Certainly we desire to see not merely the individual,
but, more than this, its vital Idea. But if the artist has seized the
inward creative spirit and essence of the Idea, and sets this forth,
he makes the individual a world in itself, a class, an eternal
prototype; and he who has grasped the essential character needs not
to fear hardness and severity, for these are the conditions of life.
Nature, that in her completeness appears as the utmost benignity,
we see, in each particular, aiming even primarily and principally at
severity, seclusion and reserve. As the whole creation is the work
of the utmost externization and renunciation [Entaeusserung], so
the artist must first deny himself and descend into the Particular,
without shunning isolation, nor the pain, the anguish of Form.
Nature, from her first works, is throughout characteristic; the energy
of fire, the splendor of light, she shuts up in hard stone, the tender
soul of melody in severe metal; even on the threshold of Life, and
already meditating organic shape, she sinks back overpowered by the
might of Form, into petrifaction.
The life of the plant consists in still receptivity, but in what
exact and severe outline is this passive life inclosed! In the animal
kingdom the strife between Life and Form seems first properly to
begin; her first works Nature hides in hard shells, and, where these
are laid aside, the animated world attaches itself again through its
constructive impulse to the realm of crystallization.
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