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 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 is 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).
Selections from Schiller, “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry” (1795-6)—trans. by C. Hempel in Schiller’s Complete Works, vol. II, (Philadelphia: I. Kohler, 1861), pp. 549-79
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Poets are by their calling the preservers of nature. Where they are no longer able to preserve nature, and where they have experienced in their own persons the destructive influence of conventional forms, or have had to contend against it, they will rise up as the witnesses and avengers of nature. Either they will therefore be nature, or seek nature after it had been lost. Hence arise two entirely different forms of poetry, which encompass and exhaust the whole domain of this art. All poets, if they are naturally called to be poets, will either belong to the naive, or to the sentimental class, according as is the character of the age in which they flourish, or according as accidental circumstances have an influence upon their general culture and upon their passing mood. [p. 555]
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I have said that a poet either is nature or else will seek her. The former makes him a naive, the latter a sentimental poet.
The poetical spirit is immortal and will never be lost in humanity; it could only be lost, if humanity itself or the capacity for human feelings, should be lost. For although man, in consequence of the freedom inherent in his imagination and understanding, recedes from the simplicity, truth, and uniform regularity of nature, yet the road to nature not only remains open to him, but a powerful and inextinguishable impulse, which is the moral impulse, stimulates him unceasingly to return to nature; it is with this impulse that the poetic faculty is in the closest relation. Hence this faculty does not become extinct at the same time that the original simplicity is lost, it only becomes active in another direction. [p. 557]
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As long as man continues to be pure nature with which we should not confound raw or savage nature, he acts as an undivided sensual unit and harmonious whole. The senses and reason, the recipient and self-acting powers of his nature, have not yet become at variance in the performance of their functions, much less are they antagonistic to each other. His sensations are not the shapeless play of chance, his thoughts are not the meaningless play of the imaginative faculty; the former are the necessary results of impressions, the latter emanate from the actuality of things. If man enters upon the path of civilisation, if art begins to mould him, the harmony of the senses ceases, and he can only aspire at moral unity, and manifest himself as such. The agreement between his sensations and thoughts which was a reality during his sensual state, now only exists in idea; it exists no longer in him, but outside of him, as a thought which first has to be realized, not as a reality of his existence.… [p. 557]
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… Ancient and modern—naive and sentimental—poets should either not have been contrasted at all, or only under a general idea of a higher order.… I should say that the power of the former is founded upon finite, and that of the latter upon infinite art. [p. 558]
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The naive poet has been favored by nature with the faculty of always acting with a spirit of undivided unity, of constituting at all times a self-existing and complete whole, and of representing humanity as it exists, in all the fullness of a living reality. To the sentimental poet, nature has accorded the power, or rather she has inspired him with an intense and impelling desire, of restoring out of his own depths, the unity which had been dissolved in hint by abstraction, of completing humanity within himself, and of passing from a finite into an infinite state. Both, however, have to achieve the task of realizing the complete expression of human nature, otherwise they would not be called poets; but the naive poet has the advantage over the sentimental poet of dealing in sensual realities, and of executing as a real fact, what the other simply aspires at. This impression is experienced by everyone who abandons himself to the enjoyment of naive poetry. At such a time he feels that all his human powers are active, he is not in need of any thing, he is a whole within himself; without perceiving differences in his emotional state, he enjoys at one and the same time his mental activity and his sensual life. The mood into which the sentimental poet transports him, is quite different. Here he is stimulated by a living impulse to bring forth the harmony which he actually felt while communing with the naive poet; he desires to transform himself into a perfect unit, to realize the fullest expression of humanity in his person. Hence, when reading sentimental poetry, the mind is set in motion, it is in a state of tension, it is oscillating between contending emotions, whereas naive poetry induces tranquillity of mind, a feeling of relaxation and repose, accord of sentiment, and perfect satisfaction.
Whereas the naive poet deals in more living realities than the sentimental, and actualizes as things of real life, the feelings and desires which only exist as potential aspirations in the mind of the latter poet; on the other hand, the sentimental poet enjoys the great advantage over the former of being able to present a higher object to the idealizing impulse, than the naive poet is able to do. We know that the real always remains behind the ideal; every existing thing is bounded, but thought is boundless. From these restrictions to which all sensual things are liable, the naive poet necessarily suffers, whereas the sentimental poet is favored by an absolute freedom of ideas. The former fulfills his task, but it is limited; the latter does not fulfill his task entirely, but it is infinite.… [pp. 569f]