John Sallis
Mimesis is configured in many ways. Its manifold senses require for their articulation the doubling of sense—that is, of the word “sense” and hence of the sense of sense—such that it designates both what is commonly displayed to the senses and what intrinsically cannot be so displayed. Our Latinate expressions for this dyad are sensible and intelligible. In Greek, the designations are αἰσθητóν and voητóv.
The terms of this dyad delimit the field within which mimesis in its manifold senses is configured. If, for instance, one is engaged in the apprehension of a painting, one sees its forms and colors, yet at the same time attempts to understand the sense of the painting. The very character of the painting is such—and is taken to be such—that it appears to the sense of sight in such a way as to present a sense quite inaccessible to sight.
Yet the field within which the senses of mimesis are configured requires a third, mediating term. For, at least until recently, paintings were not simply arrays of color but rather were depictions of persons, of landscapes, or of things occurring in nature or fabricated by humans. It is precisely across this space, from depiction to depicted, that mimesis can, almost axiomatically, be said to take place.
It is in Plato’s Republic, preeminently in Book 10, that philosophical discourse on mimesis is first developed, though as a resumption of what Socrates calls “an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (607b). By the time the question of mimesis is taken up by Socrates and Glaucon, they and their companions will all, so it seems, long since have missed both the torch race on horseback that was to take place at sunset and much of the all-night festival that Polemarchus keenly anticipates at the beginning of the dialogue. Though foreshadowed by the earlier discussions of poetry and of music, the discourse on mimesis as such will not have begun until deep in the night. Little wonder, then, that the example that occurs to Socrates is that of a bed or couch (κλίvη). As soon as he has posed the question of what mimesis is, he proceeds to lay out, in reference to this example, the three-term schema that constitutes the field of mimesis. This schema he presents as a progression toward multiplicity: from the one idea of bed, made presumably by the god, to the many beds made by carpenters, to the many appearances that each of the many beds can present, depending on whether it is observed from the side or from the front or from anywhere else. Mimesis occurs in the directedness of the painter to the many appearances presented by each of the many beds. Mimesis does not, like the τέχvη of the craftsman, produce a bed, much less the bed as such, but only a phantom (ϕάvτασμα). Because mimesis is confined to this segment of the field, because it takes place at the extreme that is opposite being as such and is directed only as far as the middle term of the schema, Socrates declares it to be far off from the truth (πóρρω … τοῦ ἀληθοῦς).
In the dialogues, there is much that works against this confinement of mimesis and the correlative deprecation of painting and poetry. One such countermove is found in the very midst of the discussion of mimesis. In describing the productive activity of the craftsman, Socrates observes—and Glaucon agrees—that the craftsman could not produce the idea itself. Rather, says Socrates, “it is in looking to the idea” that the craftsman then fabricates the bed (Plato, Rep. 596b). Though Socrates leaves it entirely unsaid, the craftsman’s production is virtually indistinguishable from mimesis; for precisely as he looks to the idea of bed, to the look of bed as such, he produces a bed that looks like the idea, that has the same look as the idea, that has a look like that of bed as such. Thus, in producing the bed, the craftsman makes an imitation, a mimetic double, of the idea. But then the question is inevitable: if the craftsman can look to the idea in order to make his product in the image of the idea, why can the painter not also look to the idea in order that his product too be made in the image of the idea? As a truly mimetic image, the painting would not, then, be so far off from the truth. Granted that the painter possesses an insightfulness and skill comparable to that of the craftsman, his work could serve to make the idea manifest rather than distorting and concealing it.
Another countermove is suggested—indeed enacted—in the structure of Book 10 and more broadly in the ascensional-descensional structure of the Republic as a whole. For even if the painter and the poet are not to be granted the capacities required for producing truly mimetic doubles, there would seem to be others who do possess these capacities. The discourse that distances mimesis from the truth begins and ends with a reference to Homer, who, among the poets, seems to be considered the chief purveyor of dissimulation and beguilement. And yet, as soon as Socrates has completed the discourse on mimesis, he begins to speak of the soul; and mentioning, among other curious things, Gyges’ ring and Hades’ cap, he prepares for the exorbitant discourse with which the Republic ends. Nothing is more remarkable than that this discourse—the myth of Er—takes the form of a story not at all unlike those told by the poets; indeed, Homer’s tale of Odysseus’ descent to Hades has been in play throughout the dialogue before finally being transformed into the myth of Er. If these structures are taken as exemplary, then it is possible to envision an itinerary on which the philosopher, having made the ascent as far as mortals can, would return to the region of poetic image-making and engage in a mimesis informed by the insight gained (Brann 2004, 271).1 Though operating from the same extreme, such mimesis would have rebounded from above and would have infused its production with something of the truth.
