11. AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

From Plato to Tolstoy, art was accused of stirring up emotions and thereby violating the order and harmony of moral life. The poetic imagination, according to Plato, feeds our experience of sadness and pleasure, love joys and anger, irrigating what should be dried out. Shakespeare never built aesthetic theories, but he did not argue abstractly about the nature of art. However, in the only passage where he spoke about the character and function of dramatic art, special emphasis was placed on this point. “The purpose of (acting) as before, and now, - explains Hamlet, - was and is - to keep a mirror before nature: to show the virtues of its own characteristics, arrogance - its appearance, and for every century and class - its likeness and imprint ". (Shakespeare V. Hamlet // Complete. Collected Works, op. 8, vol. 6, p. 75)
But the image of passion is not passion itself. A poet who represents passion does not infect us with this passion. In Shakespeare’s plays, we don’t get infected with Macbeth’s ambition, Richard III’s cruelty, Othello’s jealousy. We are not at the mercy of these emotions, we look through them, we seem to penetrate their true nature and essence. In this regard, the theory of dramatic art of Shakespeare - if he had such a theory - is fully consistent with the concept of fine arts of the great artists and sculptors of the Renaissance.
Dramatic art reveals to us new perspectives and depths of life. It gives knowledge of human affairs and destinies, human greatness and poverty, in comparison with which our ordinary existence seems to be poor and trivial. Each of us vaguely and vaguely feels the endless possibilities of life, which silently await the moment when they are summoned from a nap to the clear and powerful light of consciousness. And this is not the degree of contagion, but the degree of effort and brightness, which is the measure of the dignity of art.
The cathartic process described by Aristotle implies not a purification or a change in the character and quality of the passions themselves, but a change in the human soul. Through tragic poetry, the soul acquires a new attitude to its emotions. The soul experiences emotions of pity and fear, but instead of worrying and worrying about them, it finds a state of peace and tranquility. At first glance, this seems like a contradiction. For the effect of the tragedy, as Aristotle showed, is the synthesis of two moments, which in our real life and practical experience exclude each other. The higher tension of our emotional life is realized at the same time as that which gives us peace. We are experiencing passions, feeling their whole range and higher tension. However, getting into the sphere of art, we leave behind us just the oppression, the strong pressure of our emotions, and, moreover, it is able to endow this viewer with this skill. When perceiving his works, our emotions do not dominate us, and we do not succumb to our emotions.
Russian philosopher V.S. Soloviev in the article “Beauty in Nature” shows that the requirements of new aesthetics (realists and utilitarians) boil down to what aesthetically beautiful should lead to a real improvement in reality. The requirement, according to the philosopher, is quite fair; and, generally speaking, ideal art never rejected it, and old aesthetics recognized it. For example, the ancient tragedy, according to Aristotle, (in his "Poetics") must produce a real improvement of the human soul through catharsis. Plato (in the “Republic”) ascribes a similar real-moral action to certain kinds of music and lyricism that strengthen the courageous spirit.
Russian researcher A.A. Tsurkan analyzes the source of the tragic as an existential experience, examines the vivid forms of the tragic objectification and ways to overcome it in antiquity. (Tsurkan A.A. Tragic in ancient and modern Western European literary and philosophical tradition. Abstract of a doctoral dissertation in philosophy. Voronezh, 2000, p. 25)
The work shows that the specificity of the tragic lies in the fact that we can judge him only by the literary-philosophical forms of his objectification, in which there is an external, formal-aesthetic scheme of a tragic conflict (“peripeteia”, “recognition”) proposed by Aristotle. , “Compassion”, “cleansing”). But in order to understand the nature of the tragic, it is not enough to point out only its aesthetic form, since for each form there is some content, in this case the attitude of the philosophizing mind, its existential experience, which is reflected in the form of conflict, conventionally designated as “tragic”.
Comparison of the Attic tragedy of the 5th century BC, the French existential tragedy of Sartre and Camus, the English dystopia close in plot lines and aesthetic characteristics, convinces the researcher that the tragic is an existential experience of the meaninglessness of the newfound, unconnected voluntaristic freedom (Orestes v Sartre), the latent or open triumph of evil and the condemnation of good (Antigone or Caligula by Camus) - all of these are only particular literary-philosophical and aesthetic manifestations of the tragic inherently discovery that Under certain circumstances, the individual makes an individual, trying to comprehend the “world” in its totality through the prism of human subjectivity, the discovery of the alogical nature and the absurdity of being as such.
According to A.A. Turcan, in a certain sense, tragic as the experience of the meaninglessness of being, the randomness of what is happening in it is synonymous with philosophy itself, arising as an attempt to comprehend the "world" in its total metaphysical generalization. Therefore, the tragic is not an attribute of the profane everyday consciousness, but requires as a prerequisite the presence of a philosophical, abstract-theoretical approach to reality.
