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CHASING THE METAPHYSICAL REFERENT IN
VICTORIAN AESTHETICS: (RE)CONSTRUCTING
HISTORY, (DE)CONSTRUCTING THE SELF

presented by
Lauren Leigh Todd

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CHASING THE METAPHYSICAL REFERENT IN VICTORIAN AESTI-IETICS:
' (RE)CONSTRUCTING HISTORY, (DE)CONSTRUCTING THE SELF

By

Lauren Leigh Todd

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English

1998

ABSTRACT

CHASING THE METAPHYSICAL REFERENT IN VICTORIAN AESTHETICS:
(RE)CONSTRUCTING HISTORY, (DE)CONSTRUCTING THE SELF

By

Lauren Leigh Todd

Victorian aesthetic theory involves a complex convention of reading literature and
art that involves finding the author or artist’s identity within the work. The Victorians’
desire to determine a single, stable meaning in a work of literature of art depended on the
assumption that this meaning was created by a single, stable self. However, their study of
the aesthetic self-concept resulted in the discovery of the instability of self-presentation
and the possibility of multiple or fragmented selves. The Victorians had to reevaluate their
theoretical model in order to accommodate this plurality of “self.” In doing so, they began
to question the relationship between the construction of selthood to the construction of
history, or the zeitgeist. Thus I contend that Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus
demonstrates a pivotal move toward accepting and exploring the inherent multiplicity of
historical versus ahistorical selthood in the Victorian convention of reading that was
furthered and sometimes disputed in the works of his successors: John Ruskin, Matthew
Arnold, and Walter Pater.

C0pyn'ght by
LAUREN LEIGH TODD
1998

Dedications
First and foremost, to my parents, for going beyond the call of parental duty with their

support, their confidence in me and what I do, and especially for believing that this project
was a full time job.

To Dr. Richard Kmalczyk and Dr. Clint Hirst, for inspiring me, making me think,
fostering my ambition, and bringing the Victorians to life. Without you two I wouldn’t be
where I am today. I will always be gratefiil.

To my supportive friends, especially Louise Davis, for making me recognize and question
my assumptions and Glenda Breaux, for her generosity, including the impromptu
geometry and logic reviews.

To my brother, just because.

And, finally, to MCD, for lighting the seven lamps of architecture for me so long ago.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my deepest and most sincere thanks to Dr. Judith Stoddart for
continually challenging me, giving me direction, and lending me her guidance, support,

advice, expertise, and books for the past two years.

I would also like to express my thanks to Dr. Victor Paananen for introducing me to
Lukacz and the wonderful world of the dialectic.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1

Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus and the Problem of Tangibility ..................................... 6

John Ruskin: The Importance of Dialectical Counterbalance .......................................... 22
Matthew Arnold: Creating the Culture of the Disinterested Self. .................................... 40
Waher Pater: Theorizing the Aesthetic Mythos .............................................................. 54
Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 80
References .................................................................................................................... 82

INTRODUCTION

In his study of Victorian aesthetics, Lawrence J. Starzyk agrees with Alba Warren
Jr. ’5 observation that, “Hopelessly overtaxed with a variety of functions, many of them
incompatible with each other, Victorian aesthetics ‘recognized few common aims’” (167).
However, I have found that such an assumption subverts and distorts the relationship that
the works of the major Victorian aesthetic theorists have with one another, and the
importance of the common aims shared and explored within these various works. In this
thesis, I shall discuss the ideological compatibility and commonality exhibited in the works
of Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, and Pater. I contend that Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus
embodies the primary assumption inherent in Victorian aesthetic theory that Ruskin,
Arnold, and Pater successively adapted: that the critical enterprise should consist
primarily of the search for stable meaning of texts and other works of art as well as the
means used by authors and artists to establish their identities within those works, which
was predominantly illustrated through the study of the self-concept in criticism. This
search, in turn, results in the discovery of a multiple or fi'agmented self, suggesting
plurality rather than stability. I will argue that the idea of multiple or fiagmented selves
subsequently creates the need for a theoretical model that accounts for plurality, which is
the “common aim” shared by the four abovementioned critics.

This concept of a readily tangible artistic or authorial self is linked to Carlyle’s
extensive explication of the concept of the zeitgeist. In Victorian aesthetic theory, the
zeitgeist emerges to embody or at least describe the sense of objective tradition—or, in
simplified terms, the past—that all artists/authors draw upon in order to develop their
particular (subjective) perspectives in the present. In other words, this theory developed
as a means to illustrate the relationship between the ahistorical past and the more historical
creative impulse as it was assumed to exist within a specific text or work of art. The
inclusion of the subjective reflects the highly individualistic Romantic tradition the

l

Victorians saw themselves working within. Still, the Victorians’ insistence on including
the idea of an objectified tradition differed from the Romantic understanding of objectivity.
The Romantics searched for “a unifying order and meaning” through imagination and
individual will (Tarnas 369), whereas the Victorians strove to reject the “confusion” and
“irresolution” of “the variegated quality of [subjective] human experience” by
re-establishing a “conventionally acceptable and consensually validat ” tradition of
experience (ibid 374). This indicates that the Victorians viewed themselves working
against that Romanticism as well. Thus the zeitgeist represents both aspects of a
neoplatonic “subject-object” dichotomy. The tension in such a theory, then, lies in the
maintenance of a dichotomy that, in the end, seeks to objectify the subjective, and
generalize (or historicize) the specific (or ahistorical). Consequently, the critic’s struggle
encompasses blurring these deeply drawn divisions in an attempt to achieve praxis, or an
unmediated relationship among the comparable differences existing between not only the
perceiving subject and the object of perception, but also the perceiving subject’s
individualized (and thus relative) process of making meaning and the idea of an objective
essential, concrete signification informing and lying within every symbolic means of
communication. The zeitgeist in dialectic, then, is the “thing-in-itself,” or “essence of
praxis [tint] consists in annulling that indifference of form towards content” as Georg
Lukacz says (126); or, that point of convergence between the signification believed to be
perpetuated through a historical tradition and the more ahistorically interpreted signifiers
emerging in a specific time or age. This kind of praxis “envisages. . .a genuine
transformation of these forms” of opposition in which that very opposition can be at least
conceptually transcended (Lukécz 177). One makes this transcendence possible by
“becom[ing] conscious” of the particular elements of opposition and continually making
oneself conscious of the way in which those concepts and ideas in opposition continue to

oppose each other in a logical and immanent manner (op. cit).

As with any attempt to develop praxis or a dialectic relationship between
seemingly contrasting ideas, the problematic tension can never be fully eased. In his
“Reassessment of Early Victorian Aesthetics,” Laurence J. Starzyk recognizes the
importance of this tension, pointing out that Victorian aesthetic theory contains a conflict
between a more prominent ahistorical “metaphysics of becoming” struggling to completely
supersede a less-prominent historical “metaphysics of being” which prevents the total
theoretical cohesion the Victorians sought (170). However, by treating this tension as a
power struggle rather than a counterbalance, Starzyk’s terminology does not seem to
easily lend itself to describing praxis. As with any vocabulary or terminology, the very
use of language itself poses limitations and restrictions that, though recognized, remain
unavoidable. Nevertheless, Starzyk’s terminology gives us a necessary and hopefully
useful means to discuss the binary aspects of a dialectical theory; and, whereas Starzyk
uses these categories to maintain distinction between the two, I maintain them as a means
to identify the two halves of the greater theoretical whole.

The idea that Victorian aesthetic theory embodies an attempt at praxis between
ideas of being, or stasis, and those of becoming, or process, germinates in Sartor Resartus
and begins to come to fiuition in the critical works of John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and
Walter Pater. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus explores the problematic relationship between the
symbolic signifier and the notion of a corresponding “real” or “actual” signified in art by
placing the sigmfier/signified in a cyclical historical paradigm—a construction of history
which, as we will see in an analysis of Sartor, is perpetually beset by the advent of
subjectively constructed ahistorical ideas and expressions. The restrictions produced in
Carlylean theory will be addressed and somewhat alleviated by Ruskin. Robert Hewison’s
work on Ruskin’s “practice of treating objects both as real and symbolic” (208) provides a
basis for discussing the precarious balance between the tangible and the intangible, the
historical and the ahistorical. Though Hewison insists that this balance functions “without
any sense of contradiction” (208), close analysis of Ruskin’s texts according to the ideas

3

present in Sartor shall suggest that Ruskin’s dialectical counterbalance still contains a
great deal of contradiction between a Carlylean sense of zeitgeist and the attempt to
difi'erentiate between objective historicity and ahistorical interpretations of art. Through
exploring theoretical tension in Ruskin’s works, we shall further revisit the problematic of
the self—concept made apparent in Sartor, and the problems that arise when the fragmented
self -in the form of artist/author as well as critic—is forced into the role of textual
interlocutor.

In turn, this issue figures predominantly in the texts of Matthew Arnold. In his
quest for disinterested objectivity in the critical enterprise, Arnold parallels Ruskin’s
attempts to establish a relationship between the “real” and the symbolic by not only
“gratify[ing] the desire for knowledge and constru[ing] knowledge as a relation in which a
[perceiving] subject respects” rather than subjectively interprets “an object” (Donoghue
399), but also creating a convention of reading in which the critic shares in the creative
powers of the artist in order to find a single thread to lead one through the labyrinth of
multiple textual voices. Paradoxically, Amold’s criticism thus illustrates the problematic
internal tension within art as it leads the reader to recognize the polyphonic textual voices
of competing assumptions in a single given work, and the subsequent need to establish
praxis or a dialectic in order to adequately consider all these variances as suggested by
Sartor Resartus. The works of Walter Pater, specifically Marius the Epicurean, explore
the very process of developing this kind of praxis or dialectic through the establishment of
what he considers a “transformative” combination between the subjectivity of
Romanticism and the objectivity of Classicism. The end result of Pater’s theoretical
wanderings—a theory based on subjective impressions that “[are] not entirely subjective”
(ibid 389)—-encompass both Ruskinian and Arnoldian ideas, but comes curiously full
circle back to Carlyle and Sartor’s “Philosophy of Clothes.”

Finally, I must say a few words about my work itself. Throughout both the
research and writing phases of this project, I could never quite decide whether I wanted

4

this to be a critical or a scholarly essay. It has turned out to be both: critical in that there
are points in my text in which I focus more on my own analyses of the works at hand,
especially in my discussion of Sartor and parts of my discussion ofMarius; and scholarly
in that I spend a significant amount of time incorporating and deliberating on what I found
to be some of the most interesting, thought-provoking, and usefiil scholarship already
performed in the field, especially in my discussions of Ruskin and Arnold. But I also feel
compelled to add that in no way do I expect or intend my project to be fully representative
of all previous scholarship, nor for it to be a definitively decisive outline of what, exactly,
Victorian aesthetic theory and Victorian conventions of reading and critiquing art are.
Rather, my essay is an exploration of potentials, a presentation of ideas and analyses
meant to be furthered, examined, and even contested by myself and/or others in the future.

Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus and the Problem of Tangibility

Despite the critical attention given to autobiographical elements appearing in the
work, Sartor is not about Carlyle’s presence in the text, but his very absence fi'om it. It is
diflicult to pinpoint a unified authorial persona in Sartor; the point of view shifts from that
of the character of Professor Diogenes Teufelsdrbckh, the German Romantic
writer-philosopher, to the commentary provided by the character of Teufelsdrtickh’s
nameless editor, who serves as a sort of allegorical “Everyreader.” The editor serves as
critic appointed to decipher Teufelsdrbckh’s “Philosophy of Clothes,” and his endeavor
proves to be as much a criticism of the critical process he is expected to employ upon
Teufelsdrdckh’s work as a criticism of Teufelsdrdckh’s actual “text” and its Romantic
ideologies. Throughout the work, the editor’s growing conflict between his limited
understanding of who Teufelsdrockh is in relation to his (Teufelsdmckh’s) “Philosophy of
Clothes” corresponds, in several ways, to the conflict the editor comes to perceive in the
relationship between the socially-constructed self and the private self. The editor will
eventually uncover similarities between the problem of establishing a unified concept of
“self’ and the problernatized relationship between symbols (signifiers) and their meanings
(or referents).

Concurrently, the relationship of the past and of the passing of time to the idea of
the collectively-constructed concept of the self as manifest in the zeitgeist is one of
Sartor ’s central issues. The zeitgeist is the referent for the stable, outside concept of
history. In more Carlylean terms, the zeitgeist refers to the ‘Tirne-Spirit,” a sort of
Jungian collective unconscious that the individual artist taps into in moments of creation;
as the editor of Sartor remarks, the “seedfield” of the “speculative man” is Time (9),
providing the artist with the traditions of his predecessors—or, what the editor terms “the
Institutions of our Ancestors” (13). To elaborate on this using Carlyle’s own words fiom
his later work, Post and Present, this collective tradition ensures that “[o]ut of old Books,

6

new Writings, and much Meditation not of yesterday, [the author] will endeavor to select
a thing or two; and fi'om the Past, in a circuitous way, illustrate the Present and the
Future” (45). At first, this appears to suggest that artistic ideas and perspectives are
cyclical and permanent. Yet the finitude implied in this statement is undermined by the
tension indicated in the mention of “new Writings” and “much Meditation not of
yesterday,” which complicates the idea of finitude. In the meditation of the present, the
past is circuitously illustrated rather than directly portrayed; therefore, the present day is
not so much an ahistorical recreation of the past, but instead a historical event suggesting
prescribed progress and change. Such a concept of the zeitgeist suggests the existence of
a finite set of ideas constantly recycled by the creative minds of any given historical period.
No idea can ever be entirely new; to apply the observation of Stanley Fish, a new idea
“announces itselfas a break from the old, but in fact is radically dependent on the old,
because it is only in the context of some difl’erential relationship that it can be perceived as
new or, for that matter, perceived at all” (349). Rather, contemporary artists merely
refashion or rearrange the works of their predecessors as the means of representation
available to them changes and evolves, reflecting a constantly changing perspective. Yet
the concept ofa finite set ofartistic ideas suggests an equally limited number ofways the
ideas contained in such a fixed set can be perceived. To put it more simply, if the subjects
of art and literature remain the same, artists’ and critics’ perceptions of them must retain
similarities, if only to provide the “differential relationship” between past and present day
perceptions. And shared perception would seem to indicate the existence of an artistic
aggregate superseding the individual talent. History, or the acknowledgment of the
passing of time, becomes a thread forming human individuals and holding them together;
by appointing art as the embodiment of history, or time, art becomes the thread holding
individuals together, too. Yet without relating an intangible concept like time to a tangible
concept such as art, it hardly seems that time, or history, is comprehensible or perceptible
to an individual or even a collective of individuals. The intangibility of any such concept

7

of infinity must be represented in terms which enforce a suggestion of finitude, so that
these relationships can be established and recognized. In his text, Teufelsdrockh states
that “Man is a Spirit, and bmmd by invisible bonds to All Men. . .[and] he wears clothes,
which are the visible emblem of that fact” (60); but it is also clothes that “[gilve us
individuality, distinctions, social polity” (41). Thus Teufelsdrockh’s “Philosophy of
Clothes” becomes the metaphor not only for this binding historical perpetuity, but also the
slight variations in any given (present) historical moment.

The editor seems aware of the concept of time, and the sense of a living history, as
a symbolic construct. The zeitgeist is actually a temporary, finite representation of the
permanent infinitude of eternity; it is a term enacted to communicate an idea to the reader,
though its limitations render it somewhat incomplete. Like most figurative
representations, the zeitgeist is an “apparition. . . . [like] Souls rendered visible: in Bodies,
that took shape and will lose it”, seemingly consisting of “solid Pavement” but really
without consistency (21). As the editor enacts his momentary figures of speech, he notes
that his language—the way he represents and embodies conceptual knowledge—“is but of
Today, without a Yesterday or a Tomorrow” (21). And though he addresses his reader,
saying, “Friend, thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all
Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more” (22), the editor is not so
much testifying to the adequacy of his figurative language, but to the transient nature of it.
Any artistic profl’ering, such as the editor’s text, might be a “living link in that Tissue of
History,” but provides only a momentary and incomplete glimpse.

The possibility of the unknowability of - or, the impossibility of fiilly
imveiling-any text surfaces here, especially as the editor seeks to invoke the persom of
Teufelsdrbckh “to bring wlmt order we can out of this Chaos” (34). The editor claims
that the chaos simply results from Teufelsdrbckh’s text’s “almost total want of
arrangement” (34), but the chaos runs deeper than lack of organization. The editor has
been placed in the precarious position of attempting to bring order to the chaos that lurks

8

within systems of signification such as language and the construction of meaning. That he
feels compelled to integrate what he thinks he knows of Teufelsdrockh’s biography and
persona further complicates the issue: for the editor must construct a meaning for
Teufelsdrbckh’s text that most closely resembles the acceptable idea of man’s inherent

‘ eaning”-his “natural state,” or social (collective) consciousness. This requires a
rejection of the traditional Romantic notion that man’s “natural state” and his “social
state” are diametrically opposed. Romantic philosophies contended that social
constructions and “civilization’s sophistications...neglected man’s actual nature-his
feelings, his depths of impulse and intuition” (Tamas 313), and that any type of
socially-developed consciousness would not reflect the inherent “feelings” and “depths of
impulse and intuition” linking human beings together. Thus, the editor becomes more than
the allegorical Everyreader: he becomes a paragon of conflict by assuming the Romantic
figure of the lone, individualistic, struggling aesthetic theorist in his attempt to explicate
the meaning of life and human existence though using art and literature-
socially-constructed mediums of communication—as his evidence. Paradoxically enough,
the editor subsumes the role he sees Teufelsdrbckh portraying throughout his “Philosophy
of Clothes.” The editor labors to portray Teufelsdrbckh’s “self,” yet strives to reveal as
little about himself as possible—not even his name. At times the editor and Teufelsdrbckh
seem indiscernible from one another, as the editor’s interjections seem a part of, rather
than separate from, the quotes of Teufelsdrbckh’s text; they appear as enmeshed
personalities, sharing the same perspectives and perceptions-much like members of an
artistic collective as earlier discussed. Yet, at other times, the distinctions between the
editor and the author whose work he edits are quite clear, and the editor questions the
feasibility of ever really “knowing” or unveiling the actual Teufelsdrockh or his text. The
editor, then, leads us to question ourselves: What is identity? What is meaning? What is
the self? And what function, if any, does art/literature have in answering these questions?

