantive in its negative aspect as against all that is
concrete in Spirit and presented us as the stability of Nature, nor
to that absolute reconciliation which constitutes, the freedom of the
infinite subjectivity in truth. With the freedom of Spirit, however, in
whatever form it may appear, is generally associated the elimination
of that which is purely natural, regarded as that which is the Other
in contrast to Spirit. Spirit must in the first instance essentially
withdraw itself from Nature, uplift itself over, her boundaries and
overcome them, ere it can prevail with unfettered movement within those
bounds as within an element that is opposed to it, and can build itself
up in a positive mode of existence truly indicative of its own freedom.
If we further ask for a closer definition of the object through the
transcendence of which Spirit attains to its self-substantive form
in classical art we shall find this object is not Nature merely as
such, but rather a Nature that is already throughout suffused with
the significations of Spirit, in other words the symbolic type of
art, which made use of the immediately natural form as a means of
expressing the Absolute, its artistic consciousness either seeing in
animals and so forth the presence of gods, or striving vainly under
false modes toward the true unity of the spiritual and the natural. It
is through the removal and reformation of this defective association
that the Ideal for the first time presents itself as the Ideal, and
is forced to develop consequently this process of transcendence within
its own sphere as a phase of its own necessary evolution. Such a
consideration at once enables us to dispose of the question whether the
Greeks received this religion from extraneous sources or no. We have
already seen that subordinate conceptions are necessarily presupposed
in the very notion of classical art. These, in so far as they in truth
appear and are presented as factors of human history, are, as opposed
to the higher form, which strives to pass beyond them, the actual
starting-point of the new self-evolving art. And this is so, though
in the particular case of Greek mythology there is not throughout
historical evidence for these preliminary data. The relation, however,
of the Greek spirit to these presupposed data is essentially a relation
of construction and in the first instance of transformation. If this
were not so the conceptions and forms of the same had remained as they
were. It is true that Herodotus says, in a passage already cited, of
Homer and Hesiod, that they had created their gods for the Greeks,
but he also speaks expressly of particular gods, how this or that
one was Egyptian or some other form: the poetic activity does not
therefore exclude the reception of material from other sources, but
merely suggests an essential transformation. For the Greeks possessed
mythological conceptions before the time in which Herodotus places
those original poets.
If we inquire further into the more obvious aspects of this necessary
transformation of that which is undoubtedly involved with, but at first
still alien from, the Ideal, we find it set before us in naïve form as
content of mythology itself. The main fact of Greek theology is this,
that it creates itself and constitutes itself from that which has gone
before, which takes its place in the origins and process of its own
generic history. Incidental to this origination, in so far as the gods
are taken to be spiritual individualities in determinate bodily shape,
we find, on the one hand, that Spirit, instead of giving visibility
to its essence in that which is purely vital and animal, regards life
rather as an attribute which is insufficient[139], as its unhappiness
and death, and, on the other, that it is in the living thing that it
triumphs over the elements of Nature and its confused reproduction.
Conversely, however, it is equally necessary for the Ideal of the
classic gods, not merely to stand over against Nature and its elemental
powers as individual spirit in its finite and abstract seclusion, but
to possess itself the elements of the universal natural life notionally
as a phasal moment in the vital constitution of Spirit. As the essence
of the gods is essentially _universal_, and in this very universality
they are defined as individuals, it follows also that the aspect of
their bodily presence must essentially include at the same time the
natural as the essential and wide-reaching power of Nature, and as
vital activity intertwined with spirituality itself.
In this respect we may differentiate the process of embodiment followed
by the classical art-form under the following points of view.
The _first_ concerns the degradation of that which is purely animal,
and the removal of the same from the sphere of free and pure Beauty.
