Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self

Author(s): Richard A. Etlin

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter, 1998), pp. 1-19
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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 RICHARD A. ETLIN
Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
We have said that space is existential;we could just as well have said that existence is spatial.
Space is an integral constituentof the self. Our
psychological sense of selfhood has a spatialdi-
mension which we recognize in our feelings of
comfort or unease in response to the places that
we visit and inhabit. Our aesthetic response to
scenes of nature and to works of art, to their
qualities of line, form, and mass, is a composite
sentiment that involves a bodily sense of self,
which also has its spatial dimension. At the
deepest end of the aesthetic scale, in situations
to which we attach the notion of the sublime, it
is the spatial sense of self that is most directly
engaged in a pantheisticfeeling of transportand
transcendence.
The psychological and aesthetic aspects of
the spatial sense of self have been noted and
studiedin a fragmentaryfashion over the course
of the modern era. A preliminary charting of
those moments when attentionto these matters
has yielded an identifiableclusteringof activity
enables us to point to three historical periods.
First comes the period in the eighteenthcentury
when philosopherssuch as JohnBaillie and Ed-
mund Burke explained the natureof the experi-
ence of the sublime and when Rousseau re-
flected on "le sentimentde l'existence."Perhaps
the most complete considerationof the issue can
be found in the Frenchneoclassical architectsof
the period who recognized that the spatial sense
of self was fundamentalto profound architec-
turalexperience.
Second comes the late-nineteenth-century
school of German-language philosophers of
Einfiihlung(empathy),who were primarilycon-
cerned with the relationshipof aesthetics to the
spatialsense of the self. These writersemployed
an entire set of analytical terms to describe the
phenomenon.To emphasize vital feeling as op-
posed to sensations, they spoke of Lebensgefuhl
The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism56:1 Winter 1998
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-Maurice Merleau-Ponty'
or Vitalgefahl.2To refer to that aspect of sen-
tience which involves sentimentpermeatingthe
body they invokedthe termKbrpergefiihl.3If the
emphasis was on the sense of the body within a
defining circumambientarchitecturalspace or
the feeling of space of which the bodily self is
the center, then they spoke of Raumgefuhl.4Fi-
nally, to explain the aesthetic response to quali-
ties of line or mass in artistic or naturalforms
they used the wordFormgefiihl.5Severalof these
philosopherswere also historiansof art, engag-
ing in what they consideredto be either a scien-
tific or principledundertaking,a Kunstwissen-
schaft; and they were convinced that aesthetic
response, as well as the impetusbehind changes
in style from one culturalera to another,could
be explained by Einfuhlung and its attendant
properties as defined by these terms rooted in
the word Gefahl (sentience).6 Historically,the
Einfahlungphilosophersand the practitionersof
Kunstwissenschafthad been precededby Johann
Georg Sulzer,who, in his GeneralTheoryof the
Fine Arts (1771-1774), had explained that the
word "aesthetics"came from the Greek aisthe-
ses, meaning "the science of feelings," a tool for
understandingthe very "natureof the soul."7
For Sulzer, aesthetics referredto the natureof
Empfindungen(sentiments)promptedby works
of art so that the "soul becomes, in essence, all
feeling" and "knows of nothing outside, but
only of what is inside itself."8
The third stage seems to have had its impetus
toward 1930 primarilyin studies of psychiatric
illness, which then became a point of departure
for reflections on the phenomenologyof the spa-
tial sense of the self. In the documentsof this pe-
riod it was common to speak of "lived space,"as
in Graf K. von Durckheim's"Untersuchungen
zum gelebten Raum"(1932) and Eugene Min-
2 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
kowski's Le Temps ve'u: Etudes phe'nome'no-
logiques et psychopathologiques(1933), which
also discussed "l'espace vecu."9 In "Psycho-
Analysis of Space" (1935) Paul Schilder chal-
lenged Kant'sposition not aboutthe a priorina-
ture of space but ratherabout its relationshipto
the self: "Spaceis not an independententity (as
Kant has wrongly stated) but is in close relation
to instincts, drives, emotions and actions with
their tonic and phasic components."'0Minkow-
ski argued that the spatial sense constitutes one
of the primaryaspects of a humanbeing's expe-
rience of the self, which precedes and makes
possible a more abstract and scientific knowl-
edge of space. "I
In this article I draw upon the literatureof
these three periods to offer a preliminarystudy
of the spatial sense of the self accordingto three
different ways of apprehendingthe phenome-
non. First, I consider the psychological dimen-
sion of our spatial sense of being and explore
how it has been used to aesthetic advantage in
painting and literature. Second, I explore the
bodily and spatial nature of our response to
scenes in natureand to the formal propertiesof
works of art as a fundamental component of
aesthetic response. Third, I address the center-
ing of the self and its relationship to the polar
experiencesof intimateshelterand a pantheistic
experience of the sublime. To each of these as-
pects of the spatial sense of the self I assign a
term: (1) personal space to our psychological
sense of self which becomes engaged when we
relate to people in close proximity, (2) lived
space when we respondto the formalfeaturesof
naturalscenes and works of art, and (3) existen-
tial space to designate the primordialaspect of
ourexperienceof being in this world as it occurs
spatially and leads to feelings of transcendence.
Each of these componentsof the spatialsense of
self has it own colorationbut all are interrelated.
By understandingthe various characteristicsof
the spatial sense of self we can arriveat a fuller
understandingof its complex but fundamental
nature.
In attempting to chart the parametersof the
phenomenologyof the spatial sense of self, this
study ranges over a broad intellectual territory,
moving between psychological theory, the na-
ture of aesthetic response, and principles of art
criticism. By its very nature, such an overview
inevitably will treat certain themes more thor-
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oughly than others.Here I invoke the wisdom of
HeinrichWblfflin's introductoryexplanationof
purpose when he presented his study of "the
psychology of architecture":"One should ex-
pect no more than a sketch or outline. What I
present here should be seen only as a prole-
gomenon" to a more complete treatment"that
still remains to be written."'12
I. PERSONAL SPACE
We can use the term "personalspace" to desig-
nate the spatial quality of our relationshipwith
other people. In effect, our sense of self is not
limited to the literal space of the body but also
extends beyond it. If you think that your being
ends with the edge of your body, then consider
how uncomfortable you feel when a stranger
purposefully comes very close to you, and ask
yourself why "veryclose" becomes "too close."
Thanks to the studies of the anthropologistEd-
ward T. Hall, we know that each person carries
aroundhim or her a spatial bubble which con-
tracts or expands according to the intimacy or
formality of the relationship with another per-
son. In TheSilentLanguage(1959) and TheHid-
den Dimension (1966), Hall distinguished be-
tween four different spatial bubbles, which he
labeled as covering intimate, personal, social,
and public distances, ranging from under six
inches to over twenty-five feet: intimate dis-
tance (close phase under 6", far phase 6"-18"),
personal distance (close phase 1.5-2.5', far
phase 2.5-4'), social distance (close phase 4'-7',
far phase 7-12'), and public distance (close
phase 12'-25', far phase 25' or more). Although
a universal phenomenon, these spatial bubbles
are partly culturally determined to the extent
thatLatin peoples tend to compressthe zones of
personal and social distance whereas Nordic
peoples tend to expand them.13
In arts such as painting, sculpture,dance, ar-
chitecture, and literature,these spatial bubbles
can be used to great advantage.In painting, for
example, the artist can impartsignificant infor-
mation about the natureof humanrelationships
by manipulatingthe distances between figures
on a canvas, or can engage the viewer directly
through compositional features that seem to
thrust a depicted person out into the viewer's
personal space or alternatively to draw the
viewer's personal space deeply into the scene.
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
The impressionists,especially, exploited the ex-
pressive possibilities of the first of these two
techniques. For example, Auguste Renoir's Le
Moulin de la Galette (1876) offers an extended
courtshipscene in which the two lady friends in
the foreground are psychologically at one and
physically within the zone of personal distance
while they talk at social distance with the young
man whose back is turnedto the viewer. In the
middle ground otheryoung men take advantage
of a social convention that permits them while
dancing to get physically close to a woman to
convey their romantic intentions, by moving
from the far to the near range of the intimate
zone. In Edgar Degas's The Glass of Absinthe
(1876), the sense of alienation would be less-
ened had the painter placed the couple either
furtherapartor closer together.If separatedinto
a social zone of 4'-7', the pair would no longer
appear to be a couple; conversely, if placed
within the close phase of the intimatezone, their
alienation would have been lessened. In this
painting, the figures' facial expressions, bodily
attitudes,and physical distancing all contribute
to achieve the desired effect. Conversely, in
Mary Cassatt'sThe Bath (1891), a sense of inti-
macy is createdthroughthe combinationof the
facial expressions of the woman, presumably
mother, and child, the tender aspect of the
woman's touch, and the physical proximity of
the bodies, with heads togetherand faces closer
than six inches. In all these cases, throughempa-
thy, we the viewers place ourselves in the situa-
tion of these depicted people and imagine their
thoughts and feelings largely through our un-
derstandingof personalspace.
