The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures

by Friedrich von Schlegel

Even in music (as the expression of the emotions of the soul in their flow and change, and in the struggle with inharmonious discords, till at last they finally dissolve in harmony) it is not so much the immediate feeling—for this would be no more artistic than the mere cry of passion—as rather the idea of it that the artist has in his mind, and that forms the subject of his representations. The musician strives to represent the whole idea—the beautiful and the marvelous in the whole progress of its development. Following the inmost life-pulse in its alternate rising and falling, he labors to give its unexpected transitions up to their sudden harmony or its repetitions of still increasing pitch up to a full and soothing close, or (if this is designedly to be left unattained) up to the abrupt and painful breaking off or gradual dying away and cessation of the plaintive note or the tone of ardent longing.

And the same is the case with sculpture. But here we would premise the remark, that the principle with which we set out, of the triple nature and division of man’s being, is confirmed by the existence of a corresponding order and diversity in the fine arts. Among the arts, accordingly, whose object is the manifestation of the beautiful, music is pre-eminently the art for the soul, while sculpture is for the most part corporeal.

Now, in sculpture it is not any actual figure or the body itself that the artist has in view. It is the general idea thereof that constitutes the subject-matter of his representations. He seeks to portray its most perfect structure, its full organic development, its exquisite correctness of symmetry and sublime beauty of form. And to all this even the expression of character and passion is in a certain degree subordinate. And exactly because the external medium which it employs, because the material mass on which its internal conceptions are to be stamped, or, rather, out of which they are to be worked, is the inanimate stone and cold marble, therefore does true sculpture aim at a higher excellence than the uniformity and death-like repose which characterize the Egyptian statues of the gods. It seeks rather to triumph by copying with the most marvelous truth and fidelity the living frame in its most rapid movements, and life in its most violent struggles, and by seizing its fleeting graces to fix them forever in its own imperishable creations.

In truth, the imitation of actual reality, however difficult and in itself worthy of admiration it may be, does not constitute the aim or object, or generally the principle of sculpture, any more than of any other art. A remarkable proof of this is afforded by the fact that color, with all its charms, is excluded from the plastic art and its embodied manifestations as too meretricious and too closely allied to reality. For by such an expedient, not less than by the use of ingenious mechanism to give motion to the limbs, the artistic ideal, or the images of the gods, would have degenerated into the puppets of children.

Reality, therefore, with its actual shapes and the delusive imitation and servile copying of them, is in nowise the proper or immediate object of the plastic art. Even beauty of form is not always, not at least solely and exclusively its aim; it is only so accidentally and relatively, as a condition of the expression of character, of external states, and of the total significance. Always and universally it is a thought, the idea of some subject or form as the inner sense and significance thereof, that constitutes the essence of a work of art, and with which art in general is concerned. In other words, art is symbolical. And this may be predicated with equal truth of every higher art, as well as of sculpture, whatever may be the medium of its manifestations, whether a statue, or tone as in music, or words as in poetry. It is exactly this that constitutes the difference between high art and every other which, however closely allied to it in appearance, has some ulterior and practical object, and which therefore can not be symbolical.

Of this kind, for instance, is the difference between rhetoric (which most assuredly is an art, or at least was exclusively treated as such by the Greeks) and poetry. And it is of the utmost importance to keep this distinction constantly in view. For exactly in the same degree that it is neglected is the proper character and true excellency of the higher art of the beautiful lost sight of. And a right estimate of the other arts which have an ulterior and practical object would also be endangered. An orator who with the greatest command of practical and imaginative language is nevertheless devoid of convincing logical power to sway the minds of men by his arguments, and to bend them irresistibly to his purpose, would exercise but little influence; while no heavier censure can be passed on one who sets up for a poet, than to affirm of him, that he possesses and understands nothing but the rhetoric of passion, without—though such further qualification is evidently superfluous—true poetry.

Of the fine arts, therefore, which, employing a material medium for their representations, possess an ideal and symbolical significance, music is the art of the soul, and sculpture is that of corporeal form, and of the manifestation of the true idea of organic beauty. But among the three sister arts, painting is the true spiritual one. As the light, with its ceaseless variety of tints and hues, is the most spiritual element of nature, and as the eye is the most spiritual of man’s senses, so painting, as concerned about these, is the most spiritual of the arts, and the one with which the symbolical spirit readily associates itself. Painting directs itself wholly to the eye, whereas sculpture appeals indeed to the eye, but only as the necessary medium for satisfying the corporeal sense and feeling.

But painting, in its manifestations, does not confine itself to abstract beauty (if we may so say) or the perfect structure and symmetry of form. It embraces all the eye can reach in the visible phenomena of the world, with all its wonderful play of light and shade and magical splendor of coloring, where not only the whole, but the several parts—in a word, all that in many and various ways is charming to the senses, attractive to the eye with ever new wonders, and all that to the mind or spirit is full of deep spiritual and symbolical significance. And for this reason the wonderful art of painting is even the most appropriate, shall I say to exhibit, or rather to suggest, the high mysteries of divine love in religion and revelation. No wonder, then, if, in modern Christendom, music and painting, the art or symbolism of soul and spirit, have been chiefly cultivated, and attained their highest development and perfection, whereas the art of the perfect development of organic form and corporeal and sensual beauty, reached its height of excellence in the sculpture of classical antiquity, which in the same way and degree will never again be paralleled, or at least will never be surpassed.

It appears sufficient if we assume that there are only three symbolical arts for the higher manifestation of the beautiful. For architecture, although in various ways bound and modified by the conditions of some ulterior design, is, nevertheless, in its principal features closely related to sculpture, and stands on the same line with it. For beauty of structure, correctness of proportion, and grace of symmetry, which form the fundamental laws of the plastic art, constitute also the ideal of architecture. Accordingly, among the Greeks and Romans, where the latter attained to its highest and richest cultivation, its principles, relations, and forms approximate to those of organic figure, to which they are not indeed outwardly in their structure, but in a certain degree and according to their internal constitution, similar and correspondent, or at least related.

Egyptian architecture, with its predominantly mathematical character, and the tree-like Gothic aspiring to heaven, with its slender shafts and floral decorations, form the two extremes of this organic character which belongs to architecture, and which constitutes it one and the same art with sculpture. For the structures of the former environ and surround the creations of the latter. And it is only consistent that that which supplies the legitimate sphere and the natural medium for the other properly exhibitive art of sculpture and its statues of the gods, should even possess or acquire a similarity of character with it. As to the Egyptian and Gothic architectures, the remark readily suggests itself that the symbolical character displays itself predominantly in them: purity of form, however, is the prevalent feature of the antique (or Grecian), but even here in its proportions the symbolical principle may be traced, although it is more recondite, not to say concealed.