The Technique of Beauty [3]
— What & How
— 28 Mai ’13
Sehr geehrte Herr De Bondt, [Further in my translation – CdB]
First and foremost, please accept my apologies for not informing you more extensively and clearly about my intentions, and for not providing you with a more detailed account of the context of the correspondence I proposed. I will try to remedy this shortcoming [Manko]. My negligence is, in any case, related to the fact that at this moment, I myself am not entirely sure what my proposal precisely entails — I wrote the letter on a whim.
As for the coincidence of circumstances — my letter reaching you so shortly after your actions — this is little more than a chance occurrence. I had been familiar with your work Beethoven is Doof for some time, particularly, as I mentioned before, because of the translations of the Schönberg quote. However, my decision to contact you at that moment was indeed prompted by the reports I read about your actions and your decision to withdraw your scores from the public domain. Your decision intrigued me. Beyond what I read in short articles online, I know little about it. However, I am fairly well acquainted with the Dutch new music culture. I have traveled to Amsterdam several times to attend concerts, including those at the Muziekgebouw, but also in The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In my own country, I have attended numerous concerts featuring Dutch music, often performed by Dutch ensembles. I also own the entire Keynotes series published by the Dutch publisher Donemus. The degree of familiarity I believe I have with the Dutch ensemble culture led me to my question — or rather, my lament — about how on earth the dismantling initiated by your government could happen, and moreover, how it could be accepted so relatively easily by a culture that had started off as so critical and activist.
The withdrawal of your scores also has personal significance for me. Two years ago, I withdrew my own publications. I had a personal website where I had posted numerous essays and articles. On a bad (or perhaps good) day, I pulled the plug on my website — I suddenly found everything I had written to be nonsense [Quatsch]; or perhaps more precisely: meaningless [sinnlos]. I felt that I had to rearticulate everything from scratch. The day before, I had come across a remarkable letter from the famous mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck, in which he announced that all his work should be withdrawn from public life. That letter probably gave me the final push. I assume you are familiar with that letter (if not, I will send it to you).
That was the impulse behind my action — I acted spontaneously, as if from a void, a blank space. I assure you that my intentions are sincere. I emphasize this because I can imagine that you may not be sure what kind of meat you have in the cockpit *) At some point, I would like to send you some of the texts I withdrew for discussion, as I believe that feedback from someone else might help me refine my thinking about them. Perhaps we could also have occasional chat contact **) so that we can respond to each other immediately.
*) “mit wem Sie es zu tun hat” – misschien een iets te vrije vertaling, maar ik kon het niet laten, wellicht als reactie op Haas’ tamelijk afstandelijke schrijfstijl. [CdB].
**) “Digitalfernsprechsystemkontakt” – zal wel als grapje bedoeld zijn. [CdB]
Later today, I will send you another text, containing a substantive response to the issues you raised in your letter, such as translation and the form/content relationship.
Mit herzlichen Grüßen,
–TH
PS My name is Haas, not Hase. In Dutch: Mijn naam is Haas, niet haas.
From the notes of Cornelis de Bondt:
— May 28, 2013
This letter reassures me somewhat, though I am not entirely convinced that I am not being taken for a ride.
His reference to Grothendieck, meanwhile, does little to allay my suspicion—this case is so peculiar that invoking it seems to highlight the irony of removing one’s work rather than its political gravity. When I decided to withdraw my work, I naturally delved into similar cases. Besides Grothendieck, I quickly came across Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing. Then, of course, there is the well-known example of Kafka, who, according to accounts, instructed his friend and executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished texts. Other examples — mentioned, among others, by the late professor of law at NYU School of Law, Amy M. Adler (in a 2009 essay on copyright) — include Alberto Giacometti, George Rouault, and Jasper Johns. The legal aspects of removing or destroying art are complex, as I know from personal experience.
Grothendieck is regarded as one of the great mathematicians of the past century. On January 3, 2010, he wrote the following letter [in my translation from French]:
Declaration of Intent of Non-Publication
I have no intention of publishing or republishing any work of which I am the author, in any form whatsoever, whether printed or electronic, neither in part nor in full — be it personal texts, scientific texts, or otherwise, or letters addressed to anyone, nor any translations of texts of which I am the author. Any edition or distribution of such texts without my permission, whether past or future, for as long as I live, is against my explicit will as declared here and, in my view, unlawful. If I become aware of it, I will ask the person responsible for such pirate editions, or any other publications featuring my texts without my consent (apart from possible quotations of only a few lines), to withdraw these texts from circulation; and I will request that librarians holding such books remove them from their collections.
