What Is Literature? ed. by Paul Henardi (review)

Books 337 boutiques and art bookshops reek of elitism? Cork also documents the neglect the visual arts suffer in the mass media. Newspaper art columns are rare, television art programs rarer. When they do occur they are seldom well written or well produced. Cork describes the present social role of art as providing pleasure for a fewand an investment opportunity for a fewmore. But he has a vision of what the social role of art should be; art should be emancipatory and spiritually nourishing for broad segments of the population. Like Pop music, art should become part of the masses' lives. He believes this can be done without artists pandering to crude tastes, if only artists would bring art into a confrontation with social reality and art's distribution could be freed from high finance and upper class etiquette. The essays fail to address two important issues: (I) Under present conditions, to become part of mass life is to become especially commercialized. If financial interests influence art, they positively rule Pop music. (2) Granted that art should be a bigger part of more lives, the question remains-just what is the character of that big part that art should play? Should it amuse, distract, please, enlighten, be a means of collectiveexpression or a spur to social change-some combination of these or some different role altogether? Cork does not say. A more specific philosophy of art and society is required. Hegel: On the Arts: Mllestones of Thought. Abridged and translated by Henry Paolucci. Frederick Ungar, New York, 1979.200 pp. Paper, $4.50. Reviewed by Elmer H, Duncan* G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) is generally considered the most important philosopher of the 19th century. Unfortunately, he is not read as much as he should be. The reason is that he is considered obscure, abstract, and his thought too removed from practical concerns. But this view of Hegel may be mistaken. As a professor in Berlin, Hegel gave a series of lectures on the fine arts. These were published after his death (from Hegel's own hand-written notes plus notes students had taken on the lectures) in three volumes, in 1835, 1837 and 1838. There have been English translations, the most recent by T. M. Knox (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975). But prospective readers may be deterred by the size of the two big volumes of the Knox translation. The abridgment by Paolucci istherefore welcome.It is all the more welcomebecause Paolucci manages to make Hegel speak very readable English. There isabstract thought here, as expected. Hegel argued that there is a logical progression in the arts from the symbolic,to the classical, to the romantic. This seems to follow the one-twothree waltz-time rhythm that Hegel commentators have so often led readers to expect. Hegel thus emerges as a very important champion of romantic art. He further argues that there is a hierarchy among the several arts, such that architecture isable to serve only symbolic functions, sculpture can strive for a classical ideal, and painting, music and poetry can reach for the romantic. But what should impress readers most in reading this book is Hegel's truly amazing knowledge of the several arts and the critical literature relevant to each. Thus, for example, Hegel discusses Greek sculpture at length. In so doing, he discussesthe Laocoon group, quotes Winckelmann and shows that he was aware of Wineke1mann's disagreements with Lessing.Those who expect Hegel to be totally abstract will be surprised to find him discussing trends in painting and adding, 'All of this can be traced with clarity through the general course of Byzantine, Italian, Netherlandic, and German paintings. We will briefly characterize each of these ... '(p. 118).In hisdiscussion of poetry he notes that one may find 'true epics' among the Indians and the Russians, but not among the Chinese (p. 154)-who would have expected Hegel to have been acquainted with Oriental art? But he is completely German in his admiration of Goethe's 'Faust', which he calls 'the one absolutely philosophical tragedy' (p. 194). *Dept. of Philosophy, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76703, U.S.A. The exposinon of Hegel's work given by Paolucci...