Page 23 [23]
RITUAL AND AESTHETIC PRESENTIVITY
However, from a conservative position, it is also not possible to develop an
argument against the existence of relationships between ritual and literature
(or art). The tension between aesthetic conservatism, on the one hand, and
aesthetic subversion, on the other, is absolutely fundamental to the cultural
process and cultural evolution. It can be seen in the tension between the con¬
firmation of form and its dissolution, between consolidation, regulation, and
dynamism, between aesthetic affirmation and aesthetic transgression. This
can be expressed in the form of an old, problematic opposition, so to speak: the
opposition between Classicism and Mannerism, between the Apollonian and
the Dionysian. These oppositions apply both to art and religion (ritual comple¬
tion — ecstasy; ritual control — excitement). Transgressiveness, through to
the shattering of taboos, is a cultural and aesthetic principle which is abso¬
lutely fundamental, and often productive. However, without its counterpart,
without the practices of continual order and stabilisation (which include ritu¬
als), transgressiveness merely slips away into cultural self-destruction. In this
regard it does not seem illogical to view art’s historical process within a culture
as being a cyclic movement.
THE AESTHETIC PERSPECTIVE ON RITUAL
The Ritual can be viewed as a Gesamtkunstwerk."? As with all cultural expres¬
sions and actions, a ritual’s meaning and impact are also connected to the
degree of its aesthetic (in the sense of visible or perceivable) elaborateness in
its overall structure. In this regard, it is not logical to draw a firm line between
ritual and simple convention or routine. It would be more appropriate, as in
the arts themselves, to talk of a ritual’s stronger or weaker aesthetic intensity:
a continuum of greater or lesser aesthetic elaborateness. The aesthetic perspec¬
tive on ritual and the socially functional, communicative and institutional
perspective cannot be allowed to be pitted against each other, especially not
when the matter at stake is the importance of ritual for literature and art. This
becomes vividly clear with regard to Attic tragedy. Attic tragedy was intended
to be understood both as an aesthetic production and as a cultural produc¬
tion displayed in front of the polis and for the polis, within the framework of
the powerful Dionysian force. The polis is depicted in the Dionysian and the
performance of tragedies associated with it; the polis experiences, celebrates
and performs itself both through the Dionysian and tragedies. The polis re¬
presents itself in this great ceremony and comprehends itself as the ceremony
is performed, as the topics and problems that affect the polis (that is, the whole)
are represented, shown, and discussed.
12 Braungart: Ritual und Literatur, 41; Dücker: Rituale, 185.
21°