If my intentions as an author, as clearly outlined here, should prove to be a dead letter, then let the shame fall upon those responsible for the illegal publications and the libraries in question (from the moment they have been informed of my intentions).
Written in my residence on January 3, 2010,
Alexandre Grothendieck
The case of Rauschenberg is more interesting to me. Grothendieck speaks only of re-publication, but in fact, he does not explicitly state that his work, already present in libraries, should be removed — only that it should not be distributed. If his intention was indeed to remove all his work from bookstores and libraries, then this is poorly formulated. He does state that the texts, even from the past, must not be distributed, but this does not retroactively undo their publication; only re-publication (or republication) is explicitly prohibited. Whatever his intention may have been — even if he aimed for a rigorous removal of his texts — it remains a one-dimensional act of destruction, not a withdrawal with a creative purpose: the creation of space for something new.
With Rauschenberg, however, this was the case. His Erased de Kooning Drawing is a fine example of reinventing art — visual art, in this instance. He created the work using a drawing by Willem de Kooning (in 1953). Rauschenberg was in the process of redefining his concept of drawing by “erasing” his own drawings. In an undated interview I found online, he mentioned that, at a certain point, he felt he needed to take a drawing by a famous artist as his starting point in order to truly reach the essence. He sought an “audience” with De Kooning, who at the time was one of the most influential visual artists, and after some frowning and hesitation (according to some sources, in exchange for a bottle of whiskey), the great master handed over a drawing made with charcoal, chalk, paint, and ink — “I’ll want it to be something I’ll miss,” De Kooning said as he gave it to him. Now that means something.
Indeed, a second email followed today — without text, but with two attachments: one apparently an older article, and another a response to the substantive points in my letter.
First, the attachment containing the article Haas had withdrawn:
[Commentary on the Omission of Wagner’s Text Das Judenthum in der Musik in the 1983 Anniversary Edition by Dieter Borchmeyer – by Taunis Haas. This text was withdrawn by Haas in 2011. – Translated into Dutch by me.]
Form, Content, and Morality
Laten wij meteen ter zake komen: is vorm zonder inhoud denkbaar? Het omgekeerde, inhoud zonder vorm, is dat niet. Dit laatste is eenvoudig aan te tonen, maar het eerste niet.
Let us get straight to the point: is form conceivable without content? The reverse — content without form — is not. The latter is easy to demonstrate, but the former is not.
Before we address this, let us first consider the background of this question. The dichotomy of form and content is sometimes viewed as problematic, but many other times as self-evident. In his famous essay Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes [originally titled Die Wahrheit des Kunstwerkes — sic!], Martin Heidegger makes a point of it. Although he only explicitly mentions this conceptual pair once — “Form and content are among the most overused concepts, into which anything and everything can be placed” *) — and although one may wonder whether the term ‘content’ here should not actually be ‘matter,’ since the discussion in these paragraphs constantly revolves around form and matter, it is all too clear that this dichotomy is the central subject of the entire essay, even (or especially) through its negative treatment. From beginning to end, it proves to be an unavoidable aporia, a circular movement around the concepts of thing and thingness of the thing, which makes the concept of an artwork possible and ultimately replaces the dichotomy. In the Afterword that Heidegger added years later, he revisits the issue of truth and art, referring to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who stated in his Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik that art is no longer considered “the highest way in which truth attains existence.” Heidegger does not simply resign himself to this “verdict” of Hegel, but he unmistakably reveals himself here as a romantic for whom truth and art are inseparable entities. “Truth is the unhiddenness [Unverborgenheit] of being as being.” Beauty, in contrast, is of a lower order, as the beautiful is (merely) the articulation of the appearance of truth in the work (and as work). Beauty arises from the “unfolding of truth” and is thus not solely tied to the senses as its object — merely to form. Beauty is also the “working” of the (art)work, and as such, it is the articulation of the “indivisible whole” of form and matter.
