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The Symbol
To cite this article: Friedrich Theodor Vischer & Holly A. Yanacek (2015) The Symbol, Art in
Translation, 7:4, 417-448, DOI: 10.1080/17561310.2015.1107314
Article views: 23
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Art in Translation, 2015
Vol. 7, No. 4, 417–448, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17561310.2015.1107314
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
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Friedrich Theodor
Vischer The Symbol
Translated by Abstract
Holly A. Yanacek
Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s essay “The Symbol” considers empathy in
First published in German as aesthetics in relation to meaning. He outlines three modalities of the
Friedrich Theodor Vischer, “Das symbol. The first points to a conflation of the image and its meaning.
Symbol,” in Philosophische
Aufsätze. Eduard Zeller zu seinem At the other extreme, the image and its meaning are set apart from one
fünfzigjährigen Doctor-Jubiläum another. Finally, there is the linkage “with reservation” between image
gewidmet (Leipzig: Fue’s Verlag, and meaning, in which the beholder knows that the image and that
1887), 153–193.
to which it refers are distinct. Vischer’s discussion of the symbol was
influential on twentieth-century art historians, such as Aby Warburg
418 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
sance of scholarly interest. Along with his son, Robert Vischer, Friedrich
Theodor Vischer remains the most important source for understand-
ing the origins and significance of empathy theory in nineteenth-cen-
tury German thought. First touched on in Friedrich Theodor’s “Kritik
meiner Ästhetik” [Critique of my Aesthetics]1 and then developed in
Robert Vischer’s “Über das optische Formgefühl” [On the Optical
Sense of Form],2 empathy theory receives a treatment in the present
essay that contemporary audiences will find especially enlightening.
“Das Symbol” (The Symbol), in addition to making clear how empathy
theory developed out of the broader intellectual currents of Germany in
the 1860s, 70s, and 80s, also enjoys palpable relations to art historical
thinkers whose work possesses the greatest significance. Of these, the
most important is doubtless Heinrich Wölfflin, whose writings on archi-
tecture, above all “Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur”
[Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture],3 followed the contours
they did because of Wölfflin’s familiarity with empathy theory.
At the same time as it sheds light on empathy theory most broadly,
“Das Symbol” takes the vital step of considering empathy in aesthet-
ics in relation to sign theory, and it is this move that does the most to
establish the continuing value of the essay. Friedrich Theodor Vischer
here sketches three modalities of the symbol. In the first case, we have
a primordial, magical species of relation, in which the image and its
meaning become confused (the image of the bull, meant to signify the
divine, becomes worshipped as divine itself). At the other extreme, we
have a situation in which the image and its meaning are rigorously set
apart from one another, in which no confusion between signifier and
signified is permitted (this is a way of understanding images that many
observers have associated with modern societies). Finally, we have the
linkage “with reservation” between image and meaning, in which the
beholder knows that the image and that to which it refers are distinct,
but nonetheless permits himself or herself to be compelled by the sen-
suous power of the living image, to dwell in between the two poles
delineated earlier.
The Symbol 419
Notes To Introduction
panther that he encountered. These are not metaphors but symbols, and
readers have racked their brains over them because the images are only
shown to the imagination [Vorstellung] without the aid of the moments
given in metaphor. Only through suggestions that are weakly and
remotely supported by the means of discourse does the reader know
that it deals with the dangers of a human life searching for its spiritual
goal.—Whether one should instead call images such as these allegories
is a question that can be justifiably set aside at this point; they can only
be labeled as allegories if one uses the word imprecisely.
Regardless of whether the puzzle-like quality of the symbol is easy
and quick to solve or difficult and slow, indeed barely solvable in its
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topple entirely? That is the question and its answer is not straightfor-
ward.
We begin with the type of connection that we will call dark and
bound [dunkel und unfrei]. It belongs to religious consciousness and
is designated as historical because it was especially at home in natural
religions. Yet it is an equally enduring form, not only because natural
religions still exist, but also because Christianity (like the Mosaic reli-
gion), although, incidentally, not a natural religion, still clings to it.
