Rereading Marx's Aesthetic Notes

Rereading Marx's Aesthetic Notes

Author: Li Suogui    Published: 2024-07-29    Source: Guangming Daily

 Earlier this year, I re-read Marx's aesthetic notes "Excerpts from F. T. Fischer's Aesthetics or the Science of Beauty" (new translation) in the 2023 issue 2 of "Marxist Aesthetics Research" (semi-annual journal). From the published excerpt of Marx's notes, I learned that the new translation corrected the mistranslations and omissions in the original translation 30 years ago, improved some ambiguous and difficult-to-understand words and sentences, and made the translation more fluent and readable.

Marx's notes on excerpts from Fischer's multi-volume work Aesthetics or the Science of Beauty were completed in June 1857. The notes had never been published in full in German or other languages ​​until the Russian translation was published in the Soviet magazine Dialogue in 1990. For more than 30 years, readers who were interested in Marx's aesthetic notes could only understand part of the notes through articles written by a very small number of scholars who were able to read the original text of the notes, but had no chance to read the full text of the notes. The main reason for this was the lack of experts in philosophical aesthetics who could identify Marx's handwriting. Therefore, to date, readers have not been able to read the full text of the notes included in the historical textual research edition of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels. Fortunately, Chinese readers can now read a new translation of Marx's aesthetic notes based on the Russian translation and partially with reference to Fischer's original German work.

one

According to relevant scholars, Marx had three main purposes for writing the aesthetic notes from the end of May to June 1857: first, to prepare for the entry on "aesthetics" for the New American Encyclopedia at the invitation of Charles Dehner, editor of the New American Encyclopedia; second, to collect materials for the upcoming "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy"; and third, to make theoretical preparations for discussing Franz von Sickingen, a historical drama by F. Lassalle. All three things involve core issues of aesthetics or art. Regardless of the purpose, facing Fischer's vast aesthetic masterpiece, Marx needed to make a decision on which parts to excerpt and which content to discard. This judgment requires a deep philosophical aesthetics skill, which is precisely reflected in Marx's excerpt notes. Now it can be basically concluded that the notes cover all aesthetic categories in Fischer's works.

Marx's excerpts from Fischer's aesthetic works begin with the definition of aesthetics. This definition follows the words of Baumgarten, the founder of German aesthetics: it is "a science of sensory cognition" (the content in quotation marks is the original words of Marx's notes, the same below); and it is also described as a "theory of free art, low epistemology, art of beautiful thinking or art of analogy". Then, Marx followed Fischer's thoughts and entered Kant's study of aesthetic judgment. He recorded Kant's "imagination grasps the form of the object" and "introduced the image into judgment". Then, he included the concepts of subjectivity and object, the unity of ideas and images, and the subjective impression of beauty in his notes. After that, Marx turned his attention to what Fischer called "elements of beauty", that is, the important categories and concepts of aesthetics, and used almost half of the space to make excerpts on them one by one. In this way, readers will follow the order of Marx's excerpts, enter the palaces of aesthetics, and appreciate the profound meaning of those concepts and categories. For example, "the idea transcends the scope of the image and opposes its own infinity to the finiteness of the image" - this sentence is used to define the sublime. Assuming that the idea in the human brain is not limited by the image, it can produce the concept of finite or infinite. In such a definition, Marx did not miss Fischer's description of all the sublime: the objective sublime, the subjective sublime, and the subjective and objective sublime. In addition to such detailed excerpts of the sublime, the concepts of tragedy and comedy in Marx's notes are a bit rough. Tragedy is divided into three types: "tragedy as a universal law, tragedy of simple sin, and tragedy of moral conflict", while comedy is composed of "objective comedy or farce, subjective comedy or wit, absolute comedy or humor". Through such forms of sadness and joy, it reflects the picture of the interweaving of great sorrow and small joy in life. Of course, Marx did not forget to add humorous elements to comedy: "simple humor or wit, unfunny humor, and laughable humor."

two

After finishing the excerpts of the first volume of Fischer's aesthetics, Marx began to look through the second and third volumes. Finally, he stopped at the third volume, which is the classification of art. The contents of the following volumes, including plastic arts, painting, music and poetry creation, did not enter Marx's field of vision in this notebook. It is very likely that these four contents were not of interest to him, or were not what he needed to master.

