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Hegel on the Meanings of PoetryGary ShapiroUniversity of Richmond, gshapiro@richmond.edu

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Recommended CitationShapiro, Gary. "Hegel on the Meanings of Poetry." Philosophy and Rhetoric 8, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 88-107.

Hegel on the Meanings of Poetry

Gary ShapiroSince Socrates' attack on poetry, philosophers and critics have beenfaced with the problem of reconciling two convictions which seemequally pressing. While poetry (or imaginative literature) is and hasbeen valued as a source of insight and knowledge, it also seems clearthat poetic meaning is of a rather different sort than that found inscience, ordinary language, or (to introduce the classical contrast)prose. Philosophical theories of poetry, then, take one of two forms:either they deny one of these two beliefs, implying perhaps thatpoetry has only nonsensical or literal meaning, or they provide acognitive analysis of poetry which differentiates its meaning fromthat of prose. Hegel took the second alternative, maintaining boththat poetry "has been the most universal and cosmopolitan in-structor ofthe human race" and that the logic or meaning of poetrvis radically unprosaic' Poetry's cognitive value, like that ofphilosophy, religion, and the other forms of art, can be expressedmost generally by saying that it is a form of absolute spirit in whiehknowledge is thorough self-knowledge; the mode or form of thisknowledge is reason or dialectic as opposed to the rigid categories ofthe understanding. These formulas by themselves are notilluminating, being in Hegel's terms mere abstract universals; theytake on concrete meaning only when we see them functioning ititheir capacity of actually explaining the essential forms, aspects, ex-pressions, and historical varieties of poetry.

What is interesting about Hegel's analysis of poetry, then, is hisattempt to show that it is not only a form of knowledge, but a formwhich is quite distinct from that of prosaic thought. Both featuresfollow from the claim that the content of poetic knowledge is dialec-tical, as is the content of all art, religion, and philosophy forHegel; all are concerned with comprehending the contradictions,movements, and resolutions of Spirit (Geist) which is the fullestexpression of a dialectical activity. Hegel's conception ofpoetry could be approached simply within the context of his ownsystem by following his exposition of the idea, means of expressioti,

Mr. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas.Philosophy ^Rhetoric. Vol. 8, No. 2 (1975). Published by The Pennsylvania State

University Press. University Park. Pa. and London.

GARY SHAPIRO 89

and realized varieties of poetry, or regressing further, by examiningpoetry's place among the arts or by considering the general notion ofdialectic or spirit. While all ofthese aspects of Hegel's thought needto be understood in order to comprehend his theory of poetry, it mayclarify things to see how his analysis handles a difficulty which hasbeen encountered in the philosophical and critical analysis of poeticmeaning. After suggesting the force of Hegel's analysis in this way Iwill examine it in some detail; and since the theory offers a cognitivedefense of poetry by assimilating poetic to philosophical meaning, itwill be necessary to raise some questions about the relationship ofphilosophy and poetry which pose difficulties for Hegel's account.

I

One might begin by questioning one or both of the claims men-tioned earlier: that poetry is a form of knowledge and that it is to bedearly distinguished from a conventional or literalistic type ofknowledge (traditionally called prose). Yet a denial of either runsagainst the firm convictions of most of those who have taken poetryat all seriously. A philosopher might very well hold a theory, like thepositivist criterion of meaning, which had the consequence thatpoetry was either meaningless or had merely emotive meaning. Butthe conflict of such a theory with both common and uncommonsense concerning poetry would itself be a good reason for doubtingit. It is, of course, conceivable that we might be led to give up eitheror both ofthese claims by some very convincing philosophical systemor theory. In the absence of such a theory, however, what is needed isto understand what is already believed, following Anselm's examplein regard to the existence of God.

There is a popular cognitive conception of poetry which sees theneed for a non-prosaic analysis of poetic meaning. The conception isnot only popular among critics and aestheticians, but can makesome claim to being the dominant poetics of our time. It is generalenough to be found among literary critics, analytic philosophers,and existentialists who are otherwise of markedly diverse per-suasions. Since it is an approach which Hegel was aware of and con-sciously rejected it offers us a point of access to his own thoughtabout poetry. The conception I have in mind will be called the theoryof implicit meaning. (This follows a suggestion by Monroe Beards-%, although the th«)ry itself is a set of claims which cannot as awhole be attributed with ease to any specific pewon, although manyshare them in large part.)^ The theory begins with the realization

90 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

that poetry is meaningful rather than nonsensical although itsdeviation from science, semantically and syntactically correctlanguage (or, pejoratively, "steno-language" or "Gerede" — idlechatter) is clearly seen. Poetic meaning is said to be implicit becauseit is suggested, referred to, or symbolized rather than being actuallypresent in the literary work. Moreover the meanings in question areintrinsically and not accidentally implicit; they are not literalmeanings which could be directly stated, for which poetic ex-pressions would in that case simply be a code, but they remain im-plicit because of some special characteristic. The nature of thischaracteristic is variously understood in theories of metaphorical,s)Tnbolical, mythical, and imagistic meaning. The central point ofthe theory from which these competing versions derive, however, isthe insistence that the meaning in question is not and cannot be fullypresented in the poem. In a theory of poetic ambiguity like WilliamEmpson's, for example, poetic significance is understood as theability to suggest a wealth of possible meanings which are in-terrelated in a complex fashion. Such ambiguity cannot be explicitbecause it involves a continuum of possibilities which no actuallinguistic structure can include or contain, and so it can only heevoked. When questions of poetic value arise it is natural that suchtheories find the higher forms of poetry to be those which not onlymaximize the element of implicit or suggested meaning but show anawareness of the tension between what is (or can be) actually saidand what is evoked or symbolized. It is in this perspective that wecan make some sense of Heidegger's puzzling claim that "in thefamiliar appearances, the poet calls the alien as that to which the in-visible imparts itself in order to remain what it is—unknown.'"Although those who are given to close analyses of the nature ofmetaphor or symbol might protest rather vigorously at beingassociated with apocalyptic utterances of this sort, the commonelement in the many theories of implicit meaning is precisely the in-sistence on a tension between the limited actuality of the poem andthe indefinite possibility ofthe poetic meaning.