EdouardManet'sA Bar at the Folies-Bergere
(1881-1882) combines both manners. On the
one hand, the close proximity of the man in the
top hat to the barmaidseen reflected in the mir-
rorreinforcesthe sense of intimateconversation
signaled by the facial expressions. On the other
hand, the actual size of the young woman, com-
parableto our own, and her position behind the
truncatedfrontedge of the bar,seem to place her
within the realm of our own personal space.14
Such a manipulationof the pictureplane occurs
most famously in Rembrandt'spaintings, such
as Titus at a Desk (1655) and YoungGirl Lean-
ing on a Window-Sill(1645), where the artist
has, in a mannerof speaking, thrusthis subject
outwardin front of the picture plane to engage
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3
ourpersonalspace so thatwe feel physically and
emotionally closer to the person depicted here.
Rembrandtachieves this with Titus by position-
ing the edge of the desk at the front of the pic-
tureplane and by allowing Titus'shand to reach
outward,ostensibly into our space, and with the
young girl by directing the diagonalof the win-
dow sill seemingly outward and beyond the
limit of the surfaceof the canvas, an effect rein-
forced by the girl's bodily stance and by her ex-
pression, seemingly directedat oureyes. In such
paintings, as Henri van de Waal has observed,
Rembrandthas appliedone of the greatpictorial
inventions of Caravaggio, which was to thrust
pictorialspace outwardto the viewer:
a totally new relationship between [Caravaggio's]
paintings and the spectator,one which in my opinion
is the most significant element in his revolutionary
art: the spatial direction of his paintings. Space con-
structed according to the laws of Renaissance per-
spective was conceived as developing from the first
picture plane into the background. Caravaggio re-
versed this direction. He screens off all those engag-
ing vistas into depth, and constructs a movementdi-
rected out of the picture, towards the spectator.It is
we who are meant to become involved;that is the real
motive behind this device.15
The mechanism by which the viewer becomes
involved is throughan engagementof his or her
personal space.
In literature,personalspace offers the oppor-
tunity to explore motivation and characterin a
subtle mannerthat yields psychological insights
with a perspicacityand a force that words them-
selves could not convey.Tolstoy'sWarand Peace
(1869) offers a veritable encyclopedia of body
language in which movement from one spatial
zone to anothersignals or effectuates a change
in the emotional tenor of the charactersand of
theirrelationships.Hence Tolstoyhas AnnaPav-
lovna come closer to Prince Vasili to signal her
desire to change the subject of their conversa-
tion from mattersof court intrigueto more inti-
mate affairs. Anna Pavlovna has not simply
given Prince Vasili a sign by moving closer to
him; she has entered within the boundariesof a
more personal zone of body space to establish
the emotionalrapportattendantupon more inti-
mate conversation.'6
Similarly, when Pierre, now the new and
4 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
powerful Count Bezuhov, is at a society affair
where he is being paired off with PrinceVasili's
stunningly beautiful daughter Helene, Tolstoy,
using the occasion of passing a snuff box, has
Pierre incidentally move within six inches of
Helene's body. Since we are accustomed to
Pierre's wearing glasses, the author now takes
advantage of his character's nearsightedness,
which rendersthe entire world quite blurryout-
side the range of intimate space while focusing
everythingwithin thatzone with crystallineclar-
ity.For people who sufferfrom such myopia,the
incident resonates with special piquancy; yet
all readers can readily respond to the spatial
dynamism of the scene. The effect of Helene's
sudden nearness, heightened by the radiating
warmthof her body, the captivatingscent of her
perfumed skin, the sound of her breathing,the
voluptuousnessof her figure, and the grace of
her form, have such an overpoweringeffect on
Pierre that he entertains an intimately felt no-
tion that he must and will marry this woman.
Tolstoy describes Helene's hold over Pierre in
terms of personalspace:
Shewasterriblycloseto him.Alreadyshehadpower
overhim.Andbetweenhimandherthereexistedno
barriernowsavethebarrierof his ownwill.17
The limitationsof a journalarticle do not permit
a full consideration of the other similar in-
stances within the novel, but before leaving this
subject brief mention should be made of the
time when Tolstoyhas PrinceAndreiBolkonsky
move specifically "less than eighteen inches"
from GeneralKutuzov'sempty eye socket to set
the occasion for reflections about the comman-
der-in-chief's moral authority to send men to
certain death, as well as the complex spatialbal-
let at the death scene of the aged CountBezuhov
when Pierre, who will momentarilybecome the
new count, is accorded such increased stature
that the doctors move "to make way for" him,
whereas the announcementof the old Count's
death occasions a reciprocal loss of stature
which shrinkshis spatialbubblefrom the invio-
lability of the thresholdto his room down to his
bedside.18In all these cases, the spatial sense of
the self serves a clear artistic intention and pro-
vides subtle aesthetic effects.
The psychological characteristicsof personal
space as it becomes engaged in the relationship
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between people who have close emotional ties
assume qualities that defy a seemingly rational
analysis. Eugene Minkowski offers such an ex-
ample in his essay on "lespace primitif" (prim-
itive space) to differentiate personal space from
scientifically described Euclidean space. When
we accompany a dearly loved person to the train
station and watch the train pull away, we may
very well feel as if a part of our being is being
wrenched away with the train. Distracted, we
might accidentally jostle somebody and excuse
ourselves by saying, "excuse me, I was else-
where, I was a thousand miles away."'9 As Min-
kowski stresses, this is not a figurative manner
of speaking:
Thus is bornthe idea of a primitivespace in which our
thoughtsand our desires as well as our body move, in
which our soul moves and unfolds itself.... We will re-
frain, moreover,from seeing in the spiritualvarietyof
space, or as we can also say, in primitivespace, a mere
subjectiveaspect or a mere representationof space. It
is that our spiritualself can really move there, in its
own manner,obviously.20
Responding to possible objections about this ap-
parent materialization of our psychological life,
Minkowski observes,
there is no reason ... [to pattern]every movementand
every space on the displacementof the body in geo-
metric space. Let us take things as they are, and we
will see that this type of displacementis only a par-
ticularaspect both of movementand of space and that
when we follow the railroadwith our thought,we re-
ally do follow it, withoutthis meaning thateither our
thoughtor ourbeing becomes a body in the mannerof
the train which travels away from us. We obviously
know the movementof bodies, but we also experience
situations where we delineate a path through space
withoutthis act or pathhaving something of a mater-
ial quality to it; in such cases, "to travel through
space"does not have a subjectproperlyspeaking, it is
throughits dynamism["ana priorispatial dynamism"]
that this space is created.21
This aspect of personal space has been recog-
nized by the psychiatric profession and has been
labeled in Latin American cultures susto, mean-
ing "loss of soul." In such occurrences, we
should take the suffering person literally when
we hear "My soul is not with me anymore."
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
Speaking about this patient who had unexpect-
edly lost a close family member,the psychiatrist
Juan Mezzich explains, "In facing the tragic
news, the soul of the patient departs with the
dead person, leaving the person soulless."22As
with Minkowski's illustrative example at the
train station, susto involves an a priori spatial
dynamism which marks our affective relation-
ship with other humanbeings.