*) “Form und Inhalt sind die Allerweltsbegriffe, unter die sich alles und jedes bringen läßt” – Das Ding und das Werk [17].
The typically Romantic connection between art and truth, which we find in Hegel, reappears a few decades later in Richard Wagner. In his article Das Judenthum in der Musik, the central theme is the distinction between the What and the How [Was and Wie], the great dividing line between ‘Jewish’ art (by which he effectively means ‘French’ or ‘Romance’ art) and ‘German’ art. If one strips away the—undeniably abhorrent—antisemitism (and we will later examine whether this is indeed possible), this polemic can be seen as a plea for the What, which, according to Wagner, must be considered superior to “that repulsive How” [diesem widerlichen Wie]. It is a Platonic view that places ‘truth’ above form. This truth, Wagner argues, is articulated in German art, particularly from the music of Beethoven onward. In this regard, Bach’s music is still in a formative phase. Wagner compares Bach’s music to the Egyptian Sphinx, which remains largely an animal body, whereas Beethoven’s music has become fully human, like the entirely human form of a Greek sculpture. “Just as the Sphinx only just begins to emerge with its human face from the animal body, so Bach’s noble human head emerges from the wig.” **)
**) “Wie die Sphinx mit dem menschlichen Gesicht aus dem Tierleibe erst noch herausstrebt, so strebt Bachs edler Menschenkopf aus der Perücke hervor.”
According to Wagner, Bach is undoubtedly a genius, but he still stands in the antechamber of fully crystallized art because his musical language is still “caught in the shaping of the how.” The general musical language of his time “was still searching.” This applies mutatis mutandis to the music of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as well, but in his case, Wagner sees it as a tragic twist of fate: Mendelssohn was of Jewish descent. Here, the poison of antisemitism seeps into Wagner’s argumentation.
Despite the fact that Beethoven’s musical language had reached full maturity — having achieved a truly human and “individual, precise form of expression” — Mendelssohn, according to Wagner, could not advance beyond an “unreal shadow image.” This, Wagner claims, is because Jews speak modern European languages only as “learned” rather than “innate” languages. As a result, they remain trapped in the form of the language, in the how, and are unable to express the what in an “autonomous and original” way. Language, Wagner argues, is not the work of individuals but of a historical community. “Even this people’s own language (Hebrew) is only a dead language to them.” The same applies to music. Mendelssohn, who “died young,” undoubtedly possessed “extraordinary talent” and the “most highly developed and delicate sense of honor,” yet despite these “excellent qualities,” he never once manages to have a “profound, heart- and soul-stirring effect on us.” Instead, his music remains at the level of presenting and linking “the finest, smoothest, and most virtuosic figures, like the charming colors and forms of a kaleidoscope.” The tragedy of Mendelssohn, Wagner claims, was that although his fate loomed over him, it never became “a real, painful, and purifying awareness” for him.
One could argue that Wagner chooses his antisemitic framing as a form in opposition to the claim — most notably defended by Hanslick in Vom Musikalisch-Schönen — that music can only express itself. (In a supplement to his 1850 text, added in 1869, Wagner refers to Hanslick’s essay on musical beauty as a libel [Libell], though without mentioning Hanslick by name.) Even in his attack on Hanslick, Wagner chooses the antisemitic form: first, he fabricates a Jewish ancestry for Hanslick — who, curiously, took the trouble to deny it — then he accuses him of having flawed views precisely because of his supposed Jewish background.
That Wagner takes a stand against Hanslick’s formalist position is, in itself, a legitimate philosophical dispute; the question now is whether the antisemitic form undermines the content of his argumentation. This is, at its core, a broader question that extends beyond Wagner. The same question can be asked of Heidegger — coincidentally (or not?) for precisely the same reason: his antisemitic remarks found in his so-called Schwarze Hefte. In particular, in Überlegungen XII–XV, written between 1939 and 1941, he makes statements about “the Jews,” “international Jewry,” and “the Jew ‘Freud’” that can be classified as antisemitic. While Heidegger was a member of the NSDAP for several years, no statements or formulations are known from him that explicitly endorse the persecution of Jews; however, neither are there any unambiguous rejections of it. This means, as with Wagner, that antisemitism appears to become largely a part of the form. The content, in Heidegger’s case, is the problem of the modern, the unstoppable advance of technology, the “metaphysics of the West” [die Metaphysik des Abendlandes],*) in which “world Jewry” is not, in his view, a racial issue but a metaphysical one.**) It is concealed racism — far more chilling than a banal, overt expression of it.
