1. The idea or ideal of artistic beauty
With regard to the first and second parts, for the sake of understanding the following, we must first remind of the fact that the idea of artistic beauty is not an idea in terms of the idea itself, that is, not an idea that is understood as an absolute in philosophical logic, but an idea that is transformed into a concrete image that conforms to reality and is combined with reality to form a direct and proper unity. For as far as the idea itself is concerned, although the idea is self-real, it is only universal, and has not yet been transformed into the reality of concrete objects; On the one hand, it has a definite qualitative characterization and becomes an individual reality in essence, and on the other hand, it is also an individual manifestation of reality, with a qualitative characteristic, so that it itself manifests this idea in essence. This is tantamount to the requirement that the idea and its performance, that is, its concrete reality, should be perfectly compatible with each other. According to this understanding, the idea is the reality that conforms to the essence of the idea and appears as a concrete image, and this idea is the ideal. This kind of conformity may first be understood in a very formal way to mean that the idea is not limited to any one, as long as the image of reality (which is not limited to any one) happens to represent the given idea, then it is considered to be in conformity. If this is the case, the truth demanded by the ideal will be mixed with the mere correctness, which means that the content of any meaning is expressed in an appropriate way, and the meaning of the image can be found directly as soon as it is seen. Ideals cannot be understood in this way. Because any content can be properly expressed according to the standards of its essence, but it does not deserve to be called an ideal artistic beauty. Compared to ideal beauty, this situation is flawed even in terms of expression. In this regard, we must first mention a truth that will not be proven until the future: the defects of a work of art are not always attributable to the technical skill of the subject alone, but the defects of form always arise from the defects of the content. For example, the artistic images of the Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian peoples, such as the statues and idols, are formless, or the form is clear but ugly and unreal, and they cannot achieve true beauty, because their mythological concepts, the content and ideas of their works of art are still unclear, or they are clear but inferior, and they are not absolute in themselves. In this sense, the more beautiful the expression of a work of art, the deeper the inner truth of its content and ideas. In considering this, we should not think only of the degree of proficiency in mastering natural shapes and imitating them in the light of current external realities. Because in some stages of artistic consciousness and artistic expression, the distortion and damage of natural shapes are not unintentional, not due to unfamiliarity and unskillfulness, but due to deliberate changes, which are required and determined by the content of consciousness. From this point of view, an art, although it is perfect in terms of technique and so on in terms of its established scope, can still be imperfect as an art, and it is still flawed if it is measured by the concept and ideal of art. It is only in the highest art that the idea and the expression are truly in harmony with each other, that is to say, the image used to express the idea is itself an absolutely true image, because the content of the idea it represents is itself the real content. As mentioned earlier, this principle also contains a side conclusion: an idea must be defined as a concrete whole in itself and through itself, and thus it itself has the principles and criteria by which the process of transformation of the idea into a particular individual and into an external phenomenon is based. For example, the Christian imagination can only take the form of God in the form of man and the face of the human heart, because God Himself is known entirely as the mind in Christianity. Qualitative seems to be a bridge that makes ideas appear as images. As long as this characterization does not arise from the whole of the idea itself, and as long as the idea is not understood as something which qualifies itself and makes itself something special, the idea is still abstract, and it derives its characterization not from itself but from itself, that is, from within itself a principle that determines that a certain mode of manifestation is the only fit for it. Therefore, if the idea is still abstract, its image is not determined by it, but is foreign. This is not the case with the concrete idea itself, which already contains the principles on which it takes the form of appearance, and is therefore itself a process of manifesting itself as a free image. From this, it can be seen that only a truly concrete idea can produce a true image, and the conformity of these two aspects is the ideal.
2. Ideals develop into various special types of artistic beauty—symbolic art, classical art, and romantic art
Since the idea is such a concrete unity, this unity can only enter the consciousness of art through the extension and reconciliation of the special aspects of the idea; It is because of this development that there is a whole set of special stages and types of artistic beauty. Now that we have studied art as something that is self-contained, we should now see how the complete beauty is differentiated into various special definite forms. This leads to the second part of the book, the doctrine of types of art. These types arise because of the different ways in which ideas are grasped as artistic content, and thus the images through which ideas are manifested. Therefore, the genre of art is nothing more than the different relations between the content and the image, and these relations are actually born from the idea itself, so it provides a real basis for the distinction of art genres. For the principle of this distinction must always be contained in the very idea to be differentiated and differentiated.