First, the basic concept must still be supplemented with an important
additional factor. If one uses the basic concept precisely, the domain of
the objects from which the symbolic image is taken remains restricted
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inscribed in the original, natural meaning of the gods. The gods are now
benefactors but also punishing judges; they require a whole soul for this
purpose. We will find something different in the allegory, since a per-
sonality is specified yet the wealth of qualities assigned to it is omitted.
Allegory is thus a mere container, a bag into which a concept is stuffed.
The difference between myth and symbol becomes especially clear
in the formations that arise whenever the imagination [Phantasie] half
executes the step from symbol to myth and half falls back to the sym-
bol or remains stuck in it, for example, in the Egyptian images of the
gods with human forms and animal heads. In Indian mythology, the
multiplication of arms is added to the top half of the deities. On this
commingling, let us compare the section in Hegel’s discussion of sym-
bolism, “The Actual Symbolism” [“Die eigentliche Symbolik”], and my
Aesthetik § 427.
But I have subsequently changed my view to the extent that I estab-
lished that the myth could also be considered symbolic after all. See
Critical Path New Series, Issue 5, p. 137. “Linguistic usage also calls
both mythical and allegorical personification symbolic. It is better to
follow the linguistic usage and expand the term ‘symbolic’ to all forms
included therein.”
Volkelt (loc. cit. p. 11 ff.) disputes this. He says that since, according
to my words, meaning [Bedeutung] inheres in the god as its own soul,
meaning [Sinn] and image correspond here, while they do not corre-
spond in the symbol.
Here we must make a clear distinction between the believer in myth
and the one who sees it in his imagination [Vorstellen] or consciousness.
Although the latter lacks actual belief, he recognizes the value of myth
and uses it as an aesthetic motif for art, poetry, and the embellishment
of life and speech. For the former, gods (along with geniuses, spirits,
and legendary heroes) are real beings, their actions and experiences are
historical. For the latter these beings do not contain factual truth; he
simply likes to put himself in the place of the believer in myth. He is
fully aware that such lively phantasmata could only originate through
such belief. We call this displacement “poetic belief,” but poetic belief
is neither actual nor historical belief. Alongside or behind this poetic
426 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
belief, clear consciousness maintains that these constructs are the work
of the imagination [Phantasiewerk]. This kind of belief, this non-be-
lief and nevertheless belief, is not, however, a gratuitous desire to be
deceived. The work of the imagination is not empty: it has lasting mean-
ing, not outer (factual, historical), but inner truth. Poetic belief has a
core here because its object has a core. If the free thinker, who sees
through the myth but believes in it poetically, who therefore loves and
readily employs myth were to express this through his behavior, what
should he say? He cannot say: “I do not believe in these people and
events historically, but rather mythically.” When he says: “mythically,”
he only reemphasizes in the second part of the proposition what the first
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part already indicated, namely, that these people and events are not, for
him, part of history. Admittedly, he adds something to the simple nega-
tion, namely, the concept of the work of the imagination [Phantasiew-
erk] implied in “mythical,” but this does not acknowledge that the work
of the imagination contains a kernel of inner truth. He would therefore
have to say: historically, I do not believe in these people and events,
rather I see in them only the work of the imagination, but this work
of the imagination is not empty, and, in this sense, I believe in them.
