In these selections, Hegel sketches his ideas on what he calls “romantic” art, his third type or period of art, and the corresponding arts of painting, music, and poetry.
Hegel’s use of the term “romantic” for his third stage can be misleading. Although he lived during the period we label “Romantic,” his association of his third stage with Christianity is a better guide to the period he had in mind: it begins with early Christian art in the late Roman empire and Byzantium and continues through the Middle Ages and Renaissance into the modern period.
• Like symbolic art, Hegel’s concept of romantic art is best understood by contrast with the classical type. So it would be a good idea before reading the selection devoted to this period (HK 434-436) to look back at the last couple of paragraphs of the section on classical art (HK 433f); there he mentions features of classical art that he refers to when discussing its limitations at the beginning of the section on romantic art. Also as in the case of symbolic art, you can expect Hegel to fill out his view of romantic art when he discusses the corresponding arts. But before turning to that be sure to note Hegel’s summary slogan for the three types of art in the last sentence of the section on romantic art (HK 436f). (The idea of the “romantic” in Hegel and others had many sources. One that can shed some light on the relation Hegel sees between the classical and romantic is Schiller’s distinction between “naive” and “sentimental” poetry; some selections from the work where he made that distinction appear at the end of this guide.)
• Hegel’s discussion of the arts corresponding to the romantic type begins (before a break between numbered sections) with the last full paragraph on HK 440. But you should look for relevant comments in the selection on the arts you read for last time, especially the paragraph preceding (a) on HK 438 and the example of the temple and its sculpture at the top and bottom of HK 439. As you read Hegel’s discussions of painting, music, and poetry think about both what distinguishes them as a group from architecture and sculpture and what distinguishes them from each other; that is, think about both what he says about these questions and what you think about them.
Finally, be sure not to miss Hegel’s claim that “art terminates” (HK 444). He means it. Not only does he think that the classical type of art higher than the others, he thinks that art itself is replaced by religion and philosophy in the self-realization of the Idea. Think whether something like this could be true. (We will encounter the idea of an “end of art” again when we read Danto in the last week of the semester.)
One topic to think about for discussion is the way Hegel orders painting, music, and poetry among the romantic arts. Putting this together with his concluding comments, his view seems diametrically opposed to Plotinus’s views concerning images and discursive knowledge (see Enneads V, 8.5-6, HK 156-157).
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selections from Schiller, “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry” (1795-6) |
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... It is in the fundamental idea of poetry that the poet is everywhere the guardian of nature. When he can no longer entirely fill this part, and has already in himself suffered the deleterious influence of arbitrary and factitious forms, or has had to struggle against this influence, he presents himself as the witness of nature and as its avenger. The poet will, therefore, be the expression of nature itself, or his part will be to seek it, if men have lost sight of it. Hence arise two kinds of poetry, which embrace and exhaust the entire field of poetry. All poets—I mean those who are really so—will belong, according to the time when they flourish, according to the accidental circumstances that have influenced their education generally, and the different dispositions of mind through which they pass, will belong, I say, to the order of the sentimental poetry or to naive poetry. ... I have previously remarked that the poet is nature, or he seeks nature. In the former case, he is a naive poet, in the second case, a sentimental poet. The poetic spirit is immortal, nor can it disappear from humanity; it can only disappear with humanity itself, or with the aptitude to be a man, a human being. And actually, though man by the freedom of his imagination and of his understanding departs from simplicity, from truth, from the necessity of nature, not only a road always remains open to him to return to it, but, moreover, a powerful and indestructible instinct, the moral instinct, brings him incessantly back to nature; and it is precisely the poetical faculty that is united to this instinct by the ties of the closest relationship. Thus man does not lose the poetic faculty directly he parts with natural simplicity; only this faculty acts out of him in another direction. ... As long as man dwells in a state of pure nature (I mean pure and not coarse nature), all his being acts at once like a simple sensuous unity, like a harmonious whole. The senses and reason, the receptive faculty and the spontaneously active faculty, have not been as yet separated in their respective functions: a fortiori they are not yet in contradiction with each other. Then the feelings of man are not the formless play of chance; nor are his thoughts an empty play of the imagination, without any value. His feelings proceed from the law of necessity; his thoughts from reality. But when man enters the state of civilization, and art has fashioned him, this sensuous harmony which was in him disappears, and henceforth he can only manifest himself as a moral unity, that is, as aspiring to unity. The harmony that existed as a fact in the former state, the harmony of feeling and thought, only exists now in an ideal state. It is no longer in him, but out of him; it is a conception of thought which he must begin by realizing in himself; it is no longer a fact, a reality of his life.... ... |
Nature has granted this favor to the naive poet, to act always as an indivisible unity, to be at all times identical and perfect, and to represent, in the real world, humanity at its highest value. In opposition, it has given a powerful faculty to the sentimental poet, or, rather, it has imprinted an ardent feeling on him; this is to replace out of himself this first unity that abstraction has destroyed in him, to complete humanity in his person, and to pass from a limited state to an infinite state. They both propose to represent human nature fully, or they would not be poets; but the naive poet has always the advantage of sensuous reality over the sentimental poet, by setting forth as a real fact what the other aspires only to reach. Every one experiences this in the pleasure he takes in naive poetry. We there feel that the human faculties are brought into play; no vacuum is felt; we have the feeling of unity, without distinguishing anything of what we experience; we enjoy both our spiritual activity and also the fulness of physical life. Very different is the disposition of mind elicited by the sentimental poet. Here we feel only a vivid aspiration to produce in us this harmony of which we had in the other case the consciousness and reality; to make of ourselves a single and same totality; to realize in ourselves the idea of humanity as a complete expression. Hence it comes that the mind is here all in movement, stretched, hesitating between contrary feelings; whereas it was before calm and at rest, in harmony with itself, and fully satisfied. But if the naive poet has the advantage over the sentimental poet on the score of reality; if he causes really to live that of which the other can only elicit a vivid instinct, the sentimental poet, in compensation, has this great advantage over the naive poet: to be in a position to offer to this instinct a greater object than that given by his rival, and the only one he could give. All reality, we know, is below the ideal; all that exists has limits, but thought is infinite. This limitation, to which everything is subject in sensuous reality, is, therefore, a disadvantage for the naive poet, while the absolute, unconditional freedom of the ideal profits the sentimental poet. No doubt the former accomplishes his object, but this object is limited; the second, I admit, does not entirely accomplish his, but his object is infinite.... |