What we are going to study here is the three relationships between idea and image.
a) First, the idea is not yet in its own right at the beginning, it is still vague, or it has a definite form but is not real, and in this case it is used as the content of artistic creation. Since it is uncertain, the idea itself does not yet have the individuality that the ideal requires; Its abstraction and one-sidedness make the image bizarre and imperfect in appearance. So this first type of art is not so much a real expressive as it is an attempt at illustration. The idea has not yet found its desired form in itself, so it is only a struggle and a desire for form. We can generally call this type of symbolic art. In this genre, the image taken by the abstract idea is a perceptual material that is external to the natural form of the idea itself, and the process of visualization starts from this material and appears to be bound to this material. On the one hand, the natural object remains unchanged as it was, and on the other hand, a physical idea is reluctantly attached to the object as the meaning of the object, and therefore the object has the task of expressing the idea, and is to be understood as containing the idea itself. This happens because natural things have an aspect that is capable of universal significance. However, since it is not possible to have a complete correspondence between the idea and the image, the relationship between the idea and the image involves only one abstract attribute, such as the use of a lion to symbolize strength.
On the other hand, the abstraction of this relational also makes one aware that the idea is attached to natural phenomena from the outside, and that the idea, since it has no other reality to express it, wanders among the shapes of many natural things, looking for itself in their turmoil and disorder, but finding that they are not suitable for itself. Thus it exaggerates the natural shapes and real phenomena into uncertain and uneven things, and in them it is dizzy, fermenting and boiling, forcing them, distorting them, and cutting them into unnatural shapes, in an attempt to elevate phenomena to the status of ideas with the looseness, enormity, and magnificence of the image. For here the idea is still somewhat uncertain and cannot be visualized, while the natural thing is completely certain in terms of shape.
Since the two aspects do not correspond to each other, the relation of the idea to the objective things becomes a negative one, because the idea, since it is intrinsic in nature, cannot be satisfied with such external shapes, and so it leaves these external forms and elevates itself to the higher than those which are not suitable for it as the inner universal entity of these forms. As a result of this ascension, natural phenomena and human shapes and deeds are accepted as they are, as they are, but at the same time they are considered unfit for the meaning to which they are intended, which is originally elevated to a level far above all the contents of the human world.
Generally speaking, these situations are the pantheistic character of Oriental primitive art, which, on the one hand, imposes absolute meaning on the most mundane objects, and on the other hand, reluctantly wants natural phenomena to become the expression of its worldview, so that it seems grotesque and bizarre, without connoisseurship, or by virtue of the infinite but abstract freedom of the entity, treats all phenomena with contempt, and treats them as meaningless and ephemeral. Therefore, the meaning of the content cannot be fully reflected in the way of expression, and no matter how much hope and effort are made, the inconsistency between the concept and the image is still insurmountable. This is the first type of art, the symbolic art, with its aspirations, its restlessness, its mystical and sublime style.
b) In the second type of art, which we call classical art, the double defect of symbolic art is overcome. The image of symbolic art is imperfect, because on the one hand its ideas enter consciousness only in the form of abstract definite or indefinite forms; On the other hand, this situation makes the correspondence between meaning and image always flawed and purely abstract. Classical art overcomes these two defects by freely and properly embodying the idea in the image that is particularly suitable for the idea in nature, so that the idea can form a free and complete harmony with the image. From this, it can be seen that only classical art provides the perfect ideal of artistic creation and observation for the first time, and only then does this perfect ideal become a reality.
The correspondence between concepts and reality in classical art cannot be understood only in terms of pure form as the harmony between content and external image, just as ideals should not be understood in this way. Otherwise, every work that imitates nature, every face, landscape, flower, scene, etc., as long as it is consistent with the content and form of a certain expression, can be regarded as classical art. On the contrary, the characteristic of the content in classical art is that it is itself a concrete idea, and only in this way is a concrete spiritual thing; Because only spiritual things are truly internal. Therefore, in order to conform to such content, we must look for those things in nature that are already in accordance with the mind of the self. There must be a primordial conception of the invention of the image which suits the concrete mind, and then the concept of the subject, which in this case is the spirit of art, only needs to find that image, so that this objective being with a natural shape (i.e., the above-mentioned image) can be adapted to the free individual mind. This image is the image that the idea—as a mental thing, that is, as an individual definite psychic—must have when it appears as a temporal phenomenon, that is, the image of the person. It is true that personification and anthropomorphism are condemned as a humiliation of the mind, but since art wants to manifest the spiritual in a perceptual image for contemplation, it must go to this anthropomorphism, for it is only in the body which is characteristic of the mind itself that the mind can fully manifest itself to the senses. From this point of view, the theory of soul reincarnation is a false abstract concept, and physiology should establish the basic principle that life must reach the human image in its evolution, because the human image is the only perceptual phenomenon that conforms to the mind.