How must he speak? Symbolically, not otherwise. And that is quite right
because he now removes the meaning from its coalescence with the
image of a living person and action, despite the aesthetic beauty, and so
the meaning no longer coincides with this image as it does in the imagi-
nation [Vorstellung] of the believer. Some examples! For us, the Mother
of Jesus is not a being removed from natural law, nor the Mother of
God, nor ascended into heaven, nor Queen of Heaven; nevertheless,
whoever stands unmoved before a work of art such as Titian’s Assunta
must be completely devoid of fantasy and feeling. All earthly suffering,
all deep woe that can penetrate a human heart, and all yearning for a
pure, free, blessed existence breathes and gazes out of that wonderful
female countenance. A spark of joy, emanating from the smoke of life,
flows through the moving limbs, the folds of the garment. We are the
lingering, gazing followers, yearning to be free from our heavy earthly
bonds. Above, the reachable, humanlike God the Father and his angels
do not appear strange to us, they are necessary for the reception of
the person ascending and embodiments of boundless existence.—Or
we step before Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Every feature of this face
appears to say: no word, no tongue mentions the ecstasies of the blessed
world, from which I float down to you. The wide-eyed, apprehensive
boy on her arm continues to dream of these heavenly delights; a gentle
breeze from above plays in his locks and we believe we hear the rustling
of the mother’s garment from the movement of the descent. Saint Sixtus
points out and down below to his congregation, for whom he implored
the heavenly visitation. Saint Barbara, rapturous over the granting of
the request, looks down with pure shared joy [Mitfreude] to the blessed
world below. And the two putti, which the artist painted on only later,
The Symbol 427
look out to us from this unique, visionary image with the same expres-
sion of sincere indulgence in the child-like countenance, as further wit-
nesses of the inexpressible heavenly joy.
The Madonna-Ideal has the enduring meaning for us of an image of
pure femininity even. Still virginal as a mother: this has deep meaning
and truth apart from any church doctrine. The creation of this ideal is
the work and expression of the softened soul of the Middle Ages, which
sees all kindness and reconciliation, all pure grace manifest in the wom-
an—“the eternal feminine.”
Now, as already stated, we have no other term except “symbolic” for
the truth that these mythical constructs impress upon those who still do
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yet, with animated transference back to this belief, are assumed and
accepted as free aesthetic simulacra, which are not empty but meaning-
ful, shall be called symbolic.
It may now seem that we have now left our sequence. We began
with the type of association between meaning and image that can be
described as dark and bound. But if we call the mythical in a certain
sense symbolic, we are talking about clear and free consciousness. But
this matter has two sides. The creation of myths as such, although com-
pletely different from the confusion of an impersonal image with its
meaning, belongs to the dark and bound form of consciousness since it
does not believe in its imaginary creation merely poetically. Thus, in this
respect, the creation of myth has its place next to the symbol as it has
hitherto been conceived, the bound confused—it is admittedly separate
and yet parallel to it. But now we must establish why the predicate
symbolic should nevertheless be applied to the mythical, and we have
found that symbolic is the mythical for the learned, free consciousness.
There, symbolic is understood in a different sense. There is also a clear,
free form of symbolism. It was necessary to point to this form, which
in itself belongs to another world, namely, the dark world, and it would
not be appropriate to make a real transition out of this anticipation. It
could indeed appear differently: a clear contrast would be won; but a
stronger reason speaks for specifying the form that lies in the middle
between free and bound, clear and dark, as the second main form, and
only then letting the completely free and clear form follow as the third.
The middle belongs in the middle, the exit at the exit. Since the exit is
this latter form, it is an easing, a step toward loosening the aesthetic
bonds; it will thus be rightly moved to the conclusion.
The middle—: one can also call the matter being dealt with now a
peculiar twilight. It is the instinctive and nevertheless free, unconscious
and yet in a certain sense conscious ensoulment of nature [Naturbe-
seelung], the lending act, through which we attribute our soul and
its moods to the inanimate. I have already presented this mental act
objectively in Aesthetics (Part 2 § 240 p. 27), where I discuss how the
observer, out of the appearances and movements of nature, lets his
moods and mind’s passions [Leidenschaften seines Gemüths] become
The Symbol 429
visible. In the section on the symbol, I did not yet recognize that it can
be a particular form, and, for that reason, I erroneously limited the
meaning of the symbol to the bound, dark form. I touched upon the
teaching of music without having worked out a specific setting and
compilation; it is clearly stated in the section on landscape painting
(§ 698 ff.) that it is the collaboration of the whole towards a mood of
the soul [Seelenstimmung] which distinguishes the work of the artist
from that of the veduta painter, but I did not find the right words there,
either. This mistake was corrected in the Critical Path (New Series,
Issue 5, p. 140 ff.). The symbol concept was addressed again in the
essay “On Goethe’s Faust: New Contributions to the Critique of the
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Poem” and the form in question is distinguished from the other mean-
ings (p. 122).
