Note C.
8
1
The lecture, as printed in 1901, was preceded by the following note: “This Lecture is printed almost as it was delivered. I am aware that, especially in the earlier pages, difficult subjects are treated in a manner far too summary, but they require an exposition so full that it would destroy the original form of the Lecture, while a slight expansion would do little to provide against misunderstandings.” A few verbal changes have now been made, some notes have been added, and some of the introductory remarks omitted.
4
What is here called ‘substance’ is what people generally mean when they use the word ‘subject’ and insist on the value of the subject. I am not arguing against this usage, or in favour of the usage which I have adopted for the sake of clearness. It does not matter which we employ, so long as we and others know what we mean. (I use ‘substance’ and ‘content’ indifferently.)
5
These remarks will hold good, mutatis mutandis, if by ‘substance’ is understood the ‘moral’ or the ‘idea’ of a poem, although perhaps in one instance out of five thousand this may be found in so many words in the poem.
6
On the other hand, the absence, or worse than absence, of style, in this sense, is a serious matter.
8
This paragraph is criticized in Note D.
10
Not that to Schiller ‘form’ meant mere style and versification.
13
In Schiller’s phrase, they have extirpated the mere ‘matter.’ We often say that they do this by dint of style. This is roughly true, but in strictness it means, as we have seen, not that they decorate the mere ‘matter’ with a mere ‘form,’ but that they produce a new content-form.
14
I have learned something from many discussions of this subject. In its outline the view I have taken is perhaps nearer to Hartmann’s than to any other.
15
Popular usage coincides roughly with this sense. Indeed, it can hardly be said to recognise the wider one at all. ‘Beauty’ and ‘beautiful,’ in that wider sense, are technical terms of Aesthetics. It is a misfortune that the language of Aesthetics should thus differ from the ordinary language of speech and literature; but the misfortune seems to be unavoidable, for there is no word in the ordinary language which means ‘whatever gives aesthetic satisfaction,’ and yet that idea must have a name in Aesthetics.
16
I do not mean to imply that in aesthetic apprehension itself we always, or generally, make conscious use of a standard or, indeed, think of greatness. But here we are reflecting on this apprehension.
17
Thus, it may be noticed, the sparrow’s size, which is the reverse of sublime, is yet indirectly essential to the sublimity of the sparrow.
18
The poet’s language here has done our analysis for us.
19
A word may be added here on a disputed point as to ‘spiritual’ sublimity. It has been held that intellect cannot be sublime; but surely in the teeth of facts. Not to speak of intellect as it appears in the sphere of practice, how can it be denied that the intellect of Aristotle or Shakespeare or Newton may produce the impression of sublimity? All that is true is, first, that the intellect must be apprehended imaginatively and not thought abstractly (otherwise it can produce no aesthetic impression), and, secondly, that it appears sublime in virtue not of its quality alone but of the quantity, or force, of that quality.
20
The same principle applies to other cases. If, for example, the desolation of a landscape is felt to be sublime, it is so not as the mere negation of life, verdure, etc., but as their active negation.
21
The reader will remember that in one sense of the question, Is there no more in the sublime than overwhelming greatness?
СКАЧАТЬ
<p>41</p>
Some remarks on We are seven are added in a note at the end of the lecture.