Perhaps the most striking and conspicuous countermove is that prompted by the discourse on the beautiful that Socrates pursues in the Phaedrus. Here the motive force lies in the characterization of the beautiful as ἐκϕανέστατον, as the most shining forth, as that which, unlike the other ideas, can become manifest, can shine forth, in the visible realm. In commenting on the Phaedrus, Gadamer says of the beautiful that “it belongs to its own essence to be something manifest” (Gadamer 1965, 456). “It has, he says, its own radiance [seine eigene Helligkeit], so that we are not seduced here by distorted copies” (ibid.). If the beautiful thus shines forth in the sensible, there is every reason to suppose that it—and hence being as such—will be visibly manifest in beautiful painting and poetry.
At the end of the discussion of mimesis in Book 10 of the Republic, Socrates grants that if mimetic poetry could provide a λóγoς—give an apology—showing that it should be admitted to a good city, then he would be delighted to welcome it back from exile. Since Plato, nearly all who have ventured to take up again the question of mimesis have attempted to give precisely such an apology, to configure mimesis in such a way as to be able to welcome mimetic art back from its Platonic exile.
Efforts in this direction are ventured already in antiquity, most notably by Aristotle and Plotinus. Aristotle takes mimesis as something natural to humans and as one of the traits that distinguish the human from the lower animals. Humans are “the most mimetic,” and especially in childhood they learn by mimesis (Aristotle, Poetics 144b2). The implications of this characterization work against the Platonic deprecation, even if not as a direct countermove. Aristotle ascribes to mimesis a positive character in general; rather than producing mere phantoms, it provides a basis for learning. Furthermore, in stressing its role in learning, he in effect grants that it is disclosive of things. For if, by imitating things, one learns about them, then mimesis must have a capacity to foster insight into things, that is, to disclose them.
But what are the things open to such insight? What does mimetic poetry—tragedy, for instance—disclose? Does mimesis reach beyond particular things—beyond the bed of the carpenter, beyond the character Oedipus—and across the entire field in which mimesis is configured? Aristotle’s answer is cryptic yet decisive. It is set in the context of his comparison of the poet with the historian. Whereas the historian tells what has happened, the poet tells what might happen; and whereas the historian refers only to particulars, poetry is oriented to the universal, to what a particular character probably or necessarily will do or say. Thus, the universality to which mimesis extends is determined by the particular character depicted in the drama, by what Oedipus probably or necessarily would do or say. The mimesis indeed extends across the entire field, and yet there is a reflection from the universal back to the particular, and in this sense the focus of mimetic poetry is the individual character, not the idea of the human but a universality determined, for instance, by the character Oedipus. Such is, then, the configuration in which, for Aristotle, mimesis is formed, the configuration by which he determines its sense.
