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XXII.—Burke Among the Forerunners of Lessing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757; second edition, considerably enlarged, 1759) was received in Germany no less hospitably than in England. Lessing wrote about it in 1757 and 1758 to his friends Mendelssohn and Nicolai, planned to translate it, and left Bemerkungen on sundry points in it; Mendelssohn reviewed it; Herder considered, like Lessing, the making of a translation, referred to Burke in letters, in Das vierte kritische Wäldchen, and in conversation with Lessing; Christian Garve published a translation; and Burke's treatise was not without influence on Kant and Schiller.
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References
page 608 note 1 L-M,3 Lpz., 1886 ff., xvii, pp. 128, 134, 137, 145.
page 608 note 2 Ibid., 134, 137, 269.
page 608 note 3 Ibid., xiv, 220 ff.“
page 608 note 4 Bibliothek d. schön. Wiss. u. d. freien Künste, 1758; Ges. Schriften, Lpz., 1844 ff., iv, 1, 331 ff.
page 608 note 5 R. Haym, Herder, Berl., 1880, i, 358.
page 608 note 6 O. Hoffmann, Herders Briefe an Hamann, Berl., 1889, p. 48.
page 608 note 7 Cap. 7 u. 11; Werke, ed. B. Suphan, Berl., 1877 ff., iv, 103, 153.
page 608 note 8 Haym, l. c., and E. Schmidt, Lessing,2 Berl., 1899, i, 684.
page 608 note 9 Riga, 1773.
page 608 note 10 Cf. Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1764), Sämtliche Werke, ed. G. Hartenstein, Lpz., 1867 ff., ii, 227 ff.; H. Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, Berl., 1889, p. 149; G. Jacoby, Herders und Kants Ästhetik, Lpz., 1907, p. 292.
page 608 note 11 Cf. Briefe, ed. F. Jonas, Stuttg., [1892 ff.], iii, 236, 238.
page 609 note 1 Laokoon,2 Berl., 1880.—B. Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic,2 London, 1904, devotes three pages to Burke and Home (Elements of Criticism, 1762) together, and remarks that they “ anticipated Lessing. ” The full significance of this anticipation can be brought out only by a comparative study. For Home, who is barely mentioned by Blümner (p. 31, note and p. 640), see Josef Wohlgemuth, Henry Homes Ästhetik und ihr Einfluss auf deutsche Ästhetiker, Berl., 1893; and Wilhelm Neumann, Die Bedeutung Homes für die Ästhetik und sein Einfluss auf die deutschen Ästhetiker, Halle, 1894. The habit of giving precedence to Home (Kames) over Burke in histories of esthetics is justified by the dates of the birth of the two men, and on other grounds; but it should be observed that Burke's Philosophical Enquiry antedated Home's Elements of Criticism by five years.
page 610 note 1 Max Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Ästhetik, Berl., 1872, p. 304.
page 610 note 2 “ I am afraid it is a practice much too common in inquiries of this nature, to attribute the cause of feelings which merely arise from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the natural frame and constitution of our minds, to certain conclusions of the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to us; for I should imagine, that the influence of reason in producing our passions is nothing near so extensive as it is commonly believed ” (p. 71 f.). I quote from the sixth edition, London, 1770.
page 610 note 3 Feb. 18, 1758; L-M, xvii, 138.
page 610 note 4 Mendelssohn wrote his essay, Über das Erhabene und Naive in den schönen Wissenschaften (1758) before he had seen Burke's treatise; but modified it considerably, after reading Burke, for publication in the Philosophische Schriften, Berl., 1761.
page 611 note 1 P. 44.
page 611 note 2 P. 57.
page 611 note 3 P. 58.
page 611 note 4 P. 60 ff.
page 611 note 5 P. 66 ff.
page 611 note 6 P. 162.
page 611 note 7 P. 95 ff.
page 611 note 8 P. 99 ff.
page 611 note 9 P. 210.
page 612 note 1 P. 210.
page 612 note 2 P. 222.
page 612 note 3 As exercise tones up the physical system.
page 612 note 4 P. 257.
page 612 note 5 P. 275 ff.
page 612 note 6 P. 70 ff.
page 613 note 1 P. 101.
page 613 note 2 P. 107.
page 613 note 3 P. 107.
page 613 note 4 Job 4, 13–17.
page 613 note 5 P. 108.
page 613 note 6 P. 109.
page 613 note 7 P. 101.
page 613 note 8 P. 102.
page 613 note 9 P. 105.
page 613 note 10 Paradise Lost, i, 589–599.
page 614 note 1 P. 106.
page 614 note 2 How far Burke may have been influenced in the making of this distinction by James Harris's Dialogue concerning Art (Three Treatises, London, 1744) I cannot say. Harris (pp. 29 ff.) described a painting as a work, the perfection of which is visible after the energy of its production is accomplished; poetry, as an energy, its perfection being perceived only during the production. As is well known, Herder turned this distinction against Lessing in Das erste kritische Wäldchen, Werke, iii, 78, 158 ff.
page 614 note 3 P. 313 f.
