The Esthetic of Excess and the Excess of Esthetic

Abstract

Excluded from the philosophical logos, excess can even be seen to be the “subject” of literature. From the epic poem and the platonic divine furor to the baroque esthetic, and from romanticism to Freudian sublimation, a line can be drawn together with a theory of artistic genesis as arising out of limit experiences: excess is the mark of an encounter with a real which overpowers the signifier. The birth of the esthetic in of itself, conceived of in Baumgarten's terms, arises out of the consideration of literature and art as testifying to a truth of the confused and of the singular, inaccessible to logical reasoning in so far as it exceeds the capacity of the concept.

Keywords:

• Esthetic
• Excess
• Furor
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Baumgarten.

Notes

1. See René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 1966.

2. My translation.

3. “[In] desexualizing or sublimating the libido of the id, the ego is working in opposition to the purposes of Eros and placing itself at the service of the opposing instinctual impulses” (Freud 45).

4. See the analysis and Introduction by J. Pigeaud in L’Homme de génie et la mélancolie, Trans. & presented by J. Pigeaud, Paris: Rivages, 1988.

5. “The ‘thing in itself’ (for that is what pure truth, without consequences, would be) is quite incomprehensible to the creators of language and not at all worth aiming for. One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor” (Nietzsche 45–46).