II. LIVED SPACE
We can use the term "lived space"to referto our
psychological relationship with the appearance
of things in the world aroundus and to the aes-
thetic response which these things, including
works of art, throughtheir abstractvisual char-
acteristics,promptin us. The reasonthatI chose
the phrase "lived space" is that a significant
school of aesthetics has identified-rightly, I
believe-aesthetic response as a patterningand
coloring of "sentience," the English-language
word for the vital feeling of life which all peo-
ple feel within themselves and which the Ein-
fuhlung philosophers designated as Vitalgefahl
and Lebensgefiihl.23As RaymondBayer has ex-
plained, "what each and every aesthetic object
imposes upon us, in appropriaterhythms, is a
unique and singularformula for the flow of our
energy."24I. A. Richards's observation about
the effect of rhythm in verse also applies to
prose writing, as well as to the otherarts:"Itsef-
fect is not due to our perceiving a pattern in
something outside us, but to our becoming pat-
terned ourselves."25
In literature and music, this patterning pri-
marily involves lived time. Yet, as Richardshas
recognized, the patterningof lived time through
poetry also involves lived space as its minor
mode: "thepatternitself is a vast cyclic agitation
spreading all over the body."26When we con-
sider the expansive state that love, happiness,or
general exhilaration occasions, we then recog-
nize that emotions and all mannersof states of
being involving the coloring of sentience also
involve some combination of spatial sense and
corporeal sense.27 In An Essay on the Sublime,
John Baillie reflected a keen awareness of this
issue, especially as it relates to the spatial sense
of the self: "TheSublimedilates and elevates the
Soul, Fear sinks and contracts it; yet both are
felt upon viewing what is great and awful."28
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5
JerroldLevinson has even arguedfor the bodily
sense of participation,as well as a patterningof
lived time, in our response to music.29In effect,
as the Einfiihlung philosopher Heinrich Wdlf-
flin has observed, our experience of the lines
and forms in art through sentience is compara-
ble to the effects of "the emotional content of
sounds"in music.30
The exact natureof this experiencecannot be
encompassedby any of the termsadducedabove
in my abbreviatedreview of the vocabularyde-
veloped to describethis phenomenon.Rather,we
need to expand the list to include a phraseused
by the EinfiihlungphilosopherAugust Schmar-
sow, "die Grundlagen raumlich-kbrperlicher
Existenz," the fundamentals of spatial-bodily
existence, to encapsulatethe reach of an experi-
ence which involves both a bodily and spatial
sense of being.31 I am using the phrase "lived
space" as a concise substitutefor Schmarsow's
lengthierdescription.
The use of lived space in art probably goes
back to time immemorial. In the history of
recorded reflections on this matter-of extant
records,thatis-one of the earliest can be found
in the first centuryB.C.E. when Vitruviusencap-
sulated contemporaryRoman notions and ear-
lier Greek texts on architectureto explain that
the architecturalorders-the Doric, on the one
hand, and the Corinthian and Ionic, on the
other-through their proportionsexpressed the
force or grace of the male and female body re-
spectively.32(As Rudolf Adamy has reminded
us, that which is expressed is readily felt.33)Yet
in spite of the antiquity of this phenomenon,
self-conscious aesthetictheory aboutlived space
seems to have had to await eighteenth-century
reflections aboutcharacterand nineteenth-cen-
tury studies of Einfiihlung.In the field of archi-
tecture, Jacques-FranqoisBlondel argued that
the expression of force or grace in a building
could be achieved through massing and hence
without the use of the architecturalorders.34
Subsequently,Nicolas Le Camus de Mezieres
and then Etienne-Louis Boullee observed that
when a person responds to the inner dynamism
of architecturalforms, the shapes themselves
can elicit an aestheticresponse, which we might
term a coloring of sentience, for which words
taken from the realm of feeling or emotion offer
only approximatetranslationsof the experience:
exaltationfrom soaringforms, nobilityand pride
6 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
from stable horizontalforms, and sadness from
low-lying forms.35
It was left, though, to the Einfiihlungschool
to attemptto explain the psychological mecha-
nism behind such aesthetic response, as well as
to recordthe phenomenologicalaspect of the re-
sponse. The term Einfuhlungrefersto the sensa-
tion of a bodily participationin the aesthetic re-
sponse. So fundamental was the "animation"
(Heinrich Wdlfflin) or the "anthropomorphiza-
tion" of "dead configuration[s]" (Johannes
Volkelt) of lines, forms, and masses in art, that
the Einfiihlung philosophers considered this
process, which they also called symbolization,
the very basis of aesthetics.36
Extrapolatingfrom a recent study on dreams-,
RobertVischer noted in 1873 how in the waking
state the mind also "projects its own bodily
form-and with this also the soul-into the
form of the object."37From this observation,
Vischer explained, he coined the term Einfah-
lung.38In addressingthis subject,we shouldalso
attend to the useful distinction made by Adolf
Gdllerbetween the idealist notion of form which
becomes a symbol and the phenomenological
appreciationof reineForm(pure form), which is
the sourceof ourFormfreude(delight in form).39
Consideringboth works of art and scenes in
nature, the Einfiihlung philosophers directed
their attentionprincipallyto conditions of mass
and qualities of line, especially to the seemingly
restful aspect of the horizontal line, the active
thrustof the vertical, and the grace of the curve,
both to record the natureof the experience and
to explain its physiological basis. In addressing
these matters, Vischer noted the direct engage-
ment of sentience in such experiences:
The responsivesensationconsidersonly the outline
of theform(mountainsilhouette)or followsonlythe
pathof movement(flightof a birdapartfromthebird
itself), butit takesno accountof the existenceof the
individualorganismor its real center.To tracethe
outlineof a form is a self-movement, an act thatis
predominantly subjective:the form being no more
than an arbitrary,willful, and unilateralmeansby
whichthe bodycanenjoyitself.Thesepurelysensu-
ous self-motionsof the responsivesensation,how-
ever,aresomehowreflectedin thoughtprocessesthat
areaffectedin a moredefiniteway.Thusthe whole
personand all his vital feeling [Lebensgefahl] are
luredintocompassion.40
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Whereas we need not agree that the "responsive
sensation" considers only the outline of the
mountain, as opposed to its surging mass with
all of its faceted surfaces and the entirety of its
dense matter, or only the bird's path of move-
ment, therebyignoringalso the grace of its form
as it sweeps its wings, Vischer's attentionto the
involvement of "the whole person and all his
vital feeling" is insightful. Furthermore,Vis-
cher correctly remarkedupon "the rhythmicim-
pressionof form, which is nothingotherthanthe
pleasant overall sensation of a harmonic series
of successful self-motions,"if we considerthese
"self-motions"as a patterning of sentience. In
the process,
thewholebodyis involved;theentirephysicalbeing
is moved.Forin the bodythereis, strictlyspeaking,
no suchprocessof localization.Thuseachempathetic
sensationultimatelyleads to a strengtheningor a
weakeningof the generalvitalsensation[Vitalemp-
findung].41
When the Einfiihlungphilosophersattemptedto
explain the phenomenologyof the spatial sense
of self as it relates to an aesthetic response to
mass or line, they mistakenly followed the path
of earlier writers on aesthetics who grounded
their accounts in physiological theories of per-
ception.42 They generally thought "that the
emotional tone of a form is explained by the
kinesthetic response of the eye when its focus
follows the lines."43Both Goller and Wolfflin
correctly signaled the inadequacyof this expla-
nation.44Yet the former erred by attemptingto
explain Einfiihlungas a Geddchtnissbild(mem-
ory image), whereas the latter mistakenly tied
the experience to that of the muscular states of
the body:
Physical forms possess a character only because we
ourselves possess a body.... We have carried loads
and experiencedpressureand counterpressure, we
havecollapsedto the groundwhenwe no longerhad
the strengthto resistthe downwardpull of ourown
bodies.45
WhatWolfflin and the othertheoristsof Einfiih-
lung ignored was that the experience of archi-
tecturalspace and form-and more generallyof
shapes, lines, and forms in the other visual
arts-is felt through the body as a coloring or
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
patterning of sentience rather than through a
memory or a sympatheticprojectionof an actual
bodily condition involving resistance to weight.
If we consider Arthur Schopenhauer'scon-
tention that the aesthetic basis of architectural
expressionis the visual resolutionof the conflict
between burdenand support,we can discernthe
reason that Wdlfflin and laterobservers,includ-
ing Geoffrey Scott and VernonLee, talked too
literally about aesthetic experience deriving
from "unconsciousanalogy with our own move-
ments" (Scott).46 The visual balance between
the materialload and the supporting members
which Schopenhauercelebratedin Greek archi-
tecture can easily mislead an observer into
thinking that one's own bodily experience of
pressing a moderate weight upward could ac-
count for the feeling of equilibratedbalance and
dignity when viewing the perfect Doric of the
Parthenon.