The shape of the human body is used in classical art not only as a sensual existence, but entirely as the external existence and natural form of the mind, so it does not have all the deficiencies of purely sensual things and the contingency and finitude of phenomena. The image must be purified in this way in order to express the content suitable for it; On the other hand, if the correspondence between the meaning and the image should be complete, the spiritual meaning as the content must be able to fully express itself in the natural shape of the human being, and not go beyond the scope of the expression of the human body shape with the sensual human body. Thus the mind is immediately identified as a special kind of mind, that is, the human mind, not merely an absolute eternal mind, for the latter mind can only be known and expressed as the mind itself.
This last point is another defect that causes the classical art to fall apart and requires art to move to a higher third type, the romantic art.
c) Romantic art destroys the complete unity of idea and reality, and returns to the difference and opposition between concept and reality that symbolic art has not overcome at a higher stage. Classical art has reached the highest level of beauty, and has done everything in its power to express its artistic sensibilities. If there is any flaw in it, it is only in the art itself, that is, the scope of art is inherently limited. This limitation lies in the fact that general art uses perceptual concrete images to express the universality of the infinite concrete, that is, the mind, so that it becomes an object, while in classical art, the complete fusion of the existence of the mind and the existence of the sensibility becomes the correspondence between the two. In fact, in this fusion, the mind cannot be manifested according to its true conception. Because the mind is the infinite subjectivity of the idea, and since the infinite subjectivity of the idea is absolutely immanent, if it still has to take the shape of the body as an objective existence suitable for it, and to emanate from this shape of the body, it cannot yet freely manifest itself. Because of this reason, Romantic art has abolished the indivisible unity of classical art, because the content and meaning it obtains are beyond the scope of classical art and its mode of expression. In familiar terms, this content is consistent with Christ's proclaim that God is the mind, and is very different from the Greek belief in God, which is the basic proper content of classical art. In classical art, the specific content is the free unity of human nature and divinity, and since this unity is direct and free, it can be properly expressed in an intuitive and perceptual way. The Greek god is the object of simple contemplation and sensual imagination, so his shape is the shape of the human body, and his power and the scope of his existence are individual and special, while for the subject he is an entity and power, and the inner mind of the subject and this substance and power are only in the unity of itself, and cannot yet recognize this unity in the subjective aspect of the interior. The content of classical art is only the unity of freedom, which can be fully expressed by the human body, and the higher stage is the knowledge of this unity of freedom. This elevation from the state of freedom to the knowledge of self-realization produces a great distinction, and it is this very great distinction that separates man and animal. Man is an animal, but even in terms of his animal faculties, he does not remain in a state of ease like an animal, but is aware of them, learns to recognize them, and elevates them, such as the process of digestion, to the science of self-consciousness. It is for this reason that man removes the limitations of his immediate state of being, and since he knows that he is an animal, he is no longer an animal, but a mind that can know itself.
If humanity and divinity are elevated from the free and direct unity of the previous stage to the unity of consciousness, the medium that can express the reality of this content is no longer the direct existence of the human body, that is, the sensibility of the mind, but the inner life of one's own consciousness. Christianity understands God as the heart or spirit, not as an individual special mind, but as an absolute mind both spiritually and substantively. It is for this reason that Christianity retreats from the sensual appearance to the inner life of the mind, the material and objective existence with which it expresses its content, that is, the inner life rather than the physical shape. The unity of humanity and divinity also becomes a unity that can be realized, a unity that can only be achieved through the knowledge of the mind and only in the mind. The new content acquired by this unity is not bound to the sensual expression that seems to be appropriate to it, but is liberated from this immediate existence, which must be overcome as an opposite, to be reflected in the unity of the mind. It can be seen from this that although romantic art still belongs to the field of art and retains the form of art, it is art that transcends art itself.