What interested Marx and what he needed were the topics of natural beauty and fantasy (mythology) discussed in the second volume of Fischer's work, and the classification of art in the third volume. In the same way as the definition of beauty and the "elements of beauty" excerpted from the first volume, Marx recorded the two main aspects of natural beauty with ease: objective natural beauty (inorganic beauty, organic beauty) and the subjective existence or fantasy of beauty (general fantasy, fantasy or ideal history). Both aspects were considered "unilateral beauty" in Marx's notes, that is, "as objective existence, it is natural beauty; as subjective existence, it is imagination." Fantasy was recorded by Marx in the notes as "general fantasy, special fantasy and individual fantasy". Next, the history of fantasy or ideal did not escape Marx's sight. He saw that general fantasy "created religion, folk legends, etc."; the fantasy of the ancient Greek and Roman era was mainly promoted through plastic arts; Orientals had a brewing symbolic fantasy, and such fantasy was from symbol to myth. By the time Marx had written this, fantasy, legend, myth and religion had become an organic part of his excerpts, and they were all more or less integrated into Marx's later works.

three

Returning to the three main purposes of Marx's aesthetic notes, we can examine whether Marx really fulfilled his wishes when taking notes. According to relevant historical materials, Richard Dehner, the editor of the New American Encyclopedia, did invite Marx to write an "aesthetics" entry for the encyclopedia. As a result, Marx consulted several encyclopedias and the then-famous aesthetic works of Fischer while he was ill, and carefully made excerpts. However, after consulting with Engels in letters, Marx refused to write the "aesthetics" entry on the grounds that the entry was short and the content was difficult to write. In this way, Marx's wish to write an aesthetic work in his lifetime was not fulfilled. However, Marx's notes were not in vain. Two months after the notes were completed, Marx began to write the "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy", in which he wanted to incorporate the excerpts of fantasy, legend and myth mentioned above. He pointed out that although the premise of Greek art is Greek mythology, which is a manifestation of social form, there is no social basis for reproducing the images of ancient Greek mythology and epics under current social conditions: "Can the view of nature and social relations that formed the basis of Greek fantasy and thus the basis of Greek [art] coexist with the spinning mule, the railway, the locomotive and the telegraph?" This sentence shows that in today's society, human beings think about nature rationally, rather than treating it as a magical or mysterious thing. In this case, myths and legends lose their reason for existence, and epics can no longer be created.

Marx's aesthetic views, which he extracted from Fischer, are also reflected in his comments on F. Lassalle's historical play Franz von Sickingen. In early March 1859, Lassalle sent his play Franz von Sickingen and the preface to Marx in order to get appropriate evaluation or comments. During this period, in addition to continuing to write for the New York Daily Tribune in the United States, Marx was also preparing to write Capital. He took time out of his busy schedule to complete Lassalle's request. Not only that, Marx also wrote several letters to Engels, talking about his views on Lassalle's play. Since this play describes the European Revolution of 1848, according to the nature of this revolution, it should be a revolutionary tragedy. In connection with Fischer's views on tragedy and comedy, Marx easily regarded this historical play as a tragedy, and he also inherited Fischer's statement that "revolution is the real theme of tragedy." It is precisely because Marx's comments are well-founded and appropriate that his comments on Lassalle's play have become a classic in the history of literary criticism.

Finally, Marx ended his notes with "criticism", "taste" and the classification of various arts. Marx seemed to be unsatisfied after this excerpt. He drew a classification table intuitively according to the description of the relevant content in the third volume of Fischer's work, in order to demonstrate his understanding of Fischer's aesthetic thought and express his acceptance of Hegelian aesthetics.

(Author: Li Suogui, visiting professor of the School of Foreign Languages ​​and Cultures, Northeastern University, Qinhuangdao Branch)

Source: Guangming Daily (15th edition, July 29, 2024)