An example to start with! The poet tells of the setting sun: “Close
he had wrapped himself round with clouds portending a tempest. Out
from the veil, now here and now there, with fiery flashes, gleaming over
the field shot forth the ominous lightning.”2 Every reader knows that
such illumination is simply a soulless, purely physical appearance of
light in darkness, to which a premonition cannot by any means actu-
ally be attached, but no reader with any imagination [Phantasie] will
say this to himself while reading devotedly. Willingly and without any
objection, we let ourselves be drawn into the beautiful mental picture
[Vorstellung]. Afterwards, at another time, when it is necessary to ana-
lyze, then, in a prosaic mood, we do not deny that the poet deceives us,
but we do not dispraise this deception [Täuschung], we applaud it. It
must lie in the nature of the human soul that the soul itself and its con-
ditions are confronted with and placed in forms of existence that have
nothing to do with them per se, and the poet has proceeded according
to this nature. Even those who are not poets proceed in this manner, as
long as they are not entirely spiritless [geistlos]. The entire language is
infused with poeticizing expressions that touch on this free-essential
deception [frei-nothwendigen Täuschung]: the morning smiles, the trees
whisper, the thunder grumbles, the thunder clouds threaten, the wild
waves rage. Inanimate objects of every kind are endowed with voli-
tion: the grapes want warmth, the nail does not want to come out of
the board, the package does not want to go in the bag. If the rifleman
says: the bullet wants wood, he attributes to it the wish or the desire to
hit the wooden target. Language in itself, wherever it seems completely
non-pictorial, is nonetheless thoroughly pictorial in this sense. There is
no word of spiritual importance [von geistiger Bedeutung] that could
not have originally meant the sensuous: Seele, Geist, animus, spiritus,
Ruach (Hebrew: soul). All of these words designate waving, breathing,
spraying.—This dark-light, free-bound act is symbolic: the connection
is accomplished through the link of a point of comparison. We will
come back to that when it is necessary to go into detail. For the time
being, the proposition can be postulated without argument, since it can
430 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
hardly be met with doubt. The one example above already proves this
proposition: it is easy to see that between the two things that are foreign
to each other—optical flashing of light and dark on the one hand, and
foreboding on the other hand—lies a uniting point of comparison. The
physically dark can be compared to the unknown, and, consequently,
to the unconscious as well. In the condition of foreboding, conscious-
ness and unconsciousness come together in an indeterminate, hovering
manner, as when light flashes through darkness. It is certain, however,
that in the moments when we carry out this symbolic linkage in the
imagination, we definitely do not say that it is merely symbolic. And
this is only a lack, that is, a lack of understanding from the viewpoint
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all of existence; thus, the self that is projected into natural phenomena
becomes for it an infinitely greater, divine self. Though in human form,
the god is for religious consciousness simply a living other, external to
and high above it. The imagination of this consciousness then contin-
ues to poeticize it and thus creates a supernatural story, the myth. The
act of lending the soul [Seelenleihung] remains a necessary and distinc-
tive trait of humanity, even when it has long since outgrown the myth.
But now to what we call reservation [Vorbehalt]. So then, too, the self
that is attributed to impersonal nature does not become a godhead.
For that reason, this self is not poeticized further and it gives rise to no
myths—it perhaps gives rise to something similar to myth, but this does
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not belong in the present context, but rather in one concerning decep-
tion-free, light symbolism.