We may therefore briefly say that in this third stage, the object of art is the free concrete life of the mind, which should be manifested as the life of the mind to the inner world of the mind. On the one hand, in order for art to conform to this object, it must not be contemplated exclusively for the sensual sense, but must appeal to the inner world that is simply in harmony with the object, to the inner life of the subject, to the emotions and emotions, which, since they are spiritual, therefore seek freedom in themselves, and can only find its reconciliation in the inner mind. It is this inner world that constitutes the content of romantic art, so it must be expressed as this inner life, and through the manifestation of this inner life. The inner world celebrates its triumph over the external world, and within the outer world itself, and uses this external world as a medium to manifest its triumph, and by virtue of this triumph, sensual phenomena are reduced to worthlessness.
But on the other hand, this type of art, like all other genres, still has to be expressed in external things. Since the life of the mind withdraws from the external world and its immediate unity with this external world, into itself, the sensual external concrete image, as in symbolic art, is accepted and expressed as non-essential, ephemeral; The limited mind and will of the subject, including individual characters, characters, actions, etc., as well as the intricacies of the plot, etc., are also accepted and expressed in this way. The objective aspect of existence is regarded as accidental, driven at will by illusion, which can reflect the present at the whim of the moment, or distort the external world, turning it upside down and grotesque. For this external factor no longer has its concept and meaning as freely as in the classical art, but it is necessary to find its concept and meaning in the emotional life, and this emotional life must be manifested in itself and not from the external things and their actual forms; And this emotional life can maintain or restore its reconciliation with itself from all accidents, from all calamities and afflictions, and even from criminal acts.
From this point on, the indifference, incompatibility and division between the idea and the image of symbolic art are reborn, but there is an essential difference: in symbolic art, the defects of the idea give rise to the defects of the image, while in the romantic art, the idea must appear as its own perfect thought and emotion, and because of this higher degree of perfection, the idea withdraws from the harmony between it and its external factors, because the idea can only find its true reality and manifestation in itself.
In a nutshell, this is the characteristic of symbolic art, classical art, and romantic art as three kinds of relationships between ideas and images in art. These three types begin with the pursuit of the ideal, the concept of true beauty, and then reach and finally transcend.
3. The system of the various arts – architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, etc
The difference between the third part and the first and second parts of the book is that the third part assumes that the ideal concept and the general type of art have been solved, and all that remains is how to realize that ideal and type with some perceptual material. So what we need to do now is not to study the inner development of artistic beauty according to the universal basic principles of artistic beauty, but to study how these principles are transformed into objective existence, how they differ from each other in appearance, and how each element of the concept of beauty is realized separately as a work of art, and not just as a general type. But what art is to transform into external existence are some differences inherent in the idea of beauty itself, so that the general types of art can also be seen in the principles that distinguish and define the various arts in this third part; In other words, the essential differences between the various arts are the same as the differences between the general types of art that we have seen before. The external objective existence obtained by these types through sensual materials, that is, special materials, makes these types differentiate into independent and special modes of expression, that is, various arts, because each type has its definite character because it uses a certain external material, and the mode of expression determined by this special material makes it fully realized. But on the other hand, these types, although they have their own qualitative characteristics, are still general types, so they can also break through the limitation that each of them has a particular art as its special mode of expression, and can be expressed through other types of art, but this is only a secondary mode of expression. So on the one hand, every art belongs to a particular type of art, as a manifestation suitable for this type; On the other hand, each art can also represent any of these three types in its own way.
So, in general, what we will be looking at in this third part is how artistic beauty unfolds into a world of realized beauty in the various arts and their works. The content of this world is what is beautiful, and what is truly beautiful, as we have seen, is the spiritual thing with a concrete image, the ideal, or more precisely, the absolute mind, that is, the truth itself. This realm of divine truth, expressed in art for the sake of contemplation and feeling, is the center of the whole art world, that is, the independent and free divine image, which completely grasps the external factors of form and material and uses them as a means of manifesting itself. But since beauty appears as an objective reality in this realm, and in the process differentiates into some special independent aspects and factors, this center has two extremes of its own realization in a special reality. At the end of the spectrum is the mindless objectivity, the simple natural environment created by God. At this extreme, the mere external factor acquires a concrete image, becoming something that has no spiritual purpose and content in itself, but must obtain its spiritual purpose and content from another thing.
