Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
charms but from the girdle of Venus.
But we see, moreover, that the goddess of beauty can part with this
girdle, and grant it, with its quality and effects, to a being less
endowed with beauty. Thus grace is not the exclusive privilege of the
beautiful; it can also be handed over, but only by beauty, to an object
less beautiful, or even to an object deprived of beauty.
If these same Greeks saw a man gifted in other respects with all the
advantages of mind, but lacking grace, they advised him to sacrifice to
the Graces. If, therefore, they conceived these deities as forming an
escort to the beauty of the other sex, they also thought that they would
be favorable to man, and that to please he absolutely required their
help.
But what then is grace, if it be true that it prefers to unite with
beauty, yet not in an exclusive manner? What is grace if it proceeds
from beauty, but yet produces the effects of beauty, even when beauty is
absent. What is it, if beauty can exist indeed without it, and yet has
no attraction except with it? The delicate feeling of the Greek people
had marked at an early date this distinction between grace and beauty,
whereof the reason was not then able to give an account; and, seeking the
means to express it, it borrowed images from the imagination, because the
understanding could not offer notions to this end. On this score, the
myth of the girdle deserves to fix the attention of the philosopher, who,
however, ought to be satisfied to seek ideas corresponding with these
pictures when the pure instinctive feeling throws out its discoveries,
or, in other words, with explaining the hieroglyphs of sensation. If we
strip off its allegorical veil from this conception of the Greeks, the
following appears the only meaning it admits.
Grace is a kind of movable beauty, I mean a beauty which does not belong
essentially to its subject, but which may be produced accidentally in it,
as it may also disappear from it. It is in this that grace is
distinguished from beauty properly so called, or fixed beauty, which is
necessarily inherent in the subject itself. Venus can no doubt take off
her girdle and give it up for the moment to Juno, but she could only give
up her beauty with her very person. Venus, without a girdle, is no
longer the charming Venus, without beauty she is no longer Venus.
But this girdle as a symbol of movable beauty has this particular
feature, that the person adorned with it not only appears more graceful,
but actually becomes so. The girdle communicates objectively this
property of grace, in this contrasting with other articles of dress,
which have only subjective effects, and without modifying the person
herself, only modify the impression produced on the imagination of
others. Such is the express meaning of the Greek myth; grace becomes the
property of the person who puts on this girdle; she does more than appear
amiable, it is so in fact.
No doubt it may be thought that a girdle, which after all is only an
outward, artificial ornament, does not prove a perfectly correct emblem
to express grace as a personal quality. But a personal quality that is
conceived at the same time as separable from the subject, could only be
represented to the senses by an accidental ornament which can be detached
from the person, without the essence of the latter being affected by it.
Thus the girdle of charms operates not by a natural effect (for then it
would not change anything in the person itself) but by a magical effect;
that is to say, its virtue extends beyond all natural conditions. By
this means, which is nothing more, I admit, than an expedient, it has
been attempted to avoid the contradiction to which the mind, as regards
its representative faculty, is unavoidably reduced, every time it asks an
expression from nature herself, for an object foreign to nature and which
belongs to the free field of the ideal. If this magic girdle is the
symbol of an objective property which can be separated from its subject
without modifying in any degree its nature, this myth can only express
one thing--the beauty of movement, because movement is the only
modification that can affect an object without changing its identity.
The beauty of movement is an idea that satisfies the two conditions
contained in the myth which now occupies us. In the first place, it is
an objective beauty, not entirely depending upon the impression that we
receive from the object, but belonging to the object itself. In the
second place, this beauty has in itself something accidental, and the
object remains identical even when we conceive it to be deprived of this
property. The girdle of attractions does not lose its magic virtue in
passing to an object of less beauty, or even to that which is without
beauty; that is to say, that a being less beautiful, or even one which is
not beautiful, may also lay claim to the beauty of movement. The myth
tells us that grace is something accidental in the subject in which we
suppose it to be. It follows that we can attribute this property only to
accidental movements. In an ideal of beauty the necessary movements must
be beautiful, because inasmuch as necessary they form an integral part of
its nature; the idea of Venus once given, the idea of this beauty of
necessary movements is that implicitly comprised in it; but it is not the
same with the beauty of accidental movements; this is an extension of the
former; there can be a grace in the voice, there is none in respiration.
