Schlegel, On the Study of Greek Poetry, Selective Summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following summarizes only parts of the text regarding the ugly.]

Friedrich von Schlegel

On the Study of Greek Poetry

Selective Summary

Modern poetry strives. But either

1) it has not reached its goal, or

2) it never had one to begin with: "its striving has no established goal, its development [Bildung] no specific direction, the sum of its history no regular continuity, the whole no unity." (217)

However, there are some cases where poetry has achieved an aim, namely in supremely great works.

But even these overpowering works leave us dissatisfied. They do not unify our minds. They tear it apart.

We are satisfied only by the complete pleasure resulting when our expectations are fulfilled and our concerns answered. All longing ends. But,

This is what is missing from the poetry of our age! (18b)

Modern poetry does not satisfy us with harmony and completion. Many artists escape the "intolerable expanse of their existence" by filling the "infinite emptiness of their minds" with "everything that is unusual or new." (18c) Poetry should not merely cater to our fancy and senses.

Some still have not experienced genuine culture. Their art is vulgar and purely sensuous.

However, there is a better class of art. Its works hover high above vulgar ones. Its creators are like gods.

Every now and then in the recent history of art we come across poets who, in the midst of a oblivious age, appear to be foreigners from a nobler world. with all the strength their minds can marshal, they seek the eternal.

Even if they fall short, they inspire us to believe that other art forms might succeed.

Modern poetry does not come close. But at least it harbors noble and good things that schools had banished. However, truth and morality is their aim. Beauty it is not. Nowhere in modern poetry is beauty the fundamental principle. In fact, beauty is so devalued that modern poetry's best works are displays of the ugly. The only time we experience beauty in modern poems is in "unsatisfied longing." They have blurred the boundaries between science and art, and between the true and the beautiful.

Philosophy poeticizes and poetry philosophizes: history is treated as poetry and poetry is treated as history. (18d)

Even poetic genres have blurred.

A lyrical mood becomes the object of a drama, and dramatic material is forced into lyrical form. This anarchy is not confined to the outer limits; rather, it spans the entire realm of taste and art. The creative force is restless and fickle. (18-19)

Theory no longer has a "fixed point in the endless flux." The public taste or fashion is the only guide. Each artistic 'idol' is worshiped then overthrown by another empty idol.

Artists either

a) strive for sensuousness, even if it leaves our soul feeling empty and offends our sense of propriety,

b) aim too much for perfection, when in fact there is none, and it is irrelevant to beauty,

c) try to replicate things with absolute fidelity, even the obscure peculiarities.

Poetic theory aims for

1) charm

2) correctness, and

3) truth.

Sometimes modern works are presented as eternal models of imitation, at other times as absolute originality.

Either it demands strict submission to arbitrary rules, or it considers artistic genius in a mystical sense, and thereby makes anarchy the fundamental principle. We cannot use theory to make art. Theorems and concepts cannot construct beauty.

Theory has lost favor because it

a) never succeeded in explaining the nature of the poetic arts,

b) never gave a satisfactory classification of types of arts, and

c) has not come to an agreement on what art is in general.

If theorists can be said to agree on anything, it is that there is no universally valid law of art and no constant goal of taste. The beauty of art relies solely on coincidence.

We have seen this anarchy through poetry's history. We see no enduring peculiarity among all the many poets throughout history.

The common background for the modern poets' spirit is the desire to capture the 'beneficent effects' of a great maser or of a felicitous age. But they do not believe there is one spirit for all modern artists. That would efface the individual's peculiarity, injure her rights, and cripple her inventive power.

An endless swarm of the most wretched imitators follows every great original artist -- as long as he is born by the time of fashion -- until finally the originary image has become so common and loathsome because of the eternal repetitions and distortions that, in the place of deification, there enters abhorrence or eternal oblivion. (20c)

Modern poetry's only characters tic is lack of character. The common theme running through it is confusion. The spirit of its history is lawlessness. The result of its theory is skepticism. Its peculiarities do not have specific and fixed boundaries. So French, English, Italian and Spanish poetry exchange their national characters like a masquerade. German poetry represents all cultures except German.

The public only demands interesting individuality from its artists. It wants an effect, and it wants it to be strong and new. How that effect is obtained is of little interest. And each time their demands are satisfied, their expectations for the next satisfaction are raised.

The new becomes old; the unusual becomes common; the frisson of what is charming becomes dull. (21b)

Art descends into crudity and void. Satisfaction is always immediate, but never entire. So the hunger never subsides.

Each of modern poetry's parts by itself might be excellent. But the whole of it is purposeless and lawless. The sum of these two factors "appears like an ocean of warring forces." In it, the shattered pieces of beauty move confusedly through each other.

One could call it a chaos of everything sublime, beautiful, and charming, which just like the Chaos of old out of which, according to legend, the world emerged -- awaits a love and a hatred in order to separate the different parts and to unify the similar parts. (21)

There seems to be no guiding thread. But modern poetry's origin, interrelation, and ground should somehow be explicable. Perhaps by examining its history we can determine the meaning of its current efforts, its direction, and its goal. Often times the anarchy was the means for a better state. "Cannot the aesthetic anarchy of our age expect a similar felicitous catastrophe?" Perhaps now either art will advance or further decline. We have these questions:

1) What is the task of modern poetry?

