Chapter 13

The last of the subjects which we have still to discuss as proposed is the nature of thetragic issuewhich characters in our present drama have to confront, as also the type of tragicreconciliationcompatible with such a standpoint. In ancient tragedy it is the eternal justice which, as the absolute might of destiny, delivers and restores the harmony of substantive being in its ethical character by its opposition to the particular forces which, in their strain to assert an independent subsistence, come into collision, and which, in virtue of the rational ideality implied in its operations, satisfies us even where we see the downfall of particular men. In so far as a justice of the same kind is present in modern tragedy, it is necessarily, in part, more abstract on account of the closer differentiation of ends and characters, and, in part, of a colder nature and one that is more akin to that of a criminal court, in virtue of the fact that the wrong and crime into which individuals are necessarily carried, in so far as they are intent upon executing their designs, are of a profounder significance. Macbeth, for instance, the elder daughters of Lear and their husbands, the president in "Kabale und Liebe," Richard III, and many similar examples, on account of their atrocious conduct, only deserve the fate they get. This type ofdénouementusually is presented under the guise that individuals are crushed by an actual force which they have defied in order to carry out their personal aims. Wallenstein, for example, is shattered on the adamantine wall of the imperial power; but the old Piccolomini, who, in order to maintain the lawful régime, betrays a friend and misuses the rights of friendship, is punished through the death and sacrifice of his son. Götz von Berlichingen, too, attacks a dominant and securely founded political order, and goes to ground, as also Weislingen and Adelheid, who range themselves, no doubt, on the side of this organized power, but, through wrongful deed and disloyalty, prepare the way to disaster. And along with this we have the demand emphasized, in virtue of the personal point of view of such characters, that these should of necessity appear themselves to acknowledge the justice of their fate. Such a state of acceptance may either be of a religious nature, in which case the soul becomes conscious of a more exalted and indestructible condition of blessedness with which to confront the collapse of its mundane personality; or it may be of a more formal, albeit more worldly, type, in so far, that is, as the strength and equanimity of the character persists in its course up to the point of overthrow without breaking asunder; and in this way, despite all circumstances and mischances, preserves with unimpaired energy its personal freedom. Or, as a final alternative, where the substance of such acceptance is of more real value, by the recognition that the lot which the individual receives is the one, however bitter it may be, which his action merits.

From another point of view, however, we may see the tragic issue also merely in the light of the effect of unhappy circumstances and external accidents, which might have brought about, quite as readily, a different result and a happy conclusion. From such a point of view we have merely left us the conception that the modern idea of individuality, with its searching definition of character, circumstances, and developments, is handed over essentially to the contingency of the earthly state, and must carry the fateful issues of such finitude. Pure commiseration of this sort is, however, destitute of meaning; and it is nothing less than a frightful kind of external necessity in the particular case where we see the downfall of essentially noble natures in their conflict thus assumed with the mischance of purely external accidents. Such a course of events can insistently arrest our attention; but in the result it can only be horrible, and the demand is direct and irresistible that the external accidents ought to accord with that which is identical with the spiritual nature of such noble characters. Only as thus regarded can we feel ourselves reconciled with the grievous end of Hamlet and Juliet. Froma purely external point of view, the death of Hamlet appears as an accident occasioned by his duel with Laertes and the interchange of the daggers. But in the background of Hamlet's soul, death is already present from the first. The sandbank of finite condition will not content his spirit. As the focus of such mourning and weakness, such melancholy, such a loathing of all the conditions of life, we feel from the first that, hemmed within such an environment of horror, he is a lost man, whom the surfeit of the soul has wellnigh already done to death before death itself approaches him from without. The same thing may be observed in the case of Romeo and Juliet. The ground on which these tender blossoms have been planted is alien to their nature; we have no alternative left us but to lament the pathetic transiency of such a beautiful love, which, as some tender rose in the vale of this world of accident, is broken by rude storms and tempests, and the frangible reckonings of noble and well-meaning devices. This pitiful state of our emotions is, however, simply a feeling of reconciliation that is painful, a kind ofunhappy blessednessin misfortune.