With Plato and Aristotle, an orientation of art to nature is implicit as a possibility, though, primarily because of the focus on epic and dramatic poetry, this possibility remains largely underdeveloped. In later antiquity, however, and in modernity, especially in German Classicism, the conception of art as imitation of nature becomes quite prominent. This conception is already to be found in Plotinus’ Fifth Ennead, though the intent there is not so much to advocate this conception as such but rather to offer a supplement that provides an apology for the arts, defending them against those who deprecate them. Plotinus writes: “If someone dishonors the arts because they produce their works by imitating nature, we must tell him first that natural things are also imitations. Then he must know that the arts do not simply imitate the visible [τὸ ὁρώμενον—that which is seen], but they go back to the principles [ἐπί τoὐς λóγoυς] from which nature originates; and further, that they on their own part achieve and add much, whenever something is missing, for they are in possession of the beautiful” (Plotinus, Ennead V.8.33–38). Thus, the defense offered by Plotinus is against those who would demean the arts on the grounds that they imitate mere visible nature rather than the higher, invisible origins. Plotinus’ defense appeals to the relation of nature to the higher principles or origins: because natural things are themselves imitations of the origins, the artist’s imitation of nature extends by nature to the origins. In imitating natural things, the artist perfects them and precisely thereby refers them back to their origins. Hence, with Plotinus, the configuration of mimesis extends from one extreme to the other. What enables the passage beyond mere natural things is the artist’s capacity—born of his sense of the beautiful—to perfect these things. In a more precise formulation, the configuration extends from the mimetic artwork to the highest principle, to being or rather, to the One that is beyond being. Here, as Gadamer says, Plotinus takes a new step (Gadamer 1986, 28), and its effect is to transform the configuration of mimesis. In its full scope, artistic mimesis is now configured in such a way that it not only extends across the entire field but even exceeds the limit of that field.
In modernity, mimesis is more restricted though seldom confined within the narrow limits that Book 10 of the Republic—at least if read straightforwardly—seems to assign to it. Gadamer has repeatedly called attention to the way in which the conception of art as imitation of nature was taken up by German Classicism. He observes that this conception has nothing to do with extreme naturalism, with requiring of art straightforward faithfulness to nature (Gadamer 1993, 27/94). Rather, in Gadamer’s words, it is a matter of the conviction that in a perfect work of art the very forms of nature [die Naturgestalten selber] come in their purest appearance before our spiritual eyes” (ibid.). He adds: “Thus what becomes visible in imitation is just the genuine essence of the thing” (ibid., 32/99) In these expressions of the sense that imitation had in German Classicism, a distinct echo of the ancient conceptions can be heard.
Among the representatives of German Classicism, Johann Schlegel is notable for his extended account of imitation. His critical essay, “On Imitation,” written in 1742, begins with the declaration that art, specifically poetry, is an imitation of nature. Schlegel connects imitation with order: through imitation, the artist establishes in the imitation the same order that exists in the original. Thus, there results not only order in the imitation but also an agreement of the order established in the imitation with that existing in the original; that is, imitation and original come to share a common order. To be sure, Schlegel entertains the possibility that an artist may include in an imitation only enough parts to allow us to recognize the original in it; but then, he declares, the imagination comes to our assistance so that the imitation is pictured as complete. Schlegel continues: “When I observe order, I have a sense of pleasure; and so when I observe a similarity of imitation to original, I react in the same way” (Schlegel 1965, 23). In this way, he explains the thesis that he set out at the very beginning of the essay: that imitation in the arts has pleasure as its objective.
In referring imitation to pleasure, Schlegel not only harks back to a Platonic theme—though without a comparably precise analysis—but also takes a step toward what Gadamer calls the subjectivization of aesthetics. For in being directed to pleasure, mimetic art is, at the same time, deprived of its disclosive capacity; the way is thus prepared for the thorough dissociation of art from truth. Johann Winckelmann was perhaps the most influential of the representatives of German Classicism. His work, Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works, published in 1755, became a cornerstone of German aesthetics in the second half of the eighteenth century. In this work, Winckelmann reaffirms the conception of art as imitation of nature, while compounding such imitation with another, as indicated in the title of his work. Extolling the taste that the Greeks exhibited in their art, he declares: “The only way for us to become great, or, if this be possible, inimitable, is to imitate the ancients” (Winckelmann 1987, 5). Among those who, as he says, partook of good taste at its source, he places Michelangelo, Raphael, and Poussin (ibid.). And yet, what, in imitation of the Greeks is to be imitated is not only nature, not even nature at its most beautiful, but also, says Winckelmann, something beyond nature, that is, certain ideal forms of its beauty [gewisse idealische Schönheiten derselben], which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us, come from images called up purely in the understanding (ibid., 7; trans. modified). A note by Winckelmann identifies this ancient interpreter of Plato as Proclus and refers specifically to his commentary on the Timaeus.