Yet what mannerof bodily experiencecan ac-
count for the "mysterious and hyperphysical
character" of Gothic architecture where the
"crystalline, aspiring pillars, raised high aloft"
present an image of "all burden having disap-
peared"?47 Certainly the illusion of gravity
abolished provided by the interior of a Gothic
cathedraldrawsupon the feeling of our gravity-
bound condition. But the exultation felt in the
Gothic cathedral is an experience of sentience
comparableto that felt when viewing a Nureyev
or a Barishnikov executing a circle of reverse
jete's.No actual bodily memory of leaping is in-
volved here, either in architectureor in dance.
To the contrary,the mere thoughtof repetitively
hurling one's body backwardin an arcing mo-
tion to inscribe a circle in space is enough to
deaden any empathetic response to this dance
movement. Rather,such scenes in architecture
and dance, as in comparablepassages in music,
color and patternsentience to impartan experi-
ence of exultation. All these combinations are
aspects of sentience ratherthan of the physiol-
ogy of movement and lifting.
The Einffihlungphilosophers were not alone
in exploring the phenomenon of lived space in
the late nineteenth century. In France, Charles
Henry's studies of the "aestheticsof forms"ad-
dressed similar issues aboutthe response to line
and shape, while paying particularattention to
bodily attitudes,in an attemptto articulatewhat
Henry termed "a scientific aesthetic," with
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7
important echoes found in neo -impressionist
art.48Writingon the subject of ornamentin the
arts, the British ChristopherDresser explored
the innerdynamismor "power"which lines and
shapes exhibit.49 Shortly afterwardthe Ameri-
can architect Louis H. Sullivan discussed this
matterin his reflections abouthow architectural
form could inspire sentiments of grace or exul-
tation.50Well known for the soaring aspect of
his pioneeringtall office buildings, Sullivan had
apprenticedunder Frank Furness, who had ex-
ploited the opposite pole of aesthetic response
through the effects of viewing architectural
forms with exaggerated massive and compres-
sive features. This professional lineage contin-
ued into the twentiethcenturywith FrankLloyd
Wright'sreflections upon the aesthetic potential
of the horizontal line, considered both in writ-
ings and in buildings. Other significant recent
writings on such themes include Kasimir Male-
vich's explorationof the dynamismof form with
its visually magnetic and expressive qualities,
which he also explored in his Suprematistart,
and the considerations about the "affinity of
forms" by John F. A. Taylor in Design and Ex-
pression in the VisualArts (1964).51All of these
observersgave greaterprecision to what consti-
tutes our Formfreude(delight in form) through
the involvementof our lived space.
III. EXISTENTIAL SPACE
Of all three aspects of the spatial sense of self,
existential space presents the most complex pa-
rameters.On the one hand it is more nearly in-
visible than the othersbecause it is closest to our
everyday self; on the otherhand, it furnishesthe
occasion for deep aesthetic and spiritualexperi-
ence, conditions that are exceptions to mundane
and quotidianexistence. We have seen that per-
sonal space is largely tied to our relationships
with other people and can be charted to a great
extent through different spatial bubbles. We
have also seen that lived space relates to quali-
ties of line, mass, and form in the visual arts and
to its equivalents,as well as rhythm,in the tem-
poral arts. In contrast to this relatively simple
innerconsistency found in personalspace and in
lived space, existential space can involve at least
three sets of paired conditions.
One set concerns the natureof the surround-
ings and relates to the sense of self that a person
8 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
has either when merely standing in a place or
when moving through various spaces. The sec-
ond set concerns the nature of the response,
which can range from a feeling of secure, shel-
tered existence to a feeling of exultation and
even of transcendence. The third set is more
complicated, because it involves the simultane-
ous association of two different aspects of the
self with two differentfeaturesof the surround-
ings. One relates to the near and the far; the
other, to the way night threatens to alter and
even abolish the very sense of a unique or self-
contained self. As will be seen, these last two
conditions present diametricallyopposed expe-
riences.
Beginning, then, with the first set of condi-
tions, we can use the term "existentialspace"to
refer to the spatial sense of the self living with-
in this world, experienced as circumambient
space. Here August Schmarsowprovides a cru-
cial explanationas partof his contributionto the
writings of the Einfiihlungschool in his expla-
nations about how we carry, so to speak, space
aroundus and how this space seems rootedin an
inner center which we imagine-and feel-as
constituting a personalinner axis:
We all carry the dominantcoordinateof the axial sys-
tem within ourselves in the vertical line that runs
from head to toe. This means that as long as we de-
sire an enclosure for ourselves, the meridian of our
body need not be visibly defined; we ourselves, in
person, are its visual manifestation.
As Schmarsow recognized, existential space
constitutes a primary way of experiencing ar-
chitecture:
As the creatress of space, architecturecreates, in a
way no other art can, enclosures for us in which the
vertical middle axis is not physically present but re-
mains empty.... The spatial constructis, so to speak,
an emanation of the human being present, a projec-
tion from within the subject, irrespective of whether
we physically place ourselves inside the space or
mentally project ourselves into it.52
Schmarsowfaultedhis fellows in the Einfiihlung
school for ignoring this crucial aspect of exis-
tential space in favor of concentratingon lived
space as it responds to conditions of mass and
qualities of line.53
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This sense of carrying an inner axis within
the self thatfills the circumambientspace is well
illustratedthrougha story told by the American
architect Louis Kahn, who used to say that the
Pantheonwas a perfect building except for one
problem:it has a door. Kahnmeant that as soon
as we enter this huge, centralized, and domed
building, we immediatelyfeel as if we are occu-
pying the center and filling the great room with
our presence. We are already at one with the
space even before we traversethe distance from
the entranceto the central spot underthe open-
ing of the dome.
Both this mental displacement of the self,
which anticipates the actual movement of the
body,and the sense of spatiallyoccupyingthe en-
tirety of the building's interior are two of the
phenomenologicalconditions that Martin Hei-
degger explores with the term "das Wohnen"
("wohnenddurchstehensie Raume")in his essay
"Bauen WohnenDenken" ("BuildingDwelling
Thinking").54Similarly,this type of experience
as encountered in the Pantheon has prompted
various writers to remarkupon the "roundness
of life"-from Vincent van Gogh ("La vie est
probablementronde") to Karl Jaspers ("Jedes
Dasein scheint in sich rund").55
The phenomenon of existential space be-
comes engaged not only when we standor move
aroundone place but also by passing througha
sequence of spaces. Schmarsow seems to have
alluded to this when referring to the spatial
sense of self as it relates to open vistas and spa-
tial sequences.56Le Corbusier,who appearsto
have coined the phrase "la promenadearchitec-
turale"(the architecturalpromenade),seems to
have had the spatial sense of self in mind when
he asserted, 'An architecturemust be walked
through and traversed. ... Architecture can be
judged as dead or living by the degree to which
the rule of movementhas been disregardedor
brilliantlyexploited,"because in such instances
the viewer experiences an "intense feeling that
has come from that sequence of movements."57
Althoughthe articulationof this principleap-
parentlyhas had to await the modernera, there
is no reason to believe that spatial sequences of
the earliest known architecturedid not exploit
existential space for specific social or religious
ends. Auguste Choisy's description of an an-
cient Egyptian pylon temple is highly sugges-
tive with respect to its intentional engagement
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
of existential space: "as one approaches the
sanctuary,the floor rises, the ceilings are low-
ered, darknessincreases, and the sacredsymbol
appears only when shroudedin a dim light."58
The phenomenological sense of passing into a
spiritualrealm is created by a complex orches-
tration of movement through space, which in
turn involves passing through the disorienting
spaces of vast columnarhalls, crossing a number
of thresholds,and feeling the space successively
compress as the ceiling drops, the floor rises,
and the lateralwalls move inward,with the light
gradually diminishing into a suggestive partial
obscurity.Whateversymbolismmight have been
attachedto any of the aspects of such scenes, the
experientialeffect could not possibly have been
divorcedfrom the symbolic intent.
Moreover, as with other twentieth-century
movements in abstractart where the artist, by
eschewing mimesis of the natural world, con-
centratedon what might be called the inherent
dynamicsof form, a minimalist sculptorsuch as
Richard Serra and a sympatheticcritic such as
Rosalind Krauss have emphasized the spatial
sense of self as the principalfocus of the artist's
intention and as the primaryvehicle for the aes-
thetic effect. As Krauss explained during the
public hearing about the proposed removal of
Serra's Tilted Arc from its site, with minimal-
ism, "bodies were still to be represented by
sculpture,but bodies now, in their aspect as in-
habited, the humanbody not as it is understood
from without, but as it is lived from within."59
Serraerrs in affirmingthatthe sense of relation-
ship between one's body and volumetric form
"is a condition that can only be engenderedby
sculptureand nothing else."60It has furnisheda
primary means of expression in architecture
since time immemorialas a function of existen-
tial space.
