美学(第二卷)

Part 2 Section 1

Sign: conventional, not ambiguous

Simile: not ambiguous, invented for momentary purpose

Symbol: ambiguous

Forms of art:

Symbolic (the threshold of art)

classical (true manifestation of art, not the first form, spiritual individuality, after complex mediations and transitions)

romantic

"On its objective side the beginning of art stands in the closest connection with religion."

Symbolism three stages:

Unconscious Symbolism: Neither symbolic nor art

Sublime: Transition to symbol proper, no genuine beauty

Conscious symbolism: Symbol proper, work of art, by battle between meanings and sensuous representation

Chapter 1

Immediate unity of meaning and shape:

No such difference between soul and body, concept and reality

The Absolute has only the immediate presence of an object, the Divine

Zoroastrianism

Light does not symbolize the Absolute, it is the Absolute

The universal and that individuality are visualized and expressed as immediately one.

"poetic"

Fantastic symbolism

Meaning and the form of representation, sudden leap from one extreme to the other

Brahma: entirely withdrawn from sense and observation

Thinking requires self-consciousness which sets an object before itself in order to find itself therein.

Indian art:

The Absolute into immediately sensuous and individual thing

The extravagance of productions

Personifying universal meanings by using the human form

Symbolism proper

The Absolute becomes concrete

"The inward kept firmly in view on its own account contrasted with the immediacy of existence: the inward indeed as the negative of life, as death"

Riddle, ambiguous

Chapter 2

The meaning comes into consciousness on its own account, separated from the entire world of appearance

Sublime: to express the infinite, no object proves adequate for this representation

Pantheism (of art)

Pantheism, everything: universal soul, truth and excellence in individual being

The East

The art of sublime

Hebrew poetry

Sublime in the strict sense: the created world as finite, restricted, a glorifying accessory for the praise of God

Basically the world view of Christianity

Chapter 3

Conscious symbolism or comparative form of art: explicitly known, expressly posited as different from the external way in which it is represented.

Comparisons originating from the external object

Generally imperfect, remains subordinate, do not belong to poetry

Fable: not fabricated, concrete individuality as an actual event, maximum of naivete.

Parable, proverb, apologue

Metamorphoses

Comparisons which start from the meaning

Separation of meaning and shape, one of the two sides must be the beginning

Riddle, allegory (producing the most complete clarity), metaphor, image, simile

Disappearance of the symbolic form of art