(ββ) Much as poets present to us the bare downfall of particular people they are also able to treat the similar contingency of the development of events in such a way, that, despite of the fact the circumstances in all other respects would appear to give them little enough support, a happy issue of such conditions and characters is secured, in which they elicit our interest. No doubt the favour of such a destiny of events has at least an equal claim upon us as the disfavour. And so far as the question merely concerns the nature of this difference, I must admit that I prefer a happy conclusion. How could it be otherwise? I can myself discover no better ground for the preference of misfortune, simply on its own account as such, to a happy resolution than that of a certain condition of fine sensibility, which is devoted to pain and suffering, and experiences more interest in their presence than in painless situations such as it meets with every day. If therefore the interests are of such a nature, that it is really not worth the trouble to sacrifice the men or women concerned on their altar, it being possible for them either to surrender their objects, without making such surrender as is equivalent to a surrender of their individuality, or to mutually come to an agreement in respect thereof, there is no reason why the conclusion should be tragic. The tragic aspect of the conflicts and their resolution ought in principle merely to be enforced in the cases where it is actually necessary in order to satisfy the claim of a superior point of view. If this necessity is absent there is no sufficient ground for mere suffering and unhappiness. And it is simply due to this fact that socialplaysanddramasoriginate which form, as it were, an intermediate link between tragedies and comedies. I have already in a previous passage explained the poetical standpoint of this class of composition. Among us Germans we find it to some extent appropriating what readily moves us in the world of the citizen and family life; in another direction it is preoccupied with chivalry, a movement to which the Götz of Goethe has given a decided stimulus; mainly, however, we may call it the triumph ofordinary morality, which in the large majority of cases is the main thing celebrated. The subject-matter of such plays most in vogue are questions of finance or property, differences of status, unfortunate love affairs, examples of spiritual baseness in the more restricted conditions and affairs of life and so on. In one word, what we have here is that which otherwise is already before our eyes, only with this difference, that in such moral dramas, virtue and duty obtain the victory, and crime is shamed and punished, or betakes itself to repentance, so that in a moral conclusion of this kind the reconciliation ought to centre in this, namely, that whatever happens good is the result. Thereby the fundamental interest is concentrated in the personal or spiritual quality of views held and a good or evil heart. The more, however, the abstractly moral state of mind or heart supplies the pivot on which all turns, so much the less can it be the pathos of a particular matter, or an intrinsically essential object, to which the personality in question is attached. And add to this, from a further point of view, so much the less ultimately is the definite character able to maintain itself and persist in such self-assertion. If all is to be finally focussed in the purely moral aspects of the psychological state, or the condition of the heart, from a subjective pointof view such as this, with its dominating emphasis on ethical reflection, no standing ground remains for any other definite characteristics, or at least specific ends to be proposed. Let the heart break and change its views. Such seems to be the idea. Pathetic dramas of this type, notably Kotzebue's "Menschenhass und Reue," and also too many moral offences in the dramas of Iffland, strictly speaking, have therefore an issue which we can neither call good or bad. I mean by this that the main thing is as a rule the question of pardon and the promise of moral improvement, and we are therefore confronted with that possibility of spiritual conversion and surrender of the self. No doubt in this fact we discover the exalted nature and greatness of Spirit. When, however, the jolly dog,[62]as the heroes of Kotzebue are for the most part, and not unfrequently Iffland's too, after being a scamp and a rascal, suddenly promises to turn over a new leaf, it is frankly impossible with a good-for-nothing chap of this sort that his conversion can be otherwise than mere pretence, or of so superficial a character that it merely affects his skin, and merely supplies a momentary conclusion to the course of events that has no substantial basis, but rather, by all ordinary reckoning, will take the knave to disreputable quarters, if we will only acquaint ourselves with his subsequent history.

