Critical edition

Abstract

form, in measure and rhythm, is founded in arithmetic, yet in melody, which fi rst makes it the true, soulful expression of the idea, it is exposed to the greatest vagueness and contingency, and a judgement of what is and is not beautiful in it is oft en infi nitely diffi cult. Th us, due to the ethereal, volatile, mysterious, symbolic nature of sound, and due to the uncertainty of criticism, ugliness gains even more ground here than in painting. Finally, in the most free of arts, in poetry, the possibility of ugliness, through the freedom of spirit, and [51] the word with its utter ease of speaking and writing as medium of representation, reaches its pinnacle. To do justice truly to the idea, poetry is the most diffi cult art, because it can least of all imitate the empirically given directly, and must much rather work it out, condense it, out of the depth of the spirit. Once it is there, however, once it has won a literary existence, once it has worked out a poetical technique for itself, there is no other art that is so easily misused as poetry, because then, according to the wellknown judgement of a great poet, language already writes and thinks for us. 43 In epic, in lyric, in drama and didactic poetry, the same material undergoes a superfi cial modifi cation, in content as in form, but the material’s structure only seems to change. It is then up to a taste that is educated and enriched through manysided experience, and made tranquil through deep knowledge, to discover ugliness. To this must be added the interest that can be taken in poetry in a tendentious vein, so that it is not poetic value, but revolutionary or conservative, rationalistic or pietistic pathos that decides a poem’s fate, as our epoch proves only too oft en. For us, party ideals oft en overshadow the divine ideal, if they do not make it disappear altogether. In poetry one can sin most easily and imperceptibly, and surely in it the greatest proportion of ugliness is produced. __________ [52] Th e Pleasure in Ugliness Th at ugliness might produce pleasure seems as absurd as the claim that illness or evil might. Despite this, it is possible, in healthy as well as pathological ways. In a healthy way, when the ugly justifi es itself as a relative necessity in the totality of an artwork and is cancelled out by the counteraction of the beautiful. Not the ugly as such causes our pleasure then, but the beautiful overcoming its apostasy, which also appears. We have already discussed this above. In a pathological way, when an era is physically and morally depraved, powerless to register true but simple beauty, still wishing to enjoy in art what is piquant in frivolous corruption. Such an era loves mixed sensations that have a contradiction as their content. To tickle dulled nerves, one assembles the most unheardof, the most disparate,