page 614 note 4 P. 314. That abstract words are not real essences is the ancient doctrine of nominalism; that they hardly cause any real ideas, is a paradox.
page 615 note 1 P. 316.
page 615 note 2 P. 317 f.
page 615 note 3 P. 319.
page 615 note 4 P. 320.
page 615 note 5 P. 321.
page 615 note 6 P. 323 f.
page 615 note 7 P. 325.
page 616 note 1 Mendelssohn, in the review above-mentioned (Werke, iv, 1, 348), asks impatiently apropos of these propositions, “hat man jemals gezweifelt, dass die Worte gemeiniglich nur eine symbolische Erkenntniss gewähren?” If by “symbolische Erkenntniss” he means recognition through images formed in the imagination, the answer must be that the greater number of contemporary writers on poetry escaped doubt by taking the thing for granted. If he does not mean this, then the question is out of order. Mendelssohn had before him a copy of the first edition, without Burke's Introduction on Taste. Since this first edition is not accessible to me, I cannot say to what extent the second, the basis for all subsequent ones, may have been less open to criticism than the first. As recently as six years ago, Theodor A. Meyer (Das Stilgesetz der Poesie, Lpz., 1901) maintained with great positiveness and philosophical acumen “die Überzeugung, dass nicht innere Sinnenbilder, wie man lehrt, sondern die Worte und Gedanken der Sprache selber das Darstellungsmittel der Poesie sind, das infolge seiner Geistigkeit und Abstraktheit unfähig ist zur Erzeugung innerer Sinnenbilder und die Poesie ungeeignet macht für die Aufgabe der Veranschaulichung” (p. iv)—and Burke straightway applied his conclusions about words to poetry, where his very naiveté proved to be insight. As to Meyer, see Johannes Volkelt, System der Ästhetik, München, 1905, i, 88. On the whole matter cf. Hubert Roetteken, Poetik, München, 1902, p. 39 ff.: “Die Sprache und das innere Bild;” and Otto Harnack, “ Über Lyrik,” in Essais und Studien, Braunschweig, 1899, p. 20 ff., where an interesting distinction is made between rhetorical and metaphorical lyric poetry, and we read (p. 38): “Es ist im Ganzen eben der rhetorischen Lyrik mehr gegeben, das Erhabene zu erreichen, als der metaphorischen.”
page 616 note 2 P. 326. Cf. Volkelt, op. cit., pp. 84, 116, 128 f., 137.
page 616 note 3 Cf. Harris, supra, p. 614, note 2.
page 617 note 1 P. 328.
page 617 note 2 P. 330 f.
page 617 note 3 P. 332.
page 617 note 4 P. 340.
page 618 note 1 P. 333.
page 618 note 2 L–M3, iv, 220 ff.
page 618 note 3 P. 339 f.
page 618 note 4 Laokoon, ed. Blümner, p. 147.
page 619 note 1 Laok., p. 250 f.
page 620 note 1 Wilhelm Tell, 989–991.
page 620 note 2 P. 333.
page 620 note 3 P. 332.
page 620 note 4 P. 103.
page 621 note 1 3 vols., Paris, 1719. I quote from the first volume of the sixth edition, Paris, 1755.
page 621 note 2 Cf. Theatral. Bibliothek, 3. St., 1755, L–M, vi, 247 f.; letter to Nicolai, Apr. 2, 1757, L–M, xvii, 98; Konrad Leysaht, Dubos et Lessing, Greifswald, 1874.
page 621 note 3 “Les Peintres et les Poëtes excitent en nous ces passions artificielles, en présentant les imitations des objets capables d'exciter en nous des passions véritables. ... La copie de l'objet doit, pour ainsi dire, exciter en nous une copie de la passion que l'objet y auroit excitée” (p. 27 f.).
page 621 note 4 Pp. 5 ff., 35.
page 621 note 5 Pp. 52, 56. He recognizes a passing satisfaction in the successful copy of objects uninteresting in themselves: “nous louons l'art du Peintre à bien imiter, mais nous le blâmons d'avoir choisi pour l'objet de son travail des sujets qui nous intéressent si peu” (p. 53).
page 621 note 6 “Le but que se propose la Poësie du style, est de faire des images, et de plaire à l'imagination” (p. 313). “C'est pour inventer des images qui peignent bien ce que le Poëte veut dire. ... qu'il a besoin d'un feu divin” (p. 300). “Il faut donc que nous croyions voir, pour ainsi dire, en écoutant des Vers: Ut Pictura Poësis, dit Horace” (p. 295).
page 621 note 7 § xiii, pp. 84–112.
page 622 note 1 “La Peinture agit sur nous par le moyen du sens de la vuë. ... n'employe pas des signes artificiels, ainsi que le fait la Poësie, mais bien des signes naturels” (p. 415). “C'est avec des signes naturels que la Peinture fait ses imitations” (p. 416). “Les signes que la Peinture employe, pour nous parler, ne sont pas des signes arbitraires et institués, tels que sont les mots dont la Poësie se sert ” (p. 4.16 f.).