The editor would like to lead one to believe that the answers to such questions can
be found in the work of Teufelsdrbckh, whom he rhapsodically addresses, proclaiming,
“The secrets of man’s life were laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the
Universe, farther than another” (16). Moreover, the editor also insists that “any personal
connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh. . .or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our
judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate” (13). This particular insistence is
notable precisely because it plays into the problematic of perspective. Here the editor
seems quite concerned that the reader will not approach Teufelsdrockh’s text with the
same perspective through which the editor and/or Teufelsdrockh himself approaches it.
This complicates the idea of a similar, shared perspective intimated by the mention of the
reader’s potential “personal connection” with Teufelsdrbckh, especially as the editor later
remarks that ‘Teufelsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity [and i]n our historical and
critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the worl ” (14). Such strangeness to the
world seems impossible when the editor seeks to share elements of Teufelsdrockh’s
identity with the reader so that we not only form a ‘personal connection” with
Teufelsdrockh but consider him a “friend,” too. Arguably this “personal connection”
could refer to nothing more than sharing the fi'uits of artistic perception with
Teufelsdrbckh; still, if Teufelsdrockh is our fiiend, we are not disinterested in him. How
can one be appropriately neutral about Teufelsdrbckh’s and his “Philosophy of Clothes” if
one assumes prior knowledge of and familiarity with him, as the editor professedly does?

This also leads one to yet another question: namely, the viability of the editor’s
own presentation of Teufelsdrbckh and the “Philosophy of Clothes.” Ifwe must consider
the variety of perspectives one could apply to a reading of the text, we must also consider
the myriad of perspectives presented in the text(s) of Sartor Resamts itself. To approach
Sartor according to the general mode of Victorian conventions of reading

is to piece together the patchwork of the author’s persona located throughout the work.
However, as the text employs two narrative voices embodied by fictional characters, one
10

cannot assuredly locate Carlyle in either; thus, the next step would seem to be to form a
picture of Teufelsdrockh, especially as Sartor is subtitled “The Life and Opinions of Herr
Teufelsdrockh.” Even so, the careful reader must always keep in mind that, considering
the way the text(s) is/are crafted, the editor controls the presentation of Teufelsdrbckh’s
“Philosophy of Clothes” and the accompanying vignettes fi'om Teufelsdrbckh’s
“autobiography.” The construction of Teufelsdrockh’s self—or at least how Teufelsdrdckh
supposedly wishes to represent himself to others—is subject to how the editor wants to
construct Teufelsdrockh’s “self.” Sartor creates a textual atmosphere in which the editor
controls the elements of presentation. Ironically, the editor notes, “Great men are too
often unknown, or what is worse, misknown” (17). The editor remains largely unknown
to us, as the reader only “knows” him through his reaction to the work of TeufelsdrOckh.
And, as the reader can only “know” Teufelsdrbckh as filtered through the editor, it also
appears that Teufelsdrbckh is unknown, or misknown, to us. Even before plunging into
the “Philosophy of Clothes,” the editor remarks, “Certainly a most involved, self-secluded,
altogether enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdrbckhi” (32) Sartor, as an entire work, may
attest to the inability to truly “know” anything or anyone despite our efforts to construct
ourselves and construct the “selves” of others, and an equally-constructed belief in shared
perspective. Everything is rendered conceptual rather than concrete—shadows or
garments of misrepresentation of what there is “to know.” Incidentally, this is the very
issue that the “Philosophy of Clothes” addresses.

The “Philosophy of Clothes” can be read analogously as both the philosophy of
language, art, and other systems and/or modes of expression. Tarfelsdrbckh declares
clothing a tool that “gave us individuality, distinction, social polity. . .[and has] made Men
of us” (41). Although he questions the present usefulness of such a tool-as it “threaten[s]
to make Clothes-screens of us”-he also acknowledges that “Nowhere do you find [man]
without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all” (41). Sartor implicitly
asks the reader to question the usefulness, or the communicative ability, of artistic

11

expression, just as Teufelsdrbckh explicitly asks the reader to contemplate the
effectiveness of the manner of human dress. As clothing can camouflage, hide, distort,
and misrepresent a person, an artistic and/or literary language can be misused, or used to
construct misleading and/or inefi’ectual expositions. Still, the writer or artist cannot
abandon such tools. The writer/artist, beyond the tools available to him, may be part of
the “continual growth, re-genesis, and self-perfecting vitality” (40)—suggesting a rather
Romantic belief that the human artist harnesses a godlike creative power and that it moves
him toward a sort of “ultimate meaning” encompassing this growth and perfection—but all
would be impossible without the tools of expression, despite their many limitations. For
example, language might make ‘Vvord—screens” that scarcely reveal the concepts and ideas
language is intended to represent; yet, without language, concepts and ideas are nothing.
According to Victorian aesthetic theory as we have discussed thus far, then, would the
artist be “anything” if he did not have the tools for expression? If one subscribes to the
belief that the artist can be found in (and is defined by) his work, then one’s work—his
expression-becomes the proof of his existence. As Teufelsdrbckh seeks the best
garmentage to wear, the Victorian critic desires a language of expression appropriate for
embodying concepts and ideas-and especially those concerning the self—most accurately.

Teufelsdrbckh asks himself, “Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an
Appearance—some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind?” He cannot seem to
answer his own question, only to say that “[t]he answer lies around, written in all colours
and motions...thousand-figured, thousand-voiced...” (53). He may identify himselfas an
individual connected to a society of individuals all “sail[ing] through the Infinitude of
Cloth” (51), but that cloth is comprised of “infinitely complected tissues” (52). The key
term here is infinity, since it connotes a concept or idea ultimately intangible to us. We
can provide a definition for infinity, but only through using words that attempt to help us
conceive the inconceivability of the limitless and uncontained. As I discussed earlier, this
directly relates to the all-important concept of the zeitgeist that reoccurs throughout

12

Sartor. The zeitgeist, put in terms of “Time,” becomes something one can set limitations
on, or something parceled out so one can account for it. In other words, one adheres
finitude onto infinitude. Teufelsdrbckh even acknowledges this: “Space is but a mode of
our human Sense, so likewise Time; there is no Space and no Time” (55). It would seem
that waelsdrbckh’s desire for a more accurate portrayal of the pluralistic realities of
infinitude in the modes of artistic expression would lead him through discussions of a
zeitgeist that would be less an exercise in pondering a constantly repetitive and arguably
reductive historico-artistic cycle and more an exercise in chaos theory, which “point[s] to
new possibilities for a less reductivist. . .conception” (Tamas 405). Rather ironically, this
admission functions to complicate, rather than completely dismiss, the recurring notion
that a repetitive cycle of artistic ideas confines historicity and tradition-the past—to an
easily reducible set of finite parts as there is always the ahistorical, momentary
perspective—the present—to help account for that phiralist infinitude.

In his “Philosophy of Clothes,” Teufelsdrockh asserts that “[t]he vestrnents and
[the] self are not one and indivisible” (57), but the editor does not readily heed that advice.
Teufelsdrbckh’s text is his vestment, and fi'om the visible, tangible text the editor wants to
construct a visible, tangible Teufelsdrbckh. However, the editor does not seem to realize
that the necessity for an act of construction indicates an absence—or, the editor’s own
need to create a persona he assumes to be Teufelsdrbckh’s to inhabit an otherwise
uninhabited, or depersonalized, text. Strangely enough, Teufelsdrbckh warns us to “be
not the slave of wor ” (55), though that is exactly the position in which Sartor places
both the editor as well as the reader. The editor’s attempt to piece waelsdrbckh’s
texts—his “autobiography” with his “Philosophy of Clothes”-together to function as one
cohesive unit indicates a desire for constructions of a cohesive, rather than a plural and
fragmented, self. This desire leads the editor to project finitude onto the printed word,
with its self-imposed limitation on meaning, so that Teufelsdrbckh’s texts might be
understood as an adequate portrayal of a finite persona of Teufelsdrtickh. This firrther

13

places the reader in a position precariously akin to that of the editor, as the text offers
nothing but the words of the editor interspersed with those of Teufelsdrdckh as evidence
and explanation of the irnpotency of words. In turn, this leads us to question the
traditional conventions of reading and interpretation suggesting that the pretense of
cohesion is superior to the incompleteness suggested by the plurality of fragmentation.
Throughout the multiple layers of intertext residing in Sartor, therefore, the
incompleteness of definition and expression-and the inaccessibility of firlly articulating the
concept of the self, or what Teufelsdrockh terms the “rrrysterious ME” (6S)-keeps rearing
its head.

Recognizing the inaccessibility, or inability, to completely articulate an infinite or
at least multi-faceted concept within the limitations of language (or any other form of
artistic expression) depends on an application of Saussurian semiotics, specifically the
division between the signifier which cannot fiilly or completely express all qualities of the
concept being signified. The tension created by using signifiers while realizing one’s
relative inaccessibility to the represented concept at large parallels the neoplatonic tension
inherent in the terminology associated with Victorian aesthetic theory and conventions of
reading as discussed earlier. We must also consider that the concept of a cohesive and
discernible “self’ functions as a sort of signifier as well, as it is a construction that
incompletely conveys an idea that cannot be fully conveyed or realized. Because this
discrepancy suggests that such signifying expressions are forced onto signified concepts
with which they only share “the rudiment of a natural bond,”l one might even say there is
a sense of fictionality associated with signifiers. And, if the self-concept is merely a
signifying expression for a myriad of possible selves, then the expressed “sell” may house

 

lSee Ferdinand de Saussure, “Selections from Course in General Linguistics,” trans.
Wade Baskin, Davis and Schleifer, p. 252. Many of the ideas presented in this section of
my essay are based, though at times rather loosely, on the semiotic theory discussed in
Saussure’s work.

14

that sense of fictionality, too. Ann Rigney reminds us to take into account “the
incompleteness of fictional beings,” especially as “invented objects are understood as
determined only in those respects which are described, implied, or alluded to in the text,
which are relevant to the story being tol ” (338-9). To put it more simply, according to
Rigney’s theory Carlyle only invented enough “self” for the editor and Teufelsdrbckh to
function in the text.

This may seem to grant Carlyle too much authorial power within the text (and
within the act of reading and interpreting Sartor) yet it provides impetus for a much
greater issue: namely, the boundaries between fictional and historical writing. As Rigney
states, “[T]o the extent that historical writing is defined by its claim to represent the
objective world. . ..[historical] residue is always in theory relevant to the way readers
approach works as history” (340-1). This “historical residue” is “the awareness that
‘something has been left out’” of a text, and Rigney adds that it “may impinge negatively
on the reader’s assessment,” thus compelling us to “openly confi'ont. . .the limits of our
access to the past and its representability” (341). But what is the difi’erence between
fictional and historical/nonfictional writing? Does this in turn mean that there are
ahistorical texts as well, and that all of those are necessarily fictional? A historical text,
like a fictional text, contains constructed characters moving along in a succession of
events or vignettes; furthermore, a successful fictional text, like a historical text, provides
the reader with enough evidence to therewith create the assumption that these characters
have a pre-textual as well as a post-textual—even an extra-textual—existence. In other
words, the text creates the illusion that there are unknowable aspects to its characters; that
its characters have a past preceding the text, a future succeeding the text, and have lived
through events not textually recounted. Sartor Resartus contains the history of the
fictional Teufelsdrbckh, with the editor fimctioning somewhat as Teufelsdrbckh’s
historiographer who must navigate, as we must, the voids of textually—created
unknowability. Yet because of the limitations of textual representation, we must consider,

15

to a greater degree than the editor, that even the most multidimensional character cannot
reveal every dimension of their “being” to us: as Carlyle himself stated in his essay “On
History,” “[S]tudy and recapitulate it as we may, [this] remains in so many points
unintelligible to us; how much more must these million, the very facts of which, to say
nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot know!” (qtd. by Rigney, 342).

Once again the Carlylean concept of the zeitgeist complicates the issue. As Rigney
points out, “History is an ‘essence’ to be distilled fi'om numerous biographies. In its stress
on plurality, Carlyle’s definition of history reflects. . .a breakdown of a homogeneous
‘History’ into particular histories which either singly or together represent History as a
whole,” thus “identifying the territory of the historian with the totality of human
experience” (342-3). Yet, by this definition, the zeitgeist becomes both historical and
ahistorical; Carlylean history becomes a patchwork of decontextualized moments.

Sartor 's editor embodies this theory, seeking to piece together Teufelsdrbckh’s texts to
prove that they represent Teufelsdrbckh as a whole. Subsequently, according to this line
of thinking, the editor seeks to identify Teufelsdrockh’s “self” so that he can identify the
whole of human experience, though by doing this he is trying to recreate history by
connecting the series of Teufelsdrbckh’s ahistorical moments.

The editor undertakes the daunting task of sifting through Teufelsdrbckh’s
autobiography, indulging in though tacitly examining his Romantic interest in
self-objectification, self-symbolism, and the creation of one’s own self-concept. The
Romantics created an atmosphere of publicized privacy in which the boundaries between
the public and the private self seemed blurred into indistinction, but the editor discovers
that such a distinction is very much intact, inasmuch as the public selfis the only self
available for recognition. The editor can only know the “public” Teufelsdrbckh. The
glimpse of Teufelsdrbckh’s private identity his autobiography promises to give is very
much packaged for public consumption—as indicated by the way it is presented to the
editor in separately labeled paper bags. Moreover, the section of Sartor containing

16

Teufelsdrbckh’s autobiography begins with the editor imputing, “In a psychological point
of view, it is perhaps questionable whether fiorn birth and genealogy, how closely
scrutinized soever, much insight is to be gained” (81). Thus, before even presenting the
autobiography to us, the editor’s tone indicates that perhaps one should approach
Teufelsdr6ckh’s autobiography-4nd all author biographies in connection to an author’s
texts-with a suitable amount of skepticism.

Within his autobiography, Teufelsdrtickh comments on his own critical work,
remarking that, “as man is ever the prime object of man. . .it was my favourite employment
to read character in speculation, and fi'om the Writing to construe the Writer” (113). This,
of course, has become the heart of the theory I am here deconstructing; and this is the
critical approach used by Sartor’s editor, too. Yet, interestingly enough, Teufelsdmckh
discusses this critical approach in the past tense, noting that, at that time, his “whole
Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine!” (113) At least from the
presentation made available to us within the autobiography, waelsdrbckh seems to prefer
his more Romantic yearnings, akin to the “Satanic School” of art and literature in which
overly individualistic art becomes so obscured that it no longer is a form of viable and
comprehensible expression to anyone but the artist himself In such obscurity, the artist
within the work cannot be recognized by anyone else: the artist/author may be able to
recognize his own signature in his work, but to anyone else the signature is a glyph
stylized to the point in which it cannot impart any discernible or definite information about
its creator. Notably, this metaphysical Romanticism is what the editor—the allegorical
Everycritic—seeks to aver. His convention of reading depends on the ability to recognize
and comprehend this glyph of persona; upon realizing the obscurity of the glyph and/or its
inability to be specifically defined, the editor realizes the tenuous nature of that
convention. And, consequently, the editor expresses confusion and displeasure at this turn
of events in Teufelsdrockh’s text: “Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the confirsion”
(152). The editor loses sight of who or what he assumed Teufelsdrbckh to be, exclaiming,

17

“Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even fiom afar” (152). Even the very
name “’I‘eufelsdrockh” becomes an empty signifier that appears to deconstruct before the
editor’s (and the reader’s) very eyes. The editor later addresses Teufelsdrtickh directly,
petularrtly criticizing him: “Singular Teufelsdrbckh, would thou hadst told thy singular
story in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such.
Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering,
prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture” (185). Suspecting that his convention of
reading has become a convention of chasing shadows without ever finding the concrete
bodies that cast them, the editor even surmises that perhaps the reader of Teufelsdrbckh’s
text ‘inust endeavor to combine” the fragments of Teufelsdrbckh’s past given in the
autobiography “for their own behoof’ (185), meaning that the reader must construct for
himselfa concrete body to correspond to the shadow.

Nonetheless, if Teufelsdrbckh is a “typical Shadow,” this reverts back to the
original discussion of the conceptualized zeitgeist and the ensuing existence of a fixed Idea
or archetype of what the “Shadow” (or “soul”) embodied by a “typical” artist/writer
actually is. The editor needs a sense ofa fixed system oftype fi'om which to mold his
version of the artist’s “concrete body.” If a finite archetype exists and is perpetuated
throughout the zeitgeist, and the zeitgeist contains the perspective legacied to every
individual, then the combinations each reader will make of the fragments of
Teufelsdrockh’s life will produce similar resuhs. This once again brings to mind the
dualism between “a metaphysics of being” and “a metaphysics of becoming” as discussed
in Laurence J. Starzyk’s “Reassessment of Early Victorian Aesthetics.”

As Starzyk explains, a metaphysics of being “recognize[s] the existence of
transcendent Absolutes and conceptualized forms towards which differentiated existence
resolutely moves” (170-1). Starzyk poses the highly individualistic, if not Romanticized,
metaphysics of becoming as the more prominent, and diametrically opposed, aesthetic
orientation in which “[t]he artist is not a contemplative being actively or passively in touch

18

with transcendent realms of meaning, but rather a creator of significance engaged, again
actively or passively, in a process of finding a solution for a world without meaning”
(171). However, as indicated by this discussion of Victorian aesthetics and Sartor
Resartus thus far, the differentiation between the two branches of aesthetic theory is not as
marked and impassable as Starzyk suggests. As J. Hillis Miller asserts, “Symbols [in
Sartor] are words or signs, hieroglyphical emblems, which are used to name the highest,
the unnamable. . . .This infinite reality lies hidden behind the garment of nature, of words or
other signs, and of human consciousness, all three” (7). Because Sartor specifically
addresses the belief, so important to Victorian aesthetics, that an “infinite reality” exists
and should be represented in art to the best of the artist’s ability, it seems that, despite
Starzyk’s assessment, Victorian aesthetics is more a metaphysics of being. The zeitgeist
aheady is, hence, the creation of art is the reformulation and presentation of what already
exists. Despite this, we cannot entirely discount Starzyk’s adherence to the prominence of
the metaphysics of becoming. As J. Hillis Miller demonstrates, Sartor addresses the
problematic usage of catachresis in art, “the forced and abusive transfer of a name [or
word, or symbol, or other sort of signifier] from its ordinary or at least seemingly literal
usetoanewrealm. Thereit functionsto name somethingwhichcanbenamednoother
way, which has no literal name” (8). Miller implies that an act of catachresis must be used
in order for one to force the mysterious and obscure glyphs of works of art to impart
information, or at least allow one to behave that information is being imparted to him.
Because of “the dimension of fleeting time or transiency,” despite the stability attributed to
the time-full yet timeless zeitgeist and the “transient intrinsic worth’” it supposedly brings
to all forms of artistic representation (Miller 11), it seems that, despite the constructive
involvement of the reader/observer, the author/artist is still considered the “creator of
significance.” Recalling the cyclical nature of the zeitgeist as well as Miller’s observation
that “[i]t is impossible, in principle, to distinguish this”-the notion of a comprehensive
collective tradition of finite meaning— “from the notion that the symbols are created or

19

projected, by a kind of performative fiat, through the man himself who profi’ers the new
symbol” (11), it appears to follow that the artist creates a symbol in a specific way which
will allow his audience to construct a distinct meaning, or sets of meanings. Especially
considering that, according to the adjacent metaphysics of being, no symbol is ever truly
“new.” To once again quote Miller, though according to the theory set forth in Sartor “no
symbol retains its efficacy beyond its own time,” it is replaced “by a revalidation, a
reinterpretation of the old which makes the old effectively new” (11). The metaphysics of
being must exist dialectically with the metaphysics of becoming in order to temper it, to
ensure the Victorian goal of creating an art that “must teach man [as Carlyle states in
‘Recent English Poetry’] ‘to fix a centre around which the chaotic element of human
impulse and desire might take solid forms and move in their ordered ellipses, to originate a
spiritual stability’” (qtd. by Starzyk, 173).