At the other end of the spectrum is the inner realization of the sacredness, that is, the special subject existence transformed by God: this is the reality that operates and works in the feelings, emotions and hearts of the individual subject, and this reality is not condensed in its outward form, but retreats into the individual inner world of the subject. In this state, the divine is different from its mere manifestation, that is, the Godhead of Godhead, which is transformed into those multitude of special things that belong within the realm of knowledge, feelings, perceptions, and emotions of all individual subjects. At its highest stage, art is directly connected with religion, and in a similar field of religion we understand the distinction here: first, the earthly nature of life is regarded as finite and alone; In the second step, consciousness turns God into its object, in which the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is removed; Finally, in the third step, we move from God Himself to the devout worship of the masses of believers, that is to say, to the God who is alive and manifest in the subjective consciousness. In the art world, there are also three main distinctions that are developing independently.
a) According to this basic principle of the arts, one of the first things we must study is the architecture of beauty. The task of architecture is to process the external inorganic nature, so that it can form a flesh-and-blood relationship with the mind and become an external world in line with art. Its material is the direct external matter, that is, the bulky pile of matter subject to mechanical laws; Its form has not yet departed from the form of inorganic nature, but is arranged according to the abstract relation known by the intellect of understanding, that is, the symmetrical relation. The ideal of being a concrete mind cannot be realized with such materials and forms, and therefore the reality expressed in such materials and forms is still opposed to the idea, which is external to the idea but not permeated by the idea, or has only an abstract relationship with the idea. Therefore, the basic type of architectural art is the type of symbolic art. Architecture paves the way for the consummation of God, and in this kind of errand it painstakingly works on objective nature, freeing it from the entanglement of finitude and the distortion of chance. In this way, the building paved the way for the gods, arranged the external environment, and built the temple as a suitable place for the mind to contemplate its absolute object. It also built a wall for the assembly of his congregations of believers, sheltered from the wind and rain and from wild beasts, and showed the will of the congregation, in a way that was outwardly but artistic. The extent to which architecture can be infused into its materials and forms with this kind of content and meaning depends on whether the definite content it processes on it is meaningful, whether it is abstract or concrete, whether it is profound or superficial. In this respect, architecture can achieve a high level of achievement, and even be able to use its materials and forms to fully express the above content as a work of art. But at this point, the building has gone beyond its own confines and approached the art that is one level above it, that is, carving. Because the characteristic of architecture lies in the inner mind or in opposition to its external form, architecture can only point out things that are full of spirituality as a kind of outsider.
b) As mentioned above, architecture purifies the inorganic external world, gives it a symmetrical order, and brings it into flesh and blood with the mind, so that the temple of God, which is also the house of his believers, is built. The second step is for God Himself to enter the temple and shine with a lightning-like light of personality and permeate the lifeless heap of matter, no longer in the form of symmetry, but in the infinite form of the mind itself, concentrating and manifesting the corresponding bodily nature. That's the task of engraving. Because the inner life of the soul that architecture can only be directed from the outside, in sculpture it seems to dwell in the sensual image and its external materials, and because the two aspects seem to be in harmony, and no one overpowers the other, so the sculpture takes the classical art type as its basic type. Therefore, all the manifestations of the perceptual factor itself in the sculpture are at the same time the expression of the mental factor, and conversely, any spiritual content cannot be fully expressed in the sculpture if it is not completely presented to the consciousness in the shape of the body. Sculpture should express the mind in the shape of its body, so that the mind and the shape of the body are directly united, and stand there quietly and happily, and the form should be instilled with the content of the mind's personality. Therefore, the carving is processed on the external perceptual material, no longer only according to the mechanical nature of its bulky material pile, nor in the form of inorganic matter, nor regardless of coloring or non-coloring, etc., but to carve the perceptual material into the ideal form of the human body, but also to express the human body as three-dimensional. On this last point, we must keep in mind that it is only in the sculpture that the inner spiritual thing reveals for the first time its eternal tranquility and essential self-sufficiency. The only thing that can correspond to this silence and this unity of oneself and oneself is the external image that also has this silence and unity. Satisfying this condition is the image of abstract space (138). The mind represented in the sculpture is solid in itself, not torn apart by chance and lust; Therefore, its external shape does not appear as various phenomena, but only abstract spatiality appears in all its three-dimensionality.
