The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

(ii) The several arts—sculpture, music, poetry, etc., each on their own foundation and viewed relatively to the former evolution.

140. The point, of course, is that the different media of the several arts are inherently, and in virtue of the fact that we have not here mere matter as opposed to that which is intellectual rather than sensuous, but matter in which the notional concept is already essentially present or pregnant (sound is, for instance, more ideal than the spatial matter of architecture), adapted to the particular arts in which they serve as the medium of expression.

141. Professor Bosanquet explains these "plastic forms" (Gestaltungs formen) as the various modifications of the subject-matter of art (Trans., p. 140 note). I am not quite sure of the meaning here intended. It would apparently identify the term with the Gebilde referred to in the third division. I should myself rather incline to think that Hegel had mainly in his mind the specific general types, that is, the three relations of the Idea itself to its external configuration, viewed as a historical evolution, which Hegel calls symbolic, classical, and romantic. Perhaps this is what Professor Bosanquet means. But in that case it does not appear to me so much the subject-matter as the generic forms in the shaping of that matter.

142. Das wahrhaft Innere. That is, the inward of the truth of conscious life.

143. Means apparently the notion in its absolute sense.

144. Because it represents spirit as independent of an appropriate bodily form.

145. What appears to be denoted by Geistigkeit is the generic term of intelligence—that activity of conscious life which does not necessarily make us think of a single individual—the common nature of all spirit.

146. By Innerlichkeit, which might also be rendered as pure ideality, what is signified is that in a mental state there are no parts outside of each other.

147. Subjekt, i.e., the individual Ego of self-consciousness.

148. Das subjective Innere, lit., the subjective inner state.

149. Geistigkeit. Professor Bosanquet translates it here "intellectual being."

150. The distinction between a percipient and an external object falls away. The content displayed is part of the soul-life itself.

151. Professor Bosanquet apparently assumes a negative has slipped out. But the text probably is correct in the rather awkward form in which it stands.

152. Thus poetry is primarily a romantic art, but in the Epic it is affiliated with the objective character of classical art, or we may say that there is a romantic and classical type of architecture, though the art is primarily symbolic.

153. Gestalt. Plastic power is perhaps a better translation.

154. He means that in architecture the building is merely a shrine or environment of the image of the god.

155. Infinite, of course, in the concrete sense of rounded in itself, as the circle, or, still more, the living organism.

156. Lit., "which is not also that of the spiritual sphere."

157. That is, an object limited only in space.

158. Subjektivität. The particularization in romantic art implies the presence of an ideal element imported by the soul of the artist, which appeals directly to the soul in its emotional life. Compare a picture by an Italian master with a Greek statue.

159. Lit., "A multiplicity of isolated examples of inwardness."

160. That is, in the life shared by all as one community actuated by a common purpose.

161. As in sculpture.

162. Professor Bosanquet's note is here (Trans., p. 166) "Posited or laid down to be ideal. This almost is equal to made to be in the sense of not being. In other words musical sound is "ideal" as existing, quâ work of art, in memory only, the moment in which it is actually heard being fugitive. A picture is equally so in respect of the third dimension, which has to be read into it. Poetry is almost wholly ideal, uses hardly any sensuous element, and appeals almost wholly to what exists in the mind."

163. By particularization is meant the variety in the material of colours, musical tones, and ideas, which latter are really quite as much the medium of poetry as written language. The sensuous medium is here an abstract sign and, as Hegel would contend, nothing more than this.

164. Reference, of course, to Hegel's unfortunate acceptance of Goethe's theory of colour.

165. The colour of art is not merely ideal as applied to only two dimensions of space, but also is "subjective" in the artistic treatment of it under a definite "scheme." It is not clear whether Hegel alludes also to this; apparently not, though it is the most important feature. In fact, even assuming his theory of light to be correct, it is difficult entirely to follow his distinction between the appearance of colour on a flat or a round surface. As natural colour the one would be as ideal as the other. Only regarded as a composition would painting present distinction.

166. It is obvious that the reference here is mainly to an intentional appeal to the human soul through the content of the composition. But the appeal may also be made through the technique and artistic treatment of the medium itself.

167. The parts of a chord are not in space, but are ideally cognized. Hegel describes this by saying that music idealizes space and concentrates it to a point. It would perhaps be more intelligible to say that it transmutes the positive effects of a material substance in motion into the positive and more ideal condition of time. The point which is continually negated is at least quâ music the point, or rather, moment, of a temporal process.

168.