(γγ) In this impersonal relation of objective fact and its expression of the comparative mode, the repose and substantial self-command of character returns to itself; it is the means whereby the pain of a great downfall is softened. So Cleopatra exclaims[117] to Charmian, after she has already put the mortal aspic to her breast:
Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle—
The bite of the serpent relaxes her members so gently that Death is himself deceived and holds himself to be Sleep. And this image may well pass as itself a counterfeit of the mild and allaying influence of such similitudes.
C. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART
Didactic, descriptive poetry and the ancient epigram.
The conception we have in general terms formed of the symbolic type of art is such that within it significance and expression are unable to unite sufficiently to appear in complete and reciprocal fusion. In unconscious symbolism the incompatibility of these two aspects remained a fact throughout, if not actually declared as such; in the Sublime on the contrary this inadequacy was explicitly asserted: the absolute significance, God, no less than His external reality, the world, are expressly represented in this excluding relation to one another. On the other hand, however, in all these types that further aspect of symbolism, namely, the affinity which obtains between the significance and the external form, in which it is visibly manifested, still retained its importance. In the original type of symbolism this was exclusively the case, a type which did not as yet set forth the significance in contrast to its concrete existence. But in the Sublime, too, it remained an essential relation, a type which, in order to express the Supreme Being, if here under a wholly inadequate mode, required as its means the phenomena of Nature, and the events and exploits of God's chosen people. And finally it reappears in the comparative type of art a personal relation and one that is consequently amenable to caprice. This element of caprice, however, albeit it is an entirely present fact and particularly so in the case of the metaphor, image, and simile, is notwithstanding still hidden away behind the affinity between the significance and the image utilized to express it, in so far as it selects the comparison simply out of a regard for their mutual resemblance, a fundamental aspect of which is not so much the external form as just this relation set up between them by the activity of the soul and consisting in subjective emotions, points of view and ideas and their cognate modes of configuration[118]. When, however, it is not the notion of the material itself, but simply a capricious use of the judgment, which brings together the content and its artistic form, both can only be conceived as posited in an entirely external relation to one another; their association is now a juxtaposition without essential relation, simply a dressing up, that is to say, of the one side by the other. For this reason we have here to treat these last-mentioned and subordinate types of art by way of supplement. They arise from the absolute collapse of the essential phases in all true art-production; they bring before us, in short, by their independence of the principle of relativity the suicide of the symbolic type.
If we view this stage generally as a whole we find on the one hand already as wholly independent the elaborate but formless significance, for the artistic shaping of which all that we can now supply is an external ornament selected at caprice to set it off. On the other side we have the external mode pure and simple. That is to say, instead of being mediated in its identity with that on which it is imposed by the fact that this is its own essentially cognate significance it can now only be accepted and described in the aspect of its self-subsistence over against this centrum of significance, and consequently only as mere externality. From the above contrasted aspects we may differentiate in abstract terms didactic from descriptive poetry, a distinction which so far at least as the didactic is concerned is only to be made good under the poetic type for the reason that this alone is able to bring before us the significance in its abstract universality.
Inasmuch, however, as the notion of art does not consist in the dissociation, but the identification of significance and form we find even at this stage not only a complete separation, but also in line with that, a relation asserted between the sides thus opposed. This relation, however, now that the partition line of symbolism has already been crossed, is no longer of a symbolic nature, and is therefore an attempt to abolish the fundamental characteristics of that type, namely, the incompatibility, and at the same time the self-subsistence of form and content, a position that all the previous types were unable to transcend. Owing, however, to the separation of the two sides, which thus make for unity, being already presupposed by this type this attempt can only be looked upon as a mere aspiration[119], to completely satisfy which in all that it involves is reserved for a more perfect type of art, namely, the classical.
We will now briefly glance at these supplementary forms, in order to make our passage from them to the real type above mentioned more fully intelligible.
1. THE DIDACTIC POEM