The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
flee away." This _naïveté_ is to be met with in many of the comparisons
of Ossian. Take for example the words: "Thou art as snow on the
heather; thine hair is as mist on the kromla, when he curls himself up
on the rock, and glistens toward the gleam in the West; thine arms are
as two arrows in the halls of the mighty Fingal."
Of the same kind, only here in wholly a rhetorical way, are the
following words Ovid places in the mouth of Polyphemus (Met. XIII,
vv. 789-807): "Thou art more white, O Galatea, than the leaf of the
snow-white meadowland; more blooming than the fields, more slender than
the elm; more brilliant than glass, more arch than the tender little
roebuck; smoother than the shell ever-polished by the sea; more dear
than Winter's sun, or the shade in Summer; nobler than the fruit-tree,
more comely than the lofty plane." And so on through all the nineteen
hexameters, a description not wanting in rhetorical beauty, but as
the presentation of an emotion, which rouses little interest, itself
equally lacking in interest.
We may find many examples of this style of comparison in Calderon,
although a halt, by the way, of this kind is more suitable to lyrical
emotion simply, and fetters the march of drama far too insistently,
if it is not actually motived by the subject-matter. Don Juan, for
instance, during the progress of the action, describes at length in
this way the beauty of a veiled lady whom he had followed. This is what
he says to a third person:
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Natheless in despite and often
Through the gross and barriered darkness
Of that intranslucent veil,
Flashed a hand of sheen most splendid,
Mistress pure of rose and lily,
Princess, to whose matchless glory
E'en the snow's gleam paid obeisance,
Slave all murk of Aethiop moulding.
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