Nationalism and Culture (86 page)

Still more arbitrary is the designation "Gothic" for the art of the Christian Middle Agesj it recognizably has not the slightest relation with the people called Goths. Vasari, from whom we have taken over this designation, meant to express by it merely ♦'he contrast with the art of the Renaissance J and his violent attacks upon the principles of the Gothic show clearly that he wanted the term to be associated with the idea of the crude, coarse and barbaric. The case is no better with expressions like "baroque" and "rococo," concerning the original meaning of which we are today not at all clear. It was only later that these words took a more or less definite meaning, which nearly always differed essentially from their original significance. Hence, the great majority of the more recent style psychologists have long been convinced that a special style is not associated with a people or a nation. Thus, Scheffler, who took the standpoint that "the Gothic spirit brought forth at every stage the forms of unrest and suffering, the Grecian, on the other hand, the forms of peace and happiness," is of the opinion that both styles, the Grecian and the Gothic, have appeared among all peoples and at the most widely separated times. It was in this sense that he related to the concept of the Gothic, prehistoric and Egyptian, Indian and baroque, antique and modern, remote and near. We cannot commit ourselves to Schefiler's conclusions in general, because they suffer from the same defects as all other theories of style: from unproved and unprovable arbitrary assumptions. His assertion that the Grecian style is to be regarded as the feminine, and the Gothic as the masculine element in art is at the best an ingenious association of ideas. On one point, however, Scheffler was absolutely right: the idea which we usually associate with the Gothic was not confined to the Christian Middle Ages, although it found perhaps its most complete expression at that time. There was undoubtedly a great deal that was Gothic in the art of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians. Many of the

Indian temples, too, convey to us the impression of demonic feeling, unlimited fertility of form and powerful upreach which are characteristic of Gothic. Just so one can recognize in many modern factory buildings and warehouses similar features, so that one is almost tempted to speak of a Gothic of industry.

Nietzsche developed a similar idea when he tried to establish \n Grecian art itself two different tendencies which in some form or other recur in every period. One—Nietzsche calls it Apollinian—seems to him the expression of purely creative forces, which are surrounded by the "radiant glory of beauty" and which by their moderation and philosophic calm affect us like a dream. The other tendency—which he designates as Dionysian—is surrounded by a thousand mysteries and dark forebodings like a delirium with the upsurge of which "the subjective vanishes in utter self-forgetfulness." Nietzsche finds this feature not in Greek culture alone. "Even in the German Middle Ages impelled by the same Dionysian force ever growing bands rolled on, singing and dancing, from place to place. In these Saint John and Saint Vitus dances we recognize again the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, with their earlier history in Asia Minor and on to Babylon and the orgiastic Sakaeae." Nietzsche put the contrast in these splendid words:

We have thus far depicted the Apollinian and its opposite, the Dionysian, as artistic forces which burst forth from Nature itself without the mediation of the human artist, and in which their artistic impulses first find satisfaction directly: sometimes like the imaginary world of a dream whose completeness lacks any connection with the intellectual heights of the artistic imagination of the individual, and again like a delirious reality, which again takes no account of the individual, but even tries to destroy the individual and dissolve him in a mystic feeling of unity.^

Whether we wish to avail ourselves of the old concepts of the "classic" and "romantic," or whether instead of these we like to designate this polarity of styles, felt by everyone, as "realistic" and "idealistic" or as "impressionistic" and "expressionistic," or whether we give preference to the expressions of those logomachists who speak of the "art of abstraction" of the Nordics and its opposite, the "art of intuition" of the Greeks, or with Nietzsche like to speak of an Apollinian and a Dionysian expression of emotion in art, matters at bottom very little. What Nietzsche had recognized very clearly is the fact that the much-debated contrast which he tried to fix in the concepts of the Apollinian and Dionysian cannot be regarded as at all a problem of the North and the South or as a contrast between races and nations, but rather as an implicit dualism in human nature, which occurs among all peoples and human groups.