Further complicating this already problematic issue is the issue of creation. An
established, fixed center that creates standards of meaning and expression in art and
literature suggests a humanism markedly absent fiom all discussions of the zeitgeist; such
a godlike act of creation seemingly negates the omnipresent concepts of collectivity and
the metaphysics of being. In fact, Teufelsdrdckh issues an artistic edict, or what Miller
would call a “perfiirmative fiat”; like the God of Genesis, Teufelsdrbckh attempts to
command the conceptual (in)finitude of greater meaning-or, in Neoplatonic terms, the
Wodd of Ideas that is the zeitgeist- “Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even
Worldkin” (197), as if chaos can be sorted by merely issuing an edict. Teufelsdrbckh
represents Starzyk’s metaphysics of becoming, but also its shortcomings according to this
theory of aesthetics at large. Notice that this is a command given through language:
Teufelsdrockh, while trying to restore or reevaluate the comprehensive communicability of
the language of artistic expression, has nothing but the problematic language itself as his
creative tool. And, of course, this is the very tool Sartor, in its entirety, calls into
question.

20

Meanwhile, the editor, long a subscriber to the metaphysics of being, becomes
skeptical near the end of Sartor, as he questions the usefirlness of biography and the
construction of an author persona as a critical tool. He voices his suspicion that
Teufelsdrbckh’s autobiography is “partly a mystification,” considering the possibilities that
exist “ifmany a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction” (202). Here we must not
only recall the collapse of historical, or nonfiction, writing with fiction and the impression
of unknowability created by what Rigney termed “historical residue,” but also Miller’s
discussion of catachresis. The editor potentially identifies his search for the persona of
Teufelsdrbckh an act of catachresis, wondering if one could with surety decide “that
Terrfelsdrbckh’s Biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth,
exhibits a man” (205). Whether or not the artist’s revelation comes to him as a realization
of meanings that exist or the self-conscious creation of meaning, the editor cannot locate
with specificity the artist within the text to whom to attribute any sort of revelation and
construction to. Teufelsdrbckh, in the very end, remains intangible to the editor, as does
the meaning of Teufelsdrbckh’s texts. And, likewise, both the editor and his subject,
Teufelsdrbckh, remain relatively intangible to the reader. We cannot locate specific and
concrete evidence to construct a complete picture of either character in Sartor Resartus;
thus we must use Sartor to begin questioning the viability of searching for an intangible
artist in order to create or reevaluate meaning in art, as the Victorians set out to do
according to their aesthetic theory.

21

John Ruskin: The Importance of Dialectical Counterbalance

Robert Hewison suggests that John Ruskin’s typology contains “the practice of
treating objects both as real and symbolic, without regarding one condition as canceling
out the other. The result was his ability to move in parallel along separate levels of
argument, of the actual and the symbolic, without any sense of contradiction” (208). This
would seem to indicate that Ruskin successfully achieved the praxis, or sort of theoretical
counterbalance, that eventually eluded the editor in Sartor, but that statement would be
erroneous. Hewison’s view seems based on the kind of approach Ruskin sets forth in his
essay “Of the Received Opinions Touching the ‘Grand Style,’” in which Ruskin discusses
the three successive stages for studying art: to first recognize the “Ideas of Truth” by
‘perceiving simple resemblance to Nature,” or reality, before acknowledging the “Ideas of
Beauty,” or the means of representation used; this, in turn, leads to contemplating the
“Ideas of Relation,” in which “the contemplative and imaginative faculties” are used to
discern “the meanings and relations of these things,” or assign and interpret the artwork’s
symbolic properties (42). Hewison appears to assume that Ruskin’s “Ideas of Relation” is
a synthetic mode used to counterbalance reality and artistic representation, subjectivity
and objectivity. However, as Ruskin leaves the “Ideas of Relation” external to the actual
object and the means of artistically expressing that object in a given work, he seems to
drive a wedge between the real and the symbolic and thus uphold the neoplatonic
dichotomy causing tension within Vrctorian aesthetic theory. For Ruskin, the
communicative power in any given mode of artistic expression then, whether it be the
language of literature or the use of form, texture and/or color in the visual arts, allows the
individual artist a means of “saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly”
(Ruskin, “Water” 33). Subsequently, the elements of expression work as double-edged
signifiers, indicating a tangible and fully representable signified as well as an intangible and
largely unrepresentable signified simultaneously. According to this course of thought, the

22

assignment and equation of signifier to signified becomes a duty of the artist, though we
must question how much creative control the artist has within such a theory.

As I pointed out in the previous chapter, Carlyle’s explanations of the zeitgeist, the
continual cycle of human history and the “historical residue” that accompanies it, never
quite account for the infinite unknowability suggested by such a concept. And, as Ann
Rigney suggests, that unknowability plagues readers of texts like Sartor. This
unknowability was a central issue for Ruskin, and led him to apprehend art as elaboration
upon history. Ruskin places a more individualistic slant on Sartor 's key issue of adequate
and truthfirl representation, claiming “poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and
plairmess which ought to characterise History; but the very being of Poetry consists in
departing from this plain narrative, and adopting every ornament that will warm the
imagination” (“Style” 45). Here Ruskin portrays an understanding of poetry as a timeless
art, existing outside of time or in a moment of captured and/or suspended time. Artistic
expressions thus contain and represent a more ahistorical moment distinguished from
“merely historical statementls], not by being more vague, but more specific” (“Style” 49).
Ruskin here seems to indicate not only a symbiotic relationship between the historical
tradition and the ahistorical moment, but also seems to be defining the zeitgeist not as an
objective historical tradition but as an infinite collection of myriad ahistorical, subjective
experiences; as he states, “that which is incapable of change has no history” (op. cit.)
Whereas Carlyle’s zeitgeist was a continual unchanging cycle more orderly than chaotic,
Ruskin’s seems a more linear continuum allowing for greater change and greater
possibilities of plurality—and, ultimately, more individualism on the part of the author/artist
as well as the audience and the critic.

Discerning Ruskin’s design of the zeitgeist depends on explicating his own concept
of the “pathetic fallacy,” in which “the extermrlization and affiliation of self’ with objects
of the external world, such as art “produces the desired loss of self-consciousness in the
form of self-alienation” and eventually develops the construction of the ‘Vvorld as mirror”

23

(Fellows 49). Ruskin developed the notion of the pathetic fallacy as a means to undermine
what he felt was the “troublesomeness” of the metaphysical subject/object division that
was ambiguous and therefore aesthetically “useless” (“Fallacy” 62). However, one must
irmnediately recognize that Ruskin does not attempt to dismiss the dichotomy altogether,
because he does maintain the distance between perceiving subject and perceived object.
Rather, he is reacting against those who insist that the perceived object only exists within
the perceiving subject. Through his reaction, then, he hopes to revise critical treatment of
that dichotomy to incorporate his notions of the variety of individualism with the notions
of uniform objectivity he believes underlie all acts of perception. As Ruskin explains,
aesthetic contemplation always involves the observer’s “feelings,” sensations or emotional
response to a work of art; so, one must recognize that these “violent feelings” always
“produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things” (ibid 65). Yet one
should not be satisfied with such falseness. It is up to the individual to discern between
the personal sensation caused by his perception of the work and the power of the work
itself to incite sensation. And this power, Ruskin reminds us, “is always there, in the thing,
whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were
not left a man on the face of the earth” (ibid 63). It is the duty of the critic, then, to
achieve the “grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to
assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions” (Ruskin,
“Fallacy” 67). Basically, Ruskin asks the discerning critic to come to terms with his own
concept of self and the subjective limitations one’s self-concept imposes on perception in
order to work beyond those limitations. Consequently, Ruskin imposes a new type of
vision in which the critical observer sees himselfin the act of observation, recognizes the
myopia induced by that vantage point, and thus extends his line of sight beyond that which
was formerly capable-as if the recognition of “self” is the necessary corrective lens. In
this corrected vision, “the oppositions inherent in traditional epistemology—the
oppositions of objective to subjective, appearance to essence, surface to depth, sensations
24

to powers, perception to conception, seeing to feeling, are united in a visual process by
which the first term of the pair shifts into the second, ‘truer’ term” (Sawyer 40).
However, such self-induced selfiessness is problematic, as Ruskin’s trope of vision
assumes that the observer can either completely dismantle his assumptions from his
observations, or that the subjective self can transform into an objective self. We must
always consider that vision is always limited. Interestingly enough, Graham Hough
identifies this concept of self-less vision as Ruskin’s attempt “to release [the sense of
sight] from the bondage to utility and convention and to set it flee to operate in its own
way” (qtd. by Sawyer, 36); albeit one in which the observer is free not to see beyond
convention, but to perceive those conventions differently.

In The Failing Distance, an extensive and complex study of Ruskin’s use of the
trope of vision, Jay Fellows presents a crucial assertion that Ruskin aims to study art by
acting as a camera Iuciala,2 or an unseen observer looking in fi'om the outside: the
observer reflects an exact image of the observed for others to see, acting as an
unassuming and unobtrusive nrirror serving only to project, not interpret. In theory, the
camera Iucida does not operate as an intermediary device that filters or in any other way
distorts the image before projection, as it does not operate in self-interest. This is a
meager attempt at establishing an objective position, because the vantage point of the
outsider is “solipsistic space,” which is “space for only one person, and that person’s
tangible existence is [itself] entirely problernatical” (Fellows 6) because of its two-fold
isolation. The critic only recreates himself as camera Iucida in order to project his
observations according to the image or conceptualization he had of the respective object
before assuming the position of the camera. And, furthermore, by placing oneselfin

 

2The camera lucida is an optical device, usually attached to the eyepiece of a microscope,
that projects a virtual image of the studied object onto a page, so that it may be traced.

25

isolation, one remains isolated from what is being observed, maintaining the division
between subject and object that one initially intends to overcome. The se “attempt[s]...
nothing less than the creation of a visual mode of perception. . .that will be synthetic rather
than ‘scalpellic,”’ (Fellows 14) but fails. By synthesizing with the perceived, the perceiver
hopes to synthesize his own perception with that which always exists within the object to
be perceived; or, to put it more simply, he wants to identify the catalyst that causes the
pathetic fallacy, in order to prove that perception is not completely fallacious. But the
camera Iucida mode cannot allow the perceiving subject to establish unity with the object.
This inability to completely annihilate self ensures the unavoidability of what Ruskin
desires to transcend through vision correction: “the state of vision in which all the details
ofan object are seen, andyet seenin suchconfirsionanddisordertlmtwecannotinthe
least tell what they are, or what they mean” (Ruskin, “Truth” 26-7).
GrmuedRusldnisofadualnnndconcerningtheindividual, privateself. Onone
hand, he makes typically Victorian statements against individualism like “All great art is
the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, not in his own” (“Pallas” 97). Yet he
tempers such statements with ambiguous statements that could possibly pertain to the
artist’s individualism and godlike powers of creation: “[T]he power of assembling, by the
help of the imagination, such images as will excite...feelings, is in the power of the poet or
literally of the ‘Maker”’ (“Style” 51). Though Ruskin appears to place the ability to make
meaning in the hands of the poet (artist), his ambiguous use of the term “Maker”
complicates this subject. To put it more simply, “Maker” becomes a signifier that does
not or cannot effectively portray what it signifies. Who, exactly, is the “Maker” of
meaning in Ruskin’s equation? When one tries to humanistically collapse the god-figure
with the figure of artist or author, the idea of artist as creator is complicated by Ruskin’s
use of the verb “assemble” rather than “create.” Sartor 's Professor T eufelsdrc‘ickh found
that his godlike perforrnative fiat was not enough to create a new language of signifiers to
adequately and completely represent the innumerous “World of Ideas” he was aware of;
26

Teufelsdrdckh remained confined by linguistic limitations nonetheless. Ruskin, trying to
avoid Teufelsdrockh’s dilemma, suggests instead that it is the human ability to assemble,
or reassemble the limited signification allotted by language, through the employment of
“Ideas of Relation” to connect signifiers with the signified that provides the establishment
of meaning in art. In this, then, Ruskin seems to have evidence for the Carlylean concept
of the finite and immutable zeitgeist of meaning constantly applied to all works of art and
literature: a metaphysics of being. But reassemblance of meaning by the individual
suggests tlmt ahistorical subjectivity must also come into play, implying that a subjective,
individual-centered metaphysics of becoming is taken into consideration as well. Ruskin’s
take on aesthetic theory tries to account for them both.

Despite Ruskin’s apparent incogrrizance of Hegel’s works, Ruskin’s approach to
aesthdcs is remarkably Hegelian. Ruskin wished there to be a unity between the
metaphysics of being and the metaphysics of becoming, or between what linguistic or
artistic expressions are and what they could possibly be. The “foundation of Hegel’s
thought was his understanding of dialectic, according to which all things unfold in a
continuing evolutionary process whereby every state of being inevitably brings forth its
opposite” (Tarnas 379); in this case of Ruskin’s aesthetic theory, then, the metaphysics of
being would bring forth the metaphysics of becoming. Furthermore, any “state of being”
would actually be an ahistorical moment, since “[w]hat at any moment [is] seen as fixed
and certain [is] constamly overcome by the evolving mind,” and as “every form of thought
in human history [is considered] both an incomplete perspective and yet a necessary step
in this. . .evolution” (ibid 380). The constancy of the evolution that explores
contradictions is the only real unifying element. But what, exactly, did Ruskin intend as
his definition of “unity”? Hewison contends that “[t]he essential nature of [Ruskinian]
unity is that all objects are seen in their context, both local and historical, influenced by
their present and past surroundings, and influencing them in turn” (205). This sounds
remarkably similar to the omnipresent, pervasive nature attributed to Carlyle’s zeitgeist, a

27

supreme, ideal unity to which all things are bound. In contrast, Gary Wihl contends that
Ruskinian unity is an apparent rather than an actual unity; meaning that, for Ruskin,
“appearance is ‘essential’ to unity, but not in the sense of a total fusion of form and matter
or of image and concept” (134), or even of past and present: “Perfect unity can ‘appear’
as an ‘appearance’ (in the simple sense of ‘superficial aspect’) or as a sign, type, or
suggestion” (op. cit. ). Appearances are not permanent or concrete; furthermore, they are
metaphorical. Metaphors are signifiers representing “the confusion, through a purely
external analogy of abstract fornr, of two distinct objects” (Wihl 147) or concepts they are
meant to signify. There is no absolute signified for them to correspond to—there must
simply appear to be. Once again, even the appearance of the supposedly-corresponding
signified is unstable, ever-changing, and abstract. Signifiers are forever in the process of
“becoming” significant, suggesting but never completely asserting significance. In thl’s
paradigm, it is the act of suggesting unity, and not so much verification of it, that is
important. Apparent and suggested unity is not perfect unity, of course, but as Ruskin
himself states in “The Nature of Gothic,” “the demand for perfection is always a sign of a
misrmderstamling of the ends of art” (183, italics in original). Imperfection—even in
conceptualizations of unity- “is in some sort essential....[as] it is the sign of life in a mortal
body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change” (“Gothic” 183-4). Unity is never
static; ideals of unity evolve and change. The ideal of unity presented by critics of the past
does not always apply to criticism of works in the present. Still, we must still consider
Ruskin’s nearly constant reference to zeitgeist in his works, despite his “love of change”
and recognizance of subjectivity and fallacious appearance. Zeitgeist provides the stability
of tradition, the reason works of art, and the study of those works, are connected to
history, past traditions, and to one another, even if only indirectly by association; here,
zeitgeist is the principle of “rigidity” in art, the “not merely stable, but active rigidity,” or
progressively evolving zeitgeist; “the peculiar energy which gives tension to movement,
and stifi‘ness to resistance” (Ruskin, “Gothic” 193). Which is why Hewison’s further

28

comment that, as it was for Hegel, life for Ruskin “existed in Becoming, not Being” (205)
seems forced. IfRuskin’s vision was indeed dialectic in Hegelian spirit, life for Ruskin
must exist as much in Being as Becoming. It is an unresolvable conflict between believing
things possess a “definite and separate nature” and acknowledging the nagging detection
that this nature is always “inextricable or confirsed in appearance” (Ruskin, “Gothic” 171)
despite the many forms that nature assumes in order to rectify the confirsion. In sum,
Ruskin’s theory of art places the search for truth within the examination of the nature of
contradiction itself.

The best place to explore Ruskin’s usage, application, and maintenance of this
contradiction is perhaps Hie Seven Lamps of Architecture. As Paul Sawyer points out,
Ruskin uses architecture as the prototype for all other forms of art because Ruskin
considers it the most erqiressive, “not in the sense that an emotion is an expression but in
the sense that a sign is an expression” (87). For Ruskin, architecture is the utmost
signifier for the subject/object (or spiritual/material) dichotomy as treated in art: “Uniting
the technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it
shows the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence of the lower part over the
higher, to the interference of the constructive, with the purity and simplicity of the
reflective, element” (Lamps 3). Buildings represent the limitations of human creation, in
that the technical elements that give form to meaning predominate over the meaning or
“spirit” of their creation. Yet, to “inquire into each of these characters successively; and
determine first, what is the Mental Expression, and seconrfly, what the Material Form of
...architecture” is (Ruskin, “Gothic” 171), Ruskin hopes to transcend the “interference” of
the constructed sign with meaning, or the “reflective element” by placing greater emphasis
on the imaginative “Mental Expression.” In the preceding statement, though, Ruskin
proceeds to reintroduce the critical standpoint of the camera lucida: “[B]y rejecting the
imagination as a separate principle in aesthetic activity”-or rejecting form, or the technical
element, as a separate principle from the imaginative element, or idea— “Ruskin makes

29

possible an extreme theory by which the great artist becomes the world before which he
annihilates himself’ (Sawyer 43). This fits into Starzyk’s paradigm quite well, in which
one conceives oneself becoming the world and ceases to conceive of oneselfas a “self”
once in the state of being that world. To place this back into Ruskin’s architectural
paradigm, one builds in order to become a part of that world around one; and the
completed edifices of art/architecture represent points of “being” that temporarily arrest
that process of creative “becoming,” or at least serve as fixed (rather than plastic)
representatives of a specific stage of that process rather than the entire process at large.

Architecture, then, also embodies the paradox of constancy in change. In
architecture, “[t]here is no law, no principle, based on past practice, which may not be
overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new
material” (Ruskin, Lamps 3). To explain this more fully, Ruskin, in “The Lamp of
Sacrifice,” asks us “to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building” (8).
Architecture is the great design, or ordering principle, according to which we build; and
“to buil ” is “literally, to confirm” that ultimate design (Lamps 8-9). Thus, in the greater
scheme of art and aesthetic theory, Ruskin implicitly introduces zeitgeist as the ultimate
architectural design prescribing the means or methods, numerous and unpredictable as
they may be, by which works of art may be constructed.

