63. Modern Criticism

Like so many others, during my student days I looked to Lessing's "Hamburg Dramaturgy" as the model for all critical art. In detail, I said to myself, we have learned an infinite amount about the nature of the arts since Lessing; but I considered his view of the profession of critic to be the only true and genuine one. The spirit in which his critical achievements are imbued seemed to me to be authoritative for all time. The tradition of the school ensures that we allow ourselves to be captivated by such views during our education. But when I immersed myself in modern psychological insights, when I had worked my way through to my own views on the nature of the human mind - then the conviction of my youth presented itself to me as an illusion. Lessing faithfully accepted the sense in which Aristotle's Poetics is written. Just like the Christian of the Bible, Lessing is confronted with the aesthetics of the Greek thinker. When one reads the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie", one has the feeling that Aristotle was to be raised to the heights of aesthetics by the reformer of German criticism, from which he had long since been brought down in the natural sciences by Bacon and Descartes. The more often I picked up this dramaturgy, the stronger the feeling grew in me that the spirit of scholasticism was reviving in it. The scholastics had no eye for reality; true unbiased observation of the world is not to be found in them. Instead, they immersed themselves in the writings of the Stagirites and believed that all wisdom was already contained in them. The authority of experience, of observation, was of no importance to them, but Aristotle's was all the more so. In Lessing's art history, this scholastic spirit seemed to me to have been revived. He views the nature of artistic creation through the lens of an ancient tradition, not with a free, naïve eye. Anyone who has developed the modern scientific way of looking at things must turn away from the "Hamburg Dramaturgy" just as he turns away from the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle speaks of eternal rules of art which reveal themselves to the human 'spirit - I know not whence - and Lessing also speaks of them. And basically the entire chorus of aestheticians of the century that has just ended speaks of such rules. They all, from Kant to Carriere, Vischer and Lotze, teach how a tragedy, a comedy, a ballad must be composed. Not like the botanist who studies the life of the plant, they observe the real life of art; but they behave like a legislator who lets the laws emerge from pure reason according to which reality is to be governed. The chilling example of Vischer, who deduced from aesthetic science how Goethe should have written his Faust, comes to mind. There is not a trace of genuine psychology in such an aesthetic approach. This leads to the view that an aesthetic like that of the nineteenth century is an absurdity. In the sense that there is a botany, a zoology, there can be no aesthetics. For plants and animals have something in common that lives in them all. And the expression of this commonality is the laws of nature. A plant is a plant because it carries within itself the generality of plant nature. The work of art, however, springs from human individuality. And the most valuable aspect of a work of art, that which gives it its highest perfection, arises from the artist's individuality, which exists only once in the world. A work of art is all the more significant the more it contains that which cannot be repeated, that which is only present in a single person. An individual plant cannot be original, for it is in its nature that the genus lives itself out in it. A work of art of the highest order is always original, for the spirit from which it has sprung is not to be found a second time in the world. One cockchafer is organized like another; an ingenious individuality is only present in one specimen. There can be no general laws of art, no general aesthetics. Every work of art demands its own aesthetics. And any criticism that is based on the superstition that there is an aesthetic is a thing of the past for the scientifically minded. Unfortunately, almost all of our criticism is still more or less dominated by this superstition. Even those younger critics who have theoretically overcome aesthetics usually write in such a way that you can see in every line they write: unconsciously, the belief in universally valid rules of art still slumbers within them.

No, just as every true work of art is an individual, personal expression of a single person, so every criticism can only be the very individual rendition of the feelings and ideas that arise in the soul of the individual personality contemplating the work of art as it indulges in its enjoyment. I can never say whether a poem is objectively good or bad, because there is no standard of good or bad. I can only describe the personal impression that the work of art makes on me. And as a critic, I can never ask the reader to learn anything about the "objective value" of the work of art through my criticism; I can only ask him to be interested in the way it affects me and in the expression I am able to give to this effect. I simply say: this is what happened to me while I was looking at the work. I am describing a process of my inner life. Anyone who is interested in what goes on inside me while I listen to a tragedy or look at a landscape will read my criticism. Those who are indifferent to my feelings and ideas about a drama or a painting will not be persuaded by me that my criticism tells them anything about the meaning of the work of art. All those who set down their judgments in general aesthetics could offer nothing other than their individual, personal opinions about art. No one can learn from Vischer's aesthetics what a comedy should be like, but only what was going on in Vischer's soul when he saw or read a comedy. That is why a criticism is all the more valuable the more significant the personality from which it emanates. As individual as the feelings are that the poet expresses in a poem, so individual are the judgments that the critic makes. We read criticism not because we want to find out whether a work of art is as it should be, but because we are interested in what the criticizing personality goes through inwardly when he gives himself over to the enjoyment of the work. Truly modern criticism cannot recognize aesthetics; for it every work of art is a new revelation; it judges in every criticism according to new rules, just as true genius creates according to new rules in every work. That is why this criticism does not claim to say anything conclusive or generally correct about an artistic work, but only to express a personal opinion.