*) Die zeitweilige Machtsteigerung des Judentums aber hat darin ihren Grund, daß die Metaphysik des Abendlandes, zumal in ihrer neuzeitlichen Entfaltung, die Ansatzstelle bot für das Sichbreitmachen einer sonst leeren Rationalität und Rechenfähigkeit, die sich auf solchem Wege eine Unterkunft im »Geist« verschaffte, ohne die verborgenen Entscheidungsbezirke von sich aus je fassen zu können. [XII, 67]
**) Die Frage nach der Rolle des Weltjudentums ist keine rassische, sondern die metaphysische Frage nach der Art von Menschentümlichkeit, die schlechthin ungebunden die Entwurzelung alles Seienden aus dem Sein als weltgeschichtliche »Aufgabe« übernehmen kann. [XIV, 121]
For now, let us set aside the antisemitic expressions of Wagner and Heidegger. The underlying issue here is the question: how do ‘form’ and ‘content’ relate in these cases? The earlier-mentioned idea that content cannot exist without form follows directly from the above paragraphs. Wagner uses a form, with antisemitism as its central element, to make a statement about ‘form and content’ (‘how and what’). The argument could have been based on a different form, for instance, by directly countering Hanslick’s theory. That would have undoubtedly resulted in a somewhat different content, as the antisemitism would now have become an inherent part of that content. The form determines the content. However, without form, there is no content. A text is already form; the language in which the text is written is form. The paper, the ink, the book — these are all forms.
Now, the reverse. An empty wine bottle. One could call that form without content. Unless you say that the air inside the bottle is the content. In other words, there is always content, just not always in accordance with the (suggested) form. This seems to lead to a vicious circle, but when we connect the concept of ‘context’ to the wine bottle, we have a tool to break that circle. The wine bottle suggests a content consisting of wine. Air does not meet this criterion, so the empty wine bottle has no content. But what if we find a wine bottle filled with milk? We certainly wouldn’t say it’s empty. Or a milk bottle filled with wine. A small shift in perspective offers the solution: both bottles are filled with a similar liquid, namely a substance that is drinkable. Instead of a wine bottle or a milk bottle, it is now a ‘drink bottle’. This seems a reasonable solution, but we must still examine this issue further. What about a gas bottle? If it’s ‘empty’, it still contains gas: air. Well, then we might say: the gas bottle is meant for combustible gas, for example, for a camping set. But what if the gas bottle is again filled with wine? We can zoom out further and further, and there will always be a criterion to determine whether the bottle is full or empty. Exactly! That is the solution to the problem: the chosen perspective, the chosen context, determines the content of the form. Therefore, the bottle is never ‘full’ or ‘empty’ without the added context of the observer. But, and with this, our circle is complete: without the bottle, the observer cannot perceive any content.
In the anniversary edition of Dieter Borchmeyer’s texts of Richard Wagner, the text Das Judenthum in der Musik is omitted due to its antisemitic content. It is an attempt to rid Wagner’s texts of (a part of) their form, and by doing so, the content of Wagner’s texts (as a whole) is altered. Just as in the case of Heidegger, where the question arises whether his philosophical work is in any way linked to antisemitic remarks or views, the text Das Judenthum in der Musik is a fundamental part of Wagner’s (essayistic) work. By omitting this section, the content of the whole is affected. Here too, there is a question of form that influences content: the form ‘solves the content problem’.
But then we can take another step: form and content apparently form a whole; they cannot exist without each other. Although one of them (form) can exist without the other (content), the other (content) cannot exist without the one (form). In other words, when there is content, there is form; the dichotomy of form and content dissolves when there is content.
Morality thus becomes an immediate and inseparable part of this whole, since the whole is bound to, and connected with, a context. A context is place- and time-bound; it is part of the public domain, the ‘polis’, and therefore involves a moral component.