The zeitgeist is also Ruskin’s all-important “Lamp of Memory,” or the illunrinative
renewal ofthepastinthepresent. Hemaintainsthatwehavetwo dutiestofulfillto
architecture, and comparably all forms of art: “the first, to render the architecture of the
day, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of
past ages” (Imrps 178). The architecture of the zeitgeist may in practical application be
subject to the kind of daring that Ruskin celebrated in the Gothic spirit and more broadly
in all aesthetic endeavors—namely, the artistic spirit that of necessity “br[eaks] through
[the] law wherever it fIinds] it in existence” and “delight[s] in the infiingement of every
servile principle” (“Gothic” 187) defined by past builders or artists—but the zeitgeist

30

anchors all breakthroughs and infiingements nonetheless. Once more, this is not merely an
issue of completely separating past from present, nor becoming the present tradition by no
longer being the past. Ruskin refuses to view any dichotomy so two—dimensionally,
especially in the case of architecture:

Ruskin arrimates the buildings through an act of inmginative seeing, the

emotional equivalent of historical memory. The result is a continuous

movement through four—dimensional space rather than a switching back

and forth between past and present, with the result that each site contains

within itself the flow of history, while the flow of history, arrested at each

site, manifests itself in spots of time. (Sawyer 93)
Art and architecture are both spatial and temporal. Continuous movement through space
and time, the change of the forms given to ideas in relation to historical change, gives birth
to abundance and unpredictability. Any work of art, or contemplation of it, Ruskin knows
is “[a]bundant beyond the power of the eye to embrace or follow, vast and various beyond
the power of the mind to comprehend,” but he is just as sure that “there is yet not one
atom in its whole extent and nrass which does not suggest more than it represents”
(“Truth” 31). The “spots of time” manifest only the suggestion of total comprehension, its
possibility. We cannot comprehend totality, even through the camera lucida. As
Elizabeth Helsinger suggests, we should then adjust the trope of Ruskinian vision to
encompass “a picturesque way of seeing [that] involves not so much composition-«he
artist’s power to immediately imagine a whole—as decomposition, breaking a whole into
unrelated parts” (126). This is unavoidably still solipsistic space in which the observer
reintegrates the parts “into the kind of wholeness that the. . .spectator looks for” (op. cit. ),
but it is solipsistic space that becomes “a point of identity” (Helsinger 127), rather than a
point of self-annihilation, for the observer. The observing critic forms an appearance of
unity—a self-made unity- based on a self-interpreted ordering principle, placing
responsibility for the vitalizing historical and artistic progress within the individual in

3 1

conjunction with, rather than separated fi'om, the zeitgeist. The importance of the
involvement of “self’ within zeitgeist is “a way of using linear to arrive at comprehensive
perception” (Helsinger 129), or at least “implies the shift from immediate grasp of a
whole” or an underlying totality of meaning “to the linear or progressive attention to
details” (ibid. 127).

But what is the proportional relationship of self to zeitgeist? How does he make
adjustments so that the proper relations between construction and design, individualism
and historical precedent, can be attained? Ruskin was extremely concerned with
proportion in art, architecture, and theory. Proportion is both “a metaphorical structure
[which] intensifies cognition” (W rhl 146) and “the orderly grasp of variations in
appearance, the discovery of unity in difl‘erence” (ibid 142). To again consider Elizabeth
Helsinger’s study of Ruskin’s aesthetic ‘Vision,” we must correlate Ruskin’s discussion of
the sublime in “The Lamp of Memory” with any discussion of Ruskinian proportion.
Helsinger notes that Ruskin’s difl’erentiation between the “grotesque” and the “noble
picturesque” sublime is cmcial. The grotesque “is an attempt to see and express a large
whole in a single image,” or what the critic perceives when “arrested by an encounter with
something that exceeds ordinary comprehension” (Helsinger 121). Unable to comprehend
the totality of meaning, the true significance of the signifier at hand, one mentally produces
“an obvious disproportion between the grotesque image and what it stands for” in one’s
interpretation of the work’s symbolic properties (op. cit.) The “noble picturesque,” in
contrast, “uses excursive exploration to evoke strong feeling” (Helsinger 117) by requiring
the observer to digressively explore the mental connections or relations between the
thoughts and sensations evoked by initial acts of observation of that particular work to
other works previously considered or known. Ruskin refers to this as “parasitical
sublimity,” in that the “noble picturesque” is always dependent upon a notion of the “true
sublime.” The “true sublime” is “the condition of completely clear and comprehensive
vision, of absolutely governed imagination, of an obviously godlike grasp of visual design

32

and metaphysical order” (Helsinger 123) that, as we realized through analysis of Ruskin’s
camera lucida, is impossible. Furthermore, the “true sublime” is the capability to invent
the very primary modes of invention; but the closest the critical perceiver can come to this
“godlike grasp” of design and order is to reinvent them according to modes of invention
already put into place. The parasitical sublime is “a sublimity dependent on the accidents,
or on at least the essential characters, of the objects to which it belongs,” which “is
developed distinctively exactly in proportion to the distance from the centre of thought of
those points of character in which the sublimity is found” (Ruskin, Lamps 189). Variety is
accidental, in the philosophical sense: variety results from the production of meaning
through idiomatic circumstantial attributes that are not essential or unchangeable qualities
of that which is being signified—what Ruskin calls “the centre of thought,” which as
“meaning-in-itself’ resists attempts at firrther definition. So long as variety can be
understood as existing in exact proportion to a stable ‘meaning-in-itself,” then Ruskin can
reconcile the variety of individualism that arises in a given age (or within a particular
individual, including himself) by “subject[ing] variety to unity” (Wihl 136). Still, he is not
providing the proscriptive scale by which to measure the exactness of proportion. As
Ruskin himselfreminds us, “[p]roportions are. . .infinite” (Lamps 124).

Thus he establishes a dialectic in which the limitations present in the finitude of
“primal forms” contradictorily relate to an infinity of possible irnagistic expressions of
those forms. Concerning art and architecture, Ruskin aspires toward the creation and
appreciation of “perfect beauty,” the “noble rendering of images of Beauty, derived chiefly
from the external appearances of organic nature” (ibid 103). As he states in the “Lamp of
Beauty,” the “organic nature” of primal forms and their correlative signifiers cannot be the
same, since “[t]here is no proportion between equal things”: “They can have symmetry
only, and symmetry without proportion is not composition” (Lamps 125). The dialectic is
alsonecessarybecauseselfneedstobeconvincedthathisownsolipsisticspacedoesnot
preventhimfromobtainingtheperfectbeautyexistingbeyondthat space;thedialectic

33

feeds “the need for ‘doubleness,’ for options-a way out” (Fellows 4). Hewison describes
Ruskin’s aesthetic dialectic as one in which “the forms of beauty are detected in each
momentary view of reality; [and] the artist, through his imaginative faculty, translates
these perceptions into a work of art” (211). But any view of reality is the view fiom the
solipsistic space of the camera Iucida, and a view fi'om any self-created or self-imposed
perspective cannot even momentarily be objective. Here Ruskin’s notion of the pathetic
fallacy must be revisited: imagination is not always deceptive, as long as the imaginative
act is communicated tmthfitlly.3 Ruskin himselfstates:
[T]he action of the imagination is a voluntary summoning of the
conception of things absent or impossible; and the pleasure and nobility
of the imagination partly consist in its knowledge and contemplation of
them as such, i. e. in the knowledge of their actual absence or im-
possibility at the moment of their apparent presence or reality....lt is a
noble faculty so long as it confesses its own ideality. (Lamps 33)
Basically, Ruskin asserts that ‘thing-m-itself’ is impossible to conceive except
metaphorically or symbolically, so the “essential truth” underlying the inmginative
metaphor or symbol is always absent from acts of interpretation. Awareness of this
absence drives further innovation to remedy this, despite its ultimate impossibility;
therefore, the constant innovation, so long as it is undertaken in good faith and with the
attainment of the ideal in mind, is “noble”-—not purposefirlly deceptive. In other words,

 

3Ruskin devotes most of his chapter on “The Lamp of Truth” to discussing the relative
“truthfirlness” of the otherwise deceptive imaginative faculty in the creation of art and
architecture. It is somewhat beyond the scope of my work to outline Ruskin’s argument
in firll; for my purposes here, I think it sufices to say that truthfulness in deceit is just
another manifestation of the contradictions inherent in Ruskin’s dialectical theory. For a
more complete discussion of this particular point, see The Seven Lamps of Architecture,
p.29-69.

34

imaginative acts of expression should always be in the process of becoming what they at
length aspire to actually be.

By pronouncing Ruskin’s theoretical assumptions as resembling the metaphysics of
becoming over being as Hewison does, nevertheless, one might be tempted to play into the
Victorian critics’ overwhelming aspiration to place the artist as the centrifocal element of
the work. Ruskin may have emphasized the artist’s role in the artwork because he
perceived his predecessors as “deluded in deriving their principles fiom. . .their hypothetical
Aesthetic Man, a mere disembodied perceiver of beauty” (Rosenberg 221), but this does
not discount the audience or critic’s role from the equation entirely. For Ruskin,
“Aesthetic Man” had to exemplify creative ability-which, in turn, is an expression of the
self. But this leads us back to the issues presented in my reading of Sartor Resartus and
recasts them in light of my reading of Ruskin. Of what, exactly, does the concept 0 “self’
consist in relation to works of literature/art? Does the author/artist construct himself
within the work, or is the construction of the concept of “se ’ the responsibility of he who
perceives the work? And do the artist and the spectator share the same perception?

Unlikethe editor ofSartorwho finds that hedoes not necessarily share
Teufelsdrbckh’s perspective, Ruskin adheres to the idea of the conventional connection
between author and text, and even author and reader, in his essay, “Of Kings’ Treasuries.”
Here Ruskin promotes

the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is rightly

called “reading”; watching every accent and expression, and putting

ourselves always in the author’s place, annihilating our own personality,

and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able to assuredly say, “Thus

Milton thought,” not “Thus I thought, in mis-reading Milton.” (303)
Interestingly, Ruskin defines reading not as an examination of the text but examination of
the author of the text, implying that the critical act consists of an immediate intercourse
between the reader and the author and authorial intent in a work. Ruskin attempts

35 ‘

another application of the self-annihilating camera lucida so that “the reader forgets
himself, as he becomes part of a writer”; but, according to the camera Iucida principle, the
writer himself should be invisible to the reader (Fellows 72). Sawyer notes, “The
unconscious artist is the precondition of an aesthetic interaction so immediate that the
other elements firse together: by [the author’s] silence, his creations speak and his
audience becomes ‘part of hirn’ and beholds with him” (45). Consequently, according to
this method of reading, Ruskin should not be hearing Milton voicing his (Milton’s)
thoughts. How can Ruskin become part of Milton if Milton annihilated himselfwithin his
text? To pose Sawyer’s question, “[H]ow silent is he really?” (op. cit.)

Though Ruskin asks one to “annihilate” one’s own personality to assume the
author persona, once the reader assumes that persona, the reader becomes responsible for
the construction of meaning in that text. According to such logic, then, the reader
constructs the author persona: theoretically, the reader does not put on Milton’s mask but
designs a mask to wear and calls it “Milton.” Subsequently, Milton’s relative silence or
vocal presence does not matter much; the reader will only hear his own interpretation of it.
The unknowable, “annihilated” author leaves an empty space in a text that must be filled
by the reader, as “[a]nything empty inspires self-expression, submerged autobiography,
intrusion without self-consciousness” (Fellows 28). Either the reader may not be
conscious of his own intrusion into the text, or, like Ruskin, be conscious of his own
intrusive interpretations but subconsciously employ them anyway. Such consciousness of
readers’ reconstructions of textual elements forces Ruskin to assert that the act of reading
theworks ofthepastgrantsoneadmissionto‘that great concourse oftheDead”that
allows one to access those authors and their intentions, to “feel with them” and “be like
them” (“Treasuries” 305), to adjust one’s personal perspective to theirs.

Ruskin may believe that an artist and his audience share the same perspective but
his appetite for contradiction requires us to question this “concourse of the Dead” as
another form of the concept of zeitgeist, in that it suggests that the present-day reader can

36

share in the perspective of an artist/author of the past. As I stated previously, Ruskin’s
present shares a complicated and contradictory relationship to the past; and for Ruskin the
past can and should not be forgotten. He heralds “Poetry and Architecture” as the “two
strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men” (Lamps 178) because language “like
architecture, bear[s] the moral record of a civilization” (Sawyer 237). As Hegel claims,
the “Historical World-Spirit” or zeitgeist bequeaths us “that heritage of an already-formed
language”—~and comparably, as Ruskin might say, architectural design—to be used in acts
of creation; at the same time, though, it is up to the historically-minded critic to “bind
together the fleeting elements” dispensed in those created works in a reasonable and
meaningfirl way (“History” 537). Ifthe artist, his intent, and perspective are “fleeting
elements,” they are temporal and thus subject to change; but if

the artist, his intent, and perspective are a permanent fixture within the artwork or text,
then the artist and these accompanying concepts seem to be existing atemporally, as frozen
moments or memories that time has long passed. As Gaston Bachelard proposes, these
memories are not only “motionless,” but “locked not in duration, the sequence of
language, but in sight and space” (qtd. by Fellows, 20)-and time does not exist in space.
This paradigm renders the artist, and the “concourse of the Dead,” somewhat ahistorical.
However, a dialectic approach of contradiction and tension can be applied to this
convention of reading: for, as the reader is asked to form some sort of connection to the
author, the reader approaches this task both historically and ahistorically. The reader must
use the framework and traditions of the historical zeitgeist to try to place the author in the
author’s own context alongside the reader’s more subjective act of applying his own
context to his moment of reading.

Such necessary contradiction comes in the form of Ruskin’s distrust of the
methods of interpreting art. Though Rus ' ’8 “goal of interpretation...is to find the truth
hidden in the fallacies of art” (Shell 74), Ruskin also says “art must not be talked about”
(“Mystery” 340). In “The Mystery of Life and Its Arts,” Ruskin infers that perhaps the

37

author/artist is not so easily knowable through the examination of his art, as “[t]he
moment [the artist] can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words
become idle to him-all theories” (340). Ruskin has identified the moment in which one
conceivably transcends ordinary signifiers and comprehends the elusive, intrinsic signified
beyond the extrinsic mode of artistic expression, and, by analogy, linguistic expression as
well. In this moment, the artist directly accesses creation, and the meaning of
creation-the reasons why artists are driven to create: accessing “the instinctive and
necessary result of power, which can only be developed through the mind of successive
generations...[in which] whole eras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of
dead myriads are concentrated...” (Ruskin, “Mystery” 342). In other words, the artist is
given a taste of the infinity of the zeitgeist beyond the seemingly-finite limitations one
needs in order to conceptualize such an idea. But, like the mystic, the artist can only
impart his experience indirectly through language that fits the experience, as
Teufelsdrbckh would say, like ill-fitting and misrepresentational garments. Subsequently,
this places the critic in a precarious position within Ruskin’s paradigm, as this renders art
rather inaccessible to the critic. Ifart is the byproduct ofa personal, metaphysical
experience,thenthe criticcandiscernneithertheartistnordefinitemeaningfiom
art—which is precisely the dilemma faced by Sartor 's editor. The critic ends up chasing
the metaphysical referent of the ahistorical moment just as the author had; they both have
the same collective tradition, or artistic and literary history, as their fiamework, but the
subjectivity of the individual’s perspective at the ahistorical moment of creation or
interpretation will provide a plurality of meaning rather than a stable, definite one.
Moreover, Ruskin holds literary/artistic language accountable for the dialectical
counterbalance, stating, “[B]eauty has been in the world since the world was made, and
human language can make a shift, somehow, to give account of it” (“Essay” 436). This
becomes something of a theoretical cornerstone: if these “Ideas of Beauty” are stable and
finite, then the “Ideas of Relation” that provide meaning of art/literature, like this concept
38

of “beauty,” always exist, and aesthetic theory resulting from such a belief must include
the hope that language can be arranged in such a way as to adequately convey it. For
Ruskin, unlike the editor and Teufelsdrbckh in Sartor, language has that possibility,
especially as language is as much subject to the Hegelian evolutionary process as aesthetic
theory. One must note, though, that there seems a tone of wistfulness in Ruskin’s use of
the word “somehow,” since Ruskin probably would not have interjected that word into his
statement if he felt completely sure that this shift in language will come about, perhaps
implying that the task, in practice, is not as viable as it seems in theory. Catachresis is not
a problem but a solution for Ruskin, though a problematic solution it may be. Considering
that language is association, the making of meaning is association as well. For Ruskin the
surface object (or signifier) that inherently contained the meaning that ‘firve subjectively
associated with it. . .depends on the chance connections” related to individual experience
(Hewison 55), so that reading a text or viewing an artwork becomes an act of
individualized construction. The associations a particular author or artist may have made
with the symbolic, figurative, and otherwise representational mode of expression will not
necessarily be those ofthe critic/audience; and there is no way ofknowing ifboth sets of
respective associations are the same. Even if a zeitgeist exists, the plurality suggested by
the occurrence of “clmnce connections” undermines the idea of a collectivity in which
shared similarities allow one to directly access an artist or author in his work. To
paraphrase Hewison, Ruskin treats the author concept as both real and symbolic, without
regarding one construction as diametrically opposed to the other. Perhaps the “mystery of
life and its arts” is the mystery Ruskin’s theory cannot completely penetrate: he believes
the “r ” author/artist or tlmt artist’s own concept of self lies within the work, but cannot

get past the symbolic author concept constructed by the critic.