Turning to the second set of considerations
that relate to existential space, we find that the
experience of existential space is framed be-
tween the two poles of shelterand exultation.As
the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck has ex-
plained, there is a Caliban and an Ariel in each
of us.61Perhapsthe most complete and most in-
sightful examination of what van Eyck terms
our appreciationof "shelteredenclosure"can be
found in Gaston Bachelard'sphenomenological
studies of the "materialimagination"and "the
poetics of space"centeredarounda topo-analyse
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9
of sentimentsof intimacy promptedor fostered
by various topographical or topological situa-
tions, or whatBachelardcalled topophilie(topo-
philia).62This phenomenonis best found in the
domestic architectureof Frank Lloyd Wright,
whose The NaturalHouse (1954) is the perfect
complementto Gaston Bachelard'swork.
Even withoutthe intensely purposefulstimu-
lation of feelings of shelter as found, for exam-
ple, in Wright'shouses, architectureengages ex-
istential space through what Le Corbusierhas
termed feeling the ceiling over our shoulders.63
In literature,we find authorsusing this aspect of
existential space to set a mood or to registerthe
psychological state of a character.Kafka in Der
Prozess (1925), for example, used the spatial
sense of self as part of his exploration of feel-
ings of intimacy and alienation. In one scene,
for example, K., as he is known, is led by the
nurse into the lawyer's empty office for an
amorous encounter:'After he had sat down K.
still kept looking roundthe room, it was a lofty,
spacious room, the clients of this 'poor man's
lawyer' must feel lost in it."64 The protagonist
feels lost in the room because the space is too
large for a comfortablefeeling of well-being for
one's own sense of existential space.
Marcel Proust used his grand novel A la
Recherche du temps perdu (1913-1922) to ex-
plore the very natureof existential space,just as
he dwelt on the natureof lived time. Proustrec-
ognized that our ability to live comfortably in
the rooms we inhabit requires an accommoda-
tion between our spatialsense of self and its sur-
roundings. In the novel, young Marcel is ex-
tremely sensitive to the places in which he lives,
to the point where unfamiliarrooms are imme-
diatelydisconcertingand mustbe tamedthrough
the familiarity which habit conveys to places
and objects. Comparinghis room at Balbec to
the one in Paris, Marcel explains that he found
no psychological place for himself in the for-
mer: "It is our attentionwhich puts objects into
a room and habit which withdraws them and
makes room for us there.Room for myself, there
was none for me at Balbec (mine in name
only)."65Like the protagonistK. in Der Prozess,
Marcel is disturbedby the space of his room. Yet
whereas K. is overwhelmedby the discomfort-
ing size of the place, Marcel is troubledby its
very strangeness.Only by becoming habituated
to the room, by deadening its frighteningnew-
10
ness throughhabit, does the room become hab-
itable. As Marcel furtherexplains, "the objects
in my room in Paris troubledme no more than
my own pupils, because they were no more than
appendagesof my organs,an aggrandizementof
myself."66The inability to make the accommo-
dation that we all effectuate with relatively
greaterease than Marcel-except perhapswhen
we encounter an unaccustomed new dwelling,
usually in hotels-is often characteristicof peo-
ple sufferingfrom schizophrenia,who complain
about their existential space being dispersed
into a limitless void or aboutthe circumambient
space threatening to invade their very being
from without.67
This aspect of the spatial sense of the self can
be seen as part of a continuumrelatedto the na-
ture of being that extends to the objects of the
home. In TheMeaningof Things:Domestic Sym-
bols and the Self, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiand
Eugene Rochberg-Haltonexplain, "the objects
of the household represent, at least potentially,
the endogenous being of the owner."68This is
true for all mannersof things with which people
surroundthemselves in their homes, from their
eating utensils to their furniture. We relate to
these things in partthroughthe memorieswhich
we associate with them; throughfeelings about
elegance, status, continuity over time, and so
forth, which these objects elicit for us; but also
throughour sense of existential space.
The polar opposite to "shelteredenclosure"is
spiritualtranscendence.Whereas several of the
Einfiihlungphilosophersfocused their attention
in their writingson the aesthetic responseto line
and mass, they recognizedthat such experiences
were intimately related to "the pantheistic urge
for union with the world."69As RobertVischer
observed, our feelings of sentience can readily
become an occasion for a spiritualexperience
when prompted by an appropriateobject or
scene.70 This involves existential space and is
best illustratedby recourseagainto the Pantheon.
One of the most telling aspects of the phe-
nomenological response to the Pantheon is the
sense of spiritual awe that commonly over-
whelms people who have been affected in the
manner described by Kahn. As Goller has ob-
served, such an experience "gives a feeling
whose causes may well be active in the deepest
reaches of the human soul."'71 Baillie, whom
Samuel H. Monk credits with "very nearly
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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
evolv[ing] the idea of empathy,"offers an early
explanation of such an experience presented
in an eighteenth-century English vocabulary:
"every Person upon seeing a grand Object is
affected with something which as it were ex-
tends his very Being, and expands it to a kind of
Immensity."72
The experience is so immediate in its inten-
sity as to promptone to want to fall upon one's
knees. This impulse wells up deep from within,
for the viewer feels as if he or she is in the pres-
ence of divinity. This type of encounteradheres
to Rudolf Otto's description in Das Heilige of
"primalnuminous awe."73Except perhaps for
the reference to "eerie shuddering,"Otto's ex-
planationfits the situationcompletely:
This experienceof eerieshuddering andawe breaks
outratherfromdepthsof the soulwhichthecircum-
stantial,externalimpressioncannotsound,and the
forcewithwhichit breaksoutis so disproportionate
to themereexternalstimulation thattheeruptionmay
be termed,if notentirely,atleastverynearly,sponta-
neous.74
Since in such circumstances one can readily
have a feeling of completeharmonywith the cos-
mos, one recognizesthatexistentialspace is inti-
mately related to a preverbal,primordialappre-
ciation of our human condition of being in this
world.