But all this beauty in accidental movements--is it necessarily grace? It
is scarcely necessary to notice that the Greek fable attributes grace
exclusively to humanity. It goes still further, for even the beauty of
form it restricts within the limits of the human species, in which, as we
know, the Greeks included also their gods. But if grace is the exclusive
privilege of the human form, none of the movements which are common to
man with the rest of nature can evidently pretend to it. Thus, for
example, if it were admitted that the ringlets of hair on a beautiful
head undulate with grace, there would also be no reason to deny a grace
of movement to the branches of trees, to the waves of the stream, to the
ears of a field of corn, or to the limbs of animals. No, the goddess of
Cnidus represents exclusively the human species; therefore, as soon as
you see only a physical creature in man, a purely sensuous object, she is
no longer concerned with him. Thus, grace can only be met with in
voluntary movements, and then in those only which express some sentiment
of the moral order. Those which have as principle only animal
sensuousness belong only, however voluntary we may suppose them to be, to
physical nature, which never reaches of itself to grace. If it were
possible to have grace in the manifestations of the physical appetites
and instincts, grace would no longer be either capable or worthy to serve
as the expression of humanity. Yet it is humanity alone which to the
Greek contains all the idea of beauty and of perfection. He never
consents to see separated from the soul the purely sensuous part, and
such is with him that which might be called man's sensuous nature, which
it is equally impossible for him to isolate either from his lower nature
or from his intelligence. In the same way that no idea presents itself
to his mind without taking at once a visible form, and without his
endeavoring to give a bodily envelope even to his intellectual
conceptions, so he desires in man that all his instinctive acts should
express at the same time his moral destination. Never for the Greek is
nature purely physical nature, and for that reason he does not blush to
honor it; never for him is reason purely reason, and for that reason he
has not to tremble in submitting to its rule. The physical nature and
moral sentiments, matter and mind, earth and heaven, melt together with a
marvellous beauty in his poetry. Free activity, which is truly at home
only in Olympus, was introduced by him even into the domain of sense, and
it is a further reason for not attaching blame to him if reciprocally he
transported the affections of the sense into Olympus. Thus, this
delicate sense of the Greeks, which never suffered the material element
unless accompanied by the spiritual principle, recognizes in man no
voluntary movement belonging only to sense which did not at the same time
manifest the moral sentiment of the soul. It follows that for them grace
is one of the manifestations of the soul, revealed through beauty in
voluntary movements; therefore, wherever there is grace, it is the soul
which is the mobile, and it is in her that beauty of movement has its
principle. The mythological allegory thus expresses the thought, "Grace
is a beauty not given by nature, but produced by the subject itself."
Up to the present time I have confined myself to unfolding the idea of
grace from the Greek myth, and I hope I have not forced the sense: may I
now be permitted to try to what result a philosophical investigation on
this point will lead us, and to see if this subject, as so many others,
will confirm this truth, that the spirit of philosophy can hardly flatter
itself that it can discover anything which has not already been vaguely
perceived by sentiment and revealed in poetry?
Without her girdle, and without the Graces, Venus represents the ideal of
beauty, such as she could have come forth from the hands of nature, and
such as she is made without the intervention of mind endowed with
sentiment and by the virtue alone of plastic forces. It is not without
reason that the fable created a particular divinity to represent this
sort of beauty, because it suffices to see and to feel in order to
distinguish it very distinctly from the other, from that which derives
its origin from the influence of a mind endowed with sentiments.
This first beauty, thus formed by nature solely and in virtue of the laws
of necessity, I shall distinguish from that which is regulated upon
conditions of liberty, in calling it, if allowed, beauty of structure
(architectonic beauty). It is agreed, therefore, to designate under this
name that portion of human beauty which not only has as efficient
principle the forces and agents of physical nature (for we can say as
much for every phenomenon), but which also is determined, so far as it is
beauty solely, by the forces of this nature.
Well-proportioned limbs, rounded contours, an agreeable complexion,
delicacy of skin, an easy and graceful figure, a harmonious tone of
voice, etc., are advantages which are gifts of nature and fortune: of
nature, which predisposed to this, and developed it herself; of fortune,
which protects against all influence adverse to the work of nature.
Venus came forth perfect and complete from the foam of the sea. Why
perfect? because she is the finished and exactly determined work of
necessity, and on that account she is neither susceptible of variety nor
of progress. In other terms, as she is only a beautiful representation
of the various ends which nature had in view in forming man, and thence
each of her properties is perfectly determined by the idea that she
realizes; hence it follows that we can consider her as definitive and
determined (with regard to its connection with the first conception)
although this conception is subject, in its development, to the
conditions of time.
The architectonic beauty of the human form and its technical perfection
are two ideas, which we must take good care not to confound. By the
latter, the ensemble of particular ends must be understood, such as they
co-ordinate between themselves towards a general and higher end; by the
other, on the contrary, a character suited to the representation of these