(γγ) As regards ourmodern comedyI must draw particular attention to one point of difference, to which I have already alluded when discussing the old Attic comedy. The point is this—whether the folly and restricted outlook of the characters of the drama merely appears ridiculous to others, or is equally perceived as such by those persons themselves; whether in short the comic characters are an object of laughter only to the audience, or also to such characters. Aristophanes, that creator of genuine comedy, exclusively accepted as the main principle of his plays the latter alternative. Already, however, in Greek comedy of a later date, and subsequently in the hands of Plautus and Terence, the opposite principle came into vogue; and in our modern examples of comedy it has been carried to such a length that we find a large number of comic compositions the inclination of which is more or less the subject-matter which is ridiculous in a purely prosaic sense, or rather we might say matters that leave a sour taste in the mouth of and are repugnant to the comic characters. This is the standpoint of Molière in particular in his best comedies, which have no right to be regarded as farces. The prosaic quality here is justified on the ground that the objects aimed at by such characters are a matter of bitter earnest. They are deadly serious in the pursuit of it; they are therefore quite unable to join with satisfaction in the laughter, when they are finally deceived, or themselves are responsible for its failure. They are in short merely the disillusioned objects of a laughter foreign to themselves and generally damaging to themselves. As an example: Molière's Tartuffele faux dévot, viewed as the unmasking of a really damned rascal has nothing funny in it, but is a very earnest business, and the deception of the deluded Orgon amounts to a sheer intensity of misfortune, which can only be resolved by theDeus ex machina, in reference to whom the official of the court of justice utters the following exhortation:

Remettez-vous, monsieur, d'une alarme si chaude.Nous vivons sous un prince, ennemi de la fraude,Un prince dont les yeux se font jour dans les coeurs,Et que ne peut tromper tout l'art des imposteurs.

We may add, too, that the odious abstract[63]excess of characters so stable as, for example, Molière's "Miser," the absolutely stolid and serious subjection of whom to his idiotic passion renders any emancipation from such fetters impossible, contains in it nothing that is genuinely comic.

It is pre-eminently in this field that for compensation of such defects a fine artistic power in the accurate and exhaustive delineation of character is manifested, or a true mastery of the craft discovers its best opportunity for an admirably thought-out intrigue. As a rule the occasion for such an intrigue is supplied by the circumstance that some character or other endeavours to secure his objects by deluding some one else, such a course appearing to harmonizewith these interests and advance them. As a matter of fact, however, it only results in the contradictory situation that it is through this pernicious demand they are self-destructive. In opposition to such a plot we find as a rule a similar plot of dissembled appearances put in motion, which has for its object the like confusion of the original plotter. Such a general scheme admits of an infinite number and degree of ups and downs in the interweaving of its situations which are adapted to every conceivable subtlety. The Spaniards are, in particular, the most consummate masters in the invention of such intrigues and developments, and have composed much that is delightful and excellent in this class of work. The subject-matter generally consists of the attractive incidents of love or affairs of honour and the like. In tragedy these bring about the profoundest collisions; in comedy, however, where such qualities as pride and love that has been long experienced do not assert themselves as such, but rather by doing the reverse and in the result give the lie to themselves, such interests can merely appear to us as entirely superficial and comic.[64]A word in conclusion as to the characters who hatch and carry out such intrigues. Such are usually, following the example of the slaves in the Roman comedy, servants or menials, who have no respect for the objects of their superiors, but rather make them subordinate to their own advantage or bring them to nought, and merely present us with the amusing position, that the real masters are the servants and the masters the slaves, or at least give rise to all kinds of comic situation, which come about accidentally, or are directly the result of intention. We of course, as audience, are in the know of such mysteries, and can fortify ourselves against every sort of cunning and deceit, which often carries the most serious consequences to fathers, uncles, aunts, and the rest, all of the most respectable antecedents; and we may laugh as we please over the contradictory situations that appear before us, or are involved in such ingenious deceptions.

In this kind of way our modern comedy, generally speaking, gives play on the stage to private interests and personalities of the social life I have mentioned in their accidental vagaries, laughable features, abnormal habits and follies, partly by means of character delineation, and partly with the help of comic developments of situations and circumstances. A joviality so frank and genial as that which persists in the Aristophanic comedy as the mediating element of its resolution, does not animate this kind of comedy; or rather cases occur where it can be actually repulsive, that is to say, where that which is essentially evil, the tricks of menials, the treachery of sons and wards towards worthy men, fathers and guardians is triumphant, always assuming that the persons deluded have in no way themselves been influenced by false prejudices or eccentricities of such a kind that there is some reason why they should be made to appear ridiculous in their helpless stupidity and handed over as the sport of the aims of others.