From Hegel's point of wew, the difficulty with such a theory is notso much in working out the details of the analysis of implicitmeaning but with the assumption that such meaning i*paradigmatically poetic. There is indeed a variety of poetry whichcan be properly called symbolical and the metaphor is a consciouscomparison of an indefinite sort; yet these are the absolutelyminimal forms of poetry aad ite language rather than its exemplars-The fact of poetic tension and symbolism derives on Hegel's account

GARY SHAPIRO 91

from the general conditions of art: it seeks to express a spiritual con-tent within a sensuous form. Simply as art, poetry, whoseimaginative medium is the finest attenuation ofthe sensory forms ofthe other arts, will exhibit a symbolical aspect. Symbolical poetryproper, however, is that which does not go beyond this sense ofdisparity or opposition." In certain forms of religious poetry, forexample, God is conceived as utterly sublime and unknowable andyet a wealth of specific things and properties of the world are men-tioned simply in order to emphasize the contrast of the finite and theinfinite. Metaphorical language is a conscious development of thesame tendency to make meaning merely symbolical or implicit,although it generally reflects a more conscious artistry than thepoetry of the sublime. A metaphor has both primary and secondarysubjects which are juxtaposed in such a way as to create a novel spec-trum of possible meanings which could not be expressed by a literalcomparison. Such forms, however, testify to their own in-completeness, for they point to a fulfilled meaning which, byhypothesis, can never be made present. The symbolical ormetaphorical poet, like the religious man of the unhappy con-sciousness, is acutely aware of the opposition between what he ac-tually does and says and what he wants to mean and enjoy; and whilehe may succeed in showing the limits of the former he is preventedby his own methods from making the latter manifest. The symbolicpoet may also appear in the form of the oracle whose utterances aredeliberately vague and open to endless interpretation.

At this point it may seem as if Hegel's objections to the theory ofimplicit meaning hold only for those varieties of it which agree withhim that poetry is intentional. Suppose, however, that one regardssuch things as metaphors and symbols as simply part of the textureor surface of a poem, which can be recognized and understoodwithout any reference to the poet's intentions. Still, insofar as oneholds that these aspects of poetry are to be analyzed as implicitmeanings, Hegel's criticism applies equally; for i*- is not the meaningwhich is supposed to be manifest here but simply the reference to it.

Hegel's own conception of poetry is based not on the minimalcharacteristics of the art but on its realization in those works of theimagination whose meaning is luminous and compelling. Along withthe advocates of implicit meaning he realizes that poetry is notpropositional or prosaic. For Hegel, however, the poetic alternativeto the prose ofthe understanding is not an indefinite meaning or anineffable experience, but the speculative comprehension of thedialectical nature of spirit. The tension which the theory of implicit

92 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

meaning detects between the actual and the possible in a poem is akind of image of this dialectic of spirit but one that tums out to beultimately inadequate in the same way that symbolism generally failsto fulfill its promise. It is true that the symbolical or metaphoricaltension itself must be exhibited or presented, rather than merelydescribed, and to this extent it is radically other than what can becommunicated through prosaic propositions. Yet there is a tendencyto equate the non-proposidonal with the ineffable or the non-conceptual in this account which Hegel strongly resists. As inphilosophy, the proposidonal form is inadequate in poetry notbecause its content is available only through an esoteric intuition ofsome sort, but on account ofthe spiritual content being itself dialec-tical. Hegel's arguments against romantic intuitionism in philosophy(as in the "Preface" to the Phenomenology of Spirit) find a parallelin his characterization of s}mibolic poetry as an indefinite gropingtoward an indefinite content.

II

The theory of implicit meaning requires us to suppose that poemshave purposes or intentions, although some of its proponents areskeptical in various degrees about the possibility of discerning anysuch purposes which are not immanent and manifest in the text ofthe poem. Hegel's conception of poetry's dialectical meaning alsodepends upon noticing this purposive feature; but Hegel differs fromthe theory of implicit meaning in his claim that in the paradigmaticcases of poetry such purposes are actually fulfilled in the poem. As inhis analyses of other phenomena of spirit, like history and religion,Hegel's interest is to show just how the purpose of the activity inquestion is fulfilled. Since tfie subject matter (spirit) is dialectical,the study of the purpose and its realization will exhibit the tensionsand contradictions which are appropriate to that particular form ofactivity. It is not that Hegel applies a "dialectical method" to a sub-ject matter in order to deduce its necessary characteristics; it is thesubject matter itself which has a dialectical character. In his En-cyclopedia he emphasizes that dialectic is primarily a feature of theworld:

