The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
On the other hand this abstractness of the relation makes present
to consciousness no less markedly how the Idea stands relatively to
natural phenomena as an alien; and albeit it expatiates in all these
shapes, having no other means of expression among all that is real, and
seeks after itself in their unrest and defects of genuine proportion,
yet for all that it finds them inadequate to meet its needs. It
consequently exaggerates natural shapes and the phenomena of Nature in
every degree of indefinite and limitless extension; it flounders about
in them like a drunkard, and seethes and ferments, doing violence to
their truth with the distorted growth of unnatural shapes, and strives
vainly by the contrast, hugeness, and splendour of the forms accepted
to exalt the phenomena to the plane of the Idea. For the Idea is here
still more or less indeterminate, and unadaptable, while the objects of
Nature are wholly definite in their shape.
Hence, on account of the incompatibility of the two sides of ideality
and objective form to one another, the relation of the Idea to the
other becomes a _negative_ one. The former, being in its nature ideal,
is unsatisfied with such an embodiment, and posits itself as its inward
or ideally universal substance under a relation of _sublimity_ over and
above all this inadequate superfluity of natural form. In virtue of
this sublimity the natural phenomena, of course, and the human form and
event are accepted and left simply as they are, but at the same time,
recognized as unequal to their significance, which is exalted far above
all earthly content.
These features constitute in general terms the character of the
primitive artistic pantheism of the East, which, on the one hand,
charges the meanest objects with the significance of the absolute
Idea, or, on the other, compels natural form, by doing violence to its
structure, to express its world-ideas. And, in consequence, it becomes
bizarre, grotesque, and deficient in taste, or turns the infinite but
abstract freedom of the substantive Idea contemptuously against all
phenomenal existence as alike nugatory and evanescent. By such means
the significance cannot be completely presented in the expression, and
despite all straining and endeavour the final inadequacy of plastic
configuration to Idea remains insuperable. Such may be accepted as the
first type of art--symbolic art with its yearning, its fermentation,
its mystery, and sublimity.