The _second_ more important aspect is related to the elemental itself,
in the first instance conceived as gods put before us as powers of
Nature, through whose conquest alone the genuine race of gods can
attain to undisputed mastery, that is in the war between the ancient
and new gods. But this negative tendency becomes, then, in the _third_
place, after Spirit has secured its free right, to the same extent
once again an affirmative force, and elemental Nature constitutes an
aspect of godhead permeated with individualized spirituality in order
to re-establish even the animal organism, though here only of an
attributive and external sign. Following the above points of view we
will now, if still at no great length, endeavour to emphasize the more
definite traits, which here come under consideration.
1. THE DEGRADATION OF ANIMALISM[140]
Among the Indians and Egyptians, among Asiatics generally we find
animalism, or at any rate specific kinds of animals regarded as
sacred and worshipped, because in them the Divine itself is taken
to be visible to sense. The animal form is consequently also a main
feature of their artistic representations, albeit they are in addition
merely used as symbolic and in association with human forms, in the
stage previous to that where we find the human, and only the human,
apprehended by consciousness as that which is alone true. It is only
in virtue of the self-consciousness of the spiritual that the respect
for the obscure and gloomy ideality of animal life disappears. This
has already taken place among the ancient Hebrews who regard, as we
have already observed, the whole of Nature neither as symbol nor as the
presence of God, and attach to external objects merely the powers and
vitality which in fact dwell within them. At the same time there still
remains even among them, if in accidental fashion, at least a vestige
of reverence for the living thing as such. We may illustrate this with
the fact that Moses forbids the use of animal blood as food for the
reason that life is centred in the blood. Man, however, is really under
a necessity to eat that which is his natural food. The next step which
we must draw attention to in this passage to classical art consists in
lowering the high worth and position of what is animal, and making this
degradation itself the content of religious conceptions and artistic
productions. And illustrative of this we find abundant examples from
which I shall merely offer the following selections.
(_a_) We find that among the Greeks certain animals appear conspicuous
among others, as the snake, for example, is presented us in the
sacrifices of Homer as an exceptionally beloved genius[141], and before
all others it is this species which is offered to one god, while
others are appropriated to some other. We find, further that the hare,
which runs across the way, birds observed in their flight to right
hand or left, and entrails are investigated as fruitful in prophetic
significance. All this, it is true, indicates a real reverence for the
animal type, since the gods communicate through them and speak to men
by means of omens. If we look at the heart of the matter, however,
we shall find these to be merely isolated revelations, suggestive of
superstition no doubt, but merely momentary hints of the Divine. On
the other hand, it is an important fact that animals are sacrificed
and the sacrificial flesh eaten. Among the Indians sacred animals are
on the contrary preserved alive as such, and taken care of, and among
the Egyptians they are even preserved after their death. For the Greek
it is the sacrifice which is sacred. In the sacrifice man demonstrates
that he is willing to give up a consecrated thing to his gods, and to
deprive himself wholly of the use of the same. And in this connection
we may observe a characteristic trait in the Greek rite, among which
people the sacrifice was observed as at the same time a hospitable
feast[142], only a part of the same being dedicate to the gods, that
is, the portion which it was assumed they alone could enjoy, while
the Greek himself retained and feasted upon the flesh. Out of this
circumstance originated a mythical tale in Greece. The ancient Greeks,
it is said, sacrificed with the greatest solemnity to the gods, and
suffered the entirety of the sacrificial animal to be consumed in the
flames. Not even the poorer suppliants dared contest this great waste.
So Prometheus endeavoured to obtain by request from Zeus, that they
were merely under an obligation to sacrifice a portion, and could
devote the remainder to their own uses. He slew two oxen, burnt the
liver of both, converted, however, all the bones into one, the flesh
into the remaining hide of the animals, and presented Zeus the choice.
Zeus, deceived by appearances, selected the bones because they were a
larger portion and left the flesh in this way for human consumption.