French architects of the neoclassical period
explored the pantheistic phenomenon through
buildings and explained the natureof the expe-
rience in their writings. With the linkage in Ed-
mund Burke'sA PhilosophicalEnquiry into the
Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful(1757) of the conceptof the sublime as
found in natureto the mechanismfor replicating
the experienceof sublimitythroughartby means
of the "artificialinfinite," we find architectsnot
only attempting to create such a pantheistic
union throughtheir buildings but also attempt-
ing to explain the experiencein termsof the spa-
tial sense of self.75In 1764 the Frencharchitect
Julien-David Leroy would term this aspect of
aesthetic experience the "metaphysical"dimen-
sion of art.76
Following the exampleof Leroy'sdiscussions,
Boullee would design never-to-be-builtprojects
for a Metropolitan Church (1781-1782) and a
Cenotaphto Sir Isaac Newton (1784) in which
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
Boullee hoped to lead the viewer and eventually
the user into a pantheistic union with nature
through the experience of the sublime. (Like
Schmarsow a century later, Boullee referredto
this phenomenon alternately as the "art" and
"poetry"of architecturein contradistinctionto
its "science."77)Boull'e attemptedthis experi-
ence by applying, in effect, Burke'stwo mecha-
nisms of the artificial infinite: the immense
field of columns in the Metropolitan Church
and the immense dome, or in this case, a giant
spherical cavity evocative of the bosom of the
universein the Cenotaphto Newton. Boullee ex-
plained both projects in terms of the spatial
sense of self, beginning with an account that
refers to the recent phenomenonof the first bal-
loon flights:
Let us imaginemanin the middleof the ocean,see-
ing only sky and water: this scene is truly that of im-
mensity. In this position, everything is beyond our
grasp. There is no way to make comparisons.It is the
same for the balloonist who, floating throughthe sky
and having lost sight of the objects on the earth, sees
in all of natureonly the sky. Wanderingso within im-
mensity,in this abyss of extension, man is annihilated
by this extraordinaryspectacle of an inconceivable
space.78
In the Metropolitan Church project, Boullee
used the bodily identificationwith the immense
field of columns as the mechanism for the senti-
ment of expanding existential space through
what was latertermedRaumgefuhl.In the Ceno-
taphto Newton, the secure sense of self, through
Kbrpergefiihl,is never lost thanksto the solitary
central point of focus, Newton's sarcophagus,
which functions as a psychological anchor as
the spectator experiences a sense of extending
outward to become one with the immensity of
nature.79
IV. NIGHT AND THE BEYOND
The third set of conditions that can arise as a
function of existential space relates (1) to the
way in which we experiencea spatialdistinction
between the self and world either througha spa-
tial dichotomy between the self and the nonself
or between the more comfortable or known as-
pects of the self and the more mysteriousaspects
of the self and (2) to the way in which night
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11
threatens(or promises) to abolish the separation
between the self and the world. Both of these
phenomenological states involve what Jay Ap-
pleton has termed "the 'here-and-there'theme"
and whatI would call the "beyond":"Thistheme
of being in one place and projecting the imagi-
nationinto another,as yet unattainable-we can
call it the 'here-and-there'theme, if you like."80
In TheSymbolismof Habitat(1990), Appleton
quotes a passage from Siegfried Sassoon's The
Old Century (1938) in which the space beyond
the horizonbecomes assimilatedto the unknown
aspect of the future:"Beyondthe gardenand the
wood below it, and across the valley, were those
distanthills: and the futureseemed to lie beyond
them."'81The psychologicaleffectiveness of this
spatialanalogy depends,I believe, upon the spa-
tial sense of self whereby we have the impres-
sion of having a bounded spatial being which
extends outside the body but nonetheless is con-
tained within some actual physical boundary
within view, beyond which lies a spatial realm
that becomes the locus of the unknown or the
unfathomable.Thus, in a comparablepassage in
the unfinished novel Jean Santeuil, Proust as-
similates the space of the "beyond"to the con-
dition of wonder and mystery.82
In his discussion of the "'here-and-there'
theme,"Appletonnotes thatthis was "aconstant
featureof romanticart."83The association is apt
for a painter such as Caspar David Friedrich,
whose canvases range from the domestic scene
of Womanat the Window(1822) to awe-inspir-
ing pantheistic landscapes, and who is essen-
tially a painterof the "beyond"in all of its psy-
chological permutations. Robert Rosenblum,
when discussing Friedrich'swork, referred to
Woman at the Window as an example of the
artist's "search for new symbols to elicit tran-
scendental experience" and then proceeded to
characterizethis painting as "endlessly evoca-
tive," with its "view of the top of a ship's mast
beyond the altar-like privacy and enclosure of
the shuttered window ... conjurlingi up ... a
mood of mysteriouslonging for voyages to un-
charted regions that may be geographic, spiri-
tual, or both."84Although Rosenblumcertainly
has captured the painting's essential message,
the enclosing room and the space "beyond"are
not symbols, in the customarysense of the word
meaning an object which representssomething
else, but rathertopographicalfeatureswhich en-
12
gage our sense of existential space, especially as
it relates to the phenomenological category of
the beyond.85
Rosenblum was similarly perceptive about
Friedrich'sMonk by the Sea (1809), where he
recognizedthatthe painterhas left "themonkon
the brinkof an abyss unprecedentedin the his-
tory of painting"and that this abyss is that of a
boundless void, not only spatial but also exis-
tential, essentially an encounter with the tran-
scendental.86Once again, the painting worksby
engaging our existential space through an en-
counter with the beyond.87
Yet, the temporalrange of the phenomenonof
the beyond as found in art cannot be limited to
the nineteenth century: Appleton himself also
studied its use in sixteenth-centuryItalian and
seventeenth-centuryDutch painting.88In these
earlier eras, it reached its expressive apogee in
the work of Johannes Vermeer.We need only
consider, for example, A Girl Asleep (c. 1657)
whereVermeerutilizes the beyondto explore the
mysteriesof life and spirit.Initiallywe think that
we are looking througha pictureplane at a scene
where we find a girl sleeping in a room which is
followed by a corridorand then anotherroom to
the rear. For the purposes of brevity,I will not
dwell on the relationshipof the mask in the still
life to the girl's head below or to the objects on
the table in front of the girl except to suggest
that the formerrepresentsa doubling of the self
and thus signals an inward world and possibly
the realm of death, and that the latter evoke a
traditionalVanitastheme and therebyconstitute
a mementomori, a reminderof human mortal-
ity.89Looking more closely at the girl, we might
now notice a subtle halo of light, measuring
aboutone inch thick, which surroundsher head.
Surely Vermeeris suggesting that we are in the
presence of the spirit.
This theme is reinforced by two important
spatial disjunctions which place both the girl
and the rearroom out of our reach, so to speak.
By tilting the carpet and drastically changing
the size and focus of its detailed patternat the
nearand far sides, Vermeercreatesa disjunction
between the viewer and the girl.90Thus, we re-
ally have no access to this sleeping girl, for the
disruption in spatial continuity places her in a
realmbeyond our own.91The same is true of the
far room, which is made inaccessible through
spatial discontinuities whereby the seemingly
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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
wide corridor is compressed on its right side,
while the foreshortened door to the left that
swings into the front room seems to recede be-
hind its own sill.
How are we to cross this threshold?We look
to the rightside of the opening betweenthe front
and rear rooms, where the sharp edge of bright
light on the paired door frames focuses our at-
tention. The skewed space of the corridor,which
is compressed togetherat this point, thrusts us,
in a sense miraculously, over the impossible
threshold,not simply into the rearroom but into
the dark window and onto the mirror.Through
these related disjunctions and reversals of ex-
pectations Vermeerhas renderedthe far room as
a world beyond this world, a realm of the spirit.
And he has placed us within its very midst.92
Focusing now on the far room itself, the eye
falls on the centrally located mirror,which re-
flects nothing, and on the adjacentwindow,par-
tially shown but darkenedto revealnothing out-
side. Since the window does not providea view
to the outer world, its presence suggests that we
focus on our innerworld. With both the window
and the mirror,we are looking, as the Bible tells
us, "througha glass darkly."In paintings of this
era, the mirror,a traditionalsymbol of the Vani-
tas, often reflects a skull, as in Nicolas
Tournier'sTruthHolding a Mirror to the Vani-
ties of the World.In A Girl Asleep the mirrorbe-
comes a mirror into the viewer's soul.93 To
achieve this end, Vermeerhas used a seemingly
representationalview of the world which he has
underminedso as to create the semblanceof the
invisible within the visible, of the unseen spirit
within our quotidian world. The phenomeno-
logical technique that permits this result is the
topology of the beyond, which engages our ex-
istential space.
The splitting of the spatial sense of the self
into the near and the far is easily overcome in
the night. Reflecting on a text aboutthe night by
Minkowski, Merleau-Pontyobserves:
When,forexample,theworldof clearandarticulated
objectsfindsitselfabolished,ourperceivingself cut
off from its world imaginesa spatialitywithout
things.Thisis whatoccursatnight.It is notanobject
in frontof me, it envelopsme, it penetratesthrough
all of my senses,it suffocatesmymemories,it almost
erasesmypersonalidentity.I amno longerprotected
withinmy perceivingpost to watchfromtherethe
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
profiles of objects filing before me at a distance.
Night is without profiles, it touches me itself and its
unity is the mystical unity of mana. Even cries or a
distant light only vaguely populate it; it animates it-
self completely. It is depth with planes, without sur-
faces, without distance from it to me.94
Night, then, makes us aware of the spatial nature
of our being, since it readily abolishes the dis-
tinction between "us" and the "beyond," be-
tween the demarcating limits which the imagi-
nation creates for the self to join us to the world,
while still retaining a sense of our separate iden-
tity. Tolstoy in War and Peace uses the phenom-
enological qualities of night to great literary ef-
fect. Consider this account of the aftermath of a
battle, where the groans of the wounded form
the main point of focus:
In the dark it seemed as though a sombre invisible
river flowed on and on in one direction, murmuring
with whispers and the droningof voices, the soundof
hooves and wheels. Amid the general hum, clearer
than all the other noises in the blackness of the night,
rose the groans of the wounded. The gloom that en-
veloped the army was filled with their cries. Their
groaning was one with the blackness of the night.95
Certainly, in terms of description Tolstoy could
have conveyed his message with the sentence
which tells us that "the groans of the wounded"
filled the air. Yet the repeated references to the
darkness of night, with which the groans totally
unite, makes this passage psychologically more
effective. Through this alliance, which engages
our existential space, now rendered fluid and
permeable by the darkness, these groans can
pierce the listeners and, by extension, us, the
readers, to the depths of our being. By associat-
ing the groans with the night, which penetrates
to our very core, obliterating any secure and
separate sense of our existential space, Tolstoy
has conveyed his meaning in the most harrowing
manner.