It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adventitious art, whichfor very wantonness introduces confusion and a mere sem-blance of contradiction into definite notions. . . . But in itstrue and proper character. Dialectic is the very nature and

GARY SHAPIRO 93

essence of everything predicated by the mere understanding. . . by Dialectic is meant the indwelling tendency outwards bywhich the one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates ofunderstanding is seen in its true light, and shown to be thenegation of them.*

So far there may not appear to be any decisive difference betweenHegel's conception and that of the theory of implicit meaning. Forthe latter insists, as does Hegel, on the limited character of theimages, figures, and symbols actually presented in a poem, con-trasting it with the many possible meanings which are implicitlyreferred to. Poetry of the symbolic type, which is paradigmatic forthe theory of implicit meaning, could be viewed as a way of demon-strating the mere finitude of that which is finite. Now Hegel himselfdescribes symbolic poetry in just this way. The difference betweenthe two perspectives has to do with Hegel's analysis of how dialec-tical meanings are realized in poetry. Typically, Hegel analyzesspiritual activities in terms of three aspects: the general idea or pur-pose, abstractly considered; the medium or means in which or bywhich the purpose is carried out; and the concrete or realized end ofthe activity. In understanding history as the development offreedom, for example, we must inquire into the genera! idea offreedom (rational conscious self-determination), the means by whichfreedom is actualized in the world (the passions and interests ofhuman beings), and the end or realization of freedom (concreteethical life having its goal in the state). The corresponding aspects ofpoetry are the idea of a comprehension of the dialectical nature ofspirit, the medium and means of poetic expression, and the actualpoetic genres (the epic, lyric, and drama).

The purpose or idea of poetry sets it apart from prose bothbecause its object is explicitly taken to be spirit and because it com-prehends this object through a dialectical transformation of thecategories ofthe understanding. In this respect, poetry is simply oneform of art which, along with religion and philosophy, are the threemodes of spirit's knowledge of itself. A more definite notion of theidea of poetry in particular and of its medium emerges when poetryis located within the general context of art. According to Hegel, art isspirit's knowledge of itself in a sensuous form. Philosophy and•̂ ligion are also modes of spiritual self-knowledge; while religion<=an dispense with sensuous representations (although it employs"gures and myths), philosophy reaches its goal through the mediumof thought itself without limitation by either sense or story. The

94 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

various arts can be understood in terms of the relation in each be-tween sensuous form and spiritual content: there is a progressiveliberation from material and sensuous constraints in the series whiehbegins with architecture and sculpture and passes through painting(the art of color) and music (the art of tone) to poetry which employslanguage simply as an extemal sign of the imaginative life of spirit.In contrast to all other arts "what the end is now is to express im-mediately for spirit [Geist] the manifestations of spirit with all itsideas of imagination and art, without setting forth their visible andbodily presence."' Poetry is an art in the process of dissolution, forits extemal and objective aspect is, paradoxically, "the innejimagination and intuition itself ]das innere Vorstellen und An-schauen selbsty Hegel conceives ofthe imagination as thought in aconcrete form or aspect: it is not the images of Plato's painters or thefaculty of recalling or reproducing such images which is at stakehere, but a creative power of thought which nevertheless retainssome of the specificity and particularity of the sensuous world. Thedistinction is close to that which English critics, especiaUy of theromantic period, have drawn between fancy and imagination, or theprimary and secondary imagination.* The poetic comprehension ofthe hero differs from the philosophical because it imagines him asAchilles or Oedipus, a man of a particular nationality, character,and individuality rather than analyzing in what heroism of this orthat type consists. Poetry and speculative thought are alike in con-sidering the hero dialectically, but it is only poetry which is con-strained to do so imaginatively. Hegel's conception of poetry can bebriefly characterized as imaginative dialectic, if we remember thatimagination is not reducible to static images. It is a striking fact, forboth Plato and Hegel, that poetry not only employs or conjures upsuch images but that they are oftefl unnatural and even internally in-consistent or incongruously connected with one another from ^naturalistic point of view; while Plato takes this as evidence fotassimilating poetry to mere opinion and illusion, Hegel detectsa power and structure in the play of imagra which is fun"

damentally analogous to the dialectical structure which philosophyfinds in th in^ generally. It is worth noting that it is imagination, notlanguage, which is the medium of poetry. Language is simply a signofthe imaginative idea.

Accordingly Hegel claims that a great poem is in principle trans-latable not only from one language to another, but from verse ioprose.' Although many modern critics might dispute this, it seems tobe empirically confirmed in addition to following from Hegel*

GARY SHAPIRO 95

views. Certainly it is less strange to suggest that a poem can be trans-lated than to claim that a building or a painting could be trans-lated into a different material medium or colors. Paradigmaticworks of the literary imagination — Homer, Sophocles, Cervantes,Shakespeare — are translated and read in translation incessantly.Those aspects which seem to escape translation are either specificassociations ofthe original language which have no equivalent in thetranslator's, or the effects of tone, meter, and rhythm. Yet to someextent these are not difficulties in principle, but only in practice; ex-planations or metaphors may elucidate a strange meaning wherethere is no single literal equivalent and foreign meters may be ap-proximated by a skilled poet. Where the claim of untranslatability ismost plausible—in respect to a short lyric poem—it is usuallybecause we are concerned with a work which lies somewhere on theboundary of poetry and music.

