Hegel on Poetry, Prose and the Origin of the Arts

Abstract

Hegel claims that poetry, not prose, is the most original form of writing. This chapter examines why Hegel’s account of the history of the arts puts such emphasis on poetry—and on the apparent philosophical relevance he accorded the distinction between poetry and prose. It offers in so doing an introduction to some of the larger philosophical questions raised by Hegel’s aesthetics. In particular, it addresses (1) the question of the origin of art as an interpretive human activity—how it is created and distinguishes itself from the seemingly natural or prosaic world; (2) the question of art’s relation to consciousness and why prose needs to be considered not merely as a stylistic literary mode; and (3) the question of Hegel’s familiar historical account of the development of the specific art-forms of the symbolic, classical and romantic within the context of his famous claims about the supposed “end” of art. In considering these questions, the article examines several contemporary stances toward the historicity of Hegel’s philosophy of art. Although this question of art’s end and the post-romantic is most often considered from the perspective of the visual arts—particularly Danto’s well-known claims about abstract painting in the post-Warhol era—an examination of Hegel’s views about literature and prose narrative is important to consider in this context. The article compares Hegel’s views on prose narrative with Russian Formalist and Bakhtinian perspectives, arguing that what we notice in a work of literary art is that it has a kind of totality or independence that makes it complete within itself. On Hegel’s view, it’s not that poetry removes or distorts prosaic life, but that it actually draws a kind of intense life into itself. The article also opens the space for an examination of Hegel’s own use of prose narrative in various philosophical contexts as a mode of inquiry, from the unique form of the Phenomenology of Spirit to the distinctively narrative tasks within the Aesthetics.