For this reason, when the flesh of sacrificial animals was consumed,
the remaining portions, which were devoted to the gods, were burnt up
in the same fire. Zeus, however, took away fire from men because by so
doing he made it impossible for them to celebrate their feast. Little
help the ruse gave him. Prometheus robbed him of the fire and in the
excess of his joy flew back faster than he sped thither; for which
cause, so the tale goes, the bringer of good news invariably brings
"speed" with him. In this way the Greeks have directed attention to
this progress in human culture and preserved and reclothed the same in
myth for the mind.
(_b_) We may connect with the above as a similar example of a yet
further degradation of animalism the traditions of famous _huntings_,
such as we find ascribed to heroes, and handed down as sacred to
grateful memory. In these the slaying of animals which appear as
injurious foes, such as the strangling of the Numean lion by Heracles,
the slaying of the Lernean hydra, the hunting of the Caledonian boar
are set forth as something famous, by means of which the heroes
contended for godlike rank, whereas the Hindoos punished with death
as a crime the slaughter of certain animals. Unquestionably there is
a further interplay of symbolism in deeds of this kind or they lie at
the base of them. In the case of Hercules there is the fact of the
sun and its course, so that such heroic actions supply an essential
aspect of symbolical interpretation. These myths are, however, at the
same time accepted in their express significance as beneficial hunts
and were consciously recognized as such by the Greeks. We must here
again in a similar relation recall certain fables of Aesop, especially
those already referred to of the dung beetle. The dung beetle, that
primitive Egyptian symbol, in whose balls of dung the Egyptians or the
interpreters of their religious conceptions saw the world balls, comes
in Aesop again before Jupiter, and with the important change that the
eagle does not respect his protector the hare. Aristophanes, on the
other hand, has wholly made fun of him.
(_c_) _Thirdly_, the degradation of the animal is directly indicated
in many of the tales of metamorphosis as Ovid has delineated them
for us in detail with grace and talent and fine traits of feeling
and intuition, but also composed in a rambling way without their
great and commanding ideal significance, treating them merely as the
sport of mythos and external fact and failing to recognize a deeper
significance. Such a deeper significance is, however, there, and we
will consequently, now we mention the subject, make further allusion to
it. For the most part the particular narratives are if we look at this
material, quaint and primitive, not so much on account of the depraved
condition of the culture, but rather, as in the Nibelungenlied,
on account of the condition of a still raw nature. As far as the
thirteenth book, according to their content, they are older than
the Homeric tales; add to this they are a medley of cosmogony and
heterogeneous elements of Phoenician, Phrygian, Egyptian symbolism,
treated no doubt in a human way, but in such wise that the uncouth
stock still remains, whereas the metamorphoses which enumerate tales of
a later period subsequent to the Trojan war, although their material is
also borrowed from fabulous times, clash awkwardly with the names of
Ajax and Aeneas.
(_α_) Generally speaking, we may regard the metamorphoses as a contrast
to the conception and worship implied in animalism. Looked at from
the ethical side of Spirit they include essentially the negative
attitude toward Nature, making the animal and other inorganic forms a
phase of human degradation. Consequently, if among the Egyptians the
gods of Nature's elements are exalted and made vital in animals, here
conversely, as we have already intimated, the natural form appears
before us as an easier or difficult lapse and a monstrous crime, as the
existence of an ungod-like, unfortunate thing, and as the embodiment of
pain, in which the human is no longer able to remain self-contained.
For this reason they have not the significance of the migration of
souls in the Egyptian sense of that expression; this is a migration
which does not imply guilt, but rather is on the contrary, if we take
the case of the passage of the human soul into the animal, regarded as
an exaltation.
As a whole, however, this is no severely exclusive circle of myths,
however different the objects of Nature may be, into which that which
is spiritual is banished. A few examples will sufficiently elucidate
the point.