As imaginative dialectic, poetry does what philosophy does but ina more immediate form. In the following contrast which Hegel drawsbetween the comprehension ofthe dialectic of things in pure thoughtand in poetry, there are grounds for doubting that he takesphilosophy to be capable of doing poetry's job better than poetrydoes:

reason... does not rest satisfied with the differentiations andexternal relations proper to the conceptions and distinctionsof the understanding; it unites them in a free totality, whichin the apprehension of our finite faculty fails to prove its self-consistency. . . although it grasps and comprehends actualthings in their essential separation and their actual existence,it does also nevertheless translate this particularify into theideal element of the universal, in which alone thought is athome with itself. Consequently there arises, in contrast to theworld of phenomena, a world that is new in this sense, thatthough the truth ofthe actual [yVirklichen] is present, it is notdisplayed in actuality itself as the formative power and veryown soul of the same. Thinking is only a reconciliation oftruth with reality in thought; poetic creation and con-struction, however, is a reconciliation in the mode of real ap-pearance itself, although merely in a spiritually imaginativeform \geistig vorgestellten Form ].'"

The realization of this imaginative dialectic occurs in the actualpoems which carry out this program of overcoming the fixed op-

% HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

positions ofthe understanding. The sequence ofthese forms is not somuch chronological as logical; they form a series in which the pur-pose of poetry is actualized more and more fully. That is, they show aprogressive overcoming ofthe usual categories ofthe understanding,in particular cause and eifect and subject and object.

The epic is appropriately the simplest form of major poetrybecause its approach resembles the impersonal, spectatorial attitudeof history. The epic poet seems simply to describe a world in his songas the naive historian or chronicler narrates a series of events. So farthe usual distinction of subject and object is observed, but ananalysis of the world and action of the epic discloses a different con-ception. The hero's career itself can be understood neither as adirect effect of the social world from which it arises nor, alter-natively, as the cause of that world. Using the categories of the un-derstanding we might view society as composed of independentunits, externally related either by voluntary acts or contingent cir-cumstances, or as a cultural unit whose holistic properties detenninethe characteristics of its members. The epic offers (at least inimagination) an alternative to these one-sided views. The heroemerges out of his world, and to that extent he is an expression of it;yet at the same time he is a distinctive individual with a remarkablecharacter who undertakes unusual actions. Achilles is not simply aparadigm of what the Greek warrior should be, but in his demandfor honor from Zeus and his consuming wrath his individuality tran-scends its origins. The world of the epic, in order to make suchfigures and actions possible, must itself be a poetic world. Socially, itis one in which loose relations of allegiance based mainly on per-sonal quality and achievement have not yet been superseded by lawand order. It is even poetic in its attitude toward objects of daily use;a division has not yet been made between the fine and the usefularts, so that a door, a tripod, or a knife are as worthy of descriptionas the battles of the heroes. Here Hegel uses "poetic" in his ownsystematic sense: it is a world which is not yet ruled by the prosaiccategories of the understanding but is imaginatively conceived. Theepic poet is a kind of primitive phenomenologist who observes thedialectical patterns of the heroic world.''

The lyric poem is an individual, subjective expression which lacksthe compass of the epic; yet its imaginative structure is a variationon the same theme. The lyric attitude is that of a reflective mindwhich has withdrawn from a highly regularized extemal world, andnow assimilates that world through the power of its own expression.The lyric itself involves a clash between this individud expression

GARY SHAPIRO 97

and the subject matter (whose variety is infinite) which is to beassimilated. Here again the division is not a fixed one:

It is above all the stress of this opposition, which rendersinevitable the swing and the boldness of utterance and image,the apparent absence of order in the ideal construction andcourse of the poem, its digressions, lacunae, and sudden tran-sitions, and which preserves the ideal elevation ofthe poet, bymeans of the mastery with which he is enabled, through theartistic perfection of his work, to overcome this disunion,and to produce an essentially harmonious whole, whichplaces him, as his work, in relief above the greatness of hissubject.'^

The burden ofthe lyric is the clash between "the compelling force ofthe subject matter" and the "independent freedom of the poet";since it occurs in the imagination it requires a feeling of shock orrandomness in the texture of the poem itself. Not only does Hegelmake no effort to deduce or justify the specific nature of this clash, itis a consequence of his theory that such characteristics are necessari-ly contingent. Hegel's theory is deductive here not in its attempt todetermine concrete details but only in its insistence that it is part ofthe idea of the poem that there be striking features of it whichpresent themselves as random, indeterminate, or chaotic.

The drama is not only dialectical in its structure but represents adialectical combination of the epic and the lyric. While it presentscharacters before us in their objectivity, like the epic, these charac-ters have the self-expressive power of the lyric poet. The dialecticalrelationship between the individual and his worid is roughly similarto that in the epic; but in this context the "world" is nothing butsimilarly situated individuals. In the drama subjective spirit arisesout of a world, becomes individual, determinate, and constitutive ofthe world. In this process it can be said with equal justification thatthe subjective becomes objective and the objective becomes sub-jective. The dramatic careers of the various characters are what theyare only through conflict, collision, and resolution; the appearanceof self-subsistency is pushed to the extreme by the dramatic mode ofpresentation but dissolved or mediated in another perspective by thedramatic action. Insofar as a resolution or reconciliation is offered inthe drama, it cannot have its source in the individual characters, butto accomplish tiiis the drama itself "wil! have to propound to us the^tal energy of a principle of necessity which is essentially self-

98 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

supporting, and capable of resolving every conflict and con-tradiction.'"' In dramatic poetry the metaphor finds one of its trueartistic functions, for in modem drama (and Hegel is thinking ofShakespeare in particular here) the richly metaphorical speech ofthe characters does not point to an indefinite meaning but, as an ac-tion of their own, shows an ability to transcend and dissolve the ob-jective situation, even at the height of danger or despair. Metaphor ispoetic just to the extent that it is aujgehoben.

