Chapter XVII: Introduction: I (16)

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.

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

[Footnote 2: _Als konkretes Daseyn zur Existence gebracht._]

[Footnote 3: _In der äusseren Objektivität._]

[Footnote 4: The reference is of course to lyric composition. By _reale Individualisirung_ Hegel seems to refer to the apprehension by the lyric poet of the individual subjective experience in its independent reality.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 6: Poet. c. 5.]

[Footnote 7: _Einem colliderenden Handeln._]

[Footnote 8: As lyric poetry is.]

[Footnote 9: Poet., c. 7.]

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

[Footnote 11: Hegel apparently means this by his reference to _die beiden ersten Elemente_, but the passage is not very clear.]

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

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

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

[Footnote 16: We should say rather "stunned as by a blow," _zerschmettert,_ rather than _zerschnitten._]

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

[Footnote 18: Poet., c. 4.]

[Footnote 19: Vol. I, pp. 355-379.]

[Footnote 20: Poet., c. 6.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 23: _Rollenfächer._ Hegel may possibly mean "the professional adjustment of harmonious castes."]

[Footnote 24: See vol. III, pp. 427-430.]

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

[Footnote 26: _Das Göttliche._]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 28: _Das Sittliche_, _i.e.,_ concrete ethical condition.]

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

[Footnote 30: _Element_, _i.e.,_ apparently, "this primitive impulse of realization."]

[Footnote 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 calls _sittlichen 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 the _modus operandi_ of 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 33: Hegel here uses the word _einig_ rather in its secondary sense than in its primary one of _unique._]

[Footnote 34: _Als das zu Erhaltende,_ viz., the consistency of concrete life.]

[Footnote 35: By _ihrer unendlichen Sicherheit_ Hegel refers to the stability of the principle of self-conscious, and self-assured character, which in its weakness may be merely equivalent to cocksuredness.]

[Footnote 36: _Wohlgemuthkeit und Zuversicht_.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 38: _Der in der Menschenbrust waltenden Götter._]

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

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

[Footnote 41: Formal as contrasted with really ethical content.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

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

[Footnote 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.]

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

[Footnote 47: By _Rechtfertigung_ Hegel 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.]

[Footnote 48: By _die subjektive Vertiefung der Persönlichkeit_ Hegel would seem to mean the psychological analysis of character on its own account.]

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

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

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

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

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 57: _In dieser Bestimmtheit_, lit., in this particular definition of their content.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 62: I presume this is the meaning of _Pursche_ or _Bursche_, and not merely "youngster."]

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

[Footnote 64: I have made the best I can of a very badly expressed sentence, and, as I should add, a very meagre description of the aim of modern comic drama. I am, however, not quite satisfied that it is an adequate translation, or that I have grasped what Hegel means by the words _nicht gestehen zu wollen_. It would apply very aptly to such a character as Sir Willoughby Patterne, but the pertinency of such an epithet as _lang empfunden_ I fail to see. I doubt myself if we have here anything more than a chance note of Hegel tacked in by editors. The whole of the present paragraph is a very jejune description of the treatment of the love passion or affairs of honour by modern drama. A pity we cannot supplement it with the substance of Meredith's "Essay on Comedy." The passage, however, must be read as qualified by the further note lower down on the exuberance of one aspect of modern comedy. But the reference to "Comedy" in the modern sense is a mere fragment.]

[Footnote 65: That is, self-conscious life. The Absolute here seems to be identified with man's self-conscious activity.]

[Footnote 66: I think this is what Hegel must mean here by _im Elemente der Wirklichkeit_, in the element, that is, of material reality.]