In a converse way, however, and in contrast as such to the above generally prosaic type of treatment, the modern world, too, has elaborated a world of comedy which is both truly comic and poetical in its nature. The fundamental note here again is the cheeriness of disposition, the inexhaustible resources of fun, no matter what may be the nature of miscarriage or bad luck, the exuberance and dash of what is at bottom nothing better than pure tomfoolery, and, in a word, exploited self-assurance. We have here as a result, in yet profounder expatiation, and yet more intense display of humour, whether the sphere of it be more restricted or capacious, and whether the mode of it be more or less important, what runs on parallel lines with that which Aristophanes in the ancient world and in his own field created beyond all rivalry. As the master, who in a similar way outshines all others in his field, or rather the particular portion to which I now refer, I will, though without now further entering into detail, once again emphasize the name of William Shakespeare.

Having completed our review of the types under which comedy is elaborated we have at last reached the absolute conclusion of our scientific inquiry. We started with symbolical art, in which the ideality of the human soul struggles to discover itself as content and configuration, and, in a word, to become an object to itself. We passed on to the plastic of classical art, which displays to human vision that which has become unveiled to itself as substantive being in man's vital personality. We reached our conclusion in the romantic art of the individual soul-life, that inward world united to the absolute medium of its self-conscious energy, which expatiates unfettered within its own ideal life of Spirit; and which, content with that realm, no longer unites itself with what is objective and particularized, and finally makes itself aware of the negative significance of such a resolution in the humour of the comic Spirit. Nevertheless we find that in this very consummation it is Comedy which opens the way to a dissolution of all that human art implies. For the aim of all art is nothing else than that identity asserted and displayed by the human Spirit, in which the eternal, the Divine, the essential and explicated truth is unfolded in the forms and phenomenal presence of the objective world to the apprehension of our external senses and our emotional life and imagination. If, however, as is the fact, comedy merely enforces this unity under a mode that annihilates it, inasmuch as the absolute substance,[65]which strives here to enforce its realized manifestation, perceives that this realization is,—through the instrumentality of those interests which have now secured an independent freedom within the embrace of the objective world of Nature,[66]and are as such exclusively directed to what is contingent and personal to the soul,—itself shattered, it follows that the presence and activity of the Absolute is no longer truly asserted in positive coalescence with the individual characters and ends of existing objective reality, but rather solely gives effect to itself in the negative form that everything which does not correspond with itself is thereby cancelled,and all that remains is the presence of this free personal activity of soul-life which is displayed in and along with this dissolution as aware of itself and self-assured.

By such a path, then, as this we have arrived at our goal; and with the aid of our philosophical method have gathered every essential type and determinant of the beauty and conformation of art into a garland, the task of arranging which in its associate completeness belongs to the most worthy of any within the range of human science to undertake. For in human Art we are not merely dealing with playthings, however pleasant or useful they may be, but with the liberation of the human Spirit from the substance and forms of finite condition. We are occupied with the presence and reconciliation of the Absolute in sense and the phenomenal, with a revelation of truth, which is not exhausted of its wealth in natural-history, but is unfolded in the history of the world, as a constituent part of which Art supplies us with the most beautiful point of view, the most generous reward for the severe labours of our contact with objective reality and the grievous pains of knowledge. And for this reason it was impossible that our inquiry should wholly restrict itself to the criticism of individual works of art, or any mere recipe or inducement to their production. Rather it could have but the one object, namely, that of following up, of seizing and retaining in and through the instrumentality of thought the fundamental notion of beauty and art through all the stages which it passes in its process of realization.

If I may be permitted to assume that from the above explained point of view my exposition has not been wholly inadequate to general expectation, and that the bonds of obligation with which I have throughout been united to my reader in the pursuit of an object which we hold in common are now released, I will merely add the wish, it is my last word, that a bond yet more exalted and indestructible with the idea of beauty and truth may rivet itself between us in place of that released, and establish an union which shall now and for good remain secure.

[1]Diess treibende Pathos.Pathos is here used to signify the emotional state. This "motive force" would give the sense.

[2]Als konkretes Daseyn zur Existence gebracht.

[3]In der äusseren Objektivität.

[4]The reference is of course to lyric composition. Byreale IndividualisirungHegel seems to refer to the apprehension by the lyric poet of the individual subjective experience in its independent reality.

[5]What Hegel means apparently by this statement is that the results of the action are in the view of the persons concerned primarily referred to their own act of volition and sense of responsibility, and as such they modify their future intention or conduct.

[6]Poet. c. 5.

[7]Einem colliderenden Handeln.

[8]As lyric poetry is.

[9]Poet., c. 7.