Among the Egyptians the wolf plays a part of great importance, as,
for example, in the case where Osiris appears as beneficent protector
of his son Horus in the latter's conflict with Typhon, and in a whole
series of Egyptian coins is represented as the assister of Horus. And
speaking generally the association of the wolf and the sun-god is a
primitive one. In the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, on the other hand,
the conversion of Lycaon into the form of a wolf is presented us as
a punishment for his impiety. After the subjugation of the giants,
we are told[143], and after the annihilation of their bodily shapes
the Earth, warmed by the blood of its sons which had been scattered
in all directions, revitalized the warm blood, and, in order that no
vestige of the former wild stock should remain, brought into being a
race of men. Yet for all that was this after-birth contemptuous of the
gods, eager for savage deeds and murder. Then Jupiter called the gods
into conclave with a view to destroy this mortal race. He informed
them how Lycaon had cunningly formed stratagems against himself, the
wielder of the lightning and their sovereign lord. When, such is
the story, the worthlessness of the times was apparent to him, he
descended from Olympus, and came to Arcadia. "I furnished signs," the
narration continues, "that a god had drawn nigh and the people began to
supplicate." First, to make merry over these pious prayers was Lycaon,
who forthwith cried out: "I will make experiment whether this indeed
be a god or mortality, and the truth shall not remain in doubt." "He
made preparation," continued Jupiter, "to slay me when oppressed with
slumber; he was possessed with the passion for discovering the truth.
And not contented with this, he made an incision with his sword in the
throat of a goat of Molassian pedigree and boiled as to one part the
only partially dead members; and as to the rest baked them on the fire,
and placed both portions before me to eat. Wherefore I, with avenging
flame, have laid his homestead in ashes. Affrighted he fled forth from
thence, and when he reached the silent field he broke forth: in howls
and strove in vain to utter speech. With rage in his jaws and in the
eagerness of his animal lust for murder he turned against the cattle,
and rejoices even now in their blood; his garments have become the
hairy hide, and his arms have turned into thighs. He is a wolf, and
preserves the signs of the primitive shape."
The tale of Procne, who was changed into a swallow, sets before us the
gravity of the committed abomination with a like emphasis. When, so the
tale runs[144], Procne begs of her husband, Tereus--she happened at the
time to stand in his favour--that he will, forthwith let her go to see
her sister or suffer her sister to visit her, Tereus hastens to launch
his vessel on the sea and quickly reaches the harbour of Piraeus with
his seamanship. He, however, barely catches sight of Philomela before
he is violently enamoured of her. At his departure Pandion, the father,
binds him on oath to protect her with the love of a father, and to send
back as soon as possible the alleviation of his old age. The voyage,
however, is hardly over when the barbarous man deprives her--pale,
trembling, already fearful of the worst, and beseeching with tears to
know where her sister is--of liberty, and as twin-consort forces her
to be his concubine along with her sister. Overcome with anger and
thrusting all sense of shame on one side, Philomela threatens of her
own accord to betray the deed. Tereus on this draws his sword, seizes
and binds her and cuts off her tongue, informs, however, his wife by
way of evasion of the death of her sister. Thereupon the sorrowing
Procne tears off the fine linen from her shoulders and puts on mourning
apparel; she raises an empty tomb and in a mode somewhat out of place,
as it happens, laments the lamentable fate of her sister. How then does
Philomela meet this? A prisoner, robbed of all speech, of her voice,
she bethinks her of craft. With threads of purple she works the news
of the crime upon a white texture, and sends the raiment secretly to
Procne. The wife reads the heartrending news of her sister; she neither
speaks nor weeps; she lives wholly in the image of revenge. It was the
time of the festival of Bacchus. Driven forth by the furies of her
passionate grief she forces her way to her sister; she tears her from
her chamber and carries her off with her away. Then in her own house,
while she still is in doubt what terrible act of vengeance she shall
exact on Tereus, Itys appears before his mother. She stares upon him
with eyes of wildness. How like he is to his father! No further word
she utters, but consummates at once the doleful deed. They slay the
boy and serve him on his father's table, who partakes eagerly of his
own flesh and blood. He then calls for his son, and Procne exclaims
that he carries within him that which he calls for; and, as he still
looks about him and seeks after him and again asks and calls for him,
Philomela sets before his face the bloody head. Then he breaks away
from table with an awful cry of anguish, and weeps and calls himself
his son's sepulchre, and forthwith makes after the daughters of Pandion
with the naked steel. But now supplied with wings they float away from
thence, the one into the forest, the other into the roof; and Tereus
also, despite all the energy of his sorrow and desire of revenge, is
changed into the bird which rears on its crest the comb of feathers,
and carries a beak of immoderate projection. The name of the bird is
the hoopoe.