How should we describe the act in question here? Karl Köstlin has
already called it symbolism of form [Formsymbolik], but we should find
a term that also reveals the intimacy of the behavior. So, for instance:
intimate symbolism [die innige Symbolik]? This sounds too sentimen-
tal. Would a term from a dead language be preferable? So: personal
symbolism [die intime Symbolik]? The best option seems to come from
a work that Volkelt saved from undeserved neglect and from which he
extracted the word empathy [Einfühlung].3
Here we return to the commendable treatment of the symbol con-
cept, which I already called attention to in the opening. As already men-
tioned, Volkelt goes to work critically. Along with Robert Zimmerman,
he leads the way as the main proponent of formalist aesthetics because
he proceeds from the very true premise that the decision about the right-
ness or wrongness of its principles rests with the symbol concept. We
simply reference the assessment that Robert Zimmermann’s extremely
forced conception of this term experiences with Volkert. From there,
Volkert first goes back to Hegel. As we know, Hegel initially uses the
symbol in the first of the meanings previously mentioned, and traces it
through the forms that it assumed in the natural religions of the Per-
sians, Indians, and Egyptians. This is a particularly thoughtful section
of Hegel’s Aesthetics. He shows how the still darkly incubating spirit
[Geist], searching for light across the world-riddle [Welträthsel], and
struggling blindly to free itself from nature, cannot find the answer in
the image of man, but rather in abstract general determinants (power,
becoming, passing away, etc., higher as well as individual ethical con-
cepts that it has in mind). It is merely comparing, yet not aware of its
simple comparing and attaches to an impersonal thing. A blind explor-
ing and searching changes and reshapes the given form of nature, mul-
tiplies organs, and drives the masses into the monstrous, and, in the
process, raises itself halfway to the mythical, that is, to the beholding of
the mystery of the world in the form of the person. Yet, at the same time,
it lingers in the symbol and connects human body and animal body.
But now a disturbing combination arises in Hegel, a cross between the
432 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
under certain conditions. This point does not belong here, however; it
would disturb the order if I were to respond to it here.
Karl Köstlin’s view on this is discussed. His subtle observations
about mood-lending symbolism—about the psychological effect of light
and color, but particularly of sounds—are given due recognition. It will
be shown, however, that the inner connection—the actual tie that the
subject weaves between the object and the act of psychological lend-
ing—first requires a more detailed analysis. Secondly, it will be shown
that Köstlin has not considered the consequence that results from intro-
ducing this form into aesthetics: namely, for the principle itself, for the
fundamental concept of the beautiful. At the very outset we said that
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the decision about whether or not the formalist school is right rests with
the symbol concept. If the inanimate is thus animated through empathy
[Einfühlung], it can be concluded that empathy also extends to what
this school calls pure form [die reine Form]. Köstlin does not reach
this conclusion, and, because he recognizes the act of symbolization
[Symbolisierungsact], he slides into a dualism: two worlds of the beau-
tiful; the one is expressive, the other is mere form. We will come back
to this. The first shortcoming in Köstlin’s thoughtful remarks about
symbolic form [Formsymbolik], namely, the omission of a more precise
analysis, also results in the lack of a clear distinction between what
we call Einfühlung and so-called associative representation [associative
Vorstellung]. The latter is a more external operation; one can admit it
and yet insist on formalism. Had Köstlin engaged in this closer analysis
and, as a result, made this distinction, it probably would have shaken
his dualistic standpoint.