If we make a distinction between form and content in poetrj',metaphoric tension or implicit meaning arises out of the formal con-tradiction which poetry exhibits between its imaginative mediumand spirit; while the content of poetry has to do with spirit's con-tradictions with itself. The converse of Shakespearean drama, inwhich metaphorical form is transmuted into spiritual content, is thattype of modem poetry in which the poet takes the poetic activity it-self as a subject for metaphorical or symbolic exploration. As inHolderlin's poetry, which Heidegger so admires, spiritual contentbecomes the vehicle of implicit meaning. Of course, poetry which isconscious of itself as poetry illustrates Hegel's own categories ofanalysis as well as providing a parallel to his conception ofphilosophy as the conscious knowledge of its own history. However,by inverting the relationship between form and content, romanticsymbolism fmds its appropriate theme in the prophetic anticipationof an unknown god, falling back into another variation of theunhappy consciousness.

By insisting on the dialectical nature of poetic meaning Hegelmakes a cognitive defense of poetry which allies it with philosophy.The analogy between the two is not their shared deviation fromtautology or empirical verifiability, as the positivists suggested, buttheir possession of a common object and mode of thought, each ofwhich is highly articulated. One way of approaching this structure,which presents another contrast with the theory of implicit meaning.is to attend to Hegel's conception of organic unity. The first image inthe Phenomenology of Spirit is that ofthe growing plant whose fruitis not the refutation but the truth ofthe stem and blossom; in his lec-tures on the fine arts Hegel insists that poetry also aims at organicunity. What must be noted here is that the notion of organic unity isnot a mere metaphor for Hegel in either of these contexts, but isdrawn from his analysis of life. As analyzed in the Phenomenoiogi'for example, life is the entire process by which particular livingforms attain independent status, contribute through reproduction orsustenance to the herd ox tribe and then by their death reveal their

GARY SHAPIRO 99

partiality and testify to the strength of the whole. Organic unify,then, is not simple interrelation or harmony, but involves a con-ceptualizable dialectic of the one and the many which includesnegativify, opposition, and contradiction. While critics andaestheticians sometimes interpret organic unity as if it were aseamless whole which could tolerate no contradiction, it is part ofHegel's conception that distinction, separation, and contingency are-necessary aspects of a genuine organic unity. In this respect his ap-proach is more responsive to poetic experience than is the dogmaticassertion that every poetic part must be necessary and make a dif-ference to the whole. In each of the major genres of poetry it is evennecessary that the poem contain contingent elements; the epic, forexample, must generate a sense of facticity and inexhaustibility byfocusing on a multitude of details which might very well have beenotherwise. The .theorists of implicit meaning often treat organicunity as an ideal by which critical evaluations are to be guided. In-sofar as they have in mind the notion of the seamless whole, theyfalsify that aspect of poetic experience which corresponds to thedisunities, death, and struggle which Hegel recognizes in his idea oflife; and one wonders, in any case, how such a whole could be basedon the irreducible tension involved in implicit meaning without ap-pealing to something like Hegel's notion of infinify or totality.

For Hegel, poetry and philosophy are different modes in whichconsciousness recreates for itself the dialectical pattem which itfinds in life (remembering that life has a specific meaning here). Thepoint of reference to the notion of life is not to endorse a vagueconception of poetry as vivid or emotional, but to stress the fact thatthe way in which poetry does what the abstract understanding can-not do, is by presenting the conceptualizable and the deter-minate—although in an imaginative form. Poetry does not simplyreduplicate the tensions and resolutions of life, however; the poem isnot simply a quasi-organic object, as it is in Kant's aesthetics. Poetryis the consciousness of life and its unity is not that of an abstractuniversal but of human action. Aristotle also had something like thisin mind in defining poetry as the imitation of human life; for humanlife is a determinate subject matter in which universal principles aretrue only for the most part, thus setting up certain irreducible con-tradictions between the ideal as such and its instantiation. If Hegelextends this Aristotelian thought he does so because of ametaphysical analysis which sees the dialectical relations of human'fe as paradigms rather than anomalies. His defense of poetry meets

100 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

Socrates's critique by attempting to show that poetic knowledge isself-knowledge.

Ill

The problem with analogies is that they cut in more directionsthan is usually anticipated. As Hume observed, we attribute someform of rational design to the world only at the price of picturing theworld's creator as a craftsman (or guild) of rather uncertain abilities.Since Hegel defends the cognitive value of poetry by emphasizing itsties to philosophy, it can very well be asked whether he viewsphilosophy itself as a form of poetry or if his own philosophy is sim-ply an esoteric poem of some sort. Hostile critics have suggested thatphilosophy of the Hegelian type is merely poetry, meaning, ap-parently, that it is (at best) a lyrical expression of an individual per-spective with no more general validify than a sonnet by Wordsworthor a Howl by Ginsberg. More sympathetic readers have suggestedthat the Phenomenology of Spirit in particular is an epic, drama, orBildungsroman ofthe world-spirit, and that it offers insights into thehistory ofhuman thought which are as profound and partial as thosethat we get from Shakespeare or Goethe.

