The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2. THE SITUATION
The ideal world-condition which it is the function of art to present in contrast to prosaic reality we may conclude from our previous discussion to be merely a general background of society of a specific kind; it is merely the _possible_ condition necessary for the particular presentation, not the presentation itself. What we have hitherto directed attention to is, in fact, the general background upon which the living figures of art may appear. It is undoubtedly fructified with individuality and is supported by its self-subsistency; but as a _general_ condition it is not yet the active movement of particular individuals in the very form of life, just as we may say that the temple which Art erects is not as yet the representation of the personal godhead, but only encloses the germ of the same. For this reason we must in the first instance regard this world-condition as a kind of medium in repose, a harmony, so to speak, of forces which are operative in it, and to this extent it possesses a substantial consistency of uniform worth, which, however, must not be accepted as identical with what has been called "the age of innocence."
For it is a condition in the fulness and sovereignty of whose ethical atmosphere the terrors of division only are slumbering because, in our contemplation of it, we have before us, for the first time, the aspect of its substantial unity, and consequently are only presented with individuality in its most universal terms, a mode of viewing it which makes it fade away as though without definition or any essential disturbance of its unity, instead of giving to it the full value of definite characteristics. But such characterization is essential to individuality. And if the Ideal is to appear as _definite form_ it is necessary for it to escape from such pure universality, or in other words for it to give the universal a particular expression, and by so doing impart to it both existence and appearance. Art consequently has in this connection not only to translate into its medium a _universal_ world-condition, but must proceed beyond this quite indefinite conception to the composition of pictures of _definite_ character and action.
Regarded from the aspect under which it affects _individual_ character this general condition is the environment of circumstance which, according to its specifically detached form, tends to excite both collisions and development, forcing thereby the individuals thus affected to express their _nature_ and exhibit such expression in a definite form. From the point of view of the world-condition this self-revelation of particular individuals appears as the passing of its universality into the distinct embodiments of living individuality, an aggregate over which _universal forces_ still assert the _mastery._[311] For the eternal powers operative in the world-process constitute the substantive content of the Ideal as specifically defined in what it essentially is. The mode of existence, however, which is realized through the bare form of external condition is unworthy of this content. For in the first place such a condition is associated with habit, and the habitual is no adequate determination of those profounder interests which are active in _self-conscious mind._ Furthermore, as we have observed, it was the _contingency_ and _caprice_ of individuality, by virtue of whose spontaneous activity these very interests are permitted to appear in life; but this unessential contingency and caprice is again quite as little adequate to the substantive universality, which constitutes the notion of essential actuality. On these grounds respectively we are therefore compelled to seek an art-envisagement more worthy and better defined for the concrete content[312] of the Ideal.
This new configuration the universal powers can only retain in its _determinate existence_ in virtue of the fact that they are manifested in their essential modes of difference and movement, or, to put the matter more specifically, through their assertion of the contradictions which they relatively unfold. Two aspects of the process of individualization into which the universal thus passes must be here emphasized. In the first place, there is the _substance_ as an embracing sphere of universal forces through the differentiation indicated, which is broken from its substantive unity into its component parts; secondly, there are the _individuals_, which spring forth as the active completion of these forces and give to them a specific objectification. Now what we have characterized as the difference and opposition in which the world-condition, hitherto harmonious with the individuals conditioned by it, is involved, if we consider it from the point of view of universal condition, is the manifestation of the _essential content_ which it carries in itself. On the other hand we observe that the substantive universal in that condition is articulated through particular units in such a way that this very universal procures for itself determinate existence, albeit it is thus immersed in the appearance of chance, disunion, and division, an appearance, which, however, is rendered nugatory by the fact that it is the universal which thus appears.