In conclusion, any study of the phenomenol-
ogy of aesthetic experience will have to consider
the spatial sense of the self and its closely re-
lated partner, which we know as lived time. We
have seen in this abbreviated account how, since
the eighteenth century, artists and philosophers
have begun to explain their workings. It be-
hooves us to continue this inquiry with a dual
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13
perspective, at once philosophical-to plumb
the natureof the experience-and historical-
to chart the course of our collective understand-
ing of this essential humanphenomenon.96
RICHARD A. ETLIN
School of Architecture
Universityof Maryland
College Park, Maryland20742-1411
RETLIN@WAM.UMD.EDU
1. MauriceMerleau-Ponty,Phenomenologiede la percep-
tion (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 339.
2. For Lebensgefiihl,see HeinrichW61fflin, Renaissance
und Barock (1888), as quoted in Harry Francis Mallgrave
and Eleftherios Ikonomou, eds. and trans., "Introduction,"
Empathy,Form,and Space: Problemsin GermanAesthetics,
1873-1893 (SantaMonica:The Getty Centerfor the History
of Art and the Humanities, 1994), p. 47; for Vitalgefiihl,see
JohannesVolkelt, Der Symbol-Begriffin der neuesten Aes-
thetik(1876), as quotedin HeinrichW6lfflin, "Prolegomena
to a Psychology of Architecture"(1886 doctoral disserta-
tion, University of Munich), in Mallgrave and Ikonomou,
eds., pp. 154, 186, n. 6. Unless otherwise noted, all transla-
tions of W6lfflin's dissertationcome from this book.
3. See, for example, Volkelt, Der Symbol-Begriff,as
quoted in Wdlfflin, "Prolegomena,"in Mallgraveand Iko-
nomou, eds., pp. 154, 186, n. 5.
4. See, for example, August Schmarsow,"The Essence of
Architectural Creation" (1893), in Mallgrave and Ikono-
mou, eds., p. 287. All translationsof this essay by Schmar-
sow come from this book.
5. See, for example, Robert Vischer, "On the Optical
Sense of Form: A Contributionto Aesthetics" (1873), and
Adolf Gdller,"Whatis the Cause of PerpetualStyle Change
in Architecture?"(1887, henceforth: "Style Change") in
Mallgrave and Ikonomou, eds., pp. 111, 194. All transla-
tions of Vischer's and Goller's texts come from this book.
6. Wdlfflin, for example, in Renaissance and Baroque,
trans.KathrinSimon (London:WilliamCollins Sons, 1964),
made Einfiihlungthe centerpieceof his art-historicalmethod
and attempted to explain changes in style as a result of
changes in the Lebensgefiihlof an entire society or period, a
notion that had been adumbratedin the concluding section
of his "Prolegomena."In the crucial chapter"TheCauses of
the Change in Style," Wolfflin repeatedhis remarksmade
earlier in the "Prolegomena"abouthow "we always project
a corporeal state" (p. 77) into the outside world and con-
cluded, "in a word, architectureexpresses the 'Lebensge-
fuihl'of an epoch" (p. 78). On the place of RobertVischer's
use of Einfiihlungwithin the debates of the 1880s over the
scope and methods of the discipline of art history and for
the importanceof Vischer's and W6lfflin's ideas on Einfah-
lung for the developmentof Wilhelm Voge's writings, see
KathrynBrush, The Shaping of Art History: WilhelmV5ge,
Adolph Goldschmidt,and the Study of Medieval Art (New
York:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), pp. 29-30, 78-
82, 103, 110, and 193, n. 94. In TheCriticalHistoriansofArt
(Yale UniversityPress, 1983), Michael Podro observes that
14
WoIfflin's Renaissance undBarock "does present a general
theory of [historical] interpretation based on empathy"
(p. 103). Although Podro characterizesSchmarsowas "pri-
marily a 'philological' historian" (p. 143), he recognizes
Schmarsow's use of empathy in explaining our reaction to
sculpture(p. 143) and creditsSchmarsowfor the "extension
of the phenomenological scope of architecturalanalysis"
(p. 149).
7. JohannGeorg Sulzer, General Theory of the Fine Arts
(1771-1774), in Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composi-
tion in the German Enlightenment:Selected Writingsof Jo-
hann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich ChristophKoch, eds. and
trans. Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Thomas Christensen
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1995), pp. 25-26.
Consider also Sulzer's discussion, which begins: 'Anyone
who thinks thatthe artistmust do nothing more thanemploy
various kinds of sensations in a pleasant mix following his
own taste, and that by such a play of sensations an amusing
diversion may be created, such a person has a shallow con-
ception of art"(p. 29).
8. Ibid., p. 33.
9. On the literatureof the 1930s, see Otto FriedrichBoll-
now, Mensch und Raum (Stuttgart:W Kohlhammer,1963),
pp. 13-15, 18, 20; Graf K. von Diirckheim,"Untersuchun-
gen zum gelebten Raum," Neue Psychologische Studien 6
(Munich, 1932); and Eugene Minkowski, Le Tempsv&u:
Etudes phenomenologiqueset psychopathologiques(Paris:
J. L. L. DArtrey, 1933). Minkowski's book has been trans-
lated as Lived Time: Phenomenological and Psychopatho-
logical Studies, trans. Nancy Metzel (NorthwesternUniver-
sity Press, 1970). Here (p. 399, n. 1) he calls attention"tothe
remarkablepaper on this subject [of lived space] by my
friend Ludwig Binswanger, 'Das Raumproblem in der
Pschyopathologie,"'Zeitschriftfur die gesamte Neurologie
und Psychiatrie 145 (1933).
10. Paul Schilder,"Psycho-Analysisof Space,"TheInter-
national Journal of Psycho-Analysis 16 (1935): 295, subse-
quently incorporated into Schilder's posthumous Mind:
Perceptionand Thoughtin Their ConstructiveAspects (Co-
lumbia University Press, 1942). In this article, Schilder's
subject of inquiry was disruptionsto normal spatialpercep-
tions, including the spatial sense of the self, in a variety of
mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia,obsessional neuro-
sis, depression, mania, and hysteria.My subject is the nor-
mal human being and his or her spatial sense of self, espe-
cially as it relates to aesthetic experience.
11. Eugene Minkowski, Versune Cosmologie:fragments
philosophiques, new ed. (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne,1967),
pp. 63-65, 69-78 (chap. 5, "L'Espaceprimitif").
12. HeinrichWolfflin, "Prolegomenazu einer Psycholo-
gie der Architektur,"in Kleine Schriften (1886-1933), ed.
Joseph Gantner (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1946), p. 13 (my
translation).
13. EdwardT.Hall, TheSilentLanguage(1959; New York:
Fawcett, 1966), pp. 158-164, and The Hidden Dimension
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 107-122. The
overall approachof these two books is continued in Robert
Sommer, Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969).
14. A contemporarycritic understoodthatthere is a miss-
ing person, so to speak, at the front of the canvas, and sup-
plied that figure in a wood engraving by showing the same
person in the top hat. See Une Marchande de consolation
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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
aux Folies-Bergere,in Le JournalAmusant(May 27, 1882),
reproducedin T. J. Clark, ThePaintingof ModernLife:Paris
in the Art of Manetand His Followers(New York:Alfred A.
Knopf, 1985), p. 241. More recently, it has become a com-
monplace in art-historicalwriting that the missing person is
the viewer, whom some people identify with the man in the
top hat.
Whereas there is no question about the psychological re-
ality of the viewer's engagement into the painting, it does
not have to follow that the viewer and the man in the top hat
should be conflated. Some observers,myself included, be-
lieve that the viewer, so to speak, approachesthe barmaidat
a moment when she is daydreamingof an encounter.See
Hans Jantzen,as quotedin AlbertBoime, "Manet'sA Bar at
the Folies-Bergereas an Allegory of Nostalgia,"in 12 Views
of Manet'sBar, ed. BradfordR. Collins (PrincetonUniver-
sity Press, 1996), p. 51.
15. Henrivan de Waal,"Lightand Dark: Rembrandtand
Chiaroscuro,"Delta 12 (Summer 1969): 84.
16. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Rosemary Ed-
monds (London: Penguin, 1978), p. 6.