The tragic arises whenever being does not carry within itself a semantic and teleological beginning. This happens in two cases: 1) an incomplete or overcome transcendental component of being (antiquity, Renaissance, Modern time); 2) excessive emphasis on the transcendent to the detriment of the immanent (Middle Ages). Tragically experiencing the dystopia of being, an individual in the absence of a transcendental powerless to find a way out. Tragedy as an existential experience is not just a statement of the absurdity of being and man in it, but also a hidden or explicit protest against the incoherence of the "world", a kind of rebellious God-search, a challenge to "empty heaven." The individual, thinking reality metaphysically, is unable to explain the nature of evil in the world. He only states the presence of evil, more or less talentedly expressing his despair that the righteous are humiliated, and the villains gain the upper hand. Prometheus, who gave fire to people, suffers from the hands of an “evil” god, Oedipus suffers innocently at the behest of some Roc, Penfeus takes his own mother's head, Lyra offends children, and Hamlet sees the murderer on his mother's bed. The absurdity of this and is, according to A.A. Turcan, the core of the tragedy as a literary and philosophical phenomenon.
All contradictions between various aesthetic schools can be reduced in a certain sense to one. All of these schools recognize that art is an independent “universe of discourse”. Even the most radical defenders of the old realism, seeking to limit the art of the mimetic (imitative) function, must also take into account the specific power of artistic imagination. However, according to Kassirer, different schools differ in many ways in assessing this strength. Classical and neoclassical theories do not favor the free play of imagination. The artistic imagination, from their point of view, is a great, but also a dangerous gift.
Even the French poet and the leading theorist of classicism, who defended the advantages of ancient poetics Nicola Bualo (1636-1711) did not deny that psychologically the gift of imagination is necessary for every true poet; but if the poet is carried away by the play of these natural impulses and instinctive forces, he will never create a complete perfection. The poetic imagination must be guided and controlled by the mind, must obey its rules. Even deviating from nature, the poet should be guided by the laws of reason, and these laws limit it to the field of the probable. French classicism refers to this field in purely objective terms. The dramatic unity of space and time becomes a physical act, measurable by measures or clocks.
A completely different concept of character and function of poetic imagination is advanced by the romantic theory of art. In romantic thinking, the theory of poetic imagination has reached its peak. Imagination - henceforth not just a special gift of human activity, creating the artistic world of man, is now a universal metaphysical value. Poetic imagination is the only key to reality.
According to German critic, philosopher and philologist Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), the highest task of the modern poet is to strive for new forms of poetry, which he called “transcendental poetry”. No other poetic genre revealed the essence of the poetic spirit, "poetry of poetry." To poetize philosophy and philosophize poetry is the ultimate goal of all romantic thinkers. A true poetic work is not the result of the work of an individual artist, it is the universe itself, the only work of art that is constantly being improved. Consequently, all the deepest secrets of all the arts and sciences belong to poetry. “The most ancient poetry, the poetry of legends, memories and imagination, require a promotional, auxiliary force. There is not enough poetry in general, that is, a poetic look. He must be rooted in the heart of man with the help of feeling. So there is a lyric poetry feelings. " (Schlegel Friedrich. Aesthetics. Philosophy. Criticism. M., 1983, p. 83)
The German poet Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801)) considered art to be a magic fusion of science, religion and philosophy through intuitive perception. “Poetry,” Novalis said, “is an absolute and original reality. That is the core of philosophy. More poetic means more true. ” (See The Aesthetics of German Romantics. M., 1987)
Cassirer emphasizes that in this concept poetry and art were elevated to such heights as they had never before reached. They became the New Organon for the discovery of all the wealth and depth of the universe. Nevertheless, these violent ecstatic praises of poetic imagination had their strict limitations. “In order to fulfill his metaphysical goal, the romantic had to make a serious sacrifice. The infinite was proclaimed authentic and, in fact, the only object of art. Beauty began to be understood as a symbolic representation of the infinite. ” (Cassirer E. Tsit. Soch., P. 624)
TEST 11
1. Who blamed art for exciting emotions?
? Rousseau
? many authors from Plato to Tolstoy,
? Hamlet
? Othello
2. Who wrote the work "Beauty in Art"?
? Apollo
? ON. Berdyaev
? P.A. Florensky
? Vs Soloviev
3. Why is the tragic world view of the philosophizing mind?
? because in the tragedies expressed a deep philosophical understanding of the conflict
? because all the tragedians were philosophers
? because only a philosopher could kill heroes
? because only in tragedy one can philosophize extensively
4. Who is Caligula in the tragedy of Camus?
? wanderer
? Headless horseman
? roman tyrant
? cleric
5. Who is Nicolo Boileau?
? composer who created many Viennese waltzes
? naturalist theorist
? theorist of classicism
? frauzsky terrorist