39

Matthew Arnold: Creating the Culture of the Disinterested Self

Matthew Arnold, in the 1853 preface to his Poems, laments the disappearance of

“the disinterested objectivity” existing in “early Greek” artistry (172). Amold’s approach
to aesthetic theory depends a great deal on this concept of disinterest. Arnold was
reluctant to address his own subjectivism and acknowledge the singularity of his personal
critical perspective because he thought he could flee himself of it. Arnold perceived
himself ideally demonstrating disinterestedness “[b]y keeping aloof flom what is called
‘the practical view of things’; by resohrtely following the law of [criticism’s] own nature,
which is to be a flee play of the mind on all subjects which it touches” (“Function” 326).
As Bruce Bashford explains, “Disinterestedness is a fleedomfiom”-not of- “something:
it describes a precondition for exerting a power, rather than the exertion itself, [a]nd the
actual exercise of the critical power, as Arnold presents it, is not obviously flee” (204). In
other words, disinterest is a reactionary semblance of escape flom subjective individualism
rather than an absence of that subjectivity. Arnold presents this as if by recognizing the
problem of subjectivity through admission of it, he has absolved himself flom it and no
longer should have to deal with it. However, as Mark Jones notes, there is “strain of
Romantic irony” in this concept: like Wordsworth and the other Romantics Arnold
positions hirnselfagainst in a reactionary stance, he

occupies the foreground, not just admitting but proclaiming the

subjectivity problem. But insofar as such self-foregrounding enables

the writer to continue to pronounce on the world, it is in effect merely

an alternate way of attempting to overcome subjectivity. (79)
However, Arnold’s goal was ultimately to demonstrate that his “pronouncements on the
worl ” could and should be shared by others; for, in this sharing, he hoped to erase the
subjectivity problem as well. Arnold worked with the presumption that an artist (and
likewise the critic) could dissociate himself flom the historicity of transitory political and

40

social issues and even his own likes and dislikes in the name of intellectual objectivity in
order to work towards establishing an objective and ahistorical literary tradition. This
seems adjacent to Ruskin’s approach which took both the historical and ahistorical
elements of artistic production and interpretation into consideration. Consequently,
Amold’s approach assumes a much greater similarity of perspective between critic and
critic, and artist and critic, as if artistic and critical perspective is collectively constructed.
In addition, Arnold’s “disinterested” approach calls for subsequent discussion on
his assumption that all works of art are a form of mimesis, or verisimilitude.4 Mimetic art
relies heavily on the perception of the reader or beholder as key in determining the
qualities that make it, indeed, “mimetic.” For Arnold, then, art and its criticism should
capture, with an almost scientific precision, the reality of human experience objectively
rather than subjectively. In many respects this is a version of the Ruskinian camera Iucida
in that Arnold seeks to produce texts that act as a lens projecting a precisely accurate
image of human experience, but Amold’s critical camera seems to project a virtual—or
“verisimilar”-reality rather than an actual reality. In his essay, “Literature and Science,”
Arnold even goes as far as to place the study of art and literature, or the belles lettres,
alongside the natural sciences; as he explains, “[A]ll learning is scientific which is
systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources” (459). Therefore, Arnold
seeks to create an aesthetic paradigm which would allow a critic to systematically evaluate
art by finding “its original sources”-its meaning, or the definite signified for the artistic
and/or literary signifiers being observed. The artist/critic should understand that “[t]he

 

41A. Cuddon, in his Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Ihemy, initially defines
“rnimesis” as “representation,” only to refer the reader to his definition of verisimilitude,
which reads as follows: “Likeness to the truth, and therefore the appearance of being true
or real even when fantastic” or fictional, as fantasy/fiction “is, or should be, rooted in
reality” (1022-3). It depends “as nurch on the reader’s knowledge, intelligence and
experience...» upon the writer’s use of those same resources (1023). This seems, to me,
to summarize Amold’s working assumption quite well.

41

appeal, in the study of nature, is constantly to observation and experiment; not only is it
said that the thing is so, but we can be made to see that it is so” (Arnold, “Science” 462).
Here it seems that Arnold divides the labor of conveying and discerning meaning between
author/artist and critic: it is the former’s duty to convey meaning in a way that facilitates

' the latter’s duty to discern it. Furthermore, the meaning conveyed and the meaning
discerned will be the same for the creator and critic, who both share the same creative and
cognitive powers.

In addition, we must also consider the problems inherent in Arnold’s assumptions
about unity as they relate to our previous discussions of zeitgeist. In order to mimetically
represent human experience consistently in any given work of art,5 one must believe in
sonre sort of standard as to what that human expmience is. This would seem dictated by
history, meaning an objective historical tradition or “state of being,” thus, limiting the
knowledge that he insists we should find “naturally agreeable.” Equally notable is
Amold’s use of the words imitation and representation as potential synonyms for art
and/or literature, as an inritation generally lacks all the qualities of the genuine article and,
likewise, a representation serves as a comparable but not equal proxy, recalling the
problems of misrepresentational language occurring not only in Sartor but in Ruskin’s
works as well. This contorts and problematizes Arnold’s overall endeavor to remedy art
that “is vaguely conceived and loosely drawn;. . .representation[s] which [are] general,
indeterminate, and faint, instead of being particular, precise, and firm” (“Preface,” 172).
Arguably, the quest for objectivity—at least for the critic-would lead one into constructing
meanings that become relatively “general, indeterminate, and faint,” as the most

 

5More specifically, in the “Preface,” Arnold states: “The representation of...a man’s
feelings must be interesting, if consistently drawn. We all naturally take pleasure, says
Aristotle, in any imitation or representation whatever: this is the basis for our love of
poetry; and we take pleasure in them, he adds, because all knowledge is naturally
agreeable to us” (172). What Arnold finds interesting is truth in verisimilitude, because it
suggests stability of meaning, and such confirmation to him is pleasurable knowledge.

42

“particular, precise, and firm” constructions of meaning—meanings that “inspirit and
rejoice the reader” as Arnold insists (op. cit. )-are tinged with individual subjectivity.

Arnold, though, finds the polyphonic nature of the individual act of constructing
meaning, and the phrrality that necessarily follows subjectivity, a source of artistic and
critical distress: “The confirsion of the present times is great, the multitude of voices
counselling different things bewildering. . . .” (“Preface,” 178). Yet Arnold concurrently
celebrates the power of the individual artist, stating in “The Function of Criticism at the
Present Time” that “[t]he critical power is of lower rank than the creative,” though he is
quick to add that “it is undeniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this
fleecreafiveacfivitymotherwaysthanmproducinggreatworksoflneratumand
art”(318)-meaning, through criticism. But how much fleedom of “creative activity” does
Arnold really allow the critic? And does he allow more fleedom of creation to the artist
than the critic?

By assigning primacy to the artist’s presence and intent within the artwork, Arnold
intimates that criticism becomes a sharing of the artist’s genius, which “does not
principally show itself in discovering new ideas;” rather, the work itself demonstrates the
artist’s genius “of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery” (“Function”
319). It becomes the critic’s duty to passively show how the artist—within the
work-synthesizes and exposits meaning and nun’s “nature.” As Mark Jones observes,
such “passiveness betokens a communal world, and a certain bondage within it” (73).
Tlrusit seems Amoldportraysanaestheticrealminwhich, inthecomrnunalarenaof
artists and critics, the artist actively produces genius that the critic passively accepts. Yet
it seems that “analysis and discovery”-which are interpretive acts-Arnold insists artists
shy away flom are very much present, inasmuch as he celebrates the “interpretative
power” found in works of art (specifically poetry) themselves, but not in the critic. Arnold

pointedly declares:

43

The grand power of poetry is in its interpretative power; by which I mean,
not a power of drawing out in black and white an explanation of the
mystery of the universe, but the power of so dealing with things as to
awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of
our relations with them. (“Gue’rin” 54)
Here “interpretative power” is a conjoining of the critical and the creative. By placing
critical power in an uneasy equilibrium with the creative, it would follow that the critic is
capable of placing the same “interpretative power” into critical works as the artist/author
places in his work. This endangers the premise of critical disinterestedness by describing
creatively-empowered criticism as an act of‘ ee” creation, which is arguably a subjective
treatment of the supposedly “objective” knowledge of “the universe” treated in an artistic
work. The artist renders his interpretation of knowledge subjectively, and the critic does
the same in turn. “[S]ubjective creativity betokens personal power and fleedom, but also
isolation” (Jones 73), and the creator only has power and fleedom within his solipsistic
space. Likewise, even if the critic portrays himself acting as a camera Iucida passively
projecting how another person (the artist/author) “dealt with things” in his work, the critic
is still acting as a filter; his subjectivities, his individual limitations, cannot be avoided.
Nevertheless, Mark Jones advises us that Amold’s project of disinterestedness
should be considered for its “pragmatic function as necessary fictions, self-encouraging
self-delusions” (95). Arnold needed to use the concept of disinterest as the talisman to
guide him toward “[t]he grail of theory,” which is “the neutral judgment or the absolute
standard” (Jones 88) by which to judge art and literature. Yet, as Stanley Fish reminds us,
“there is no ‘universal perspective of an interest (no interest) that is identified with no one
in particular and therefore serves everyone in general’” (qtd. by Jones, 86): “every judge
or standard we employ is contaminated by the fact that we employ it and deem it fit flom
our own ineluctible situations and interests” (Jones 88-9). For Arnold specifically, his
attempt to find the neutral, absolute standard referents and signifiers for an equally neutral
44

and absolute signified through analysis, discovery and synthesis and exposition serves his
own interests. Analysis and discovery—the work of the critic-is highly subjective,
whereas “synthesis and exposition” of ideas which are not new, but omnipresent and
collective, is more objective-and, for Arnold as critic, more desirable. We must always
keep in mind, though, that to “see things as they really are,” in a sense, is to see things as
Arnold himself sees them.

Arnold seems to be applying a version of Ruskin’s principle of the “Ideas of
Relation” to artistic creation while removing it flom the critical enterprise without
thoroughly explaining why he creates such a dichotomy between objective artistry and
subjective criticism. Timothy Peltason describes Amold’s criticism as “at once a
succession of exact judgments and observations and an allegory of the critic’s own mind”
(752), most likely because Arnold demonstrates constant awareness of the difl‘erences
between the qualities of an external artistic object and how they figure into the internal
mental processes of the perceiving subject. But “[t]his combination,” Peltason asserts,
“evaporates the opposition between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ on which Arnold’s
criticism first seems to depend, and unite[s] him with...a modernism for which ‘realism’ is
an inevitable, if also an adequate, label” (op. cit. ), for the reason that “[t]he apparent
esserrtialism of Amold’s position, with its reference to the fixed We of the object ‘in
itself and its...stress upon the ‘ideas’ that literary works hold in readiness...is belied and
counterbalanced by another emphasis in his writings, on process and on particularity’ ’
(ibid. 750). One must also realize, though, that the “real” for Arnold is rhetorically
devised and maintained: “[Rlather than conceiving of knowledge as a flee-standing and
correct representation of the world, rhetoric sees knowledge as sustained by human
powers of thought and expression” (Bashford 207). By doing so, Arnold implicitly
acknowledges that “reality,” or the absolute truth, is constructed through a perpetually
evolving process, and on a somewhat limited and individual basis. Despite this implicit

45

admission, however, he fails to explicitly acknowledge the subjectivity of such an
approach.

As he persistently insists that “the sense of creative activity belongs only to
genuine creation” (“Function” 338), and “genuine creation” is the domain of the artist,
Arnold must also insist that the artist is responsible for the creation of meaning. It follows
then, that there is one, inherent, stable meaning in a given work that the critic can and
should objectively be able to discern. Once again, the belief in the stable artist and stable
meaning within a work brings us back to the ever-present concept of the zeitgeist. As
Starzyk notes,

As the primary requisite of great art, Amold.. .recognized the need to

understand and express the zeitgeist. It is necessary, as Arnold points out,

that the poet must first begin with an idea of the world in order not to be

prevailed by the world’s [subjective] multitudinousness. (174)
The “multitudinousness” Arnold finds in his “modern times” consists of “an immense
system of institutions, established facts, accredited dogmas, customs, rules, which have
come to them flom times not modern” (“Heine” 96-7). This system is a collection of
traditions that paradoxically both exhibits and obfuscates the all-irnportarrt ahistorical “idea
of the worl ” Arnold seeks. “In this system,” Arnold continues, “their life has to be
carried forward; yet they have a sense that this system is not of their own creation, that it
by no means corresponds exactly with the wants of their actual life, that for them, it is
customary, not rational” (ibid 98). This is another incarnation of the zeitgeist, or the
influence and intrusion of the past into the present. The zeitgeist holds that all important
primary or absolute idea, though encoded in signifiers flom previous historical moments
that do not adequately convey meaning in Amold’s “modern” context. Thus, progress and
change is needed in order to recontextualize and thus historicize this otherwise ahistorical
“idea of the world”; so Arnold suggests that traditional expressions should be reevaluated
and reconfigured in order to serve contemporary life. In short, this is a complex and

46

problematic process of recognizing an ahistorical or timeless standard in order to
historicize it and make it temporal.

Yet, at the same time, Arnold himself notes that, “the elements with which the
creative power works are ideas; the best ideas, on every matter which literature”-and,
comparably, all other forms of art— “touches, current at the time” (Arnold, “Function”
319, italics in original). This suggests that perhaps these ‘ideas of the world” contained in
the zeitgeist are just as historically malleable and impermanent as the means of
representing them, after all. Arnold further says, “for the creation of a master-work of
literature [to take place] two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of
the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment” (op. cit.) The “power of
the moment” refers to the historical moment, created within a context reflective of the
artist’s own subjectivity, and this suggests that neither artist nor critic—and therefore any
work either produces-can be separated flom its context. So, as it was for Carlyle and
Ruskin, Amold’s zeitgeist, whether he fully recognizes it or not, is a mixture of the
historical and the ahistorical, the subjective and the objective.

Arnold developed his theory in accordance with his desire to understand zeitgeist
as more than the history of human limitation and subjectivity, to “circumvent. . .the problem
of historical change” by locating what he calls “the elementary part of our nature’”
(Carroll 10). Rather than maintaining the Romantic notion that “the elementary part of
our natme” is primal or in some way animalistic, Arnold declares it to be the desire for a
civilized, learned society. Accordingly, Arnold’s zeitgeist becomes culture, ‘Vvhich is the
study of perfection [that] leads us... to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious
perfection, developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, developing
all parts of a society” (Culture 8). This should recall Teufelsdrockh’s reassessment of
“natural man” and “social man,” bhming the Romantic divisions between the two;
meaning, more specifically to Arnold “natural man” is “social man” and civilization, or the
culture that is social organization, is man’s “natural state.” Arnold sees human

47

development of society and culture as a natural inclination toward perfection. Moreover,
studying “perfection”-or, rather, the human process of striving to achieve perfection-
entails a reconstruction of history, in that human history needs to be understood as an
ongoing and infinite progress toward perfection. This is explained more succinctly in the
words of Joseph Carroll, as he contends that Amold’s concept of culture
imposes on Arnold the task of reshaping history in some meaningful
fashion, neither arbitrary and fantastic nor nihilistic and inhumane. His
comparative critical method itself implies that there is some law of unity
binding all the phases of “the collective life of humanity,” and his dictum
that humanity has an invincible tendency to develop implicitly presupposes
a rationale for the course of civilization. (46)
As with Ruskin, Amold’s works do not demonstrate any explicit knowledge of or
reference to those of Hegel, but Amold’s concept of culture is actually a somewhat
Hegelian concept. Hegel’s version of zeitgeist is the “Absolute. . .urriversal Mind or Spirit”
that drives “[a]ll of nature’s processes and all of history, including man’s intellectual [and]
cultural ...development” toward “the Absolute’s [evolutionary] quest for self-revelation”
(Tamas 380-1). In the Hegelian paradigm, though, the infinite possibilities of
self-revelation are reserved for the Absolute, rather than in human development; Hegel’s
zeitgeist does not seem to leave much room for human revelation, implying that the human
mind is too limited to fathom such revelation. Therefore, Amold’s task is “to render
historical change concordant with rationalist universalism. . .[by] rejecting the Romantic
assumption that ‘the All’ is a formless infinity inaccessible to the divisive analytical
categories of the mind” (Carroll 75).

Whereas Ruskin’s application of the zeitgeist suggests that it is a counterbalancing,
dialectical conceptual tool, Amold’s zeitgeist takes on godlike properties of perfection,
not to mention the ability to catalyze and give meaning to creation and progress, thus
becomingthebeliefonwhichheestablisheshisfaith. Arnoldmayclaimthat‘human

48

sensation and sentiment derive flom a nature greater and more permanent than the
individual sell” (ibid 14), but one must be careful not to immediately identify Amold’s
belief in an Absolute as belief in an all-controlling, onmipotent God. Amold’s symbolic
“God”-or ultimate meaning, ultimate objectivity- “is himself both the abstract ideal of
perfect being and knowing. . .and also the historical process through which humanity
advances in pursuit of this ideal” (Carroll 77). And both the abstract ideal and the
historical process are created not by an “Absolute,” but by man himself. As Arnold
declares in “Literature and Science,” “everyone knows how we seek naturally to combine
the pieces of our knowledge together, to bring them under general rules, to relate than to
principles... .” (463). Thus we can conclude that, in Hegelian dialectic spirit, Arnold
admits that absolute, objective ideals exist because human individuals create them
subjectively and mentally place them outside themselves, or decide to consider them
“external” to themselves; and consequently Arnold proceeds to consider those ideals as
external and objective.

For this reason, many critics, including Bashford, write about the humanistic
quality of Amold’s approach to criticism and aesthetic theory. For my purposes here, I
find it necessary only to identify Arnold as humanistic in that he considered art, literature
and criticism a civilizing influence capable of “mak[ing] man realize his potential. . .and to
reduce the discrepancy between potentiality and attainment” (Cuddon 43 2). Furthermore,
as Bashford illustrates, Arnold’s critical and theoretical work “focuses on human powers
or abilities. . .including the abilities to express and understand thoughts and feelings. . .and to
discriminate values....[in order to] confer a certain character on our experience in the
world” (197). Arnold subsequently establishes a humanistic “religion” of culture as
represented in its literature. Just as members of a traditional religious congregation
theoretically need to harmonize their beliefs, the congregation of artists, writers and critics
of Amold’s “religion of culture,” self-empower themselves collectively to construct
knowledge and meaning. By “[flollowing our instinct for intellect and knowledge,”

49

Arnold explains, ‘Vve acquire pieces of knowledge; and presently, in the generality of men,
there arises the desire to relate these pieces of knowledge to our sense of conduct, to our
sense of beauty” (“Science” 463). This “sense” of conduct and beauty seems a rather
static principle ascribed to the zeitgeist, an ideal of perfection that allows one to make
“criticisms of the existing order of things,” although such “suggestions for their correction
proceed invariably flour a recognition of attitudes or material conditions that impede the
realization of this ideal” (Carroll 62-3). To sidestep this impediment, Arnold ascribes a
kinetic quality to the zeitgeist of “the art and poetry and eloquence of men who lived,
perhaps, long ago” so that it “[has] also the power. . .capable of wonderfully helping us to
relate” the works of the present to the tradition-establishing ones of the past (“Science”
468). This only serves to problematize Amold’s concept of the ideal, though, in that
establishing comparative relationships between the ideal texts and works of the past and
those of the present “suggests that value and meaning are always difl‘erential,” as
comparative relationships more often emphasize difference over similarity (Peltason 761).
And Arnold must cling to any established similarities between past and present works of
art and literature in order to make the zeitgeist an aesthetic platform to unify artist and
critic, works of art with the critical and theoretical study of art, by claiming that the artist
and critic/theorist both share the same kind of relationship with the traditions of the past.
Out of necessity, he generalizes the definition of zeitgeist to the point where it can be
defined as something all-inclusive. Thus Amold’s zeitgeist becomes not only a unifying
concept but an Establishment, as perfection comes flom “men who either belong to
Establishments or have been trained in them” (Culture 9-10).