This reference to the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Platonic dialogue that deals most directly with nature and its beyond is indicative of the manifoldness of Winckelmann’s appeal to the Greeks. For in addition to calling for artistic imitation of Greek works, he also renews—if with a certain restraint—the ancient configuration of mimesis as extending across the entire field from imitation to nature to something ideal beyond nature.
By the time of Hegel, everything had changed as regards mimesis. By the time Hegel presented his lectures on aesthetics in Berlin in the 1820s, mimesis had fallen into thorough disrepute as a conception by which to characterize art. In fact, Hegel’s Aesthetics sets out, almost at the beginning, a thoroughgoing critical rejection of mimesis as the aim of art. According to Hegel, mimesis can produce nothing but one-sided deceptions, replacing the reality of life with its mere dissimulation. Thus, it is as if a return had been made to the most critical strain in Book 10 of the Republic, and the products of mimesis were now again to be condemned as mere phantoms.
Hegel puts forth three criticisms of mimesis. First, he observes that mimesis amounts to nothing but repetition, producing again as an artwork something that already exists in the world. Such repetition, Hegel says, is utterly superfluous, for whatever might be displayed by a mimetic image will always be inferior to its original. Compared to the original, the copy can have little effect except to deceive, though the deception to which Hegel refers lacks altogether the forcefulness and corruptive power attributed to mimesis in the Republic. Hegel tells some curious stories about such deceptive, yet weak, mimesis. There were the grapes painted by Zeuxis, which were declared a triumph of art because doves came and pecked at them. Then there was Büttner’s monkey, which—as the story goes—ate a picture of a beetle in his master’s book but then was pardoned, since he had demonstrated how excellent the pictures in the book really were. To the bestiary containing these deceived animals—mere doves and monkeys, no humans—Hegel makes some further additions by drawing a bizarre comparison: In sum, however, it must be said that, by mere imitation [Nachahmung], art cannot stand in competition with nature, and, if it tries, it looks like a worm trying to crawl after an elephant (Hegel 1985, 1:52/1:43).
Hegel’s second criticism is that the mimetic conception of art gives no place to objective beauty. If what counts is only the copying and its accuracy, then there can be no question as to what should be copied. Even if the artist were resolved to copy only beautiful objects, his mimetic art would lack all means for determining what is beautiful; discrimination between beautiful and ugly could not but be completely subjective.
The third criticism simply draws the indisputable limit of the mimetic conception of art. Even if, to some degree, painting and sculpture appear to imitate natural things, this is not at all the case with architecture nor with poetry insofar as it is not confined to mere description of nature. Thus, according to Hegel, the mimetic conception of art cannot be extended to cover all the arts. Curiously, however, Hegel makes no mention of the art that many would consider the least mimetic, namely, music.
With respect to the dissociation of art from mimesis, Hegel regards Winckelmann as his predecessor. He observes that Winckelmann was inspired by insight into the artistic ideals of the Greeks—as indeed was Hegel too—and he credits Winckelmann with having opened up a new way of considering art by rescuing it from views that regarded it as merely imitating nature. And yet, though Hegel is justified in regarding Winckelmann as having broken with the concept of art as mere imitation, Winckelmann did not in fact reject the role of mimesis in art but rather expanded the sense of mimesis far beyond that of mere copying, even beyond imitation merely of nature.
This contrast makes it all the more evident that Hegel’s concept of mimesis is thoroughly reductive. In his criticisms of mimesis, he takes it to be nothing more than mere copying, the mere reproduction, in an image, of what already exists in the original. Mimesis is accorded no capacity to perfect what is imitated and thereby to disclose something essential beyond what is merely given. Conceived in this manner, reduced to the merest copying, mimesis can contribute nothing to the production or the work of art.
Yet behind the reductiveness of Hegel’s concept of mimesis, there is a more expansive strategy at work. The strategy is to reduce and thus exclude mimesis from artistic production in order to make way for an essential relatedness of the artwork to spirit. Since there are systematic constraints that require Hegel to maintain that, as he says, everything spiritual is better than any product of nature (Hegel 1985, 40/29), art can be accorded its place of honor only if its primary relatedness is to spirit rather than nature. A true artwork is thus declared to be such that it presents the true, that is, presents spirit. More specifically, the artwork is taken to be such that it presents spirit as spirit, that is, absolutely. Because artistic presentation is absolute, art belongs, along with religion and philosophy, to the highest sphere of spirit’s self-presentation.
