On the common and minor treatments of artistic subjects

�On the common and minor treatment of artistic subjects� refines our judgmental capacity further by pointing out at these two manners of dealing in literary style; some will notice that this essay is expressed in a rather incisive manner. Concise, shar

Friedrich Schiller: On the ordinary and minor treatment of artistic matters

A translation by J Marc Rakotolahy

 

Ordinary is anything that does not relate to the spirit and arouses nothing else but sensible interests. In truth, there are thousand things which, already because of the material they are made of, or of their content, are ordinary. However, because the ordinary material can be elevated through its treatment, therefore, in Art, we can speak of ordinariness, only in the form. An ordinary mind would adulterate the noblest material through an ordinary usage, a great mind and a noble soul, to the contrary, would even know to magnify what is commonplace, and in truth, through that, it ties something spiritual to the material and discovers in it a great aspect Hence, a storyteller would account to us, with equal care, of the ordinary, most meaningless feat of a hero as of his most sublime acts and would report, equally in length, about the origins, the manner of clothing, the way of running the house as well as the projects and endeavours of his hero. His biggest acts, he will narrate in such a manner that no one considers them than what they (really) are.

 

A storyteller would also account about the spirit and the specific nobility of the soul in the private life of his hero, and place an interest and content in the most unimportant actions of his hero, which would, then, make him important. An ordinary taste have proven the painters from Holland in pictorial art, a noble and great one the Italians, and an even greater one the Greeks. These latter always acted upon ideals, refused any common proceedings and also never chose ordinary material. A portraitist may depict his subject in an ordinary or a great manner. He performs this depiction ordinarily if he carefully exhibits the arbitrary the same way he does with the necessary if he overlooks the outstanding and cares only about the ordinary; he performs with greatness if he knows how to extract the most interesting traits, if he knows to differentiate the arbitrary from the necessary, to infer only the arbitrary and to perform but the outstanding. Greatness is, however, nothing else than the expression of the soul through proceedings, behaviours and situations. A poet treats his matter in a common manner when he insists on unimportant acts and goes surreptitiously over the important things. He treats it greatly when he links them to greatness.

 

Homer knew how to describe Achilles’ shield in a very spiritual manner, although the making of a shield is a matter, somehow, very common. A matter still under the denomination of ordinary is the minor, which is different from this one in that it indicates really not something negative, not something really lacking in spiritual and noble matters, but rather depicts something positive, namely the fullness of feelings, of unrefined manners and of contemptible sentiments. “The ordinary proceeds really from an absence of an advantage which was made obvious, while the minor from the lack of a particularity which anyone can have.”

 

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