Establishments call for moderation, or a tempering of individualistic impulse.
Arnold’s zeitgeist Establishment counterbalances, to once again borrow Starzyk’s
terminology, a metaphysics of being with a metaphysics of becoming. On one hand,

Arnold notes that “Establishments tend to give us a sense of a historical life of the human
Spirit, outside and beyond our own fancies and feelings”-indicating a concept of history as
50

stable, finite, and unchangeable as one cannot change that which has always
occurred-meanwhile adding that Establishments “thus tend to suggest new sides and
sympathies in us to cultivate” as well (Culture 15), indicating the change and perhaps
uncertainty associated with acts of “becorrring.” By Amold’s logic, then, believing in and
perhaps even worshipping culture, the conceptually-embodied zeitgeist, leads one “to see
things as they really are” (Culture 22), to recognize culture as a dynamic act of becoming
that should result in the static repose of being. The dynamism, or “flexibility,” Arnold
attributes to culture recalls a Ruskinian sense of zeitgeist, but Amold’s version is much
less Hegelian in nature.

With the idea of an establishment comes the subtle connotation of completion and
finality which, analogously, must be transferred to Amold’s ideas of the established
author/artist in a given work. Arnold, seeing a completed literary text, sees the
author—or, the author’s concept of self—as existing in a static repose of being within that
given text, the end result of the author’s dynamic act of becoming. Here Arnold
establishes a Ruskinian “concourse of the Dead,” in which the static author within the text
is displaced flom history and the passage of time. Amold’s version of the “concourse of
the Dead” is an artistic and literary aristocracy—as “[a]ristocracies are, as such, naturally
impenetrable by ideas” that bring change (Arnold, “Heine” 108)-inhabited by “the
unapproached masters of the grand style” (Arnold, ‘ eface” 175). These grand stylists
“deliver [themselves] flom the jargon of modern criticism, and escape the danger of
producing. . .works conceived in the spirit of the passing time”-the historical moment-
“and which partake of its transitoriness” (Arnold, “Preface” 181). Paradoxically, Arnold
also claims that a grand stylist creates works in which the critic/reader can “feel. . .the
power of modern ideas” (“Heine” 106), especially since “modernity” is such a transitory
concept. This appears to contradict the advice of Maurice de Gue’rin, which Arnold
adheres to in his essay on de Guerin: “Study...language by attentive reading, making it
your care to remark constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of style, but without

5 1

ever adopting the manner of any master. In the works of these masters we must learn our
language, but we must use it each in our own fashion” (qtd. by Arnold, “Guérin” 61).

This implies that one never does escape one’s historical moment, that works of art and the
ideas they contain may never be completely ahistorical. Arnold, though, seems to interpret
this as indicating that the methods of the artistic and literary “masters” are products of
their historical concept though the meaning behind their methods are not restricted by such
temporal construction.

Oddly enough, as Eugene Goodheart points out, “Arnold avoids the perception of
self-contradiction in his work” (86). Belief in stable, finite meaning would arguably
suggest belief in a correlating concept of a “best self’ that he would like to believe is a
unitary, rather than a shifting, self; and, though Arnold insists on finding the definitive
author-concept in a text, he scarcely addresses the best self/everyday self dichotomy in
relation to the author-concept. In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold differentiates between the
two versions of the self-concept: “By our everyday selves. . .we are separate, personal, at
war....But by our best selfwe are united, impersonal, at harrnonymand this is the very self
which culture, or the study of perfection, seeks to develop in us” (64). He acknowledges
theshiflthathe cannotseemtounify. Ononeharrd, Arnold esteenrs artistsandauthors
for being “great men of culture” able to transmit “the best knowledge [and] the best ideas
of their time” through their artistry (Culture 48). Yet, simultaneously, if we consider
Arnold’s use of Montesquieu’s idea that one approaches and studies art out of “the desire
to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being more
intelligent” (qtd. by Arnold, Culture 30), it seems that Arnold approaches literature to find
the author—the figure of the “great man of culture”-and make that author-concept his
(Amold’s) mirror image. As a critic he is facing, though contestably ignoring, the problem
faced by the editor in Sartor Resartus. namely, that the instability and flagmentation of the
self-concept evidences itself through the realization that the reader constructs the
author-concept. This firrther recalls the apparent doubling of the editor and Teufelsdrockh

52

in Sartor also, the argument that by looking for the author’s self-concept within a text one
actually looks for himself, to “augment his own excellence.”

Once again, we must call into question the typically Arnoldian concept of
disinterest, too. Ifone approaches an artwork to discover the artist-concept (and how the
artist conceptualized himself) objectively, the concurrent desire to ascertain and develop
one’s own self-concept—and the connection existing between artist and critic lies in the
zeitgeistuseems highly subjective, and discordant with Amold’s disinterested philosophy.
The inevitable emphasis on subjectivity suggests that the factor of unknowability
problematizes the attempt to establish objectivity: because the inability to firlly represent
the signified must always come into play, any attempt to compensate for that
unknowability requires subjective “guessw ” on the critic’s behalf. One must revert
back to the problematic caused by historical residue. Ifwe are to believe Eugene
Goodheart when he says that, unlike Ruskin, “Arnold failed to rmderstand the power of
the symbol”-or, in our case, language-“at the historical moment when it was both fact
and symbol—that is, symbolic without being fictive” (90-1), then we must consider that
Arnold never quite accounted for the factor of unknowability, or “the limits of our access
to the past and its representability” (Rigney 341) as Ruskin did. Similarly, if the zeitgeist
is the crucial link between artist and critic-that which allows the critic to ascertain the
artist within the artwork—then the limits of represerrtability and knowability hrrking in the
zeitgeist 's residue arguably cause fragmentation and separation between artist and critic,
critic and text, and perhaps even the artist and his own artwork. Furthermore, I contend
that Arnold failed to understand the limitations of the signifier within the historical
moment (or zeitgeist) because of its inescapably fictive nature; considering, of course, the
struggle of Sartor Resartus’s editor discovering the fictiveness of the various
representations of Teufelsdrbckh and the catachretic, subjective nature such fictiveness

brings to the use of symbolic representation.

53

Walter Pater: Theorizing the Aesthetic Mythos

Somewhat like Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean
serves as a mythic bildungsroman of the conring of age of an aesthetic theorist who, in
turn, is the embodiment of the theory he comes to profess. Like Sartor 's editor, who must
emerge himself in the contemplation of Professor Teufelsdrbckh’s line of Romanticism in
order to reconcile it with the strains of skepticism and self-doubt fostered by the emerging
sense of Modernism, the distant and equally nameless narrator of Marius incamates the
desire to incorporate the aesthetic lessons of the past in the context of the present. In
Pater’s novel, past and present converge within the narrator’s several interpretive
intrusions into Marius’s biography. As William Shuter notes, “These intrusions [of
‘historical glosses and explanations’]. . .disrupt any illusion of immediacy by drawing
attention to the historical distance that separates the narrator and the reader flom the
novel’s subject and they uncover the mechanisms by which the narrator has accomplished
his historical reconstruction” (30). This is a crucial observation on Pater’s work, in that
the text itself seems more concerned with using Marius as a personified conduit through
which one can explore textual mechanisms of interpretation and the construction of
meaning in terms of a historical aesthetic tradition than with the development of Marius as
an individual character.

Because the structure of the novel purposely calls attention to the inevitability of
interpretive distance between the historian/historical critic and history, one must again
reconsider the notion of zeitgeist, this time as explored somewhat contradictorily in
Pater’s other works, in order to firlly discern the progress of the aesthetic theorist that
Marius represents. In fact, Pater seems unable to maintain a single definition or
understanding of zeitgeist, which is not in itself uncommon or even problematic, inasmuch
as Carlyle, Ruskin and Arnold incorporate a broadly pluralized and abstract understanding

54

of zeitgeist in their respective works. RT. Lenaghan goes as far as to declare that Pater’s
works read “almost. . .as a series of essays examining difl‘erent zeitgeists” (qtd. by Moran,
170). Indeed, Pater’s works collectively suggest a greater, if not more theoretically
complex, Hegelian understanding of zeitgeist than is explored in Carlyle’s Sartor, and he
further elaborates the reconfigurations of zeitgeist presented in the works of Ruskin and
Arnold. Pater conceived zeitgeist to be chaotically kinetic in both the cyclical construction
promoted by Carlyle as well as the more linear construction designed by Ruskin, while
maintaining the quality of stabilized tension that Arnold attributed to his version.

Gerald Monsman astutely observes that an understanding of Pater’s aesthetics
ultimately depends on differentiating between ideology and mythos (19). In this case, we
must define ideology as the subjective and impermanent body of ideas, doctrines, and
beliefs reflecting the needs and aspirations of an individual or a group of individuals that is
subject to constant change through human progress. Because ideology is subject to
constant change inasmuch as it evolves through a series of mutations and eventually falls
out of fashion, ideologies of the past are never completely accessible. Mythos, though,
must be understood as a consistent pattern of universal, intrinsic basic values and attitudes
shared by humanity throughout the ages, and it thus creates stable and concrete meanings
to correspond with symbols and signifiers, always accessible in any time. Consequently,
Pater regards the traditions perpetuated in and by the zeitgeist to operate on a mythic
rather than an ideological level, especially as he relies on the perpetually universal qualities
of mythos to serve as the enduringly stabilizing center around which “that nimbly-shifling
T ime-Spirit, or Zeit-geist. . .which is always modifying men’s taste, as it modifies their
manners and their pleasures” (Pater, “Postscript” 55) revolves. Thus Pater presents the
aesthetic theorist (i.e., Marius)-the embodiment of aesthetic theory—as a kind of
neo-Romantic mythic hero. Pater fashioned the theorist mythically rather than
ideologically so tint his recognition of the universality of mythic pattern in art and
literature allows him to “mediate between time and eternity, bringing renewed life to those

55

around him through his powers of synthesis” (Monsman 39). Synthesis is itself an act of
interpretation, and thus a subjective act wholly dependent on the individual’s perception;
as Maureen Moran reminds us, mythos “ascrib[es] shape, explanation, or meaning to
diverse, inchoate experiences, intuitions and feelings” (172-3). And critical interpretation
always incorporates an ideological context which displays itself subconsciously even if the
critic makes a conscious efl’ort to avoid it. Therefore, Pater, while presenting the theorist
asbeingboththeincarnationofhis ownageaswellasthereincarnationofagespastin
order to circumvent his contemporary ideologies, may ascribe to him the gilt of an
uncanny vision which pierces through the obfirscating layers of progress in order to clearly
see the connections between past and present, but that gift of vision proves itself subjected
to the relativity of ideological perspective nonetheless. The result of this endeavor is an
aesthetic theory that “construct[s] a new reading of the modern temper

but. . .deconstruct[s] the ‘myth’ of interpretation and den[ies] the possibility of a stable,
identifiable meaning” (Moran 173).

Pater found the popular art and literary criticism of his time errant in its
assumption that all works were “but translations...of one and the same fixed quantity of
imaginative thought” (“Giorgione” 43) embodied in a zeitgeist that sets the parameters for
not only the subject matter of art but also the methods of presentation. Pater seems to
adhere to this conception of zeitgeist when he declares that “[o]ne of the functions of
aesthetic criticism is to define these limitations; to estimate the degree in which a given
work of art fulfills its responsibilities to its special material” (op. cit.) Yet simultaneously
he wants to define these limitations in order to reinvent and possibly transcend them,
believing that even a zeitgeist limited to the perpetuation of stabilized mythic patterns of
creating meaning-the correspondence of the “special material” of a work to the essence of
‘true’ meaning of any and all symbolic representations - must permit those patterns to be
perceived difl‘erently than they had been in the past and accordingly evolve in order to
remain cogent and useful to both artist and critic. Here Pater allows for difl’erences in

S6

perception where his predecessors and contemporaries could not. Notwithstanding the
idea of the “spectral essence” of truth underlying all, Pater, unlike Carlyle, Ruskin and
Arnold, does not use the concept of zeitgeist to mandate that there is a standard
evaluation and interpretation of art that all nrust follow in order to truly conrprehend art
and/or create “good” art. Instead, Pater desires deviation and individualism. Art strives
“to become a matter of pure perception” in that it is only “valuable and justly attractive” in
correlation to how it is clothed in “the fashion of a time, which elevates the trivialities of
speech, and manner, and dress, into ‘ends in themselves,’ and gives them a mysterious
grace and attractiveness in the doing of them” (“Giorgione” 47). As does Carlyle through
the character of Teufelsdrockh, Pater recognizes that meaning is continually clothed and
reclothed according to the “changing conception of [a specific culture or era’s] own
experience” (Moran 17 5) as well as a changing conception of the past in relation to the
context of the present. Unlike Carlyle’s theorist, though, Pater questions the conception
of meaning itself. Whereas Carlyle’s (as well as Ruskin and Arnold’s) zeitgeist contains
meaning, established by some force beyond man, which transcended trivialities of
particularity, Pater’s zeitgeist appears to be, in part, an efiuvial collection of all the
man-nrade individualisms— the trivialities of particularity, or the fashions of each particular
time or previous epoch, that both make meaning and change the ways in which meaning is
derived.

In his essay on Coleridge, for example, Pater proclaims that the critic should
discern meaning flom a work by evaluating “its connexion with the intellectual and
spiritual condition of its age” (17), rather than its connexion with the intellectual and
spiritual condition of the zeitgeist at large; insisting it is “the character of the [particular]
age” which influences artist and critic through “the medium of language and ideas” (2).
Yet, if neither the artist nor the critic controls the language and ideas belonging to the
“character of the age,” then neither artist nor critic can be responsible for creating the
character of that age. It has to have been generated by or evolved flom the character of a

57

previous age. In this way, Pater implicitly defines the “particular character” of the given
age as something corresponding to the general character of all ages, calling into question
his view of the role of originality and individualism in the evohrtion of conceptualized
meaning. To put it more simply, if the individual cannot control the language and ideas
corresponding to meaning, the individual instead uses the language and ideas made
available to him to discover and discern that meaning that precedes language and idea and
that has, in essence, created tlmt language and these ideas. Thus, in more Carlylean terms,
the individual rearranges or reevaluates these given ideas in the language made available to
him in order to redress, or “re-clothe,” the ideas recycled in the zeitgeist. Language may
“possess. . .a genius, a very fastidious genius, of its own” which “change[s] along with the
changing thoughts of living people” (Pater, “Style” 66), but it is a veiled and limited form
of expression in that it must correspond to absohrte meaning. Pater “held that within the
shifting fabric of the sensuous veil itself...there can be discerned the eternal outline of the
Absolute” (Monsman 6).

This brings us back to the initial Neoplatonic subject/object dichotomy that all
versions of Victorian aesthetic theory painstakingly try to address. Pater equates this
dichotomy to the two dichotomous tendencies that have always existed in the history of
art and literature: the Romantic and the Classical (“Postscript” 48). Criticism in the
Romantic vein celebrates the “strangeness of beauty,” thus making “the desire for beauty”
a “fixed element in every artistic organisation”; the Classical defines “qualities of measure,
purity, [and] temperance” for artistic excellence (ibid 50). The Romantic and the
Classical always have a dialectical relationship with each other: the Classical presents an
authoritative and stabilized prescription for the creation and contemplation of a work of
art, and lends that stability to the Romantic tendency in order for beauty to become any
sort of fixed element in aesthetic criticism, and the Romantic lends to the Classical the
recognition and acceptance 0 “strangeness,” or individuality. Monsman calls this the
dialectic of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in Pater’s aesthetics, in which the

S8

centrifugal Romanticism that “derives its energy and strength flom some inward source
and is subjective in nature” eternally intertwines with the centripetal Classicism
“[un]related to the revolutionary, individualistic world of romanticism, but belong[ing] to
a fixed world of the type,” characteristically more objective, that “tends instead to be
authoritative” (10). “Because romanticism is always transforming itself into its opposite,
classicism, and because classicisrn constantly needs the rejuvenating touch of romanticism,
these tendencies seem to alternate in periods” (Monsman 11) and thus the dialectic
continually exists in motion.

When defined in this manner, Pater’s dialectical aesthetic theory appears to involve
the assumption that the zeitgeist is cyclical, as it repetitively alternates periods of
Romanticism and Classicism as well as maintains the “fixed world of the type,” or the
standard repetition of the mythical/historical archetypes, throughout history. Interestingly
enough, though, the seeming simplicity of this cyclical structure can be complexified by a
careful consideration of Monsman’s word choices in his definition of Pater’s theoretical
construct. He notably describes Romanticism-or the centrifugal tendency-ms both
“rejuvenating” and “transforming”; moreover inferring that as Romanticism has the ability
to “transform” itself into Classicism, Romanticism becomes a transformed kind of
Classicism difl‘erent than the last because its “rejuvenating” touch brings a kind of new,
inspired life to Classicisrn’s previously used, fixed types. In this rejuvenation, “[w]hat is
lost in precision of form is gained in intricacy of expression” (Pater, “Coleridge” 4), or
individualized style. Still, with Classicism one cannot ignore the belief in one eternal form
of meaning flom which all fornrs of imaginative expressions of meaning are derived. Like
Ruskin, Pater maintains that imaginative expressions are “intuitive grasp[s]. . .of the essence
of an object” emanating flom the “indwelling principle” that “leaves its trace in metaphors,
visual or verbal” (Sawyer 67), just as, Neoplatonically, imaginative expressions can be
explained as subjectified emanations flom the objective “First Principle.” However, these

59

subjectified emanations occur with each rebirthing of the cycle, or advent of a new epoch
or historical period; how, then, is change accounted for in Pater’s notion of zeitgeist?
Actually, the idea of change and evolution in human perception perplexed Pater.
On one hand, Pater wanted to acknowledge and celebrate the importance of the individual
genius’ “power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking” manner, yet simultaneously
wanted to limit this individualistic power by imposing upon it “an element of permanence,
a standard of taste which genius confesses” independently of time and place
(“W mckelrnann” 28). Change could not deviate flom the unity which Pater emphasized as
the most important aspect not only of art but of criticism: “All depends upon the original
unity, the vital wholeness and identity, of the initiatory apprehension or view” (“Style”
69). Like his contemporaries, then, Pater still clings to the assumption that the “original
unity” of all art—of all thought-lies in an omniversal zeitgeist; for this assumption provides
him assurance that all artistic, literary and critical endeavors are related to one another and
thus made meaningful. Only in this manner can the critic truly perceive that “[a]ll art
aspires toward the condition of music”-rmrsic being the one form of art which does not
separate matter flom form (Pater, “Winckelrnann” 45), the static flom the kinetic, the
body flom the garment. All “apprehensions or views,” though, especially apprehensions
of change and progress, may be limited to the perceptions possible in a particular time;
but, as that “time is infinitely divisible,” each mode of perception “is infinitely divisible
also” (Pater, “Renaissance” 40). This, though, is problematic in that the zeitgeist does
present limitations which are then compounded with the limitations of the human mind,
“of the individual in his isolation” (op. cit.) So it appears that Pater attempts to “infinitely
divide” something that he previously describes as finite. As a result, one might be tempted
to conclude that his endeavor to make the limited appear unlimited ultimately fails, but
that would be the result of a firihrre to understand the complexity of Pater’s appropriation
of the Hegelian dialectic in his formulation of his theory of the self in relation to the

60

construction of history and zeitgeist—which is, incidentally, the primary concern addressed
in Marius the Epicurean.

