The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4) / Hegel's Aesthetik

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

2. PARTICULAR ARCHITECTURAL MODES OF CONFORMATION

If we pass now to a consideration of the particular forms in which romantic architecture receives its specific character we shall find, as we have already above noticed, that our entire discussion will be confined to what is genuine Gothic architecture, and mainly that of the church buildings of Christendom, in their contrast to the Greek temple.

(a) As fundamental form underlying all the rest, we have here the wholly shut off dwelling-house.

(α) In other words, just as the Christian spirit withdraws itself within an ideal realm, the building is the place essentially delimited on all sides for the congregation of the Christian community and the gathering together of spiritual life. It is the concentration of essential soul-life which thus encloses itself in spatial relations. The devotion of the Christian heart, however, is at the same time and in the same degree an exaltation over finitude, so that this exaltation, moreover, determines the character of God's house. Architecture secures thereby as its significance, independently of the object which renders it necessary as a building, this exaltation to the Infinite, a significance which it is forced to express through the spatial relations of architectural forms. The impression, therefore, which art is now called upon to emphasize is, in one aspect of it, and in contrast to the open gaiety of the Greek temple, that of the tranquillity of the soul which, released from external nature and worldly conditions, retires wholly into self-seclusion; in the other aspect of it it is that impress of a solemn sublimity, which strains and soars over and beyond all rational limits. If, therefore, the buildings of classical architecture as a rule offer the expansion of breadth, we find in contrast to this that the romantic character of Christian churches asserts itself in the growth upwards from the soil and a soaring to the skies.

(β) In this oblivion of external Nature and all the diverting occupations and interests of finite existence, which is to be effected by means of such seclusion, the open forecourts and colonnades and the like, which are in direct communication with that world, furthermore and of necessity fall away, or only receive an entirely modified representation within the interior of the building. And in like manner the light of the sun is either excluded, or glimmers in broken rays through windows of painted glass, which, to prevent total immersion in darkness, are perforce admitted. What humanity needs here is not the gift of external Nature, but a world created through it and for it alone, for its devotion and the activity of its soul-life.

(γ) We may fix as the pervading type by which the house of God is generally and with particular reference to its sections characterized that of the free rise and running up into pinnacles, whether they be built up by means of the arch or straight lines. In classical architecture, where we find columns and piers with superimposed beams is the fundamental form, rectangularity and the office of support is the feature of importance. For the construction superimposed at right angles marks in a definite way that it is supported. And even though the beams do in their turn carry the roofing, the surfaces of this latter portion incline to one another in an obtuse angle. In such a construction we find no trace of a genuine tendency to points and a soaring up: we find simply repose and support. In the same way, too, a circular arch, which extends in a continuous and equally gradated incline from one column to another, and is referable to one and the same centre, rests on its substructure of support. In romantic architecture, however, we no longer find the relation of support simply and rectangularity the fundamental form, but rather we have before us the fact that all that is enclosed either on its interior or exterior side independently springs upward, and, without the secure and express distinction between the relationship of weight and support, concentrates in a point. This pre-eminently free striving upwards and tendency to inclines that run to culminating points is what constitutes here the essential determinant, by virtue of which either acute-angled triangles with a more slender or broader base or pointed arches appear, both of which aspects stand out most obviously in the characterization of Gothic architecture.

(b) Moreover, the obligations of spiritual devotion and exaltation, regarded as a cultus, bring before us a variety of definite conditions and features which cannot be fully met on the exterior of the building in the open halls or forecourts of a temple, but can only be satisfied within the house of God itself. If, therefore, in the case of the temple of classical architecture it is the external form which is of most importance, and we find it remaining by means of the colonnades more independent of the interior construction, romantic architecture presents a contrast to this not merely in the fact that the interior of the building is more essentially important, for the reason that the whole purports to be simply an enclosure, but also in this, that the interior permeates the very form of the exterior throughout, and determines its specific shape and mode of articulation.

In this connection we will, in order to examine the matter more closely, first make an entrance into the interior, and working outwards therefrom endeavour to elucidate the exterior.

(α) The definition I have already adduced as best describing the interior of the church is that of a certain place set apart and enclosed in all its aspects, whether it be in opposition to the inclemency of the weather or the distractions of the outer world, for the community and its spiritual worship. The space of the interior is consequently an enclosure in the completest sense, whereas Greek temples, apart from the presence of open passages and halls in the environment, not unfrequently possessed open cells.