On the other hand, we have changes which proceed from a guilt of less
significance. As examples, there is Cygnus who became a swan, and
Daphne, the first love of Apollo[145], who was changed into the laurel,
Clyde into the heliotrope, Narcissus, who despised in his vanity
maidens, and sees himself in the watery mirror, and Biblis[146], who
was enamoured of her brother, and is, when he scorns her, changed into
the spring which even now bears her name and flows beneath the shading
oak.
However, we must not lose ourselves in further digression through
particular examples, and I will merely, by way of passage, and the
one further reference to the change of the Pierides, who, according
to Ovid[147], were the daughters of Pieros and challenged the Muses
to a match of rivalry. For ourselves the distinction of importance
is the nature of the songs which the combatants sang respectively.
The Pierides celebrate the battles of the gods[148] and honour the
giants unduly while they depreciate the deeds of the great gods.
Rising up from the depths of Earth, Typhoeus filled heaven with fear;
in a body the gods take flight from thence until, wearied out, they
rest on Egyptian soil. But here, too, so sang the Pierides, Typhoeus
arrives, and the high gods are fain to hide themselves in illusive
shapes. Jupiter was leader of the army, and for this reason, so ran
their refrain, the Lybian Ammon to this day is figured with crooked
horns; and in like manner the scion of Semele is changed into a ram,
the sister of Phoebus into a cat, Juno into a snow-white cow, Venus is
concealed in a fish, Mercury in the feathers of Ibis.
Here we find therefore the gods suffer reproach in their change
to animal form. Although their translation is not presented as a
punishment for a wrong or a crime, it is their cowardice which is held
forth to us as the reason of this self-imposed metamorphosis. Calliope,
on the other hand, exalts in song the good deeds and history of Ceres.
Ceres was the first, so ran the strain, to scour through the fields
with the crook-backed ploughshare; first was she to give fruits and
fruitful means of nourishment to the ploughed fields. First was she to
lay down laws for our guidance; we are collectively but a gift of her
wisdom. "Ah," she exclaims, "my task is to celebrate her, and yet how
shall I tune my strain worthy of such a goddess! Assuredly the goddess
is worthy of the singer's best." When she has finished, the Pierides
adjudge themselves victors in the contest: but even as they endeavour
to speak, and with loud cries, so Ovid informs us (v. 670), are
flourishing about with their hands, they perceive their nails passing
away into feathers, their arms become covered with down, while each is
aware that the mouth of the other is closing up into the stiff bill
of a bird: and while they are all for deploring their lot, they are
carried up on the waves of their wings, they float away, the screamers
of the woods, and as waifs of the air. And even unto this day, adds
our poet, they still retain their own glibness of tongue and excited
chatter, and infinite desire to gossip. In this way we find again also
here that metamorphosis is presented us as punishment, and, what is
more, is presented, as is so frequently the case with such stories, as
punishment due to religious impiety.