As I mentioned earlier, Pater presents Marius as a neo-mythic and somewhat
Byronic hero in that he “is not merely a passive reflection of his intellectual environment”
but “a delineat[ion of] that mythic element in the hero by which he has his ‘own masterful
way with that environment’ and transcends his age” (Monsman 39). Marius portrays the
“mythic element” of Romanticism by adhering to a belief that sense perceptions enable one
to descry a spiritual ideal internalized within the corporeal, and thus allow one to surpass
the idiomatic ideology of one’s peers and produce an “idealogyf’ more attuned to the
essential or supreme design flom which all things originate. And this “idealogy” one
creates is just as applicable in any past or future age. However, the extreme individualism
required of this position tends to decline into what Pater calls in his essay on Coleridge an
“egotisnr,” or form of the self-concept, that “do[es] something with the idea in spite of the
essential nature of the idea” (6), or the ideal. It is an obfuscating manipulation of truth
that renders “all. . .fictitious flom the begimring” (op. cit.) because of its dependence on the
very relativity of perception. The hero relies on his perception of himself as heroic; and,
as mentioned earlier, Pater was quite concerned about the isolating limitations of an
individual’s mind. In Marius, Pater explores this issue with regard to the way
self-perception influences one’s perception of that which exists outside the self. His only
means of allowing Marius to maintain some sort of separation between self-perception and
object-perception, then, is to ascribe to him to the kind of autonomy present in Classicism.
mmMmiusisaRomanficfigmewhonansfomshimselfviamembmceofChssicism
into a theoretically rejuvenated and thus dialectically balanced critic embodying both
tendencies, shifting adeptly between the centrifugal and centripetal forces of the zeitgeist
in order to reconcile the temporal and the atemporal, the historical and the ahistorical.

Before proceeding into the text of Marius itself, I must note here that the reader
must be constantly aware that the narrator presents Marius’s biography in a retrospective

61

style; more specifically, one should always be aware that the narrator’s knowledge of the
result of Marius’s theoretical growth and change influences his presentation of each of
Marius’s incremental steps toward complete transformation into the dialectic.
Furthermore, similar to the textual inter-relationship between the editor and Teufelsdrbckh
in Carlyle’s Sartor, the narrator at times seems to conflate himself with the figure of
Marius sothat itis oflendiflicult to separate Marius’sownrecognitionofhismental
progressions flom the narrator’s interpretation of such. The narrator presumably writes
Marius’s biography as a project of reflective history, which relies on the postulate that the
historian (or, in this case, biographer) is able to relate past events objectively and thus
accurately. However, considering Pater’s extensive use of Hegelian dialectic philosophy6
we must then utilize Hegel’s cautionary stance on historical construction in reading
Marius the Epicurean. Hegel advises a carefirl reader to be wary of conflations between
the writer and his historical subject, as “it oflen happens that the individuality of attitude
thatnmstcharacterizeawriterbelongingtoadifl’erentcultureisnotinaccordwiththe
period; [thus] the spirit of the writer is quite other than that of the times in which he
treats” (“History” 540). However, as Hegel also defines reflective history as “history
whose mode of representation is not really confined by the limits of time to which it
relates, but whose spirit transcends the present” (op. cit. ), Pater’s insistence on the
recognition of mythic pattern in aesthetic criticism seems applicable to our reading, in that
the text asks us to assume that Marius and the narrator can be reasonably conflated by
virtue of sharing what Monsnran calls the same delineation of the mythic element allowing
each character to transcend their respective historical contexts and share a universalized
experience. This rather abstract notion, of course, will become complicated during the

 

6Unlike Ruskin and Arnold, Pater directly addresses Hegel’s texts in his work. Pater
obviously had extensive knowledge of Hegel’s works, and cites Hegel as a great influence
on his own work.

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course of evaluating the text, yet it seems the most reasonable point from which to launch
explication
When the reader first meets Marius, he is a youth living the consummate pastoral
experience typical of most Romantic figures. The narrator notes that, while living simply
and thus close to nature, “[a] sense of conscious powers external to ourselves. . .that
conscience, ...was become in [Marius] a powerful current of feeling and observance” (4).
Marius interprets his own consciousness as manifest in his emotional and sensual cognition
of himselfwithin his environment, as existing correspondingly to an external conscience of
a supreme or essentialist design. At first, this implies that Romanticism is the solid
foundation for Marius’s intellectual maturation; but even in Marius’s earliest stages of
theoretical development, in his most unmitigated adherence to Romanticism, the narrator
intuits that the seeds of Marius’s philosophical discontent are sown. The narrator finds
evidence of this in the very name of Marius’s childhood home— “White-Nights,” a “coy,
retir ” place heavily steeped in memories of the past. The narrator provides a curious
analogy in his explanation of the name’s importance:
‘The red rose came first,’ says a quaint German mystic, speaking of ‘the
mystery of so-called white things,’ as being ‘ever an afterthought—the
doubles, or seconds, of real things, and themselves but half-real, half-
materialuthe white queen, the white witch, the white mass, which. . .is
celebrated by young candidates for the priesthood with an unconsecrated
host, by way of rehearsal’. So, white-nights, I suppose...should be nights
not of quite blank forgetfirlness, but passed in continuous dreaming, only
halfveiled by sleep. (9)
By implying that the red rose is the progenitor of the white, the narrator also implies,
albeit symbolically, that the red rose is the thing-in-itself, idea unified with form/content;
the white rose, subsequently, is a shade, or pale copy, of the original, similar but not the
same. The white rose cannot be “blank forgetfulness” as it retains enough properties that
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it remains relative to the red, but at the same time it is “half veiled,” wearing what the
narrator earlier describes as “the veil of our familiarity with things by no means vulgar’ ’-or
idiomatic- “in themselves” (7). “So-called white things,” then, are the idiomatic forms
thatcarrymeaninginaspecificageorhistoricalcontext.

Since the juvenile Marius lives ‘Vvith the traditions of the past” (15), we must
relate this analogy to Pater’s presentation of history (and the way history is constructed)
within the text. The “traditions of the past” or zeitgeist of which Marius is aware at this
particular time is a collection of ‘Vvhite things” or idiomatic forms; it is not the very
forging of the absolute pattern for human history that Marius reflects upon specifically, but
a wider, more non-specific notion of previous eras. Expressing a Hegelian outlook that
his “culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all events into historical
representations” (“History” 539), fostering a cyclical construction of history, Marius
seems to conclude that, through forging connections between past and present idiomatic
vehicles of meaning, he is able to deduce the true or ideal meaning in the world, or the
“red rose” flom which all "white roses” came, through historical reconstruction. This
idealism is mistaken, the narrator quickly tells us, because Marius is “constructing the
world for himselfin great measure flom within” and producing a ‘Vein of subjective
philosophy, with the individual” rather than any external ideal or thing-in-itself “for its
standard of all things” (15). In short, Marius is reinventing the past to correspond to his
view of the present. Thus Marius nrust reconsider his version of Romanticism to realize
that it is “useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past” because “[t]he pallid
shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and fleedom of the present” (Hegel,
“History” 542)-—or, to use the terminology of the narrator’s analogy, the reconstructions
of the “white things” of the past vainly struggle with those being constructed in the
present.

The catalyst for Marius’s reconsideration of his early Romanticism is the death of
his mother, which “made him a questioner” by turning his “seriousness of feeling into a

64

matter of the intelligence” (26). Plausibly, the bond between Marius and his mother,
being a bond between generations, represented to him a bond between present and past; as
Marius felt adjoined to his mother, he also felt adjoined to the past, as if his individual
identity was in part externally constructed thus producing an individualism not completely
self-centered. As death introduces to Marius the prospect of change, he must now
struggle with reconciling the idea of change with a belief in the cyclical nature of the
world. Recognizing that his senses and emotions had “lent [hirn]self to an imaginative
exaltation of the past,” he begins to explore his capacity for reason in his intellect, which
“suggested the reflection that the present lmd, it might be, really advanced beyond the
past...” (28).
At this pivotal point in the text, the narrator interjects with his own interpretation

of the issues Marius is only beginning to consider, stating:

If, in a voluntary archaism, the polite world of that day went back to a

choicer generation, as it fancied, for the purpose of a fastidious self-

correction, in matters of art, of literature,. . .at least it improved, by a shade

or two of more scrupulous finish, on the oldpattern; and the new era.

might perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a single step onward....in

the consummation of time. (28-9)
This is not quite an abandomnent of a cyclical construction of history, or a reliance on a
cyclical zeitgeist, but brings into question the properties of each repetition of the historical
cycle. Specifically, Pater’s use of the word “shade” recalls the discussion of “so-called
white things” flom the previous chapter. Artistically, “shade” represents difl‘erentiation in
color: for instance, navy and royal are both shades of blue, but are not the same blue, as
they each respectively embody different properties of “blueness.” More philosophically,
then, each historical era is a shade of the cyclical pattern, but each respective era is not the
same; each era embodies difl‘erent properties of the pattem-at-large. As the narrator
suggests that the emergence of difl’erent properties in the reproduction of the historical

65

pattern demonstrates progress, one must difl’erentiate between defining progress as simply
being change, and defining progress as “change as improvement.”

This is firrther complicated when one adds Pater’s use of the phrase
“consunnnation of time” into the consideration of the different versions of the definition of
progress indicated by the text. Consummation suggests unity, but also finalization and
completion, as if time has an end. As I discussed in the chapter on Carlyle, the notion of
zeitgeist itself is a term meant to indicate time; the idea of time itself is constructed to
impose seemingly finite indicators on something that is actually infinite. We nrust impose
limitations of alleged finitude on concepts of infinity in order to comprehend them.
Zeitgeist then can be understood as a finite cycle to contain human progress within the
parameters of our limited abilities of comprehension. As we observed in Ruskin’s work,
when history is envisioned more as a linear continuum than as a repetitive cycle, greater
possibilities for plurality, allowed by a greater recognition of infinity, emerge. In a cyclical
zeitgeist, the “consummation of time” would be the point in the cycle in which the end of
the pattern conjoins with the beginning, and the cycle is reinitiated. But, in a linear
construction, there cannot be a temporal point where progress just stops, as lines extend
themselves infinitely; therefore, any point on a time-line which one would call the
“consummation of time” would be an atemporal construct in which one imposes finality on
something which can never be finalized. This quandary prominently figures into Pater’s
aesthetics because he believes the theorist must formulate a working concept of how
history is constructed in order to ascertain how the individual makes progress in
accordance to the role he plays in recognizing, maintaining, and/or elaborating the
zeitgeist. For this reason, Pater turns to Hegel’s advice to consider history not reflectively
or critically, but philosophically: to undertake the “thoughtful consideration” of the study
and presentation of history itself (“History” 563) and realize that “the history of the
world. . .presents us with a rational process” (ibid. 544). Through establishing the
difference between cognition and intellection, or history as one perceives it to be versus

66

history as it really is, Paton-through Hegel—asserts that once one can discern the process
by which, or the supreme “Reason” why (op. cit. ), history progresses or evolves, one can
explain the role the individual plays in not only the progression of history at large but
specific histories, such as literary or artistic histories. Of course, this all depends on
something similar to Amold’s idea that one can feasibly “see things as they really are.”

This idea is explored in depth in the novel’s extended retelling of the myth of
Cupid and Psyche and the narrator’s ensuing commentary. Monsman considers this the
pimracle moment of the whole text, contending, “The drama, the real action of the novel,
is a duplication of the allegorical and mythical pattern of the quest of Psyche for Cupid,”
as this is the “pattern reflected in Marius’s quest” for truth and meaning (66). Marius
processes the anecdote too early in his theoretical development to provide the critical
climax Monsman suggests, but the reader’s realization that the mythic pattern of heroism
flom which Marius derivates is Psyche’s is indeed pivotal. Like Marius, Psyche
recognizes the obfuscating properties of the veil of familiarity that drapes her environment
and is driven by the desire to discover the concrete material flom which her familiar
abstractions derive; at the same time, though, Psyche is punished with a series of
seemingly impossible trials for her discoveries, and ultimately fails in her final quest. Thus,
to Marius, she represents the possibility that the concrete can be found if one persistently
explores and evaluates the abstract, though her punishment and failure serve as a reminder
that stories can only partially correspond to reality—that Marius, as well as all artists,
critics and theorists he represents, might fail to find true meaning, or to a greater extreme,
that there may not be absolute meaning and constancy in his world to find. And the
possibility of failure becomes increasingly apparent to Marius through his relationship to
Flavian and his flirtation with Flavian’s brand of egocentric Romanticism.

Under Flavian’s influence, Marius takes his quest for meaning to the study of
literature, becoming like Flavian “an ardent, indefatigable student of words, of the means
or instrument of the literary art” (54), in hopes that he will discover in literary art the unity

67

between content and form, subject and object. Flavian figures importantly in Marius’s
development as he embodies a belief in a construction of history as both linear and cyclical
and comprehends himselfas instrumental in both configurations. On one hand, Flavian
adheres to the philosophy of Pliny the Younger, who said, “‘I am one of those who admire
the ancients, yet I do not, like some others, underrate certain instances of genius which
our own times afl‘o ” (55, italics mine). In this case, Flavian suggests that progress is
improvement through the furthering of genius, allowing for separation between the past
and the present. On the other hand, Flavian characterizes his task of genius to be one of
restoration of the old rather than the creation of something new: instead of creating new
meanings for the form of artistic expression, his work is the
disentangling [of words flom] the later associations and going back to the
original and native sense of each—restoring to full significance all its
wealth of latent figurative expression, reviving or replacing its outwom or
tarnished images. . .to re-establish the natural and direct relationship
between thought and expression. . .[to] restore to words their primitive
power. (55)
Flavian’s approach depends on the assumption that language has definite meaning—its
“original and native sense”-rather than associative and arbitrarily designated meaning.
This assumption is problenmtic in and of itself, especially considering the relative inability
of words to fully express meaning and the concurrent plurality of interpretations that this
inability causes, as revealed by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus. But in this case we cannot
dismiss this assumption completely because it is so instrumental in Pater’s text. Flavian
does not realize that if he adhered absolutely to a linear construct of history, he would be
only “replacing” the outworn and tarnished significations, thus substituting one meaning
arbitrarily for another. As he also sees himself “reviving” standard and traditional
significations, especially considering his belief in an absolute “original and native” meaning
of words, he is actually supporting a more cyclical historical construct. The conclusion
68

that the narrator comes to, which seemingly will become Marius’s conclusion as well, is
that an individual must recognize “the power of the enchanted-distance fallacy” (58) that
allows one to reconstruct the past and to acknowledge its similarities to the present while
at the same time to concede that the reconstruction is, at least in part, inaccurate and
fictitious. One cannot ever truly escape the context of one’s own age or step outside
one’s own perception. Even a “conscious efl’ort in the way of a reaction or return to the
conditions of an earlier [age]. . .would be but. . .artificial artlessrress” (op. cit.) To once
again employ the narrator’s initial rose analogy, the past is the red rose with the “fleshness
of the open fields,” whereas the reconstruction would be but white roses “in a heated
room” (58). But the differing versions or shades of the rose still retain similarities, thus
indicating that perhaps one can compose a concept of history, or zeitgeist, which
dialectically contains both cyclical and linear properties.

Flavian may represent the germ ofthis dialectical pattern, but in no way does he
represent the dialectic put into practice. He is too much the dilettante preoccupied with
“mere details of form” which “serve the purpose of bringing to the surface. . .certain strong
personal intuitions. . .which the artistic or literary faculty was called upon to follow, with
the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within” (59). His individualism did not
result in the reconciliation of subject and object, but merely conflated subjectivism and
objectivity in order to create a false semblance of unity. Like Carlyle’s Teufelsdrockh,
Flavian’s concern with the role the individual plays in the creation and perception of the
material world overshadows, or perhaps too heavily influences, his conception of the
essential “model within.” Flavian’s theories did not bring Marius the answers he sought,
so he must modify his approach. In Marius, Flavian’s Romanticism must transform itself
into Classicism.

Once again, the catalyst for this next step in Marius’s intellectual development is a
deathuFlavian’s. Flavian, the embodiment of extreme Romanticism, dies because “he
sufl‘ers the fate of a mind imprisoned in its own subjectivity” (Monsman 74); and, if

69

allowed to continue his tutelage in what Gerald Monsman calls “a sinister Epicureanism”
(70) under Flavian, Marius would have become imprisoned in his own subjectivity as well.
Freed flom Flavian’s influence, then, Marius’s Romanticism can-according to Pater’s
design—transform itself into Classicism. This begins with Marius’s growing empathy for
the “poetic beauty in mere clearness of thought, the actually aesthetic charm of a cold
austerity of min ” (Marius 72). His “natural Epicureanism” or Romanticism “already
prompt[ed] him to conceive of himselfas but the passive spectator of the world around
him,” a version of the Ruskinian camera Iucida; but, rather than passively accepting his, or
Flavian’s, interpretive observations without question, Marius becomes “[i]nstinctively
suspicious of those mechanical arcana, those pretended ‘secrets unveiled’” (op. cit.) by
sense perception and emotional reaction. In order to discover the “wandering Platonic soul
[that] was but so flail a residue or abstract,” Marius must resort to a “severe intellectual
meditation,” or application of the powers of reason, “to get that precise acquaintance with
the creative intelligence itself, its structures and capacities, [and] its relation to other parts
of himself and to other things” (Marius 72-3).

According to Hegel, the zeitgeist, the “creative intelligence itself,” that maintains
the structure and capacity of all human endeavors and events is the infinite essence of
Reason; accordingly, all human powers of reason exist in relation to this higher Reason.
And, ultimately, Hegel contends Reason is what unifies form and content, matter and idea:

Reason ...is Substance, as well as Infinite Power, its own Infinite Material
underlying all the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the
Infinite Form—that which sets this Material in motion. On the one hand,
Reason is the substance of the universe... On the other hand, it is the
Infinite Energy of the Universe. (“History” 544)
Reason is thus placed “outside reality,” and is “something separate and abstract. . . .[as i]t is
the infinite complex of things, their entire Essence and Truth” (op. cit. ). This Infinite
Form is not only Pater’s mythic archetype but the ultimate meaning for the application of
70

that archetype. More specifically, it is the pattern which underlies rather than prescribes
history, a pattern which is paradoxically energy-as-forrn, spirit-as-material,
signified-as-signifier. This pattern leaves no room for an arbitrary relationship between the
two halves of the dichotomy; in this construction, progress—whether progress as
variations on the same or progress as metamorphosis-is the result of an energy, a
movement, that is ultimately fixed and still. For Marius, recognizing this concept of
zeitgeist includes a Heraclitean “denial of habitual impressions” which give “a false
mmressionofpammmcemfixitymflmrgs,wlnchhavereaflychmgedthennatmemthe
very moment in which we see and touch them” (Marius 74). Though not adhering to a
complete Heraclitean denial of the existence of a permanent reality by recognizing only the
reality of change, Marius, applying an acceptance of “the ‘perpetual flux’ of things” to his
Neoplatonic belief in absolutisrn, conceives there to be “a continuance, if not of their
material or spiritual elements, yet of orderly intelligible relationships, like the harmony of
musical notes, wrought out in and through the series oftheir mutations” (75). In other
words, Marius approaches a Hegelian concept of unity, the dialectical correspondence,
like that Pater finds in music, in which form meets content.

