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

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

3. THE METAMORPHOSIS[86]

The third mode we have to discuss in its contrast to the fable, parable, proverb, and apologue, is the metamorphosis. This is no doubt of a kind which is both symbolical and mythological; it sets forth, however, expressly furthermore the natural in its opposition to the spiritual. That is to say, it confers on an object immediately present to sense such as a rock, animal, flower, or spring the peculiar significance of being a delapsus and a punishment of spiritual existences. Such are the examples of Philomela, the Pieredes, Narcissus, and Arethusa, all of whom, through some false step, passion, transgression or the like, became subject to irreparable guilt or pain, and for this reason were deprived of the freedom of spiritual life, and united to the substance of physical nature. From one point of view Nature is not regarded merely under its external and prosaic aspect, simply, that is, as mountain, river-source, tree and so forth, but it further receives a content which is bound up with some action or event of spiritual life. The rock is not simply stone, but Niobe herself, who weeps for her children. From the other point of view this human action implies guilt of some kind, and this metamorphosis into the physical phenomenon is accepted as a degradation of Spirit.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish these metamorphoses of human individuals or gods very sharply from the genuine type of unconscious symbolism. To return to Egypt, for example, the Divine is here in part immediately envisaged in the mysterious and secluded intension of animal life, partly, too, the real symbol is here a natural form which is immediately associated with a wider significance cognate to it, despite the fact that this form is unable to supply the determinate existence fully commensurate with it; and this is so for the reason that neither in respect to its form or its content has unconscious symbolism arrived at the free outlook of Spirit. Metamorphosis, on the contrary, emphasizes the essential distinction between Nature and Spirit, and by doing so marks the passage from that which is both symbolical and mythological to that which is in the strict sense mythological, under, that is to say, a conception of the latter, which, albeit that it proceeds in its myths from a concrete fact of Nature such as sun, sea, rivers, trees, earth, and the like, nevertheless, further and expressly sets this purely natural aspect on one side and apart, divesting such natural phenomena of their inner content and individualizing the same as a spiritual Power in the adequate artistic form of gods clothed in the lineaments of humanity, whether we regard them as external shape or spiritual activity. In this sense Homer and Hesiod have given to the Greeks their mythology, a mythology which by no means merely consists in the revelation of the significance of such gods, by no means is merely an exposition of moral, physical, theological, or speculative doctrine, but one that is a mythology in the strict sense, that is the origin of a spiritual religion under the genuine guise of our humanity.

In the Metamorphoses of Ovid the most heterogeneous material is brought together quite apart from the entirely modern spirit in which myth is treated. Beside the mere aspect of metamorphosis, which could here in general terms only be conceived as a kind of mythical representation, we have the specific character[87] of this type raised in an exceptional way in these narrations, in which embodiments of this sort, which are commonly accepted as symbolical, or are already received in their entirely mythical character, appear to have been converted into metamorphoses, and that which is elsewhere united is so presented as to assert an opposition between its significance and form, and the passage of the one into the other. In this way, for instance, the Phrygian or Egyptian symbol, the wolf, is so separated from its intrinsic significance, that the same is converted into a previous existence if not actually into the kingship of the Sun, and the existence of the wolf is conceived as resulting from an act of that human existence. In the same way in the song of the Pierides the Egyptian gods, the ram, the cat, and so forth are imaged as such animal forms, in which the mythical gods of Greece, Jupiter, Venus, and the rest have concealed themselves from sheer fright. The Pierides themselves, however, by way of punishment, in that they dared to rival the Muses with their singing, are changed into woodpeckers.

Looked at from another side it is equally necessary, with a view to securing the more accurate definition, which the content wherein the significance consists essentially carries, that we distinguish the metamorphosis from the fable. That is to say in the fable the binding together of the moral with the natural fact is an association that is harmless; for in this the thing of Nature, regarded under the mode in which it differs in its natural aspect from Spirit, does not affect the significance, although there are certainly single examples of the fables of Aesop, which, with but slight alteration, would be instances of metamorphosis. As such may be cited the forty-second fable of the bat, the thorn-bush, and the diver, whose instincts are explained as due to the ill-luck of former experiences.

And here we must end our passage through this the first circle of the comparative type of art. It started from that which was immediately present to sense, that is, the concrete phenomenon. We proceed now from the point we have arrived at to examine a further kind of significance which the type unfolds.

B. COMPARISONS, WHICH IN THEIR IMAGINATIVE PRESENTMENT HAVE THEIR ORIGIN IN THE SIGNIFICANCE.

Forasmuch as the severation of significance from embodiment is the hypostasized form for consciousness, within which the relation of both originates independently, it is both possible and inevitable that in the articulation of the self-subsistency of one side no less than the other a start should be made not only from external existence, but conversely and as emphatically from that which is immediately present to the conscious subject, in other words general conceptions, reflections, emotions, and principles of thought. For this inward aspect is equally with the images of external objects a subject-matter present to consciousness and in its independence of that which is external proceeds on its way from its own resources. In the case, then, where we find the significance is the point of departure, the expression, that is, the reality, appears as the modus formulandi, which is abstracted from the concrete world in order to give a visible and sensuously defined shape to the significance regarded as abstract content.

Owing, however, to the reciprocally indifferent relation under which both sides confront each other, this association which binds the two sides together is, as we have already seen, no essentially explicit and necessary union; consequently the relation, such as it is, that is no actual reflection of objective fact, is rather a product of active mind, which no longer even disguises this its fundamental character, but rather deliberately exposes it in the form of its representation. The very embodiment possesses this binding together of form and content, soul and body, under the guise of concrete animation[88], as essentially and explicitly the substantial union of both sides in the soul as in the body, in the content as in the form. In the case before us, however, what is presupposed by consciousness is the dislocation of the two sides, and consequently their association is the vivification of the significance simply for consciousness by means of a shape external to it, and an indication of a real existence, equally subjective in its character through the relation of the same to the general conceptions, emotions, and thoughts common to humanity. For this reason what is mainly emphasized in these forms of comparative art is the subjective art of the poet in his creative capacity, and in complete works of art we have mainly in our attitude to this particular aspect of them to separate that which strictly is appurtenant to their subject-matter and its necessary embodiment from that which is attached to them by the poet as mere ornament and embellishment. Such accessory detail, which we cannot fail to distinguish, that is, consisting mainly of images, similes, allegories, and metaphor, is precisely that part of his work in virtue of which he earns his title to fame with most people, a tendency which is all the more common because it indirectly bears witness to the insight and subtlety which enables such critics to discover our poet and draw attention to that aspect of his invention which is so entirely his own. But for all that, as we have already observed, in genuine works of art such forms as those we are discussing can only be regarded as accessory, although we doubtless do find in previous works on Poetics such incidental features treated as precisely those which go to make the poet.