Rereading Marx’s Aesthetic Notes

Earlier this year, in the 2023 issue No. 2 of *Research on Marxist Aesthetics* (a semiannual), I reread Marx’s aesthetic notes, “Excerpts from Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s *Aesthetics, or the Science of the Beautiful*” (new translation). From the published summary of these notes by Marx, it is evident that the new translation corrects mistranslations and omissions in the original translation from thirty years ago, improves some unclear and hard-to-understand phrases, and makes the translation smoother and more readable.

今年初，笔者在《马克思主义美学研究》（半年刊）2023年第2期重新读了马克思的美学笔记《弗·泰·费舍〈美学或美的科学〉一书摘记》（新译文）。从已发表的马克思这篇笔记的摘要得知，新译文修正了30年前原有译文的误译和漏译，改善了部分含糊不清和难以理解的词句，使译文变得更加流畅、更具可读性。

Marx completed his excerpts from Vischer’s multivolume work *Aesthetics, or the Science of the Beautiful* in June 1857. Until the Soviet journal *Dialogue* published a Russian translation in 1990, these notes had never been compiled and published in full in German or any other language. For over thirty years, readers interested in Marx’s aesthetic notes could only learn about parts of them through articles written by the very few scholars capable of reading the original manuscript, and they had no chance to read the notes in their entirety. The reason is mainly the lack of philosophical-aesthetic experts able to decipher Marx’s handwriting. Consequently, to this day, readers still cannot access the full text of the notes as included in the *Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe* (MEGA²). Fortunately, Chinese readers can now read a new translation of Marx’s aesthetic notes, based on the Russian translation and partly referencing Vischer’s original German work.

马克思对费舍的多卷本著作《美学或美的科学》所做的摘录笔记完成于1857年6月。直到1990年苏联《对话》杂志刊登俄译文前，这篇笔记从未被整理成德文或其他文字全文发表。30多年来，对马克思的美学笔记产生兴趣的读者，只能通过极少数有能力阅读笔记原文的学者所写的文章来了解笔记的部分内容，而无缘阅读笔记的全貌。究其原因，主要是缺乏能够辨识马克思手迹的哲学美学专家。因而，迄今为止，读者仍未能读到《马克思恩格斯全集》历史考证版收录的笔记全文。幸运的是，中国读者现在可以读到根据俄译文并部分地参考费舍德语原著翻译的马克思美学笔记的新译文了。

I

一

According to relevant scholarly research, Marx’s main purposes in writing the aesthetic notes from late May to June 1857 were threefold: first, in response to an invitation from Charles Dana, editor of the *New American Cyclopaedia*, to prepare for writing an entry on “aesthetics” for that encyclopedia; second, to gather material for the forthcoming “Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy”; and third, to prepare theoretically for a discussion of Ferdinand Lassalle’s historical drama *Franz von Sickingen*. All three matters involve core issues of aesthetics or art. Whatever the purpose, faced with Vischer’s vast aesthetic opus, Marx had to decide which parts to excerpt and which to omit. Such judgment required deep philosophical-aesthetic competence, and this competence is precisely reflected in Marx’s excerpted notes. It can now be basically determined that the notes cover all the aesthetic categories in Vischer’s work.

据有关学者的研究，马克思于1857年5月底至6月写作美学笔记的主要目的有三个：一是应《美国新百科全书》编辑查·德纳的约请，为这部百科全书撰写“美学”词条做准备；二是为即将创作的《〈政治经济学批判〉导言》搜集材料；三是为讨论斐·拉萨尔的历史剧《弗兰茨·冯·济金根》做理论准备。这三件事都涉及美学或艺术的核心问题。不论出于何种目的，面对费舍这部浩瀚美学巨著，马克思需要作出该摘记哪些部分和舍弃哪些内容的决断。这种判断是需要有很深的哲学美学功力的，而这个功力恰恰通过马克思的摘录笔记反映出来。现在基本上可以断定，笔记涵盖了费舍著作中的各个美学范畴。