This demonstrates the advent of Marius’s becoming what William Shuter terms a
“periegetic critic.” Shuter remarks tint Pater’s texts are those of a “periegetic writer...in
continual movement, but this movement is constantly arrested by the sites”-or, in this
case, the various philosophical and theoretical tangents- “he has undertaken to visit and
describe” (28). Pater enables Marius, a periegetic character then, to find

in the aesthetic realmmthe ideal reality denied us by the Heraclitean,
scientific world view. ...[as] art gives to the ideal its necessary concrete
expression; for the aesthetic object, anchored in the world of sensuous
perception, within the fabric of the veil of immediate experience, becomes
the visible and empirical locus of the Absolute. The presence of “flux”
need not rule out the existence of fixed form. (Monsman 16)

7 1

Art—and the artistically-created aesthetic world Pater creates for Marius—is, like Hegel’s
philosophy and Victorian aesthetic theory itself, a “region of paradox” (Shuter 65). In this
paradox, there is no point of stasis that is truly not kinetic. Applying this to the separation
Laurence Starzyk presumes exists within Victorian aesthetic theory, then, in periegesis
there cannot be a “theory of being” that is not simultaneously a “theory of becoming.”

In terms of zeitgeist and constructs of history, then, it would seem that a “theory
of being” would place more emphasis on the traditions of the past, mythic patterns, fixed
archetype, etc., and oppositionally a “theory of becoming” would emphasize the present
and the future in terms of transformation, improvement, and permutation. The basis for
“theories of being” in which “being” is equated with pure stasis (removed flom kineticism)
is a “‘common experience’” which is “after all only a fixity of language” (Marius 70). As
Marius discovers, the addition of kineticism concedes for “the abstract apprehension that
the little point of this present moment alone really is, between a past which has just ceased
to be and a firture which may never come...” (79-80). In this construct of time, time-and
history-is not quite cyclical or linear. It cannot be cyclical because the cycle always
brings the promise that the past has not really ever “ceased to be,” and that the future is
always coming. As for linear construction, the past would provide a point of departure
which would “cease to be” inasmuch as it would be the point flom which one moves
away. But we must consider that points on a line are constructs we place upon it in order
tolimittheunlirnited, ormaketheinfinitefinite; meaning, evenifpointAisthepastand
point B is the present in which we can foresee a perceivable future, we cannot ignore that
the line on the plane always infinitely extends before point A and beyond point B beyond
our line of sight. Consequently, the past is also “beyond A” and the firture always
“beyond B”-and point B itselfis only a transitory, arbitrary and misleading “fixity of
language.” In any case, the idea of chaos is introduced into both constructs of history, or
of zeitgeist. In the linear construction, chaos exists as the disordered state of the infinite
space extending beyond the perceivable points. In the cyclical construction, the dynamics

72

of chaos theory take effect, suggesting that small variations in the repetition of the
historical cycle could lead to vast and unpredictable deviations of the same pattern-or that
each repetition of the cycle centers on a variable of non-fixed value. All of this leads up
to a specific question: how can theory make order of chaos, and how does Marius-as—critic
do so?

Considering that at this point Marius is steeped in classicism, it seems relevant to
point out that, in Greek mythology, Chaos was the unfathomable space flom which
Zheo‘ria, “that vision of a wholly reasonable world, which, according to the greatest of
them, literally makes man like God” (Marius 80), or what Hegel calls the ultimate Reason,
arose. Pater applies a delineation of this mythic pattern to his understanding of the
function of art and literature; by casting his milieu as chaotic, works of art then become
the means to create “a wholly reasonable worl ” within that chaos. Pater is actually
issuing another form of Tarfelsdrbckh’s performative fiat, insisting that through artistic
expression, he can command chaos to transform into “a World, or even Worldkin”
(Carlyle, Sartor 197) in which reason, order and meaning are tantamount to existence, just
as he textually commands the transformation of Marius’s Romanticism into Classicism.
Yet we must still be aware that this performative fiat only forces the semblance of
order—or the concept of order-onto chaos, unpredictability. It is a self-imposed fiat that
perhaps only has meaning and ‘ eason” to the individual issuing it. Even Hegel is forced
to admitthatimposing orderonauniverseinperpetualflrnrthroughany“severeand
lengthened process of culture” (“History” 553) such as art or theories of art is an
egocentric act. Even “[i]f...we consider Subjectivity,” he says, ‘Vve find that the subjective
knowledge and will is Thought. But by the very act of thoughtful cognition and volition, I
will the universal object-the substance of absolute Reason” (ibid 580, italics mine).
Accordingly, then, the essential, absolute Reason or zeitgeist assumed to lend meaning to
all things, is just as self-willed and subjective as interpretive manifestations of such. So
wherein lies the difl’erentiation that Pater still maintains between the two? Pater’s

73

adherence to Amold’s idea of a “disinterested” study of culture, in which individual ersatz
selflrood exists only in relation to collectively-born “actual” selflrood, seems key, as does a
reliance on a Ruskinian device of objectifying vision. Pater’s incorporates his
contemporaries’ theoretical designs for “refining all the instruments of inward and outward
intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing and exercising one’s self in them, till
one’s whole nature became one complex medium of reception, towards the vision. . .of our
actual experience in the worl ” (Marius 82) so that he can maintain his contention that the
absolutecanexistuor, at least, that itcanbe conceived andthusused asabasis for
aesthetic theory.

But, unlike Arnold or Ruskin, Pater stops short of insisting that one can annihilate
one’s own concept of self to walk fleely and impartially within “that great Concourse of
the Dead” (Ruskin, “Treasuries” 305) which supposedly maintains the stability of
traditional meaning and the means of transmitting it. Pater recognizes that the concourse
consists of abstractions that “are but the ghosts of bygone impressions. . .that so ofien only
misrepresent the experience of which they profess to be the representation” (Marius 81).
Even when, in the text, he propels Marius into “the wonderfirl machinery of
observation,. . .flee flom the tyranny of mere theories” (op. cit. ), Pater implicitly concedes
that this ‘inachinery of observation” is a theoretical and thus abstract device in and of
itself. Even empiricism, in the form of going “back. . .to experience, to the world of
concrete impressions, to things as they may be seen, heard, felt by [the observed” (op.
cit.) relies on subjectivity—not only the perspective of the observing self, but the selfs
ability to process that data in order to define concrete reality through language, which is
itself an illusory attempt to define reality and characterize the universe.

Once again inducing a paradox, Pater calls this “neutraliz[ing] the distorting
influence of metaphysical system by an all-accomplished metaphysic s ' ” (op. cit.) In his
“Postscript to Appreciations,” Pater admonishes artists and critics for too easily indulging
“the comrnon-place metaphysical instinct” which allows one too easily to claim

74

recognition of the general traits of reality which supposedly define the universe and ‘thich
we must renounce if we mean to mould our lives to artistic perfection” (37). Perhaps this
is Pater’s way of adhering to Hegel’s warning in his Philosophy of Fine Art that a
completely metaphysical means of theorizing art would limit art to being “regarded as
aspiring to something else that is set before consciousness as the essential and as what
ought to be, so that then the work of art would only have value as a useful instrument in
the realization of an end having substantive importance outside the sphere of art” (640). If
art is perceived only as one of many manifestations of the “Universal History” or zeitgeist
in which “Spirit displays itselfin its most concrete reality,” then its aesthetic properties are
not completely accessible or comprehensible; for, as “we must premise some abstract
characteristics of the nature of spirit” (Hegel, “History” 551) if we try to completely
attune aesthetic objects to non-aesthetic history, we then rob works of art of their
“self-contained existence” (ibid 552). Hegel himselfproposes that “the content of art is
the Idea, and that its form lies in the plastic use of images accessible to sense”; and,
furthermore, that “[t]hese two sides art has to reconcile into a hill and united totality” can
only find reconciliation within the specific realm of aesthetics (Art 640). In favor of
unifying Idea and its plastic form himself, Pater consciously decides to contend that, in the
aesthetic realm, one must “detect the passion and strangeness and dramatic contrasts of
life” as “a magic web woven through and through us,...penetrating us with a network
subtler than our mbtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the worl ”
(“Postscript” 37). And although this “magic web” is nothing more than self-contained and
self-irnposed limitations, it must seem infinite to both the artist and critic; by believing that
this “magic web” of art exists to unify idea and form, it therefore becomes a self-induced
“equivalent for [a] sense of fleedom” (op. cit. )—or an assumed, rather than an actual,
fleedom. Moreover, this is fleedom in the classical Stoic sense, entailing fleedom flom

the constraint of human emotion or “passion,” in the vein of Arnoldian “disinterest.”

75

The ability to accept the premise of limited fleedom is the end result of what Pater
calls Marius’s “‘aesthetic’ education” in culture, in which he, alter “ascertaining the true
limits of man’s capacities” can work within those limitations to expand and refine them
(Marius 84). Pater’s aesthetic culture, like Amold’s, aims to achieve perfection, or at
least examine the possibility of that achievement, within human limitations. Aesthetic
perfection,inthePaterian sense, is ofcourseunity; anditisthatunityMarius seeksinhis
pilgrimage to Rome. However, the “perfection in the things of poetry and art” Marius
finds in Rome is “a perfection which indicated only too surely the eve of decline” (99).
Marius may have “come to Rome partly under poetic vocation, to receive. . .the very
impress of life itself, upon the visual, the imaginative, organ, as upon a mirror” and
subsequently “transmute them into golden words” (103); meaning to transmute them into
words of the “golden mean,” so that Marius can construct the world through language
that takes the course between the two extremes, whether those extremes be between the
material and spiritual, subject and object, Romanticism and Classicisnr, etc. However,
Pater’s use of the word transmute indicates that, even at this stage, even with Marius’s
introduction into and assimilation of the edicts of Classicism, further transformation or
“transmutation” of his initial Romanticism is necessary.

However, it is important to remember that Pater never abandons the Romantic
impulse completely. Just as Marius encountered the danger of taking his Epicurean
Romanticism to an extreme through his involvement with Flavian, his fascination with
Aurelius and the Empress Faustina threatens to lead him into complete submersion into the
purest form of Stoic Classicism which doubtless is, to Pater, what leads to the decline of
Rome’s “perfection.” The narrator notes that the rhetoric of Stoicism ‘Vvas grown
persuasive and insinuating, and sought not only to convince men’s intelligence but to
allure their souls” (Marius 143). This language intended to be unifying, orderly and
reasonednor meaningful—was becoming pretentious and misleading, creating and

76

transmitting subjectified and arbitrarily assigned meaning like all other forms of language.
As the narrator further states, “[I]t was almost Epicurean” (op. cit.)

Once he begins to more explicitly deliberate on Stoicism, especially the teachings
of Cornelius Fronto, Marius finds the Stoic contention that the “idea of Humanity-of a
universal commonwealth of mind, which becomes explicit, and as if incarnate, in a select
communion of just men nude perfect” (146) is dubious. He finds that, while listening to
Fronto, “his own thoughts were passing beyond the actual intention of the speaker; not in
the direction of any clearer theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, but
rather as if in search of its visible locality...” (147). Through Classicism then, Marius
reaches the epiphany of “the perception of an order external to himself,” but this mode of
thought in turn gives him the task of“find[ing] that ideal actually incarnate in the fabric of
the visible worl ” (Monsman 85). This must be a world visible to all, not just the select
few, or the one. The expressions of the will of each individual in a society, culture, or
epoch is both individual and collective. Only collectively can “this matured totality. . .thus
constitut[e] one Being, the spirit of one People,” and “[t]his spiritual Being (the Spirit of
Time)ishis; heisarepresentative ofit;itisthatinwhichhe originated andinwhichhe
lives” (Hegel, “History” 583). Marius begins to conceive himself—the aesthetic
theoristuas the representative of zeitgeist; to put it more simply, he returns to the concept
of self to find the ideal in the visible world. Made aware of human limitations, Marius
now conceives of perfection in its “narrowest” sense: “the perfection of but one part of his
nature”-self-perception (Marius 154). He believes that through “an imaginative
sympathy” with the “aesthetic character” of visible things, “as because to be occupied, in
this way, with the aesthetic or imaginative side of things, is to be in real contact with those
elements of his own nature, and of theirs, which. . .are matter of the most real kind of
apprehension” (155). Pater thus asserts that form and content may only be unified within

works of art and within a theoretical matrix particular to aesthetics. For, in the domain of

77

art and literature, there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea, widely extended in
time

and place, in a kind of inpregnable possession of human life—a system

which. . .is rich in the world’s experience; so that, in attaching one’s self to

it, one lets in a great tide of that experience, and makes, as it were with a

single step, a great experience of one’s own....(Marius 155)
Pater thus contents himself by acquiescing to the limitations of human subjectivity and the
absolute unknowability of things, and (almost) reconciles himselfthat meaning itself is
uncertain, certainty being a humanly-created concept of one’s own design to begin with;
but only because he maintains that the very existence of “[t]he Logos, the reasonable spark
in man” evidences the existence of an essential Logos external to man (Marius 167). Near
the end of his journey into theory, Marius concludes that “[t]here could be no inward
conversation with one’s self. . .unless there were indeed someone else, aware of our actual
thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one’s disposition of one’s self’ (op. cit.)
Marius comes to recognize this as the Judeo-Christian God; but, taking into account
Pater’s extensive use of mythic pattern and delineation, Marius’s ‘God’ becomes another
symbolic representation of Hegel’s “spiritual Being” or zeitgeist. By personifying zeitgeist
as an omnipoterrt creator who has made a “world, or a worldkin” flom chaos and thus
created the order for human history to follow, Pater fashions the artist and the theorist as a
creator cast flom a similar mold. In Pater’s theory, therefore, the artist creates a work to
reflect the world around him, the critic/theorist creates an understanding of that work; and
both their creations correspond, henceforth, to past creations and their creators as they are
all “but reflections in, or a creation of, that one indefectible mind” (179) that is zeitgeist.
As Marius 's narrator concludes, “It [is] easier to conceive of the material fabric of things
as but an element in a world ofthought—as thought in a mind, than ofnrind as an
element. . .or passing condition in a world of matter, because mind was really nearer to
himself’ (180).

78

In conclusion, then, Pater indicates that accepting the relationship the present
moment has with the past does not rely on understanding history, and/or time, as
conducting itself in either a cyclical or a linear manner. Study of historical constructs may
indicate that time can or may operate according to either formulation, and both
formulations can be pertinent in specific situations or modes of thinking; which is why
asserting that both constructions must be understood as Operating dialectically with and
against one another is preferable. In art and thus in aesthetic theory, explanatory
definitions of the zeitgeist itself may become “trapped at a particular point on the
circumference” or line of the progress of time/history, ‘unable to synthesize the larger
world of temporal and spatial particulars” (Monsman 202), rendering the concepts of
zeitgeist themselves relative, subjective, and therefore incomplete. This is why works of
artbecomeirnportarrt astheyrepresentinthemselvesmomentsofqtparent synthesisand
the possibility-though not the actualityuof resolute synthesis. “Art is the supreme visible
embodiment” of zeitgeist inasmuch as “the aesthetic object condenses the random
movements of the circumference” or linear progression “to the hard, gem-like permanence
of central form” (Monsman 204).

This promotes the idea that all artworks are, like Keats’s Grecian urn, the embodiment of
a ‘flozen moment’ rendering the temporal atemporal: that a work of art condenses random
movements into an orderly and perceivable moment that can be explicated, or at least
observed within the limitations of human ability and humanly-created theory. Of course,
these atemporal moments are still kinetic in that they retain a correspondence with
progressive ternporality, which too carries a sense of order or reason that makes the

correspondence possible.

79

SUNMARY AND CONCLUSION

As this discussion of Sartor Resartus in conjunction with the works of Ruskin,
Arnold, and Pater demonstrates, Victorian aesthetic theory was, as Starzyk suggests,
“overtaxed with a variety of functions.” But this was due to the demands created by the
maintenance of the neoplatonically-based divisions between subject and object, which in
turn created firrther divisions between the historical and the ahistorical, perspective and
tradition, critic and artwork/text. The multiple implications resulting flom the manifold
applications of the concept of the zeitgeist asserted by each critic ofien added considerably
to the complexity and securing irnperrneability of these dichotomies, though these
revaluations of the zeitgeist as well as these dichotomies were intended to provide a
simplified or definite treatment of such. Inasmuch as the quest for an objective and
systematic aesthetic theory for criticism resulted in the profl’ering of engaging and
temporarily functional conventions of reading literature and explicating other forms of art,
it also proposed further doubts, increasing the number of seemingly unanswerable
questions and promoting assumptions concerning textual and aesthetic synthesis that grew
increasingly tenuous.

Concurrently, the Victorians’ growing awareness that establishing concrete
connections between author/artist and reader/audience/critic, as well as between the
author/artist and the artwork, was impossible resulted in a theoretical explosion in which
issues of phrrality and inaccessibility demanded attention. The tensions that resulted flom
these conflicting dichotomies forced the Victorians to at least begin the process of
establishing a dialectical aesthetic theory to account for all these points of opposition in a
counterbalancing praxis, moving away flom more traditional synthetic aesthetic theories
requiring resolution through compromise. As illustrated in explications of Arnold’s
critical work, the need for praxis made evident in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus complicates
attempts at theoretical synthesis. And, though Ruskin’s work comes closer to achieving

80

the sort of analytic counterbalance required of praxis, his inability to fully abandon more
traditional attempts at synthesis illustrates the enormous difficulty associated with the task.
Pater’s concept of apparent rather than actual unity and synthesis comes closest to
embodying this ideal praxis in a materialized, experiential critical practice. Still, as these
issues are apparent in the works of all four critics, and as the works of all four critics
illustrate similar contradictions in the treatment of similar theoretical and ideological

obstacles, this at least demonstrates that Victorian aesthetics recognized a common aim.

81

REFERENCES

82

WORKS CITED

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Pater, Walter. “Coleridge’s Writings.” Uglow 1-26.

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85

Sawyer, Paul L. Ruskin 's Poetic Argument: The Design of the Major Works. Ithaca,
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86

GENERAL REFERENCES

Abrams, MB. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical
Tradition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1953, 1971.

Alexander, Edward. Matthew Arnold John Ruskin, and the Modern Temper.
Columbus: Ohio UP, 1973.

Choe, Wolhee. “Walter Pater’s ‘Romantic Morality. ’” Victorian Newsletter 72 (Fall
1987): 12-17.

Dowling, Linda. The Vulgarization of Art: The Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy.
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Felluga, D. Franco. “The Critic’s New Clothes: Sartor Resartus as ‘Cold Carnival. ’”
Criticism 37.4 (Fall 1995): 583-99.

Landow, George P. “Ruskin as Victorian Sage: The Example of ‘Tramc’.” New
Approaches to Ruskin. Ed. Robert Hewison. London, Boston, and Henley:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 89-110.

Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1989.

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