The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
In contrast with sculpture it
is yet of more vital importance to the arts of painting, music, and
poetry, that they should display the inmost complexity of character,
and real artists of every age have recognized this. In Shakespeare's
"Romeo and Juliet," for example, the most pathetic characteristic of
Romeo is his love: but he is also placed before us under relations of
the greatest contrast, whether it be in reference to his parents, his
friends, his love troubles, or his affair of honour in which he fights
with Tybalt, his attitude of deference and trust to the monk, nay, even
on the verge of the grave his conversation with the apothecary, from
whom he purchases the poison. Throughout he is the same worthy and
noble man of deep emotions. In the same way the character of Juliet
is unfolded throughout the range of her relations to father, mother,
nurse, the Count Paris, and father Lawrence. And, despite of this, she
is as deeply immersed[362] in her one preoccupation as she is in every
one of these situations, and her entire character is transpierced with
and carried away by the one single emotion, her passionate love for her
lover, which is as deep and broad as the unbounded sea, so that it is
but the simple truth when she exclaims, "The more I give, the more I
possess, both are infinite."
From all this it appears that even when there is but one pathos
visible, it must unfold itself as the wealth of all it possesses. And
this is what really happens even in lyrical poetry, where we find the
pathos is not attached to actions determined by positive circumstances
and conditions. For in this latter case the pathos can only assert
itself as the spiritual state of an emotional nature otherwise complete
in itself, which is, that is to say, free to express itself in any
other conceivable circumstance and situation which may confront it.
The use of words of vital significance, an imagination which can
associate itself with all the world, can restore the Past to the
Present, can transform the entire external environment of man's life
to a symbolical expression of his spirit, can bravely adventure into
the depths of comprehensive thought, and, while doing so, reveal an
exuberant, capacious, clear, exalted, and noble nature--a wealth of
character such as this, freely expressing such a world, is a prize
indeed for the Lyric Muse. No doubt a purely logical reflection may
find it impossible that such, variety of character should co-exist
with a masterful clearness of type. We may be asked, for instance,
in reference to the heroic character of Achilles, whose strength of
youth is the pre-eminent, trait of his beauty, how it is possible to
reconcile the tender heart so manifest in his relations to his father
and his friend with the cruel act of revenge wherewith he drags Hector
round the walls. Precisely the same kind of inconsequence is to be met
with in Shakespeare's clowns. They are, with scarcely an exception,