Marx’s excerpts from Vischer’s aesthetic work begin with the definition of aesthetics. This definition follows the formulation of Baumgarten, the German founder of aesthetics: it is “a science of sensory cognition” (the content in quotation marks is from Marx’s original notes; the same below); and it is also described as “a theory of free arts, a lower theory of cognition, an art of beautiful thinking, or an analogical art.” Immediately thereafter, Marx follows Vischer’s line of thought into Kant’s study of aesthetic judgment, recording Kant’s “imagination’s grasp of the form of the object,” which “introduces the image into judgment.” Next, he incorporates into the notes the unity of the concepts of the subjective and the objective, idea and image, and the subjective impression of the beautiful. After this, Marx turns his attention to what Vischer calls “the elements of the beautiful,” i.e., the important categories and concepts of aesthetics, and devotes nearly half the space to excerpting them in sequence. Thus, the reader, following the order of Marx’s excerpts, enters one hall of aesthetics after another, savoring the profound meanings of those concepts and categories. For example, “the idea transcends the sphere of the image, and opposes its infinity to the finitude of the image”—this sentence is used to define the sublime, assuming that if the idea in the human mind is not limited by the image, concepts of finitude or infinity can arise. With such definitions, Marx does not let go of Vischer’s description of all that is sublime: the objective sublime, the subjective sublime, and the sublime of subject and object. Besides such detailed excerpts on the sublime, the concepts of tragedy and comedy are treated somewhat more briefly in Marx’s notes. Tragedy is divided into three types: “tragedy as a cosmic law, tragedy of mere guilt, and tragedy of moral conflict,” while comedy consists of “objective comedy or farce, subjective comedy or wit, and absolute comedy or humor.” Through such forms of tragedy and comedy, a picture of the interweaving of great sorrows and small joys in human life is refracted. Of course, Marx does not forget to add the element of humor to comedy: “simple humor or wit, humor that is not laughable, hearty laughter.”

马克思对费舍的美学著作的摘录是以美学的定义为开端的。这个定义沿袭了德国的美学鼻祖鲍姆加登的说法：它是“一门感性认识的科学”（引号内容为马克思笔记原话，下同）；而且它还被描述为一种“自由艺术的理论、低级认识论、美的思维的艺术或类比的艺术”。紧接着，马克思顺着费舍的思路进入康德的审美判断力研究，他记录下康德的“想象把握对象的形式”，将“形象引入判断力”。接着，他又把主观、客体的概念、观念和形象的统一与美的主观印象纳入笔记。此后，马克思又把目光移向了费舍所说的“美的要素”，即美学的重要范畴和概念，用几乎一半的篇幅依次对它们做了摘记。这样，读者就会循着马克思摘记的次序，进入美学的一个个殿堂，体味着那些概念、范畴的深邃含义。比如，“观念超越形象的范围，并把自己的无穷同形象这一有穷对立起来”——这句话是用来界定崇高的，假定人脑中的观念不受形象的限制，就可以产生出有穷或无穷的概念。像这样的界说，马克思没有放过费舍对一切崇高所做的描述：客观上的崇高、主体的崇高和主客体的崇高。除了这样详尽地摘记崇高外，悲剧和喜剧的概念在马克思的笔记中就略显粗略了。悲剧分为“作为宇宙法则的悲剧、单纯罪过的悲剧和道德冲突的悲剧”三种，而喜剧则由“客观上的喜剧或滑稽剧、主观上的喜剧或诙谐、绝对的喜剧或幽默”构成。通过这样的悲、喜形式，折射出人生中大悲小喜相互交织的图景。当然，马克思还没有忘记为喜剧补充上幽默的成分：“质朴的幽默或风趣、不可笑的幽默、开怀大笑的幽默。”

II

二

After finishing his excerpts from the first volume of Vischer’s aesthetic work, Marx begins to look through the second and third volumes, and finally stops at the first third of the third volume, where the classification of the arts is discussed. The later volumes, covering the plastic arts, painting, music, and poetic creation, do not enter the scope of Marx’s notes. It is quite possible that these four topics were not of interest to him, or were not what he needed.