Regarding this conception of art, two points need to be noted. First of all, the relation of art to spirit is typically designated by the words darstellen and Darstellung—let us say, to present and presentation. Occasionally, Hegel substitutes the word enthüllen—let us say, to uncover. Because he has so decisively excluded mimesis, he never uses this word—that is, the German Nachahmung—to designate the relation between the artwork and spirit. Yet, the question cannot but be raised: Is presentation entirely distinct from mimesis, or is it—can it be regarded as—a higher form of mimesis? Does the artwork present spirit precisely by way of a certain image or trace of spirit that is borne by the artwork? In this case, Hegel would, then, have excluded an inferior, indeed reduced, form of mimesis in order to introduce a higher mimesis linked to spirit.
The second point is that a certain mimesis of nature cannot but return in Hegel’s concept of art. For as the sensible presentation of spirit, as unveiling the truth in the form of sensible artistic form (Hegel 1985, 64/55), the sensible moment in the artwork cannot be suppressed. In many cases, that moment will inevitably be mimetic.
As Hegel outlines it, the configuration is no longer one of mimesis at all. If, on the other hand, one moment remains in some sense and in some instances mimetic—as in a painting of a landscape—then the configuration of the artwork—as the sensible presentation of spirit—would conjoin a mimetic moment with a presentational moment; the latter is what would extend on beyond nature, drawing art across the entire field. If, still further, presentation were determined as a higher form of mimesis, then the configuration would conjoin this higher mimesis with another closer to nature.
While Gadamer grants the profundity of Hegel’s conception of art as the sensible presentation of spirit, he points to what he considers a basic flaw in this conception. In Gadamer’s words, Hegel’s conception fails to do justice to the fact that the work speaks to us as a work and not as the bearer of a message (Gadamer 1993, 124/33). Gadamer’s charge is thus that Hegel makes the artwork a mere vehicle by which spirit is announced, so that, in the end, what counts is this announcement and not the work as such. Gadamer observes, furthermore, that it was precisely this conception that led Hegel into entanglement in the problem of art as a thing of the past. For, if art is a mere sensible vehicle, it will be surpassed by other vehicles less attached to nature and more capable of presenting spirit as it unfolds more fully in Christianity and in modernity.
It is remarkable that Gadamer takes up the question of mimesis as extensively as he does, especially considering the proximity of his thought to Heidegger’s, and, not least of all, to The Origin of the Work of Art. For in this text, Heidegger appears to be totally uncompromising in his rejection of all mimetic conceptions of art. Immediately following his famous—or perhaps infamous—discussion of van Gogh’s painting of what Heidegger takes to be a pair of peasant’s shoes, he writes of the opinion, which has fortunately been overcome, that art is an imitation [Nachahmung] and depiction of reality (Heidegger 1977, 22). Rhetorically posing the question whether van Gogh’s painting is an imitation of a real pair of peasant’s shoes, he answers: “By no means” (ibid.). As the essay continues, he enacts this opposition to mimesis by choosing as the other major work to be discussed something that, as Hegel pointed out, cannot be conceived as mimetic, namely, an architectural edifice, in this case, a Greek temple. In view of Heidegger’s unconditional rejection of mimesis in art, one can only expect that Gadamer’s return to the question of mimesis will involve a transmutation of the very sense of mimesis, a displacement and reconfiguration so radical that the word hermeneutics will no longer entirely suffice. Especially in light of Gadamer’s extended discussions with Derrida, it would be more appropriate to speak of a deconstructive turn in hermeneutics, even of a deconstruction of mimesis.
On the other hand, there is a deeper level at which Gadamer and Heidegger are in complete accord. When Heidegger delimits art as—in the untranslatable phrase—“das Sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit” (ibid., 25), he means not only that truth is set into the work but also that truth is set to work as truth only in the work. In other words, the truth that is set into the work is not a truth that first of all somehow exists, only then to be set into the work. The truth that is set into the work is nothing except as set into the work. As Gadamer insists in his criticism of Hegel, the work of art is no mere bearer of a meaning that can subsist apart from it and that could be transferred to some other vehicle.