c) The temple has been erected by the building, and the sculptor's hand has placed the idol in the temple, so the third step is that the god manifested to the senses faces the crowd of his believers in the wide hall of his temple. These masses of believers are the reflection of the spirituality of the objective existence of the sensibility in themselves, the subjectivity and inner life that play the role of instilling vitality, and with this subjectivity and inner life, it is only for the content of art and for the materials used to express the inner life and the external image that specialization, individualization, and their associated subjectivity become the principles of qualitative. At this stage, the solid unity of God in the carving is divided into the inner life of many individuals, and the unity of the inner life of many individuals is not emotional but conceptual. It is only at this stage, only at the stage where God begins to reciprocate in this way, from the unity within Himself to the realization of Himself both in the subjective knowledge of Himself and in the subjective knowledge of the people who are united by their commonality, that God becomes the true mind—the heart of His mass of believers. In these masses of believers, God is freed on the one hand from the abstraction of the unity of self and himself that has not yet unfolded, and on the other hand from the situation of direct immersion in the physical form, as he is represented in the carving; In this way God is exalted into the life of the mind and into knowledge, that is, into the reflection that is essentially inward and appears as the life of the subject. Therefore, this higher content is now something of the mind, and something of absolute mindfulness; However, because of the above-mentioned differentiation, this absolutely spiritual thing also appears as individual mental life, that is, individual moods; Since the main thing that is present at this stage is no longer God's carefree self-sufficiency, but especially his appearance, that is, the existence of others, that is, self-manifestation, at this stage the various forms of subjective life in the midst of active movements and actions, such as man's passions, movements, events, in short, the vast sphere of man's emotional will and the restraint of the emotional will, have independent qualifications to be the object of artistic expression. In order to conform to this content, the perceptual element of art must also be transformed into something that is itself individual, so as to facilitate the expression of the subject's inner life. Materials that meet this requirement are colors, sounds, and sounds that are suggestive only to inner perceptions and ideas, and the ways in which these materials are used to express the meaning of the above content are pictures, music, and poetry. In these arts, the perceptual materials are divided into various kinds, which are generally regarded as conceptual, so it is most in line with the general spiritual artistic content implication, and the relationship between the spiritual content implication and the perceptual material is also closer in these arts than in architecture and sculpture. However, the unity thus obtained is a more internal unity, the emphasis is placed on the subjective aspect, and because form and content have to be concretely differentiated to obtain a purely conceptual existence, this unity can only be achieved at the expense of the objective universality of content and the fusion of this universality with the direct perceptual factor.
The form and content of these arts have been raised to the conceptual level, abandoning the symbolic architectural and the classical ideal of sculpture, so they take the romantic art type as their basic type, because they are most suitable for the expression of romantic art. They form a whole set of art, because romantic art itself is the most concrete.
The individual arts in this third area can be divided as follows:
a) The first art that followed the engraving was painting. The material used by painting as a content and the medium through which it is expressed is purely visible to the naked eye, that is to say, it is characterized by the fact that it derives its qualitative qualities from color. The materials of architecture and sculpture are certainly visible and colored to the naked eye, but this is not like in painting, where it is not visible in terms of visibility alone, and it is not a color formed by the opposition and unity of light and darkness. This visibility is itself subjective, conceptual, and it is neither like the volumetric properties of abstract machinery that need to work in bulky matter in architecture, nor like all the perceptual properties of three-dimensional space that are required in sculpture, even though these properties are concentrated in the shape of the organism. The qualitative difference between the visibility of painting and the way of achieving it lies in the fact that it is more conceptual, in the particularity of color, and in the fact that it frees art from the fact that matter has to occupy the perceptual space completely, because it is confined to the plane.
On the other hand, the content of the painting is also widely specialized (differentiated). Anything that can occupy a position in the human heart, such as emotions, concepts, goals, etc., everything that can cause action, all these complex materials can form the rich and colorful content of painting. The whole world of distinctions, from the highest qualities of the mind to the most isolated natural things, can find its place in painting. For even individual scenes and phenomena of finite nature can be expressed in art, as long as there is anything that can lead to the factors of the mind so that they become flesh-and-blood with thoughts and emotions.