The separation of these forces and their objectification[313] in individuals can, however, further take place under definite conditions and circumstances, under which and as a constituent aspect of which the entire objective appearance receives a determinate form, or as the stimulative impulse of this very realization. By themselves such circumstances are without interest[314], and it is only through their relation to mankind that they receive such a significance, through whose self-consciousness the content of these spiritual forces is carried actively into objective appearance. The external circumstances are consequently only to be regarded of significance in so far as they supply an essential relation to Spirit, in so far, that is to say, as they are comprehended by those individual units and afford them a stimulus to actualize their inward _spiritual_ needs, the aims, ideas, the determinate substance, in short, of all that requires an individual embodiment. Regarded as a stimulating influence of this kind particular circumstances and conditions create what we have called the _situation_, which is specifically presupposed in the actual self-expansion and activity of all that still lies undeveloped in the universal world-condition; it is for this reason we have considered the previous determination of the notion of the situation as necessary to any inquiry into the true constituents of _action._
The situation expressed in general terms is in one aspect of it the circumstance _particularized_ to the point of _definite character_, and under this characterization it is, to put it another way, the stimulating impulse to a particular expression of content, which it is the function of artistic presentation to transmute into a specific form of existence. Looked at from this latter point of view especially the situation offers a wide field for contemplation, inasmuch as it has ever been one of the most essential objects of art to discover situations of real interest, that is to say, of such a kind as will present to us the profound and weighty interest, the truest content of spiritual life. The requirements of the several arts in this respect no doubt differ. Sculpture, for example, is pre-eminently limited in its reference to the inwardly detailed variety of situations. Painting and music are already operative in a freer and more comprehensive medium. Finally, we are least able among them all to exhaust the possibilities of poetry in this respect. Since we have not yet arrived at that portion of our subject where we deal directly with the specific arts, it will be sufficient here to draw attention to a few of the most general aspects of that inquiry, which we may subdivide in the following manner.
_First_, we would observe that the situation still retains the form of _universality_ and thereby of _indeterminacy_, so long as it is undeveloped and without definite characterization; we have, consequently, at first present before us a situation which is without situation. For the form of indeterminacy is itself only _one_ form as opposed to its contradiction of determinacy, and is shown to be, by virtue of this very contrast, a one-sided aspect which as such possesses a determinate relation. _Secondly_, however, the situation passes in separation away from this universality, and becomes certainly determinate to that extent, but at first with a determinacy which produces no destructive consequences, that is to say, it is one which offers no stimulus to _active opposition_ and its necessary resolution. _Thirdly_, we find the element of _disunion_ in all its vigour creating by the definition of its opposed characteristics the essence of the situation, which thereby is carried into a _collision_, which again proceeds to reactions, and, as such, forms the point of departure to the conception of artistic action properly so called. We may, in fact, characterize the situation generally as the _intermediate plane_ between the universal world-condition still in a state of equilibrium, and the concrete action unfolded in all its tendency to movement and reaction, a position which gives to it the characteristics of both extremes, and enables us to pass over from the one to the other.
As an illustration of this the situation of the Belvedere Apollo is seized at the moment when he moves forward in wrathful majesty after slaying the Python with his arrow. A situation of this kind has not the grandiose simplicity of the earlier Greek sculpture, which asserts for our intelligence the repose and open clarity of the gods by means of expressed actions of less significance. Take the case of Aphrodite peacefully gazing at herself while emerging from her bath in full possession of her charms; or of fauns and satyrs at play, play that is wholly absorbed in itself; or of that famous satyr who dandled the young Bacchus in his arms, while he looks down upon him with infinite tenderness and grace; to say nothing of the endless variety of unconstrained activities in which Eros is depicted. Such are a few examples of this type of situation. If the action is of more concrete character we are confronted with a more involved situation, which, at least for the artistic presentment of the Greek gods as self-substantive powers, is less appropriate. In a case of this kind the pure universality of the individual god is less able to transpierce the accumulated detail of the particular action which he expresses.
The Mercury of Pigalli, which is a present of Louis XV to the exposition of statuary in Sanssouci, is fastening on his winged sandals. This is a perfectly harmonious action. The Mercury of Thorwaldsen, on the contrary, is depicted under a situation which is almost too complicated for sculpture. He listens attentively to the flute of Marsyas. At the same time he is craftily spying him to see how he may slay him while his hand grasps maliciously for the dagger he has concealed. In opposition to this, if we may add one more illustration from a more modern work of art, is that representation by Rudolf Schadow, of a maiden binding her sandals in much the same simple manner as we find in the case of Mercury. In this example the naïveté of the situation does not contain the interest we experience when it is a god who exhibits such unconstrained action. When it is only a maiden who fastens her sandals or spins, there is little else to engage our attention but the simple action, which is by itself of little significance or importance.
It is through the medium of "Werther" that Goethe has elaborated the convulsions and anguish of his own heart, incorporated, in short, the facts of his own experience in a work of art. This, after all, is true of every lyrical poet; he gives poetical expression to that which nearly affects him, and thereby throws the windows of his heart open to the fresh air. That which has hitherto been sealed up within is released in the external object, from which our humanity has freed itself, just as we are the lighter for the rain of tears, in which the sorrow is wept away. So Goethe, as in fact he has told us himself, by his composition of Werther, liberated himself from the mastery and pressure of his heart troubles. At the same time we must point out that this last-mentioned situation is not really appropriate to the type with which we are now dealing; it obviously presents the profoundest contradiction in itself which calls for resolution. No doubt in the kind of lyrical situation we have identified with "the occasional" we may have declared a circumstance objectively determined, in other words, an activity in close relation to the external world; but, on the other hand, we find the poetic temperament equally able to withdraw itself within the atmosphere it creates wholly free from its external environment, and to make that inward world which is the combined product of circumstance and emotion its true point of departure.