2) Can it be attained? and

3) What are the means to this?

To answer them we need to determine modern poetry's

a) character,

b) principle of development, and

c) the original traits of its individuality.

Modern poetry does have a common element, a characteristic trait, and common inner foundation. Modern poetry makes-up a coherent whole, even if there are no universal principles.

Consider how diverse Europe is. Nonetheless, there is still the European character. All its cultures share a common spirit and origin. As well, the different parts mutually influence each other. It has a common goal. So in this sense Europe is a whole.

As well, modern poetry is such an interrelated whole. We see for example the reciprocal imitations between cultures. At certain points in history, one natural character spread through the rest. Germany is the only culture that has been influenced by other cultures, but not an influence back to them. Hence the original national character becomes increasing diminished. Then, all of European poetry homogenizes, making the gradual transition from the original unique national character to the character of an artificial culture.

But despite these original differences that homogenize, all European cultures have a common origin. And we see archetypal narratives.

So first European culture was homogeneous. Then after a total revolution they dispersed and diversified. But their common origin remained. This similarity has influenced poetry.

We may also distinguish modern poetry from the other sorts preceding it in history. It

1) insists on imitating antiquity's art

2) demands that theory explain it and tell it how to proceed

3) is internally divided into high and low art.

[skip to page 66]

We may consider Greek poetry as a maximum and canon of natural poetry.

With bold certainty the outlines are simply sketched and then filled and completed with exuberant vigor; every formation is the complete intuition of a genuine concept. (66c)

Greek poetry:

a) contains the entire cycle of the organic evolution of art is concluded and completed

b) contains the entire gamut of taste,

c) is not constricted by the boundaries of its poetic types. Rather, these boundaries are produced through its formative nature. And through its development all the poetic types developed.

d) is an eternal natural history of taste and art.

e) contains the pure and simple elements that make-up the chaotic organization of modern poetry. For example, we may describe Goethe's style as a combination of Homer, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

But the moderns will reject Greek poetry. They will consider it immoral. It is too sensuous. Its comedies glorify folly. And they defame the noble.

Schlegel will not give a single, valid, objective principle of aesthetic criticism. Then he can explain the subjective origin of modern poetry's misconception of Greek poetry.

All assessments must meet two conditions:

1) the standard must be universal,

2) the application of the standard must be conscientiously faithful.

Our current philosophy of taste and art is incompletem because it has not established a theory of ugliness.

Beauty is the pleasing appearance of the good. Ugliness is the displeasing appearance of the bad. Beauty rouses the mind by means of sensuousness to pursue spiritual pleasures. So a hostile attack on sensuous causes ethical pain.

Thus life in all its charm invigorates and refreshes us, and even terror and suffering is fused with grace; while here the disgusting, the grievous, the horrible fills us with revulsion and abhorrence. Instead of graceful ease, a clumsy awkwardness oppresses us; instead of lively vitality, dead weight. Instead of a symmetrical tension in a beneficent alternation of movement and calm, a painful rending pulls one's interest to and fro in opposite directions. Where the mind longs for peace it is tormented by a destructive rage; where it yearns for movement, it is fatigued by languorous weariness. (68c.d)

When we represent ugliness, animalistic pain is the only source of the ethically bad. We do not posit anything positive or absolutely bad against the absolutely good. Instead, we merely negate pure humanity, which encompasses totality and multiplicity. Ugliness is an "empty pretense" within real physical evil. Yet, it is without moral reality. "Only in the sphere of animality is there positive evil -- pain.' In pure spirituality, there is only pleasure and painless limitation. But in pure animality there is only pain and gratification of need without pleasure. Man has a composite nature. In him are blended the negative limitations of the spirit and the positive pain of the animal.

The opposite of plentiful abundance is emptiness, monotony, uniformity, spiritlessness. Disparity and struggle are the opposite of harmony. Wretched confusion is opposed to actual beauty in the strict sense. Beauty in the strict sense is the appearance of a finite diversity in a conditioned unity. The sublime, however, is the appearance of the infinite--infinite abundance or infinite harmony. It has thus a twofold antithesis: infinite deficiency and infinite disharmony. (69a)

The degree of negation determines the level of baseness. However, the level of ugliness is determined by the intensive quantity of the drive that is being contravened. So for there to be ugliness, there must be a deluded expectation and an aroused and then frustrated yearning.

The feeling of emptiness and struggle can grow from mere discomfort to the most raging despair, even though the degree of negation remains the same and only the intensive strength of the drive increases. (69b)

Sublime beauty gives us absolute pleasure. Sublime ugliness is the delusion that comes about through and exertion of the drive. So it is despair, which is an absolute unmitigated pain. It also causes the displeasure or pain that results when we perceive ethical incongruities.

There is no ultimate in beauty. Likewise none in ugliness. So even within the highest level of ugliness there is something beautiful. Hence to bring about the ugly sublime, we must create the utmost abundance of strength.

Artists should obey both the laws of beauty and ugliness.

From:

Schlegel, Friedrich. On the Study of Greek Poetry. Ed. Stuart Barnett. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.