b) The second type of art through which Romantic art is realized is music, which is the opposite of painting. The material of the music, while still emotional, has developed to a deeper subjectivity and specialization. Music also treats the perceptual element as conceptual, which can be seen from this: painting retains its full form for the extension of space, and deliberately imitates it; Music, on the other hand, cancels or negates the continuity of this space, and conceptualizes it as a separate point of isolation. As this negation, the point itself is a concrete positive process of negation within the properties of matter, manifested in the movement and vibration of the object within itself and in relation to itself. This initial conceptuality of matter—no longer the conceptuality of space, but the conceptuality of time—is sound, a negated perceptual factor, the abstract visibility of which has been transformed into audibleness, and sound seems to liberate the conceptual content from the material captivity. This immanence and spirituality, which is initially infused into matter, provides the material for the expression of the inner and spiritual nature of the mind which is not yet determined in itself, so that the state of mind and all its emotions and desires are expressed in its voice. So music becomes the center of romantic art, just as sculpture becomes a bridge between architecture and several subjective romantic arts; Music also became a turning point between the abstract spatial sensibility of painting and the abstract spirituality of poetry. Like architecture, music itself has a relationship of quantity that conforms to understanding, and it is based on the strict regularity of sound and its confluence and continuity, which contradicts the emotional and inner life that music represents.
c) As to the third type of romantic art, its most spiritual expression, we must look for it in poetry. Poetry is characterized by its ability to subordinate the perceptual element from which music and painting have begun to liberate art to the mind and its ideas. Because the last external substance retained by the poem is the sound, and the sound in the poem is no longer the emotion caused by the sound itself, but a meaningless symbol in itself, and the idea represented by this symbol is itself concrete, not only an indefinite emotion and its various depths and grades. Thus the sound becomes a word, a sound that is already made in itself in sections, and its meaning is to mark ideas and concepts, because the point at which music has attained which is itself negation, now progresses to a point of complete concreteness, which is the mind, that is, the self-conscious individual, who produces from itself the infinite space of ideas, and combines this infinite space with the temporality of sound. This perceptual element is still directly integrated with the inner life in music, but in poetry it is separated from the content of consciousness, which the mind itself identifies as an idea, and in order to express this idea, the mind also uses sound, but only as a symbol of its own worthlessness and meaninglessness. In this way, sound can become mere letters, for what is audible is reduced to a mere mark of the mind like what is visible. Therefore, the proper expressive factor of poetry is the imagination and spiritual contemplation of the poem itself, and since this factor is common to all types of art, poetry flows in all arts, and develops independently in each art. The art of poetry is the universal art of the mind, which is itself free, free from the external perceptual materials for expression, and wanders freely only in the inner space and inner time of thoughts and emotions. But at this highest stage, art surpasses itself, because it abandons the principle that the mind achieves harmonious expression through sensual factors, and changes from poetry expressing imagination to prose expressing thoughts.
These are the totalities of the classifications of the various arts: architecture, external art; engraving, the art of objectivity; Painting, music and poetry, the art of the subject. There have been many other classifications that have been tried in the past, because there are many aspects of a work of art, and one can sometimes use one aspect and sometimes that aspect as the basis for classification, and in fact people tend to classify in this way. Sensual materials, for example, can be used as a classification criterion. According to this criterion, architecture is regarded as crystallization, sculpture is regarded as a perceptual and spatial whole, materials are portrayed as the shape of organisms, and painting is regarded as colored planes and lines. In music, space is transformed into a point of time, with its own content; In the end, in the poem, the external material is completely reduced to a worthless status. In addition, the distinction between various arts can also be seen in terms of their abstract properties of time and space. This abstract distinction in the work of art, like sensual material, can certainly be studied in the light of its characteristics, but they cannot be regarded as the final fundamental law, for any such aspect must itself be governed by a higher principle. We find this higher principle to be the symbolic, classical, and romantic types of art—these types are the universal stages or factors of the concept of beauty itself.
The relationship of these types to the various arts with concrete forms is as follows: the various arts constitute the real existence of the art type. Symbolic art has achieved its most suitable reality and the most perfect application in architecture, and can function completely according to its concept, and has not yet been reduced to the inorganic nature dealt with by other arts; The classical art of antiquity is fully realized in sculpture, which regards architecture as a mere wall, but has not yet been able to develop painting and music as absolute forms of expression of its content; Finally, Romantic art grasped painting and music as its independent and absolute forms, and the expression of poetry was also included; But poetry is suitable for all types of beauty, and runs through all types, because the characteristic factor of poetry is the creative imagination, and the creative imagination is necessary for the creation of every kind of beauty, no matter which type of beauty it belongs to.
Thus what the various arts realize in individual works of art is, according to their concepts, only those universal types that emerge from the spontaneous idea of beauty. The vast palace of art was built as the outward realization of this idea of beauty. Its architects and craftsmen are the minds of increasingly conscious beauty. But to complete this official of art, world history will have to go through thousands of years of evolution.