(_β_) If we consider further examples of still well recognized
metamorphoses of men and gods into animals, we shall find that,
although they do not directly imply any transgression as the cause
of such a change, as, for example, in the case where Circe possessed
the power to change men into animals, yet, for all that, the animal
condition is at least indicative of a misfortune and a humiliation,
such as brings no honour even to the person who makes such a change
subservient to private ends. Circe was quite a subordinate, obscure
type of goddess, and her power appears as mere witchery, and Mercury
assists Odysseus, when the latter contrives to free his comrades from
the spell. Of much the same kind are the many shapes which Zeus takes
upon himself, as, for example, when he is changed into a bull in his
quest of Europa, or when he approaches Leda in the form of a swan, or
fructifies the Danae in a shower of gold. In all these cases the object
is one of deception, directed by purposes of an inferior, that is to
say, not spiritual, but purely natural quality, purposes which the
ever constant jealousy of Juno render unavoidable. The conception of a
universal procreative life of Nature, which in many of the more ancient
mythologies constituted the leading motive, is imaginatively reproduced
in separate poetical tales about the easily enamoured disposition of
the father of gods and men, exploits, however, which he does not carry
through in his own or, for the most part, in human shape, but expressly
either in the shape of animals, or some other embodiment of Nature.
(_γ_) And, lastly, we may add to our list those hybrid forms, combining
both humanity and animalism, which are also not excluded from Greek
art, though the animality is here accepted as something that degrades,
is unspiritual. Among the Egyptians, for example, the he-goat, Mendes,
was revered[149], and, according to the opinion of Jablouski[150], in
the sense of the procreative power of Nature, generally speaking, as
that of the sun, and to such an outrageous excess that, according to
Pindar, even women sacrificed themselves to these creatures. Among the
Greeks, Pan, on the contrary, personifies the mysterious sense of the
divine presence, and later in the shape of fauns, satyrs, and Pan-like
figures, the goat shape only appeared in a subordinate way, such as
in the feet, and in the most beautiful representations was perhaps
limited to the pointed ears and little horns. The rest of the figure
is shaped in human guise, and the animal suggestion thrust back upon
the barest detail. Yet, for all that, fauns were not recognized among
the Greeks as gods of any important rank or spiritual forces; their
fundamental characteristic remained that of a sensuous, uncontrolled
joviality. It is true that they are also artistically represented with
an expression of profounder significance, as, for instance, that fine
example of one in Munich, which holds the youthful Bacchus in his arms,
and gazes down on him with a smile which is brimming over with love and
tenderness. He is not to be taken as the father of Bacchus, but merely
the foster-parent, and we find given him here the beautiful feeling of
joy in the innocence of the child, such as that which, in the maternal
devotion of Mary for the Christ babe, is exalted in romantic art to so
lofty a level of contemplation. Among the Greeks, however, this most
charming love still belongs to the subordinate sphere of fauns in order
to indicate that its origin is traceable from animal, that is natural,
life, and consequently is entitled to rank with such a sphere[151].
Mediate shapes of a similar kind are the centaurs, in which we may
also observe that the Nature-aspect of sensuality and desire is also
supremely prominent to the suppression of the spiritual side. Cheiron,
no doubt, is of a more noble type, a clever physician, and the tutor of
Achilles; but this instructive _rôle_, as the teacher of a child, is
not appropriate to godhead strictly, but is to be related with human
ability and cleverness.
In this manner the relation of the animal shape receives a modification
in classical art from whatever point of view we regard it. Its
prevailing employment is to indicate that which is evil, bad, inferior,
merely natural and unspiritual, whereas, outside Greece it was the
expression of the positive and absolute.
2. THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN DIVINITIES
The second grade of more elevated rank we may contrast with the
degradation of the animal condition consists in this, that the genuine
gods of classical art, inasmuch as they possess for their content a
free self-consciousness, which we may define as the power of spiritual
individuality reposing on its own resources, are also able to be
represented as subjects of knowledge and volition, that is as spiritual
potences. For this reason the _humanity_, in the bodily form of which
they are presented us, is not, as one may say, a mere form, which is
girt about this content by virtue of the imagination under a mode of
purely external validity, but is rooted in the significance, content,
and ideal substance itself. The divine, however, generally speaking, is
essentially to be apprehended us unity of the natural and spiritual;
both sides are involved in the conception of the Absolute; and it is
merely the different mode, under which this harmony is conceived, which
constitutes from our present point of view the respective grades of
the various forms of art and historic religions. According to our own
Christian way of looking at it, God is the creator and lord of Nature
and the spiritual world, and therewith, no doubt, exempted from the
immediate and determinate existence of Nature, for the reason that,
before all else, he is very God as the taking back into Himself of his
own fulness, that is as absolute and self-dependent Spirit; it is only
the finite and human spirit which stands in opposition to Nature as
a limit and a bound, a limitation which such only thereby overcomes
in his determinate existence, and exalts himself intrinsically to
the grade of infinity in so far as he grasps Nature contemplatively
in thought, and in the actual world[152] consummates the harmony
between spiritual idea, reason, the Good and Nature. This infinite
actualization is, however, God, in so far as the lordship over Nature
is strictly due to Him, and He Himself is conceived as explicit in this
infinite activity, and the knowledge and volition of such realization.
In the religions of strictly symbolic art, on the contrary, as we
have traced already, the union of the Inward and Ideal with Nature
was an immediate association, which consequently made use of Nature
both as regards its substance and form as its fundamental mode of
determination. In this sense the sun, the Nile, the sea, the Earth,
the natural processes of birth, death, procreation, and reproduction,
in short, all the varied changes of the universal life of Nature were
revered as divine existence and life. These Nature-forces, however,
were even in symbolic art personified, and consequently set up in
contrast to the spiritual. If, however, and nothing less than this
is the requirement of classical art, the gods are to be spiritual
individualities in harmony with Nature, mere personification is a
conception insufficient for this result. For personification, in
the case that its content is a purely universal force and activity
of Nature, persists as a mere form, unable to penetrate to the
constituting substance, and can neither give existence to the spiritual
content in the same, nor its individuality. We find therefore
necessarily in classical art a change of front[153], to the effect
that, in conformity with the degradation of the animal aspect we have
just been considering, the universal power of Nature also in one aspect
of it suffers humiliation, and the spiritual is proportionally exalted
in contrast to it. And by this means we find that it is the principle
of _subjectivity_, rather than mere personification, which becomes
the main mode of definition. From another point of view, however,
the gods of classical art do not cease to be potences of Nature,
because God here has not yet come to be represented as essentially
absolute and free spirituality. In the relation of a merely created
and ministrant creature to a lord and creator separated from it,
Nature stands, however, albeit deified, either as we have it in the
art of the Sublime--conceived as an essentially abstract, that is
purely ideal masterdom of one supreme substance, or--as in the case of
Christianity--exalted as concrete Spirit to absolute freedom within the
pure element of spiritual existence and personal actuality. Neither of
these examples falls in with the point of view of classical art. God
here is not as _yet_ lord of Nature, for the reason that he does not
as yet possess absolute spirituality either if regarded relatively to
what is contained in Him, or to the mode under which He is apprehended.
He is no longer lord of Nature, because the sublime relation of the
deified natural thing and human individuality has ceased, and taken
upon itself the limitations of beauty, in which their just due must
be rendered for art's representation without any tittle of loss to
both aspects, the universal and the individual, the spiritual and the
natural. Consequently in the god of classical art the nature-potency is
preserved, but is conceived as such not in the sense of the universal
and all-embracing Nature, but as the definable, and consequently
limited activity of the sun, sea, and so on, generally speaking, as
a particular natural potency, which is made visible as spiritual
individuality, and possesses this spiritual individuality as its
essential being.
For the reason, then, as we have already made clear, that the classical
Ideal is not immediately present, but first makes its appearance
through the process in which that which is negative to the formative
content of spirit is resolved, this transformation and building up
into new forms of that which is raw, unbeautiful, wild, grotesque,
purely natural, or fantastic, which originated in earlier religious
conceptions and views of art, will be a leading interest in Greek
mythology, and consequently will necessarily reproduce a readily
defined sphere[154] of particular significances.