结束摘录费舍美学著作第一卷后，马克思开始翻看第二和第三卷，最后，他把目光停留在第三卷的三分之一部分，即艺术的分类那里。而后面的卷册所涉及的造型艺术、绘画、音乐和诗歌创作的内容则未进入马克思这份笔记的视野。很有可能，这四项内容不是他感兴趣的，抑或不是他需要掌握的。

What interested Marx and what he needed were the topics discussed in the second volume of Vischer’s work—natural beauty and fantasy (myth)—and the classification of the arts in the third volume. Using the same method as with the definition of the beautiful and the “elements of the beautiful” excerpted from the first volume, Marx skillfully records the two main aspects of natural beauty: natural beauty as objective existence (the beauty of the inorganic world, the beauty of the organic world) and the subjective existence of beauty, or fantasy (general fantasy, fantasy or the history of the ideal). Both aspects are recognized in Marx’s notes as “beauty existing in a one-sided manner,” that is, “as objective existence, it is the beauty of nature; as subjective existence, it is imagination.” Fantasy is transcribed by Marx in the notes as three types: “general fantasy, particular fantasy, and individual fantasy.” Next, the history of fantasy or the ideal does not escape Marx’s attention; he sees that general fantasy “created religion, folklore, etc.”; in the Greco-Roman period, fantasy was mainly driven by the plastic arts; Eastern peoples have a kind of incubating symbolic fantasy, which moves from symbol to myth. As Marx’s pen reaches this point, fantasy, legend, myth, and religion become an organic part of his excerpted notes, and they are more or less integrated into Marx’s later writings.

使马克思感兴趣的和他所需要的内容是费舍著作第二卷讨论的自然美和幻想（神话），以及第三卷的艺术分类这些话题。与上述摘自第一卷美的定义和“美的要素”的手法一样，马克思轻车熟路地记录下自然美的两个主要方面：客观存在的自然美（无机界的美、有机界的美）和美的主观存在或幻想（一般幻想、幻想或理想的历史）。这两个方面在马克思笔记里都被认作是“单方面存在的美”，也就是说，“作为客观存在，是自然的美；作为主观存在，是想象”。幻想在笔记中被马克思抄录为“一般幻想、特殊的幻想和个别人的幻想”三类。接下来，幻想或理想的历史没有脱离开马克思的视线，他看到一般幻想“创造了宗教、民间传说等”；古希腊罗马时代的幻想主要是通过造型艺术推动的；东方人有一种酝酿的象征性幻想，这样的幻想是从象征到神话。马克思走笔至此，幻想、传说、神话和宗教就构成了其摘录笔记的有机部分，而它们都或多或少地融入马克思以后的创作中。

III

三

Returning to the three main purposes of Marx’s aesthetic notes, we can examine whether Marx actually realized the wishes he had when making the notes. According to relevant historical evidence, Charles Dana, editor of the *New American Cyclopaedia*, did indeed invite Marx to write an entry on “aesthetics” for that encyclopedia. Consequently, Marx, despite his illness, consulted several encyclopedias and the then highly renowned aesthetic work of Vischer, and carefully made excerpts. However, after consulting with Engels by letter, Marx declined to write the “aesthetics” entry, citing the short length of the entry and the difficulty of the content. Thus, Marx’s lifelong wish to possibly produce an aesthetic work was not fulfilled. Nevertheless, the notes Marx made were not in vain. Two months after completing the notes, Marx began writing the “Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy,” intending to incorporate the excerpted content on fantasy, legend, and myth mentioned above. He points out that although the premise of Greek art is Greek mythology, and Greek mythology is an expression of social forms, under current social conditions there can be no social basis for reproducing ancient Greek myth and epic imagery: “Can the view of nature and of social relations which lies behind Greek imagination and therefore Greek [art] coexist with spinning jennies, railways, locomotives, and the telegraph?” This sentence indicates that in a society like today’s, humans think rationally about nature, rather than treating it as something magical or mysterious. Under such circumstances, myth and legend lose their reason for existence, and epic can no longer be created.

