The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
(_γ_) Consequently, we have before everything else the demand made
on the dramatic _poet_ in his creative capacity, that to the fullest
extent his intelligence is awake to that ideal and universal substance
which is at the root of human ends, conflicts, and destinies. He must
fully acquaint himself with all the contradictions and developments
which the particular action will, under the proposed conditions,
necessarily involve and display. He must not merely be aware of them
in so far as they originate in personal passion and the specific
characterization of particular individuals, or as he finds such
related to the actual content of human designs and resolves; but also
in so far as they are simply referable to the external relations
and circumstances of concrete life. And, along with this, it should
be within his powers to recognize what the real nature of these
paramount forces are, which apportion to man the just guerdon of his
achievements. The rightful claim, no less than the wrongful misuse
of the passions, which storm through the human heart, and excite to
action, must lie disclosed to him with equal clarity, in order that
precisely in those cases where the ordinary vision can only discover
the ascendancy of obscurity, chance, and confusion, he, at least, will
find revealed the actual selfaccomplishment of what is the essence of
reason and truth itself. It follows, therefore, that the dramatic poet
ought as little to confine his efforts to the indefinite exploration
of the depths of emotional life, as the one-sided retention of any
single exclusive mood of soul-life, or any limited partiality in
the type of his sense-perception and spiritual outlook generally.
He ought, rather, to exclude nothing from his vision that may be
embraced by the widest expansion of Spirit conceivable. And this is
so because the spiritual powers which are exclusively distinct in the
mythological Epos, and which, by virtue of the many-sided aspects of
_actual individualization_[4]tend to lose the _clear definition_ of
their significance, assert themselves in dramatic poetry in consonance
with their simple substantive content as pathos altogether, and as
apart from individual characters. The drama is, in fact, the resolution
of the one-sided aspect of these powers, which discover their
self-stability in the dramatic character. And this is so whether, as
in tragedy, they are opposed to such in hostility, or, as in comedy,
they are displayed within these characters themselves, without further
mediation, in a condition of resolution.
(_b_) _Dramatic Composition_
In discussing the drama as a concrete work of art, I propose to
emphasize, briefly, the following fundamental points:
_First_ there is the unity of the same viewed in contrast to that of
the Epos and the lyric poem.
_Secondly_, we have to consider the articulation of its parts, of its
separate parts and their development.
_Thirdly_, there is the external aspect of diction, dialogue, and
verse-measure.