The Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Myth of the 20th Century; Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts; An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual Confrontations of Our Age by Rosenberg Alfred

Author:Rosenberg, Alfred [Rosenberg, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2012-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter IV. The Aesthetic Will

Our previous digression was necessary because it established that it is not the "feeling of eternity and infinity" which is essential, but that personality, within similarly conditioned individuals, represents the ultimate primal phenomenon of all artistic creation. The perspective on infinity by Lenotre and the dark mysteries of Rembrandt are not something merging into infinity but, among other things, they represent a tension of soul. It is remarkable how little heed the systematizers pay to the rhythm which all great artists of Europe followed half consciously, half instinctively. Their art does not run in a line from the material to the infinite. It returns to the self. It concentrates the spiritual powers always anew in order to flow them out fresh again. At the moment when Beethoven shaped tonal images in the highest peaks, near to sublimation, a jubilant scherzo suddenly intruded. In the midst of motives rejective of the world, a splendid struggling will resounds. These are not restraints but the life rhythm of western art. The scherzo of a Beethoven, the final concluding deed of the hundred year old Faust, the heroic greatness of Wagner’s Siegfried , the smiling conquest of tragedy by Hans Sachs, the mysticism of Meister Eckehart and his richly active life, can only be understood if every rigid monism is rejected. To thrust human volition into boundlessness as the "western soul" is a fundamental attempt to weave nebulous Syrian magic into the culture of Europe.

The music of Bach and Beethoven is not the highest attainable stage of elevation of soul, but it signifies the breakthrough of an unequalled spiritual power which does not merely strip off material bonds—that is only the negative side—but expresses something completely fixed, even if this cannot always be outlined in black and white. The Germanic conquest of the world is not boundless expansion but enhanced forcefulness—that is, willed action—the "sweet sacred accord," to which Schubert attributed omnipotence. The will is the soul imprint of clear sighted energy. Thus it belongs to the aim setting mode of observation, while instinct is linked with the causal mode of thought. Even today, with the "resolute willed ego" comprising every area of psychological study, the aesthetic will is denied. In this connection it is, if not the strongest, then it is certainly the most comprehensive, expression of the human will. Artistic creation is the conscious transformation of material through a unity bound through fixed forms in every art. If the other directions of the will have only one characteristic feature—the material—it is art that lays claim to substance and content. In the broadest sense, our entire formative appropriation of world and ego is a willed artistic activity. The mythical images of a God riding through the air in his thunder wagon and the marble Pallas Athena are both, in essence, consequences of the same formative activity. The idea of the law of the conservation of energy presupposes similar formative powers of soul.

An example is the Prodigal son . This is a picture from Rembrandt’s last year.

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