[10]The fact should be noted, however, that in the illustration each division is a complete whole in itself.

[11]Hegel apparently means this by his reference todie beiden ersten Elemente, but the passage is not very clear.

[12]Gehalt. That is, an imaginative personality, which seizes the type and our general humanity.

[13]In this obscure passage I have rather sought to emphasize what appears to me the general sense than adhere to literal accuracy. What is contrasted is clearly the naturalism of such a diction as Schiller's "Robbers" and the French classic diction.

[14]Der Allgemeinheit.We should say of "a more ideal or creative atmosphere." The creative poet imports his own universality into the final result both of diction and imaginative conception. Hegel adheres to the philosophical term, which, apart from explanation, is certainly very bald, and even, as it stands, unintelligible.

[15]It is not very clear to what Hegel here refers unless to the fact that female parts were played by youths.

[16]We should say rather "stunned as by a blow,"zerschmettert,rather thanzerschnitten.

[17]Eines grossen Gemüths.It is not clear how far the reference is to the poet or the characters. It applies to both.

[18]Poet., c. 4.

[19]Vol. i, pp. 355-379.

[20]Poet., c. 6.

[21]Apart from the practical impossibility of enforcing such a condition in modern times, Hegel appears here rather to overlook the fact that the printing of a work is of great convenience, and may even involve less expense where its repetition in several theatres is possible, and, after all, important drama is literature. Where the art is bad it is no more possible to prevent its appearance, if the artist is able to afford the expense of publication, than in any other art. In the one case as in the other public taste and the law of supply and demand are here the sole and ultimate tests. Sophocles may have written his dramas, no doubt, with a particular stage in view, but we are not therefore entitled to conclude that either he or Aristophanes would have refused assent to the publication of any or all of their works had there been a publisher willing to accept responsibility. Most certainly we may suppose that Shakespeare would not have done so, at least after due representation and revision. I have, however, met with students of Shakespeare who maintain that no complete autograph manuscript of any single drama of this poet ever existed.

[22]I think it is obvious that if we take the case of the finest musical reproduction by individual artists of the first rank this distinction is not so emphatic as Hegel would make it out to be. A really great musical performance is something much more than a reproduction of musical sound. The effect of personality plays here a part of real and essential importance.

[23]Rollenfächer.Hegel may possibly mean "the professional adjustment of harmonious castes."

[24]See vol. iii, pp. 427-430.

[25]Unmittelbaren Individualität.Hegel means the individuality that is abstract, not soldered into the substance of concrete human life.

[26]Das Göttliche.

[27]In Gegentheil seiner.Hegel means, apparently, that the principle asserts itself positively rather than as the mere negation of the finite, as in exclusive asceticism.

[28]Das Sittliche,i.e.,concrete ethical condition.

[29]Hegel appears to understand by pathos here little more than a psychological state.

[30]Element,i.e.,apparently, "this primitive impulse of realization."

[31]Hegel's language,wenn sie itzt aber wirklich, seems to go as far as my translation. The difficulty of the entire passage, and it is no doubt considerable, is primarily due to the fact that Hegel is here importing into the notion of classic divinities the profounder significance of what he callssittlichen Mächte. By doing this he can more readily shelve the problem how we are to regard the nature of their existence as potential forces of the Divine Being; that is, apart from their operative energy in human life, as also themodus operandiof such Divine energy in its original participation with a real world. He avoids, no doubt, one of the most disputed aspects of his philosophy. But if it is urged in criticism that at least in part his present exposition tends rather to vagueness, or at least to accept a certain measure of symbolism rather than remain severely on the ground of genuine philosophical method and thought, to associate itself rather with Plato than Aristotle, in the present context, at any rate, I am inclined to agree with it.

[32]Der Gewalt des Anundfürsichseyenden.Lit., of that which is or becomes explicit on its own account, i.e., essentially. Hegel refers, of course, to the ethical forces in the process of life.

[33]Hegel here uses the wordeinigrather in its secondary sense than in its primary one ofunique.

[34]Als das zu Erhaltende,viz., the consistency of concrete life.

[35]Byihrer unendlichen SicherheitHegel refers to the stability of the principle of self-conscious, and self-assured character, which in its weakness may be merely equivalent to cocksuredness.

[36]Wohlgemuthkeit und Zuversicht.