This is, then, the first of the four moments that constitute Gadamer’s deconstruction of mimesis. Gadamer sets up this deconstructive moment by first of all affirming the traditional understanding of art as mimesis. In his words: “The tradition is justified in saying that art is always mimesis, that is, that it presents something [sie bringt etwas zur Darstellung]” (Gadamer 1993, 127/36; trans. mod.). Yet everything depends on how presentation is understood, and on this point Gadamer is no less radical than Heidegger. The presentational character of an artwork does not consist in its presenting something that it is not. Gadamer expresses this deconstructive turn in the most succinct terms: “What the work has to say can only be found within it itself” (ibid., 127f./37f.). In other words, the presentation, the mimesis, that an artwork carries out and that indeed makes it properly an artwork is not a presentation of something other, not a mimesis of something outside the work; rather, the mimesis takes place within the work itself.
Clearly, then, mimesis reconfigured in this manner—“true mimesis” Gadamer calls it (ibid., 302/64)—cannot be identified with repetition. Almost as if his target were Hegel’s reductive concept of mimesis, Gadamer declares that mimesis is not a matter of letting something that is already there be there again, that it is not a matter of duplicating something already existing, not like the landscape painting that would be only a picture of the landscape painted. Rather, says Gadamer, mimesis is transformation (Verwandlung) (ibid.). This redetermination constitutes the second moment in the Gadamerian deconstruction of mimesis.
The mimetic transformation comes about neither in something apart from the artwork nor in the one who apprehends the work. Rather, the transformation is there in the work itself. It takes place as a bringing forth of enhanced possibilities, as a showing, a lighting up, of possibilities never seen before. Mimesis is enhancement of possibilities; that is, it sets before us—in the work itself—new, untried possibilities, prospective senses never yet manifest.
The third deconstructive moment involves reconstruing the duality of mimesis, displacing the image/original relation that was definitive for traditional concepts of mimesis. Gadamer does not entirely collapse the distinction between image and original. But he does emphasize that in true, that is, deconstructed, mimesis, there should remain only a kind of trace of this difference. In the language of Truth and Method, what is decisive here is “aesthetic non-differentiation” (Gadamer 1965, xxvii). Gadamer explicitly relates this almost vanishing difference to the structure of mimesis as transformation. His point is that the transformation, the opening of new possibilities, that takes place in the artwork bears a reference back to what has undergone transformation. Precisely in setting out these possibilities, the work tacitly refers to that from which they are set forth.
Yet, if it is primarily as emergence of meaning in the work that mimesis takes place, there is still another aspect—a fourth moment—to which Gadamer refers, though without extensively developing it. In the artwork, there is not only a manifestation but also a sheltering of sense, a sheltering (Bergung) (Gadamer 1993, 125/34) that stabilizes and secures the sense that mimesis has also set free.
Thus set into the work, mimesis as the transforming emergence and sheltering of sense is configured in a way that could not have been envisioned within the orbit of metaphysics. Gadamerian mimesis is configured outside the distinction between intelligible and sensible, that is, entirely outside the field within which, since Plato, mimesis has always been configured. Now the field must be opened and laid out anew by resisting what the doubling of sense has produced and by returning to the sense from which a new, exorbitant articulation can be ventured.
In conclusion, two questions—or rather, two sets of questions—need to be posed, questions that venture beyond the manifold senses of mimesis that have been considered.
The first concerns the itinerary laid out by the deconstructive elaboration of hermeneutics. The question is: Does this itinerary lead into completely uncharted territory? Does the radicality of this turn—or leap—enable it to make an utterly new beginning? Or is its itinerary such that in advancing beyond the conceptuality of metaphysics, it also, in that very move, circles back to the Platonic beginning? Does this advance also take up, simultaneously, a possibility already envisioned in the Platonic dialogues?