The analysis, which was lacking until then, is carried out in the
work from which we have taken the name Einfühlung for the deeper
form: “Das optische Formgefühl: Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik” [“The Opti-
cal Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics”] by Robert Vischer
(1873). In the act in question, the gathering [Beiziehung] of accompa-
nying representations [Vorstellungen]—and this is, as the name already
suggests, the association—converges into one through an incomparably
more intimate and initially imperceptible process. It produces a summa-
tion. It has long been recognized that the beautiful is in no way some-
thing simple like a chemical element. The beautiful, that is, the act, the
contract between subject and object, through which what we call the
beautiful or beauty emerges, is an interpenetration [Ineinander] of mul-
tiple acts. Thus, one of its main forms, the transference of the soul from
the subject into an inanimate object, will be such an interpenetration,
a summation, and analysis must reveal how a more intimate process
of inscribing inner life in the given object differs from a more superfi-
cial one. We will get to know this second process (the merely associa-
tive) more thoroughly, and examples will show its difference from the
first process more precisely, if we follow the author’s analysis. Volkelt
434 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
r eproduces the same, and we could reference his rendition if there were
not remarks to add on at certain points.
First, we must mention additional precursors, to whom Robert Vis-
cher owes closer inspiration, as he says in the preface. These are Völker:
Analyse und Symbolik: Hypothesen aus der Formenwelt [Analysis and
Symbolism: Hypotheses from the World of Form] (1861), a “thought-
ful” work in spite of a certain lack of more focused abstraction, and
Scherner: Das Leben des Traums [The Life of the Dream] (1861). He
extracted fruitful seeds for the further development of thought from the
latter work, especially in relation to the symbolic in the act in question,
and to the difference between the mere associative imagination [asso-
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that we will investigate a work that covers this area later on.—We now
return to the author’s path. He does not ignore the fact that the play
of representations [Vorstellungen] in the dream is just the faculty of
fancy [Einbildungskraft]. Sensation has now expanded and deepened
since it links itself to a self-generated image, but this dark linkage is not
yet what we call imagination [Phantasie], with the familiar distinction
assumed whenever the deeper act in question should occur. This act
implements a soulful, non-arbitrary, and free (and yet conforming to
natural law) transformation into an unfamiliar guise.
The spirit world [Geistwelt] must appear first. This particular inves-
tigation is not concerned with showing its coming-into-being. It will be
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coil, spread out, contract, reach high and far, and metamorphose like
a protean in ways that no human body can. Its feelings, its passions,
its wants and abilities grow ad infinitum. This is surely an appropriate
addition; the subject takes this lifting of its barriers from the act itself:
light, fire, air, water, earth, plant, and animal lend him their qualities,
powers, and formations, and lend the works of human hands their lines,
volumes, and extensions.
We have already used the term Einfühlung for the totality of this
deeper act of the soul and would like to leave it at that for the sake
of simplicity. The author himself differentiates three types of behav-
ior understood in this totality and calls only one of these Einfühlung.
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How easily we could continue with examples: I sadly bow over the
stream with the willow tree, I defiantly stretch myself up with the
cliffs, I ascend with the missile, I angrily and unflinchingly burst forth
with the shot (“The cannons have their bowels full of wrath” Shake-
speare).—Since this act attains its actual depth and power in the third
form, Einfühlung, it will be permissible to refer to the entire act as such.
The word Einfühlung then acquires a broader and a narrower sense; it
denotes the entire act in the broader sense and the most intense of its
forms in the narrower sense.
Before we proceed with the author, it is necessary to introduce the
work, whose importance I mentioned above without citing it. I said that
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closely. I have already mentioned that Robert Vischer is the first to have
drawn this distinction with precision. The association is secondary; the
linked mental image attracts something else and places it next to the
given mental image. With the color red, blood and anger come to mind;
with the color green, the sprouting vegetation of spring. Italy crosses
my mind when I see an orange, and with gold and marble, their value;
with the moon, I think perhaps of lovers: all of this is merely accom-
panying memory [begleitende Erinnerung], not Einfühlung. But these
auxiliary mental images [Nebenvorstellungen] associate closely with it
and considerably increase the summation that constitutes the aesthetic
act. In his evaluation of Fechner, Volkelt investigates this side with the
thoroughness that it requires.