page 622 note 2 “Les vers les plus touchans ne sçauroient nous émouvoir que par degrés, et en faisant jouer plusieurs ressorts de notre machine les uns après les autres” (p. 417). “Ainsi les objets que les tableaux nous présentent agissant en qualité de signes naturels, ils doivent agir plus promptement” (p. 418). “Cette image [poétique] nous touche; mais quand elle nous est représentée dans un tableau, elle nous touche bien davantage. Nous voyons alors en en instant ce que les vers nous font seulement imaginer, et cela même en plusieurs instans” (p. 419). There is here a suggestion, but no sharp formulation, of the Lessingian “coexistent” and “successive.”
page 622 note 3 P. 415 f.
page 623 note 1 P. 104.
page 623 note 2 Essay on the Theory of Painting (1719) by Jonathan Richardson. I quote from The Works of Jonathan Richardson, London, 1792.
page 624 note 1 Op. cit., p. 12.
page 624 note 2 Ibid., p. 14.
page 624 note 3 Ibid., p. 35.
page 624 note 4 Joseph Spence, Polymetis, London, 1747, p. 311. Lessing noted this sentence; cf. Nachlass B, Blümner, p. 415.
page 624 note 5 P. 84 f.
page 624 note 6 Pp. 86, 94 f.
page 624 note 7 P. 87.
page 624 note 8 P. 90.
page 624 note 9 P. 92.
page 624 note 10 P. 93.
page 625 note 1 Pp. 95 f., 102 ff.
page 625 note 2 P. 97 ff.
page 625 note 3 P. 103.
page 625 note 4 P. 109.
page 625 note 5 The Greek opinion that music is the most imitative of the arts must have given them pause if they had meditated upon it. Cf. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, London2, 1898, chapter ii, ‘Imitation’ as an Aesthetic Term.
page 625 note 6 P. 333.
page 626 note 1 Paris, 1747. Mendelssohn, reviewing C. W. Ramier's translation (Lpz., 1758), described Batteux's work as, in spite of its errors, “das beste Lehrbuch in den schönen Wissenschaften, das wir haben;” Werke, iv, 1, 361. Cf. a fuller criticism in the essay, Über die Hauptgrundsätze der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften, Werke, i, 283.
page 626 note 2 P. viii.
page 626 note 3 P. 256.
page 627 note 1 P. 255.
page 627 note 2 P. 163, in chapter iii, Les règles generates de la Poesie.
page 627 note 3 P. 163 f.
page 627 note 4 P. 164.
page 627 note 5 P. 165.
page 627 note 6 P. 10.
page 627 note 7 P. 11.
page 628 note 1 P. 13 f.
page 628 note 2 P. 16.
page 628 note 3 P. 17.
page 628 note 4 Cap. ix, 2–4.
page 628 note 5 P. 27. This, I take it, is Aristotelian. Schasler, however, maintains (p. 316) that “das Batteux'sche Princip der sogenannten ‘Naturnachahmung’ nichts weniger als aristotelisch, sondern vielmehr platonisch ist.”
page 629 note 1 P. 31 f.
page 629 note 2 P. 33.
page 629 note 3 P. 34.
page 629 note 4 P. 81. There is a hopeless entanglement of the beautiful and the good on p. 89 f.
page 630 note 1 Oeuvres, ed. J. Assézat, Paris, 1875, i, 343 ff.
page 630 note 2 P. 385.
page 631 note 1 P. 385 f. Diderot proceeds to illustrate the treatment of another subject, a woman dying, in the three arts, poetry, music, and painting.
page 631 note 2 Lessing reviewed Diderot's Lettre in Das Neueste aus dem Reiche des Witzes, Monat Junius, 1751 (L–M3, iv, 415–422), translating liberally from the passage about Virgil, but saying nothing about the significant example of the femme mourante.
page 631 note 3 Werke, i, 107 ff.
page 632 note 1 Bibliothek, 1757; printed in the Philosophische Schriften (1761) under the title Über die Hauptgrundsätze der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften; Werke, i, 2793.
page 632 note 2 Laokoon, 63. Blümner did full justice to Diderot on previous pages (45–49).
By way of supplement I should like to add that Daniel Webb's Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting appeared in 1760 (not 1764 as given by Blümner, p. 29); and that his Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry, London, 1762, inaccessible to Blümner (ibid.), do little more than repeat the sentiments of the earlier book in respect to the similarity of painting and poetry. On p. 94 f. of the Beauties of Poetry Webb does indeed observe that the painter's subject is restricted to coexistence, and illustrates this proposition by the example of Imogen's speech in Cymbeline, i, sc. 3, ll. 14–22:
“Thou should'st have made him
As little as a crow,“ etc.
“The circumstances in this description, which tend to heighten the beauty of the image in the last line, cannot be expressed by the Painter; he can have no advantage from a succession of ideas.” And on p. 102 he says: “In this [i. e., the expression of thoughts and feelings] the Painter is extremely limited; for among the infinite turns and workings of the mind, which may be expressed by words, and become the springs of sentiment, there are so few to which he can give shape or being; and his indications of peculiar and characteristic feelings, are so vague and undecisive, that his expressions, like their motives, must be obvious and general.”