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
disruption, constitutes the element of prose in the mutual relation of
the two sides. A noble mind or a virtuous soul to whom the realization
of self-conscious life is denied in a world of vice and folly, turns
away from the existence which thus confronts him with passionate
indignation, or more subtle wit and more frosty bitterness, and either
is wroth with or scorns a world which gives the lie direct to his
abstract notions of virtue and truth.
The type of art which accepts this sudden outburst of opposition
between a subjectivity still finite in its mode and a degenerate world
outside it as its matter is the _Satire_, the ordinary theories as to
which have little to commend them, for the simple reason that they
break down precisely where we look for their assistance. Satire has
nothing to do with epic poetry, and it has just as little affinity
with lyric. In the Satire it is not the life of the emotional nature
which is expressed; rather the general conception of goodness and what
is essentially needful, which it no doubt blends with the particular
aspect of soul-life[205], appears as the virtuousness of this or that
individual; but this does not suffer itself to be enjoyed in the open
and unhampered beauty of imaginative conception or let that enjoyment
issue freely. Rather with discontent it retains the existing discord
between the writer's own state of mind and its abstract principles
and the empirical reality which mocks them. To this extent satire
is neither a genuine creation of the poet nor a real work of art.
For these reasons the point of view of the satirical poem can never
be reached satisfactorily through those other types of poetry just
mentioned; it must be apprehended in a more general way as the example
of this very transitional form we referred to from the classic Ideal.