The _collision_ arises, as we are now considering it, in an act of _violation_, which is unable to retain its character as such, but is compelled to find a new principle of unity; it is a change in the previously existent condition of harmony, a change which is still in process. The collision is, however, not an _action_, and is to be taken simply as stimulus to action to all that characterizes the situation. And this is true, although the contradiction in which the collision is enclosed may be the result of previous action. As an example of this we may cite the trilogies of the ancients, which carry forward the main theme by presenting at the close of one drama the collision which forms the stimulative impulse of the next, which, in its return, renders necessary the resolution which is carried out by the third. And, moreover, for this very reason that the collision always requires some resolution attendant on this conflict of opposing elements, the more a situation is full of it the more it is peculiarly adapted to the subject-matter of dramatic art, it being the especial claim of that art to present beauty in its completest and profoundest development. Sculpture, on the contrary, is not wholly suited to give embodiment to any action, through which the great spiritual forces are manifested either in their division or reconciliation, and indeed the art of painting, despite its more extended spatial significance, is only able to objectify a single moment of action.
These situations of tragic significance introduce a peculiar difficulty in dealing with them which is inherent in their very conception. For inasmuch as they obviously arise from violations of the world-condition they offer to our consideration circumstances which are unable to continue as they are, which render necessary something of a remedial nature to reclothe them. But the beauty of the Ideal consists precisely in its undisturbed unity, repose, and consummation with itself. The collision, on the other hand, disturbs this harmony of what is truly real and ethical, and drives this unity of the Ideal into discord and opposition. Through the representation of such disruption the Ideal itself suffers violation. The function of art will undoubtedly consist partly in preventing the entire destruction of free beauty in this difference, and partly in only carrying this breach of unity and the conflict it occasions to a point in which harmony may again be recovered as the result of such a conflict and its resolution, and in this way become manifest for the first time in its essential perfection. It is, however, impossible to determine on a general principle the precise limit to which such discordance may be carried inasmuch as the several arts in this respect preserve their independent character.
The medium of the subjective idea can support a far intenser disruption than that of the plastic arts[318]. In other words, poetry is quite within its right when it breaks up the unity of the world of the imagination even to the point of the extremest form of desperation, and in its delineation of external objects to that of absolute ugliness. In the case of the plastic arts, on the contrary, in painting, that is to say, and even more so in sculpture, the external form remains in unalterable fixity; it can neither be removed nor lightly passed over in such a way that it again disappears. Under such conditions it would be a serious defect to represent once and for all an ugliness, which could not possibly be transmuted. Consequently all that would be quite compatible in dramatic poetry, which is able to represent a momentary appearance that again vanishes, is not within the province of the plastic arts. In discussing the more obvious types of collision we can only in this portion of our inquiry indicate the most general points of view. We would particularly draw attention to three fundamental aspects under which they may be co-ordinated. _First_, there are those collisions which proceed from purely _natural_, that is to say, physical conditions, in so far as these are characterized with qualities which are negative or evil and consequently discordant.
_Secondly_, we have collisions which are of a _spiritual_ nature, but which depend on _natural_ conditions, conditions which may in themselves have a positive[319] character yet for the spirit contain within themselves the seeds of difference and contradiction. _Thirdly_, there are divisions which are caused entirely by disruption in the Spirit alone; to these alone we are justified in attaching the peculiar interest of contradiction which is bound up with genuine _human activity_. (_α_) Now with reference to the first type of conflicting forces--for the reason that here it is only external Nature, through the maladies and other evils and infirmities which are incidental to her creating, conditions which destroy the pre-existent harmony of life, replacing such with a state of antagonism--such can at most merely serve as a stimulus for something outside them. Regarded wholly by themselves such collisions are of no interest; they are the subject-matter of art simply for the sake of the disruption which may follow as a _consequence_ of some natural misfortune. The "Alcestis" of Euripides, we may add, too, that of Gluck, the subject of whose opera is practically the same, are examples of this; in both the sickness of Admetus is necessarily presupposed. That sickness merely by itself could not fitly supply a subject for artistic treatment. It only becomes, even in the handling of Euripides, associated with it by virtue of the individual characters, who, on account of such misfortune, are compelled to face a further collision. It is the word of the oracle that Admetus must die unless another will pass to the underworld for his sake.