回到马克思做美学笔记的三个主要目的，我们可以来考察马克思是否真的实现了做笔记时的愿望。据有关史料证实，《美国新百科全书》的编辑查·德纳的确邀请过马克思为这部百科全书撰写一篇“美学”词条。由此，马克思抱病查阅了几种百科辞书和当时极负盛名的费舍美学著作，并小心翼翼地做了摘录。然而，经与恩格斯书信协商后，马克思以词条篇幅短小和内容难写为由，拒绝了写作“美学”这个词条。这样一来，马克思一生中有可能创作一篇美学著作的心愿就未能达成。然而，马克思所做的笔记没有白费。笔记完成两个月后，马克思开始写作《〈政治经济学批判〉导言》，他要将上述提及的幻想、传说和神话这些摘录内容融入其中。他指出，尽管希腊艺术的前提是希腊神话，希腊神话是社会形式的表现，但在当前的社会条件下不可能有再现古希腊神话和史诗的形象的社会基础：“成为希腊人的幻想的基础、从而成为希腊［艺术］的基础的那种对自然的观点和对社会关系的观点，能够同走锭精纺机、铁道、机车和电报并存吗？”这句话表明，在今天这样一个社会里，人类理性地思考着大自然，而不是把它当作一种神奇的或神秘的事物。在这种情形下，神话、传说就失去了存在的理由，史诗也就不可能再创作出来。

Marx’s excerpts from Fischer’s aesthetic views are also reflected in his comments on Ferdinand Lassalle’s historical drama *Franz von Sickingen*. In early March 1859, Lassalle sent his play *Franz von Sickingen* together with its preface to Marx, seeking an appropriate evaluation or critique. During this period, Marx was not only continuing to write for the American *New-York Daily Tribune* but also preparing to write *Capital*. He stole time from his busy schedule and spent precious hours fulfilling Lassalle’s request. Moreover, Marx wrote several letters to Engels discussing his views on Lassalle’s drama. Since this play depicted the European revolutions of 1848, [6]6 The European revolutions of 1848 were a series of republican uprisings against monarchies across Europe, which Marx and Engels analyzed as bourgeois-democratic revolutions that failed due to the betrayal of the bourgeoisie and the immaturity of the proletariat. it should, by the nature of that revolution, have been a revolutionary tragedy. Connecting this with Fischer’s views on tragedy and comedy, Marx readily regarded this historical drama as a tragedy, and he also inherited Fischer’s formulation that “revolution is the true subject of tragedy.” It is precisely because Marx’s commentary was well-grounded and appropriate that his critique of Lassalle’s drama became a classic in the history of literary criticism.

马克思摘自费舍的美学观点，还体现在他对斐·拉萨尔的历史剧《弗兰茨·冯·济金根》的评论上。1859年3月初，拉萨尔将其写作的剧本《弗兰茨·冯·济金根》和序言一起寄给马克思，以求得到适当的评价或评论。这一时期，马克思除了继续为美国《纽约每日论坛报》撰稿外，还在为写作《资本论》做准备。他忙里偷闲，花费宝贵时间完成了拉萨尔的请求。不仅如此，马克思还给恩格斯去信数封，谈及对拉萨尔戏剧的看法。既然这部剧是描写欧洲1848年革命的，那么按照这场革命的性质，它应该是一部革命的悲剧。联系到费舍的悲剧、喜剧观，马克思很容易地将这场历史剧看作是悲剧，而且他还承袭了费舍的“革命是悲剧的真正主题”这一说法。正因为马克思的评论出典有据、恰如其分，才使他对拉萨尔的戏剧评论成为文艺批评史上的经典之论。

Finally, Marx concludes the notes with “criticism,” “taste,” and the division of the arts. Having finished his excerpts, Marx, as if still unsatisfied, intuitively drew a classification table based on the relevant content of Fischer’s third volume, thereby demonstrating his understanding of Fischer’s aesthetic thought and simultaneously expressing the degree of his acceptance of Hegelian aesthetics.

最后，马克思以“批评”“鉴赏力”和各门艺术的划分作为笔记的结尾。摘记到此，马克思似乎意犹未尽，他按照费舍的第三卷有关内容的描述，直观地画出了一张分类表格，以此来彰显他对费舍美学思想的理解，同时表达出他对黑格尔派美学的接受程度。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