[37]Hegel seems to have in his mind characters in comedy of which Falstaff may be taken as a supreme example, and Shakespeare above all the creator of many such. Roy Richmond and Sancho Panza are of the same type.

[38]Der in der Menschenbrust waltenden Götter.

[39]In no religious or even strictly ethical sense of course.

[40]I am not quite sure what Hegel means by his use here of the wordVersühnung, lit., reconciliation. I presume he means a power of harmonious recovery, whether in a good sense is not quite clear.

[41]Formal as contrasted with really ethical content.

[42]Die Substanz. I presume this is the meaning,i.e., the substantive ideality of the ethical forces inherent in man. The entire passage is sufficiently difficult to translate, or indeed wholly to follow, or at least apart from its subsequent application to the chorus of Tragedy.

[43]Allgemeine.Formal in the sense that such a state is not concretely realized in action, but restricts itself to the ideal homogeneity of its form.

[44]It is perhaps best to repeat Hegel's own phrase.

[45]Die sittliche Berechtigung zu einer bestimmten That.The context shows that Hegel does not merely mean the justification in the individual conscience, which is demanded by and perfected in such activity, but the actual ethical claim which is vindicated in such action.

[46]That is, the content of the dramatic action in Greek drama.

[47]ByRechtfertigungHegel here seems to mean not so much the vindicated right as the degree of responsibility which a certain attitude of mind involves. It is the nature of the subjection to the vindicated right, or its absence.

[48]Bydie subjektive Vertiefung der PersönlichkeitHegel would seem to mean the psychological analysis of character on its own account.

[49]Blosser Ausgleichung.The metaphor seems to be that of a final settlement of accounts, a general settlement would be perhaps a better translation.

[50]Hegel's statement is hardly supported by the facts as they are narrated in the "Œdipus Rex." It is the force of facts rather than a power of prevision, which arouse the knowledge of the terrible truth. But Hegel is here evidently most absorbed in the ideal and universal significance of the drama.

[51]That is, of course, in death. Sophocles himself of course only very indefinitely, through the evidence of an eye-witness, refers to such a possible apotheosis.

[52]The statement of the general contrast is no doubt true enough. It may be doubted, however, whether Hegel's own interpretation of the reconciliation of Œdipus as one consummated in death can be wholly brought under the ancient conception. It would seem truer to admit that in the spirit at least of the "Œdipus Coloneus" we have, at least in so far as that reconciliation is objective, and not merely a reconciling influence on our minds, the spectators, as in the case of the deaths of King Lear or Cornelia, in the sense that "death makes all things sweet," a mysterious approach to problems which Christianity first attempted seriously to solve, and which are usually regarded as insoluble without the assumption of a future state, or at least a divine absorption. Even admitting that Œdipus in his death became a real constituent of the harmonious unity of the civic life that received him, we cannot with truth say that such a reconciliation was one in which he shared personally, and whereof he was conscious, except in so far as he was aware of this by prevision; and to that extent the reconciliation was not in his death, but rather, as in the Christian view, a condition of the soul, a conviction that by his death he would live again,—almost identical in fact with some modern interpretations of immortality.

[53]Hegel means the conflict between the universal social interest and the private interest, between the concrete social life and the wholly private life.

[54]I think this gives the nearest approach I can make to the self-coined wordGrundwohlseyns, lit., "the at bottom well being."

[55]Subjektiven Substantialität.Ideal, that is, as opposed to a substantive content based on the facts of living people. Impersonations of qualities imagined rather than portraits of living men, ideal therefore in a theoretic and bad sense.

[56]As previously stated I adopt Hegel's expression, being unable to express it otherwise better. The whole emotional condition is more or less the meaning, but it is rooted in Greek literature.

[57]In dieser Bestimmtheit, lit., in this particular definition of their content.

[58]Hegel may mean that the passions are opposed to each other. The nett result is the same.

[59]Lit., "Is made the tragic lever."

[60]The epithet might mean also "suggestive of personal irritation," but the other epithets rather negative this rendering.

[61]Räderwerk.The whole of this passage, in its theoretical analysis, is extremely difficult not merely to translate, but to follow clearly.

[62]I presume this is the meaning ofPurscheorBursche, and not merely "youngster."

[63]Abstract in the sense that the vices are detached in their extreme from concrete human nature.

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