Oldal 23 [23]
OCR
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 confirmation 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 completion — ecstasy; ritual control — excitement). Transgressiveness, through to the shattering of taboos, is a cultural and aesthetic principle which is absolutely fundamental, and often productive. However, without its counterpart, without the practices of continual order and stabilisation (which include rituals), 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 expressions 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 perspective 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 production 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 represents 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°