Alcestis, out of love for her husband, devotes herself to such a sacrifice, resolves to die, in order to restrain Death from touching her beloved, the father of her children, the king. In the Philoctetes of Sophocles a physical malady is also the cause of the collision. Here the Greeks during their voyage to Troy place the man who is suffering from a wounded foot, caused by the serpent's bite in Chrysas, on the island of Lemnos. In this case, too, the physical mishap is merely the extreme meeting point and incentive of a further collision. For, according to the prophecy, Troy can only fall when the arrows of Hercules are in the hands of the storming army. Philoctetes refuses to give them up because he has been compelled for nine years to suffer the martyrdom of his banishment. This refusal, no less than the fact of his unrighteous desertion from which it springs, could have been followed by every variety of result other than that which took place; the real interest accordingly does not centre in the malady and its physical necessity, but in the opposition which arises from the refusal of Philoctetes to surrender the arrows. The case of the plague in the Greek camp before Troy is very similar; although this is already represented entirely as the consequence of former transgression, as a punishment, in short, a mode of statement more adapted to epic than dramatic poetry, nevertheless it is closely associated with evils incidental to natural misfortune such as storm, shipwreck, and drought. As a rule, however, art will not represent such mischance as mere accident, but rather as an obstruction and misfortune whose necessity simply consists in assuming precisely this particular form rather than another.
When Œdipus, for example, leaves the throne of Thebes without a ruler, he leaves his two sons confronting each other with a right and claim of equal strength. The brothers arrange to occupy the throne alternately from year to year. Eteocles, however, breaks the compact and Polynices brings an army against Thebes to enforce his right. The antagonism of brothers has always been in the history of art a fruitful source of collision; it commences indeed with the story of Cain who slew his brother Abel. In the tale of Shah-Rameh, the earliest example we have of a Persian book of heroic legend, it is a contention of throne succession which is the source of the most varied conflicts. In this Feridu divided the Earth among his three brothers. Selm receives as his portion Rum and Chawer; Turan and Osin are given to Thur, and Fredysh becomes lord of the Earth from Iran. All three, however, claim the land which belongs to his brothers, and endless quarrels and wars are the result. In the Middle Ages we find just the same countless examples of family and dynastic broils. Such dissensions, however, appear in themselves to be due to accidental circumstance.
It is not necessary that brothers should be at enmity; particular circumstances and more important causes must be attached, such as the in itself tragic birth of the sons of Œdipus, or, as we find in "the Bride of Messina," the author is at pains to shift the quarrel of the brothers on to still more fateful circumstances. In Shakespeare's "Macbeth" a similar collision is the foundation of the tragic dénouement. Duncan is king and Macbeth, as his nearest and oldest relation, is consequently heir to the throne with a right precedent even to Duncan's sons. The primary incentive of Macbeth's crime is the wrong which the king has done him in naming his own son as heir to the throne. This justification of Macbeth, which is supported by the chronicles of the time, Shakespeare has entirely passed over, because, it was solely his object to bring into startling relief the repulsive aspect of Macbeth's ambitious passion, in order thereby to make his work agreeable to King James, who would be naturally interested in finding the crime of Macbeth depicted without extenuating circumstances. As a consequence we can find no sufficient reason why, under Shakespeare's handling of the subject, Macbeth fails to murder the sons of Duncan no less than their father, lets them escape in fact; nor can we understand why they are wholly overlooked by the nobles. However, the entire collision upon which, the drama of Macbeth turns carries us beyond the particular type which we are now mainly considering.
The differences which obtain between classes, such as the ruled and the rulers, are, no doubt, essential to the notion of state-life, and are founded on reason, for they are caused by the inevitable articulation of the organic community, and assert themselves as such through the specific forms of occupation, disposition, modes of life, and general levels of education in all their branches. It is another matter, however, when these differences as they affect individuals are determined absolutely by the accident of birth, so that the individual man from the very start is not on account of any quality in himself, but solely through the accident of Nature, irrevocably relegated to a particular class or caste. In such a case it is obvious these differences appear as innate and are, moreover, though purely external, girt with force in its highest and most aggressive mode. We are not bound to ask ourselves how this fixity and compulsive restraint came originally into existence. For the nation may originally have been united, and the natural distinction between freeman and serf been only evolved at a later time, or the difference between castes, classes, and privileged persons may have grown out of earlier distinctions of nations and races, as many are inclined to think is the explanation of the caste distinctions of India.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.