Fechner admits that half of aesthetics depends on association. More
than half depends on Einfühlung. The examination must now proceed
up to the formalists’ actual fortress and more precisely contemplate
a main point, which has not been emphasized strongly enough hith-
erto and which I indeed took up yet did not exhaust in Critical Path
(loc. cit. p. 144 ff.). Can the delight in pure forms, the mathematically
determined harmonic proportions also be explained symbolically? Met-
rics and music are all about lines, planes, geometric forms, regularity,
symmetry, proportion, temporal and numerical orders. According to
Fechner, this is the “half” of aesthetics that remains if half of the same
depends on the association. The question is how things stand if one
distinguishes intimate symbolism, i.e. Einfühlung, from association and
yet invokes Einfühlung. Formalism will say: there is a remainder that
does not merge into Einfühlung; of all concrete formations on which it
is to be employed, the pure relationships, the harmonic orders must be
distinguished as such, and there is nothing to symbolize there. I can only
present my conviction without proof here: even this remainder, which
does not seem to merge into symbolism, opens itself to symbolism.
These are relations of unity in multiplicity. How can unity in multiplic-
ity please aesthetically? In itself, it is something purely abstract, which,
as such, leaves the soul, psychological sensuousness, ice-cold. If the soul
feels something thereby, namely, desire, aesthetic desire, it can only be
because the soul itself, with its nerves and entire body, is a unity in
444 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
the Concept of the Beautiful]. He maintains that there are two kinds
of beauty: beauty that pleases through the expression of life and the
soul, and beauty that only pleases through regularity and harmony (also
grandeur). He gives the example of a building site, on which, next to
raw material, one sees other material that has already been formed. In
contradistinction to the former, the latter simply delights. I cite Goethe’s
splendid poem “Der Wanderer” [“The Wanderer”] in response. The
wanderer sees an architrave lying in the bushes near a rustic cottage
and calls out: “Not by thee these stones were joined, Nature, who so
freely scattered!”5 Man has made this form and placed inside it the
good order within himself; he finds the human therein.—We are faced
with a fundamental question. Should aesthetics be developed from one
principle or two? After everything that has been stated, we can call
the principles harmony [Harmonik] and imitation [Mimik]. Imitation
is partly indirect (the symbolic in the case of an inanimate object) and
partly direct (in the case of an animate object). Although there is no
need for symbolic lending, direct imitation does not discover its object
aesthetically; an act of the imagination is required through which the
soul appears in the object more perfectly. Is the establishment of har-
mony as pure form and this act, which either animates symbolically or
does so in a higher form without a symbol, one act or two? Köstlin will
say: two, and we will say: one. The beautiful is unified harmony and
imitation in the sense that “unified” expresses real, living unity because
(symbolic) imitation also underlies harmony, only in its own manner
that is different from imitation in the case of concrete shape and mean-
ingfully formative abstract orders. One realizes this with meter, for
example: it must be clearly distinguished from the poetic content of
words, which it brings under control, and yet it expresses mood in itself,
the pace of mood. Robert Vischer’s work, likewise the aforementioned
journal essay and recently the studies in art history also contain fruitful
thoughts about this, which we can no longer go into here.
Hitherto, we first discussed the bound, dark symbol, whereby the
myth also had to come up for discussion, then the middle form, in
which bondage and darkness connects with freedom and brightness in
the manner described. We shall now cross over to the third form, the
The Symbol 445
simply light and free symbol. The awareness that image and meaning
are only connected through one tertium comparationis is not merely
reserved here, but rather presently in mind. Think about an anchor,
a palm tree, an olive branch, an eagle, a bundle of arrows, and about
acts like giving bread and salt or cutting a tablecloth (Count Eberhard)
and their familiar meanings. Aesthetic value is not excluded because an
image is still available, but it is limited to a moderate amount because
the brightness is essentially clarity of mind, awareness of purposiveness
[Zweckmässigkeit]: the latter is true only if the tertium is reasonably
chosen. Yet, if this is not the case, one is directed all the more to the
sphere of understanding [Verstandesgebiet] in order to seek, to ven-
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ture a guess. The allegory now positions itself opposite to the myth.