Hegel himself clearly rejects such a view because ofthe distinctionwhich he makes between the imaginative and the thinking com-prehension of spirit's dialectic. All of the poetic genres are tied to theimmediate and specific because they present dialectical ideas only inimaginative form. Neither the Hegelian system nor any of the par-ticular works within it has the specific emotional unity of the reflec-tive individual which characterizes the lyric. The breadth ofthe sub-ject matters, the changes of perspective, and the aim at a universalit)'which transcends such limited perspectives as the lyric offers,suggests that the affinify might be rather with one of the more ob-jective literary genres, the epic or drama.

Hegel does indeed consider the question whether the history oftheworld, as an action of spirit, could be the subject of an epic. Sincemany have credited Hegel with composing just such a work, it isworth quoting his rejection of this possibility:

In this respect no doubt the most exalted action of Spiritwould be the history of the world itself. We can conceive itpossible that our poet might in this sense undertake toelaborate in what we may call the absolute Epos this univetsal achievement on the battlefield of the universal spir't'

GARY SHAPIRO 101

whose hero would be the spirit of man, the humanus, who isdrawn up and exalted from the clouded levels of consciousexistence into the clearer region of universal history. But invirtue of the very fact of its universality a subject matter ofthis kind would so be quite unfitted for artistic treatment. Itwould not adapt itself sufficiently to individualization. For onthe one hand we fail altogether to find in such a subject aclearly fixed background and world-condition, not merely inrelation to extemal locale, but also in that of morality andcustom. In other words, the only basis for all we couldpossibly presuppose would be the universal World-Spirit orintelligence, whom we are unable to bring visibly before us asa particular condition, and who is possessed of the entireEarth as his local environment.'*

In general, Hegel continues, an epic of the world-spirit presents twopossibilities: the absolute idea which governs history could be per-sonified, embodied in a specific human form, or presented only asthe necessify underlying the actions of specific nations and world-historical figures. The first alternative is not feasible because "theinfinity of such a content must shatter the necessarily limited artisticvessel of determinate individualify," while the second would collapseinto "a series of particular characters which emerged and againdisappeared in a wholly extemal succession" because the world-spirit, unable to appear as an individual agent, would be relegated toa shadowy role behind the scenes.'*

Hegel's objection to an epic of the world-spirit is equally ap-plicable to a dramatic version of the same story because here, too,the specific characters could not embody a universal content. Yetthere does seem to be a strong dramatic strain in Hegel's philosophy,although commentators have disagreed as to whether it is essentiallytragic or comic." Usually the heart of this analogy is said to lie in thefact that drama raises up and examines an individual's career onlyto show his ultimate destruction simply because of his own finitude.In Hegel's view of comedy, in particular, the figure is one whichfalsely claims a universal importance and whose dissolution leavesthe audience with a sense ofthe infinite power of spirit as opposed toall that which is finite. Now while this pattem is recognizable both indrama and in Hegel's philosophy itself, it manifests itself differentlyIE the two modes of discourse. For the protagonists of drama are™iite individuals, imaginatively conceived, while the actors inlegel's philosophical "comedy" are the ideas of individuality as well

102 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

as all the major attitudes which spirit can assume in a collectivefashion. Comedy is the imaginative version of what is thoughtuniversally in dialectical philosophy. The very analogies employedhere come from Hegel's own philosophical analjfsis of the drama inwhich the forms of poetry themselves play a role analogous to (yetdistinguishable from) Falstaff or Moliere's misanthrope.

Even if these poetic interpretations of Hegel's philosophy are in-consistent, both in principle and in detail, with his own conceptionof philosophy, they suggest a criticism of Hegel's system which couldbe expressed in another way. The point of adopting a poetic view ofaphilosopher's work may be either to disparage what bills itself ashigh metaphysics as mere poetry, whose meaning is alleged to beemotive only, or to salvage the cognitive value of a system whoseuniversal and literal truth we feel impelled to deny. The first ap-proach is one which begs the question as to the relationship betweenphilosophy and poetry; it represents, from Hegel's point of view, thedichotomous thought ofthe understanding which is unable to com-prehend dialectic, whether in imaginative or purely speculative formexcept by noticing the bare feelings which accompany them. Thesecond approach is more charitable but inconsistent with Hegel'sview of philosophy. For in this context the object of comparing aphilosophical with a poetic work is to suggest that it is one per-spective among several, a story told in one way which is to be com-plemented by stories with a different imaginative coloring. Thecognitive significance and value ofthe story is preserved insofar as itis taken to suggest an actual pattern or order which does obtain,even if it also attempts to include material which is properly ex-traneous or makes an exaggerated claim to be the exclusive versionofthe truth.