What is most suggestive of such a turn is the affinity between certain moments of the Gadamerian deconstruction and the Platonic characterization of the beautiful. Gadamer insists that the work is no mere bearer of a meaning capable of subsisting apart from it; rather, in his view, the operative mimesis takes place within the work itself. An affinity between this view and what the Phaedrus puts forth regarding the beautiful can be discerned: according to the Phaedrus, something is beautiful, not by virtue of merely instantiating an idea apart from sensibility, but rather because of the shining forth of the beautiful in the very midst of the sensible. Furthermore, just as Gadamer’s account displaces the traditional original/image relation, so in the Platonic account the proximity of the beautiful to the sensible reduces to a mere trace the difference between the beautiful and whatever is beautiful. The question that remains open is whether and to what extent the operation of mimesis in the artwork can be taken to correspond to the shining of the beautiful in whatever is beautiful.
The other major concern is with Gadamer’s silence concerning the elements. This silence is especially remarkable in view of the significance that Heidegger accords to the earth: the very happening of truth in the artwork involves, according to Heidegger, not only the setting up of a world but also the setting forth of earth. Yet when Gadamer refers to the connection that Heidegger establishes between art and the twofold movement of revealing and concealing, he links concealment, not to the earth, but merely to human finitude (see Gadamer 1993, 125/34).
There is need, then, to break this silence and to consider whether—and, if so, how—the elemental earth might enter into mimesis as reconfigured by Gadamer. It would be necessary—so it seems—that the transformation effected by mimesis not only open up new possibilities but also draw those possibilities back toward the concealment that the earth keeps always in effect and that therefore pertains fundamentally to our belonging to the earth. In addition, the sheltering of sense that Gadamer ascribes to the artwork but leaves largely undeveloped could (indeed should) become the theme of a corresponding discourse on the earth.
Suppose we grant, with Gadamer, that artistic mimesis effects a transformation through which something not seen before—or, at most, barely seen—is brought to light. This thesis amounts to saying that artistic mimesis discloses something that otherwise would remain virtually invisible. What is this virtually invisible that art would make visible? Does it consist only of possibilities, which are, then, enhanced as such precisely in being brought to light? Are there not other virtually invisible moments that art can—and does—bring to light? Are there not virtually invisible moments that frame the very appearance of visible things and that orient and give space to all that belongs to the life of humans? Art itself attests that there are indeed such moments—or, as they are more appropriately called, elements. Such attestation is to be found in Cézanne’s paintings of Mt. St. Victoire, which disclose, in its elemental character, the earth gathered up into the mountain; and in Monet’s paintings as they make visible the light and atmosphere that make things visible while themselves remaining—save for art—virtually invisible; and in Beethoven’s symphonies as they let resound a depth of passion that is ever within us but withdrawn into silence.
In the late 1780s, Goethe undertook a journey to Italy. He traveled by coach through the Brenner Pass and on to Verona. He went on to visit Venice, Rome, and Naples and eventually reached Sicily. All along the way he marveled, above all, at the natural beauty, most of all in Sicily, where, as if framing the most glorious ruins of Greek antiquity, the forces and the splendor of nature are gathered. In the account Goethe wrote of his Italian journey, he attests to the power that elemental nature has to call forth the most profound artistic impulses and aspirations. In Sicily, he wrote of “the clarity of the sky, the breeze from the sea, the haze which, as it were, dissolved the mountains, sky, and sea into one element.” “On this supremely classical soil,” he continues, “I felt in a poetic mood, and whatever I experienced, whatever I saw, whatever I noticed, whatever came my way, I could take hold of it all and preserve it in a pleasing receptacle.” Ecstatic in the presence of elemental nature, he resolves to bring to life and to light all he has experienced. Therefore, he writes, “I was the more prone to yield to a gradually reviving urge: to enliven by means of worthy poetic figures my present splendid surroundings, the sea, the islands, the harbors, and to create for myself, on and out of this locality, a composition with a sense and tone unlike anything I had yet produced” (Goethe 1950, 298–300).
Thus does the artist attest to the power of the elements—of mountain, sky, and sea—to elicit the most profound creativity, to awaken and enliven in the artist the deepest desire to bring these elements to life in the work of art, to do so through an exorbitant form of mimesis that remains to be thought.2