2 The Birth of Tragedy.

Above everything we must avoid generalizing individual phenomena in the history of a people or a period in order to build up for it a collective character. The Greeks were certainly a people filled with the joy of life, but it would be senseless to suppose that the implicit tragedy of life was hidden from them and that the Greek never knew anguish of spirit or tormenting emotional disturbances. It is just as misleading when certain culture psychologists and style theorists represent the Middle Ages to us as a time of agony of soul and primal demonic impulses in which man was too much concerned over the terrors of death and the gloomy problem of the approaching day of retribution to appreciate the joyous and peaceful aspects of life. The Middle Ages, too, knew joy of life, had their festivals of cheer, their earthbound sensualities, which often enough are manifested in their art. One need but recall the ultra-realistic sculptures on countless ecclesiastical and secular buildings of that time to find eloquent testimony to this. Every period has its delusions, its spiritual epidemics, its Saint John's and Saint Vitus's dances. The Christian Middle Ages were no exception to this rule. We are, however, often so much concerned with the illusory ideas of others that we never become conscious of our own. And yet our own time offers us a lesson in this regard that it is not easy to misunderstand.

Pain and joy are the high points of human feeling, which recur in all times, under every skyj they are the two poles about which our spiritual life revolves, and alternately they set their stamp on our physical being. And as the individual man can never remain permanently in a state of deepest agony of soul or ecstatic happiness, still less can an entire people, a whole period. The greater part of a human life lies between suffering and joy. Pain and bliss are like Siamese twinsj despite all antitheses, they are still linked together, so that we cannot imagine one without the other. That is also true for the creative expression of the two emotions in art. As every man is sensitive to the feelings of joy and pain, so we find in the art of every people evidence of both emotional complexes, which alternately fade out and wax strong. Only the two taken together, with their thousands on thousands of modulations, shadings and changes, convey to us an idea of art as a whole. Schefiler recognized this clearly when he concluded:

The ideal thing for the understanding of art is to get close to that imaginary point outside the earth's orbit of which Archimedes dreamed. It must have no reservations, no limits; life, art, must for it become one enormous whole, and every bit of art history must be like an extract from a universal history of art. Even the patriotic point of view has no validity. The manner in which all races, peoples and individuals have had their share in the eternal life of artistic form is too great a miracle to be reducible to the nationalistic. But if the national point of view must thus be given up, that is, if the scien-

tific connoisseur may not even participate in the impelling will of his nation, how much less can he follow his little personal will, his own natural impulse, and coin from it apparently material arguments.

So long as our acquaintance was limited to the styles of the European peoples and their relatives it was comparatively easy to survey the fine arts, and especially architecture, as a whole and to make definite classifications. But with the extension of our knowledge much of this is changed. It is not yet possible to establish beyond dispute the basic relations between the different styles of architecture of ancient peoples, especially when they did not belong to the European culture circle, although some important results have already been achieved in this direction. Countless connecting links of the tectonic creations which certainly once existed have in the course of the millennia disappeared without leaving a trace, either because the material could not withstand the ravages of time or because influences of some other kind hastened the destructive processes. So it has gradually ceased to be customary in scientific circles to speak of an Egyptian, an Assyrian, or a Persian art simply, though this may still happen often enough in everyday life and in school instruction. With the deeper penetration into the history of Greece there dawns on us for the first time the knowledge that the antique itself had its antiquity, its Middle Ages, its later and its latest period, a matter which is made clear to us especially by the development of architecture from pre-Homeric times to the rise and decline of "Hellenism." It is in style that the culture content of a period best reveals itself, because it in a certain degree reflects an ensemble of all the social strivings of a period. But most important of all there is revealed here also the stimulating influence that comes from without and often gives rise to new forms of style. This mutual stimulation runs through the history of all peoples and constitutes one of the fundamental laws of cultural development in general.