An impersonal image is occasionally called allegorical, but it is more
correct to call only a personal image allegorical, be it simply arranged
or set into operation. The difference from the myth lies in the fact that
personification is an act of the imagination [Phantasie] purely in the
service of thought, like the selection of an impersonal image in the case
of the light, conscious symbol. Concerning the question of how these
two can win aesthetic vitality, of how allegory then becomes similar to
myth, I only briefly refer here to the remarks in Critical Path, Issue 5, p.
148, which admittedly require supplementation.
An important point is still overdue, which can only be mentioned at
this time although it pertains neither to the rational symbol, nor to the
allegory. In the work Goethe’s Faust: Neue Beiträge [Goethe’s Faust:
New Contributions], I attributed the predicate “symbolic” to direct,
actual artistic and poetic depiction, when the depiction is clear and gen-
erally meaningful, works out general human content with the energy
abiding in a realistic entity, and holds up as characteristic of all time (p.
123 ff.). Volkelt disagrees with this and finds it confusing (loc. cit. 32
ff.). I must adhere to my position. Goethe and Schiller are on my side
with their use of language, and they have found successors; the use of
language has arisen and can no longer be invalidated. We will always
call types such as Faust, Macbeth, Lear, and Richard III symbolic when-
ever we want to indicate how profoundly and universally true they are.
I have spoken of a certain tangible surplus of meaning in the image,
despite it being very clear, and I know of no better formulation even
now. It is not possible to go into detail here. We could cite and exam-
ine even more examples for this purpose; I have mentioned Valentin in
Faust as an example of a figure, who, although typical, should not be
called symbolic in such a broad sense of the word. Volkelt says I should
have subsumed Valentin under Schwertlein [sic.] along with Gretchen
and Marthe. This appears doubtful to me; if we choose the expression
“highly symbolic” [hochsymbolisch] for the symbolic in the present
sense, one will find my doubt justified.—Something dangerous lies in
this linguistic usage, however. A style that diminishes the energy and
determinacy of the individual for the sake of universality of meaning
446 Friedrich Theodor Vischer
can lean on this linguistic usage, make it a motto, and cover itself with
it. It is certainly with Goethe’s approval that Schiller calls Die natürliche
Tochter [The Natural Daughter] highly symbolic, a drama which is not,
as some have said, as smooth and cold as marble, but rather appears as
cold as marble because it is as smooth as marble.—Goethe’s growing
penchant for the real, pure allegory in old age is related to this.
An exhaustive treatment of the whole field of terms pertinent here
must also finally bring in the doctrine of tropes and figures. If we atten-
tively survey all forms encompassed by this doctrine, we get the follow-
ing result: all these forms amount to animating the physical world and
embodying the spiritual. These forms, in the variety of their expressions,
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all stem from the urge to look inside the mind and nature, and thus,
together with all forms of the symbol and myth, they serve to present
the universe to the mind and imagination as one thing. Robert Vischer
pointed out how much can be extracted for this study from the work by
Karl Konrad Hense: Poetische Personification in griechischen Dichtun-
gen mit Berücksichtigung lateinischer Dichter und Shakespeare’s [Poetic
Personification in Greek Poetry with Reference to Latin Poets and to
Shakespeare] (1868).
Hermann Siebeck developed a proposition from my Aesthetics into
a leading basic concept for aesthetic intuition [ästhetische Anschauung]
as a whole in his work: Das Wesen der ästhetischen Anschauung: Psy-
chologische Untersuchungen zur Theorie des Schönen und der Kunst
[The Essence of Aesthetic Intuition: Psychological Examinations of
the Theory of the Beautiful and of Art] (1875). This fundamental idea
appears in §19 of the first part: the beautiful is personal and all preced-
ing levels signify that personality is nascent. (We can explain the second
part of this proposition from the context: impersonal nature already
announces the human.) Siebeck’s principle theorem regarding inani-
mate nature reads:
Translator’s Notes
Orcid