Hegel does take up an attitude of this sort toward hisphilosophical predecessors, but he holds it to be an inadequatedescription of his own standpoint of absolute knowledge. Even if theway to truth necessarily involves the sympathetic comprehension oferror, truth is one and error is manifold. At the end of his En-cyclopedia Hegel makes this claim explicitly in considering therelationship of art and philosophy: "Whereas the vision-method oSArt . . . shivers the substantial content into many separate shaps. . . Philosophy not merely keeps them together to make atotality, but even unifies them into the simple spiritual vision, and Mthat raises them to selfconscious thought."" The basis ofthe con-trast here is Hegel's logic of determinacy. Spirit, in its t e l idrive towards self-knowledge, knows itself at first only vaguely

GARY SHAPIRO 103

indeterminately. Symbolic art is the poorest of artistic phases justbecause it involves a juxtaposition of abstract material forms, likethe Egyptian pyramids, with a spiritual content which is merely in-dicated rather than manifested; it is not only that spirit in this stageof art is indeterminate in its substance, but that its connection withits external embodiment is subject to the radical indeterminatenesswhich infects all reference of the pointing or indexical variety. As wehave seen, Hegel argues that it is the purpose of poetry to overcomesuch indeterminateness and that this purpose does realize itself, atleast within certain limitations. Philosophical knowledge, whichdispenses with the imaginative and figurative limitations of art andreligion, accomplishes the transition from the indeterminate to thedeterminate in the realm of thought in an apparently unrestrictedfashion. The thoughts of Being and Nothing, with which Hegelbegins his Logic, are as abstract and indeterminate as thoughts canbe; an analysis of their deficiencies and contradictions eventuallyleads to the concrete and determinate Absolute Idea. Spirit exhibitsa similar process, traced in the Phenomenology, in its developmentfrom undifferentiated subjective feeling to philosophical self-knowledge. In all such movements it is the dialectical contradictionsofthe subject matter which produce negations which are themselvesdeterminations. Hegel always derides the interest in the possible (the"merely possible") for its indifference to attained actualify, whetherin art or political life.

The logic of determinacy which govems Hegel's thought is in mostcases presupposed; it is simply the form ofthe transition from a pur-pose or intention which is apprehended and adopted vaguely to theconcrete realization of that purpose or intention. In any suchteleological activity possibilities seem abundant at the beginning butare gradually narrowed down as irreversible decisions are made andwe acquire a more determinate knowledge of our own purpose,which has itself become more determinate. In the last chapter of the^dence of Logic Hegel discusses the process of determination morespecifically. The absolute method, that is, bis method of philosoph-ical exposition is said to be both analytic because it is attuned tothe structure of things themselves and synthetic because it ob-serves the subject matter as tending to become other than itself. Thisanalytic and synthetic moment of the judgnient, "by which theuniversal of the beginning of its own accord determines itself as the«Aer of itself K to be named the dialectical method."" The progressof the method is from the bare or empty universal beginning to the••l determinate conclusion. Although the method reveals that

104 HEGEL ON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

even the beginning is not wholly or completely indeterminate (e.g.,being, essence, and universality are determinated distinct forms ofindeterminate beginning), the movement which it traces is from theless to the more determinate, pursuing one determinate result on thebasis of those already attained: "First of all, this advance is deter-mined as beginning from simple determinatenesses, the succeedingones becoming ever richer and more concrete."'^ Hegel seems todeny in the case ofthe determinate and indeterminate (as he does ex-plicitly in the case of the mediate and immediate) that there isanything at all which is solely one or the other. But the whole prog-ress of his system requires that in all important or significant re-spects that which is always tends toward greater determinateness.

The theory of implicit meaning, although not elaborated withspecific reference to Hegel, challenges this logic of determinacy in-sofar as it applies to poetry. It claims that ambiguify, metaphor, andsymbolism are the heart of poetry just because they are surroundedby a halo consisting ofan indefinite variefy of possible meanings andinterpretations. At this point the theory converges with a similarcritique, this time explicitly addressed to Hegel, which bears on hisconception of philosophical meaning and communication. Much ofKierkegaard's attack on Hegel, repeated with variations by Sartreand Heidegger, is based on the claim that Hegel supposes an im-possibly determinate relationship, amounting to identity, betweenhimself and his readers. According to this critique, a discursive com-munication, whether poetical or philosophical must exhibit a certainamount of indeterminateness simply in order to engage its readers.Since the reader as an actually existing person lives by continuallyprojecting possibilities of action and understanding, communicationis defeated by the assumption that he can coincide with the author ina determinate "we" which excludes further possibilities of in-terpretation. Such a completely determinate communication wouldmean the end of the reader's existence. What is required forphilosophical communication, then, is an analogue of Socraticdialectic or Platonic dialogue which preserves the readerspossibilities and allows him to generate "fresh words" in his ownsoul. The existentialist critique of Hegel aims at demonstrating thaiin neglecting the Socratic problem of the written word he did nottake a sufficiently dialectical attitude toward his own dialecticTaking this line of criticism together with the previous one, they con-verge in the claim that the distinction between determinate and in-determinate meaning does not lead to an adequate account of thedifference between poetic and philosophical discourse.