This can be observed in architecture better than in any other field of art, for it is the most social of all arts and in it is always manifest the will of a community. In architecture the purposive is most intimately blended with the esthetic. It was not the whim of the artist that built a pyramid, a Grecian temple, a Gothic cathedral j it was. a generally experienced faith, a common idea, that made those works arise under the hand of the artist. It was the Egyptian cult of the dead that impelled to the construction of the so-called "nmstabas" and the pyramids. The pyramid is nothing more than a gigantic tomb which in its external form reflects the social character of a definite epoch. Just so, the airy temple of the Greeks could come into being only among a people that constantly played about under the open sky and would not allow themselves to be shut up in enclosed rooms. The Christian cathedral had to be able to

take in an entire community j this purpose underlay its whole structural type, and in spite of all the alternations of external form remains always the same.

Architecture has been called an art of moods, and so it is, and in much higher degree than any of the other artsj but this is true only because architecture gives such overpowering expression to the spirit of the community as to summon a collective mood in which every personal emotion dissolves. Scheffler has depicted this effect of the architectonic work of art by showing how it is the weight of a universal idea that is here revealed to the beholder. The impression is so powerful because what is transmitted to man is not a mood pointing to some inner relation between the work and its creator, even when he is known. When looking at a picture there comes to the mind of the beholder quite of itself an implicit contact between the work of art and the master who brought it to life. From the picture he gets in some measure a feeling of the personality of the artist, feels the stirring of his soul. But with the architectonic work of art the creator remains for him just a name; here it is not an individual will that speaks to him; here towers the will of a community, which always seems like an anonymous primal force. Scheffler concludes from this that "the architect is only the pupil of the spirit of his time, only the intelligent instrument of fruitful technical concepts. He is rather the one led, than the leader," ^

But the inner aspirations and the will of a community, as they are manifested in its religious ideas, its customs and general social philosophy, do not change suddenly, but only gradually, even when the changes are caused by catastrophic occurrences. Even revolutions can create nothing new of themselves; they merely release the hidden forces that have been slowly developing in the body of the old organism till the external pressure can no longer withstand them and they break their way out. The same phenomenon can be observed in the development of the various styles in art, and especially in architecture. True, we may observe revolutionary changes, and the apparently sudden appearance of new styles. But if we go into matters a little more deeply, we recognize clearly that a long development preceded the periods of revolution, and that without these nothing new could ever have been constructed. Every new form develops organically from those already existing and as a rule still carries on its back for a long time the shell of the egg it came from.

If one brings into immediate juxtaposition two utterly different styles, for example, the Grecian and the Gothic, there is, of course, a whole world between them and no point of contact can be recognized. But if one studies the slow growth of various styles, taking note of all connecting links and transitional types, then one recognizes a slow maturing of the

' Der Architekt. Frankfurt a/M, 1907, p. lO.

various forms and structures. Like all others, this development has its periods of stagnation and of vigorous forward drive, though nothing can long interrupt the steady progress of the whole movement. This is quite natural, for art itself is merely one of the many manifestations of cultural constructive progress, and in its way gives expression to this. So here, too, the several stages of the development of style are of longer or shorter duration according as the stream of social events glides slowly on or suddenly swells to a flood and overflows its banks. But the steps in the development can never be mistaken j out of every form there grows another} nothing arises just of itself} all is in fluxj everything moves.

The question of style arises not merely from the conception of the artist} it is also in great measure dependent on the material which he has at his disposal. Every material, be it wood, clay or stone, demands its own peculiar treatment, has its own peculiar effects, which the artist recognizes fully and takes into consideration in his work. It is, therefore, not without reason that men have spoken of the spirit of the material. There are art historians to whom the commanding influence of the material seems all-important. Naumann, for example, could maintain that the Gothic style owed its origin immediately to the soft, workable sandstone of the He de France, where the Gothic first took on visible form. This assertion may be too sweeping, but we must recognize that there is a large measure of truth underlying it. Let one think of the builder's art in ancient Egypt, of the origin of the pyramids. Or let one take the structures of the Babylonians and Assyrians, who because of the lack of wood and stone were almost entirely dependent on the fabrication of dried or baked clay bricks. Brick construction led to quite peculiar types of style} only from it could the rounded arch and, gradually, the vaulted dome, have arisen.