The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4) / Hegel's Aesthetik

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

And further, on a higher plane, the bodies of animals are utilized as symbols, but most succinctly of all the human figure, which, even at this stage, as we shall see later on, appears to be elaborated in modes more compatible with its intrinsic worth for the reason that even now Spirit in general makes a real movement to embody itself from out the mere swaddling clothes of Nature in a shape more adequate to its own self-subsistent personality. Such, then, constitutes our general concept of the true form of symbolism and the necessity under which art labours to express the same. And in order that we may discuss the more concrete exemplifications of this type of symbolism, it will be necessary in dealing with this first plunge of Spirit into the wealth of its own resources to leave the East and direct our attention mainly on the West.

As a symbol of universal import to indicate the point of view where we now stand, we may perhaps first and foremost fix before our eyes the image of the Phoenix, which is its own funeral pile, yet ever is rejuvenated out of the flames of its death and rises from the ashes. Herodotus informs us (II, 73) that at least in representations he saw this bird in Egypt, and, in fact, it is the Egyptian people who also supply us with a focus for the type of symbolical art. Before, however, we proceed to the closer consideration of Egyptian art we will mention several other myths, which form, as it were, the passage to that national symbolism which we find most elaborate, no matter from what direction we approach it. Such are the myths of Adonis, that of his death, and the lament of Aphrodite over him, the funeral festivals, etc., conceptions and rites which find their original home on the Syrian coast. The service of Cybele among the Phrygians possesses the same significance, which also finds its echo in the myths of Castor and Pollux, Ceres and Proserpina.

As the essence of such significance we find in the above quoted examples, before everything else, that phasal condition of negation we have already alluded to, the death, that is, of the natural regarded as a basic and absolute condition of the Divine process, emphasized as such, and made visible in its independence. It is in this sense that we can explain the funeral festivals that celebrate the death of the god, the excessive lamentations over his loss, which is once more made good through his rediscovery, resurrection, and rejuvenescence, making it possible for the festivals of joy to follow. This universal significance contains further its more definite relation to Nature. In winter the sun loses his force, while in spring he returns once more, and with that Nature regains her youth, she dies and is reborn. In examples such as these the Divine, personified as a human event, discovers its significance in the life of Nature, which then from a further point of view becomes a symbol for the essential character of the negative condition generally, in spiritual things no less than natural.

It is in Egypt, however, that we have to look for the perfect example of symbolical representation in its systematic elaboration of characteristic content and form. Egypt is the land of symbol, which proposes to itself the spiritual problem of the self-interpretation of Spirit, without being able successfully to solve it. The problems remain without an answer; and such solution as we are able to supply consists therefore merely in this, that we grasp these riddles of Egyptian art and its symbolical productions as this very problem which Egypt propounds for herself but is unable to solve. For the reason that we find that Spirit here still endeavours in the external objects of sense, from which again it strains to free itself, and further labours with unwearied assiduity, to evolve from itself its essential substance by means of natural phenomena no less than to embody the same in the form of spirit for the vision of the senses, rather than as the pure content of mind, this Egyptian people may, in contrast to all the instances previously examined, be described as the nation Art claims for herself[59]. Its works of art, however, remain full of mystery and silence, without music or motion; and this is so because Spirit here has not yet truly found its own life, nor has learned how to utter the clear and luminous speech of mind. In the unsatisfied stress and impulse, to bring before the vision through her art, albeit in so voiceless a way, this wrestle of herself with herself, to give shape to the Inward of her life, but only to become conscious of her own Inward, no less than that which universally prevails[60], through external forms which are cognate with it—we have in a sentence the characterization of Egypt. The people of this wonderful land was not merely agricultural, but also constructive, a folk which tossed up the soil in every direction, delved lakes and canals, and exercised their artistic instincts not merely in giving visible shape to buildings of enormous solidity, but in carrying works themselves of vast dimension to a like extent into the bowels of the earth. To erect buildings of this kind was, as we have long ago learned from Herodotus, a principal occupation of this people, and one of the chief exploits of their kings. The buildings of the Hindoo race are also unquestionably of colossal size; we shall, however, find nowhere else a variety which can compare with that of Egypt.

1. Reviewing now the general conceptions of Egyptian art with a closer attention to particular aspects of it, we may in the first place define the fundamental principle of so much of it as follows, that we find here the Inward is securely held in its independent opposition to the immediacy of external existence. And what is more, this Inward is conceived as the negation of Life, in other words the dead thing, not as the abstract negation of the evil and hurtful thing, such as Ahriman in contrast to Ormuzd, but as form essentially substantive.

(a) To illustrate this thought further, the Hindoo merely subtilizes his life to the most empty of abstractions, that is in result one that therewith negates every form of concrete content. Such a Brahm-becoming process is not to be found in Egypt; rather we find here that the invisible possesses a fuller significance; the corpse secures the content of the living body itself, which, however, as torn away from immediate existence, in its retirement from actual life[61], still possesses its relation to that which is alive, and in this concrete form is maintained as self-subsistent. It is a well-known fact that the Egyptians embalmed and revered cats, dogs, hawks, ichneumons, bears, and wolves (Herod., II, 67), but most of all the dead human body (Herod., II, 86-90). By them the honour paid to the dead is not that of burial, but its preservation from age to age as a corpse.

(b) And moreover we may observe that the Egyptians do not merely remain constant to this immediate and still wholly natural permanency of the dead. That which is preserved in its physical or natural aspect is also conceived to endure in a form present to the imagination. Herodotus informs us that the Egyptians were the first who held the doctrine that the human soul is immortal. We consequently find that they are the first who present to us a more exalted mode of this resolution of the natural and spiritual, a mode that is to say, under which it is not merely the natural body which secures an independent self-subsistence.

The immortality of the soul is a conception which borders closely upon the freedom of Spirit. The Ego is here apprehended as removed from the purely natural mode of its existence, reposing on its own substance. This knowledge of itself, however, is the principle of freedom. No doubt we are not justified in asserting that the Egyptians grasped the notion of spiritual freedom in its profoundest sense. We must not imagine that their belief in the immortality of the soul is identical with our own form of that belief; but they already possessed the power to retain securely that which was separated from Life under a form of existence visible only to the imagination, no less than one in which it was identical with the bodily material. They have thereby made possible the passage to the full emancipation of Spirit, albeit it was but the threshold of the temple of freedom that they passed over. This fundamental conception of theirs is further expanded to a unified and substantial Kingdom of the Departed set up in contrast to the immediate presence of the real. A Court of Justice of the Dead is held in this invisible state over which Osiris as Amenthes presides. One of similar character is also instituted in the sphere of immediate reality, justice being executed even among men over the dead, and after the decease of a king every one was entitled to submit his grievances to that court.

(c) If we now proceed to inquire what is the symbolical form of art, which is given to such conceptions, we must look for this among the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture. The form of this architecture is twofold; there is one type that is superterraneous, while the other is subterraneous.