GARY SHAPIRO 105

To the extent that Hegel is committed to a logic of deter-minateness, he sees the metaphorical character of poetry as anecessary defect and the philosophical appeal to possibilify as afailure to achieve wisdom which shrouds itself in a mystery. Thescorn which Hegel addresses to the appeal to the merely possible inthe moral life has its counterpart here in his theory of discourse. Inboth areas it answers to a common and substantial intuitivepreference for the articulate and developed as opposed to the in-complete and fragmentary. Nevertheless, the contrast between theconcretely actual and the vaguely possible seems undialectical in itsdualism. It appears to rest on the assumption that the determinate(or actual) and the indeterminate (or possible) are inversely related.Yet this seems to be one of those principles of the understandingwhich Hegel was so skillful at dissolving by an appeal to experienceand dialectic. One who has a determinate situation in life and actualtalents or skills certainly has more genuine possibilities of actionthan the man who refrains from any definite undertaking so as toremain free for all possibilities. In general, the actual must arise outof some set of possibilities, but once actual, it offers a new set ofpossibilities.^" The principle is operative in both poetic andphilosophical discourse. It is the complex and highly structuredwork, whether Shakespeare's plays or Hegel's Phenomenology,which is typically the ground of many interpretations. Here there isan observable reciprocity of the possible and the actual, for in-terpretation is a development of possibilities ingredient in the actualstructure of a work. There is something puzzling about Hegel'sfailure to discem the dialectical relationship of the actual and thepossible; if he had, the result might have been a recognition of thepluralism inherent in philosophical as well as poetic discourse. Thegerm of truth in the poetic interpretations of Hegel's philosophy,then, is the reintroduction of indeterminateness into a system whichseeks to exclude it by comprehending it. Whether in regard to poetryor philosophy, however, the altemative to the priorify of the actualneed not be the priority of the possible, as the theorists of implicitmeaning and the existentialists have supposed. To retum to thequestion of poetic meaning, it should be possible to account both forthe dialectic of spirit which Hegel recognizes in great poetry as wellas those holistic pattems of metaphor and image to which moderncriticism has drawn our attention. Fire in the Iliad, sight and blind-ness in Oedipus, or the storms in Shakespeare's plays tend to beneglected in Hegel's account of these poems just because of his""'directional logic of determinateness. If modem critics have tend-

106 HEGELON THE MEANINGS OF POETRY

ed to give brilliant but one-sided accounts of such metaphors whichomit the dialectic of spirit, Hegel sees the dialectic but omits the im-plicit dimension ofthe poem. What is needed is an analysis of poeticmeaning which does some justice to the relations of the actual andthe possible or of spiritual meaning and metaphorical tension.^'

NOTES

' Hegel. The Philosophy ofthe Fine Arts (PFA). translated by F. P. B. Osmaston(G. Bell: London. 1920). vol. 4. p. 21.

' For Beardsley's version of the theory see his Aesthetics (Harcourt. Brace andWorld: New York. 1958), pp. 114ff. Others who subscribe to the theory in one form oranother are Philip Wheelwright and Max Black in their theories of metaphor,WiUiam Empson in his study of ambiguity, and Martin Heidegger in his conception(cited below) ofthe poetic image.

' Martin Heidegger. ". . . Poetically man dwells" in Poetry, Language. Though!.translated by Albert Hofstadter {New York: Harper and Row. 1971), p. 225.

' Hegel discusses several forms of symbolic poetry in his Lectures. See especiallyvol. 2. pp. 110-168.

^ Encvclopedia SS81, translated by WiUiam Wallace.• P f i , vol.4,p. 5.'PfA,vol.4,p. 9.•Pf/l.vol. l ,p . 381.' PEA, vol. 4, p. 10. However, it should not be supposed that Hegel is indifferent to

rhythm and rhyme in poetry. In his account of poetic expression he attempts to showthat it is essential for poetry to mark itself off from other forms of discourse by the useof such modes; he also suggests some intriguing correlations between the "natural'principle of metrical order in ancient poetry and its more objective attitude towardlanguage and between the modern system of rhyme and a greater emphasis onlinguistic meaning. Hegel sees that the direction of modern poetry is to emancipate itself from all such constrictions ofthe medium but characteristically observes that theemancipation requires a development through the self-imposed discipline ofversification.

'»/'f/l.vol.4pp.25-26."PK4, vol. 4, pp. 106-192.'̂ PFA, vo). 4. p. 229. For Hegel's genera! analysis ofthe lyric see pp. 193-247." PFA, vol. 4, p. 254. For the drama see pp. 248-350."/•FA, vol. 4, p. 136.' '/>F/i,vol.4,p.l37." losiah Royee suggests an analogy of the Phenomenology with Faust in his Lec-

tures on Modem Ideatism (Yale University Press, 1919). Walter Kauftnann disagreesin detail but offers his own version of the analogy in Hegel: A Reinterpretatwn(Doubleday: New York, 1966, pp. llSff). Jacob Loewenberg argues that thePhenomenology and Hegel's system as a whole can be best construed as a comedy whis introduction to Hegel: Selections (Scribner's: New York, 1929).

" fncyc/opedia. p.572. A. V. Miller's translation." Hegel s Science of Logic, translated by A. V. Miller (Humanities Press: Ne

York, 1969), p. 831." Science of Logic, p. 840.

GARY SHAPIRO 107

" lustus Buchler defends an interesting version of such a theory of possibility andactuality, but without specific reference to Hegel in his Metaphysics of Natura! Com-plexes (Columbia University Press: New York, 1966).

-' Work on this paper was supported by Kansas University General Research Grant34)4-5038. I am grateful for that support and for helpful comments on an earlier ver-sion of this paper made by Albert Hofstadter. Rex Martin, and the reader for thisiaurnal.