17. Ibid., p. 237. This scene has its predecessor in the
encounter between Mme. Marneffe and Wenceslas Stein-
bock in Balzac's La Cousine Bette (1847; Paris: Bookking
International,1993), p. 217: "Anim6par une pointe de vin,
il s'6tendit, apres le diner, sur un divan, en proie a un bon-
heur a la fois physique et spirituel,que madame Marneffe
mit au comble en venant se poser pres de lui, lgere, par-
fumee, belle a damnerles anges. Elle s'inclina vers Wences-
las, elle effleura presqueson oreille pourlui parlertout bas."
18. Tolstoy,Warand Peace, pp. 192-193, 89-90.
19. Minkowski, Versune Cosmologie, p. 70. All marksof
emphasis in quotationsused in my article occur in the orig-
inal. In the closing passages to Part 1 of L'esclusa (1893),
Luigi Pirandello skillfully applies the psychological lessons
of this type of parting at the train station. In a scene with all
three women weeping and sobbing, he has the two women
who remain behind on the platform clinging to each other,
the partingMartareachingback with outstretchedarms that
slowly dropas the trainpulls aways, with all eyes rivetedto-
gether. Pirandello uses repetition and ellipsis to renderthe
tearing feeling virtually palpable ("e da cui ancora fin lag-
giu, fin laggiui,si agitavano in saluto i fazzoletti..."), and
closes both the scene and the first part of the book with a
soft, distractedvoice trailing off into the void that is being
progressively opened by the departing train: "-Addio...
Addio...-mormorava quasi a se stessa, agitando il suo,
l'abbandonata"(L'esclusa, eds. Marziano Guglielminetti
and LauraNay [Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1992], p. 108).
By the time the readerreachesthe last word (I'abbandonta),
presentedwith the classical rhetoricaldevice of suspension,
the entire weight of anguish and tragedy of the book up to
this point has been concentratedinto Marta'scurrentcondi-
tion of solitude, now fused with the wrenchingeffect of the
departure.
20. Minkowski, Versune Cosmologie, p. 71.
21. Ibid., pp. 73, 75 (the quotationin brackets).
22. As quoted in Daniel Goleman, "MakingRoom on the
Couch for Culture,"TheNew YorkTimes,December5,1995,
sec. C,p. 1.
23. Sentience is not to be confused with emotion. Both the
composer Roger Sessions and the philosopher Susanne K.
Langer offer helpful distinctions on this matter,while ex-
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
plaining that the patterningof sentience is the basis of aes-
thetic experience.Although both Sessions and Langermake
their remarkswhen discussing music, Langer has also cor-
rectly applied her observations to aesthetic experience in
general. As Langer explains: "The tonal structureswe call
'music' bear a close logical similarityto the forms of human
feeling-forms of growth and of attenuation,flowing and
stowing, conflict and resolution, speed, arrest, terrific ex-
citement, calm, or subtle activationand dreamylapses-not
joy and sorrow perhaps, but the poignancy of either and
both-the greatness and brevity and eternal passing of
everything vitally felt. Such is the pattern,or logical form,
of sentience; and the pattern of music is that same form
worked out in pure, measuredsound and silence. Music is a
tonal analogueof emotive life." Feelingand Form:A Theory
of Art Developedfrom "Philosophyin a New Key" (New
York:CharlesScribner'sSons, 1953),pp.27,32 (for Langer's
extension of her discussion of music to "be generalized to
yield a theory of art as such").See also RogerSessions, "The
Composerand His Message," in TheIntentof the Artist, ed.
Augusto Centeno (Princeton University Press, 1941), pp.
123-124. In her book, Langer repeatedlyquotes from Ses-
sion's essay, which she praises as "remarkablydiscerning"
(p. 67).
24. RaymondBayer,as quoted approvinglyin Susan Son-
tag, "On Style," in Against Interpretationand OtherEssays
(New York:Dell, 1970), p. 37.
25. I. A. Richards,as quoted approvinglyin Paul Fussell,
Poetic Meterand Poetic Form,rev.ed. (New York:McGraw-
Hill, 1979), p. 5.
26. Ibid. On this subject, see also RichardA. Etlin, In De-
fense of Humanism: Value in the Arts and Letters (New
York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1996), p. 18.
27. The concept of the coloring of sentience is a leitmotif
in Bergson's "Essai sur les donnees immediates de la con-
science" (1889), in Oeuvres, eds. Andre Robinet and Henri
Gouhier (Paris: Presses Universitairesde France, 1970), es-
pecially pp. 88, 89, 108. Every sentiment,explains Bergson,
"has its animationand its color,"where "animation"is syn-
onymous with elan (pp. 88-89). Speaking in a similar way
about sentience, Louis H. Sullivan has remarked, "Seize
upon the drift, the color, the intensity, the what-you-may-
call-it of the moving fermentinglife aboutyou" (Kindergar-
ten Chats [1901-1902], ed. Claude F. Bragdon [Lawrence,
KS: Scarab FraternityPress, 1934], p. 66). Elsewhere and
repeatedly in this text and in other writings Sullivan com-
ments on the fundamentalimportance of the experience of
rhythm, which is phenomenologically a patterningof sen-
tience or, to use Bergson'sterms,of animationor eilan.Thus,
as Bergson and Sullivan have prescientlynoted, the pattern-
ing and the coloring of sentience are two of the basic and
complementarymodes of imparting meaning through lan-
guage and art.
28. John Baillie, An Essay on the Sublime (London: R.
Dodsley, 1747), p. 32. This essay, published posthumously,
can be found as AugustanReprintSociety Publicationno.43
(New York:Kraus, 1967) with an introductionby Samuel
Holt Monk. For a discussion of comparableremarksmade
by Nicolas Le Camus de Mezieres in Le Genie de l'archi-
tecture,ou l'analogie de cet art avec nos sensations (Paris,
1780), see RichardA. Etlin, TheArchitectureof Death: The
Transformationof the Cemeteryin Eighteenth-CenturyParis
(MIT Press, 1984), p. 117. Consideralso Rousseau'sobser-
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15
vations about the spatial aspects of "le sentiment de l'exis-
tence" (the sentiment of existence) in the texts quoted in
Georges Poulet, Les Metamorphosesdu cercle (Paris: Plon,
1961), pp. 104-107. See also Binswanger's observationsin
Uber Ideenflucht(1933) on the spatialaspects of optimism,
summarized with quotations by Bollnow in "Der eupho-
rische Raum,"Mensch undRaum,pp. 238-240.
29. For the latter,see JerroldLevinson, "EdmundGurney
and the Appreciationof Music,"Iyyun,TheJerusalemPhilo-
sophical Quarterly 42 (1993): 181-205; for the former,
"MusicalLiteracy,"The Journal of Aesthetic Education 24
(1990): 22-23, whereLevinson, in providinga rhythmicfig-
ure from Bruckner's Fourth Symphony (E-flat), asks:
"Wheredoes the expressive punch of this figure, especially
in its rising and forte enunciations(e.g., at measures51-54)
derive from?" and responds: "I suggest it cannot be other
than from some association with human movement; the
image of a compressed(e.g., crouching) body rising, slowly
at first, then more swiftly, to full statureseems particularly
apt, but surely some sense of physical rising is being tapped
into. It is this that crucially funds the figure's uplifting, life-
affirming quality.Similarly,the gay, carefreemotives of the
second thematicgroup (measures75-86) unmistakablyde-
rive theirexpressivenessin partfrom theirevocationof skip-
ping and dancing movement."For an alternativeexplanation
of this phenomenon, see below where I discuss analogous
accountswith respect to the visual and plastic arts by Robert
Vischer,Geoffrey Scott, and VernonLee [Violet Paget].
30. Wolfflin, "Prolegomena,"p. 151.
31. AugustSchmarsow,BeitragezurAesthetikder bildenen
Kanste. III. Plastik Malerei und Reliefkunstin ihremgegen-
seitigen Verhdltnis(Leipzig: Von S. Hirzel, 1899), p. 29.
32. Vitruvius,The TenBooks of Architecture,trans.Mor-
ris Hicky Morgan (New York:Dover, 1960), book IV,chap.
I, sec. 7-8, pp. 103-104.
33. RudolfAdamy,Architektonikauf historischerundaes-
thetischerGrundlage,in Die Architekturals Kunst(1881), as
quoted in Mallgraveand Ikonomou,eds. and trans., Empa-
thy,Form,and Space, p. 292, n. 1 (translationmodified): "In
architecturewe deal with the representationof the notions
of force and load to our feeling." Adamy is commenting on
Schopenhauer'sexplanation of the aesthetics of architec-
ture, which I discuss below.
34. On Blondel see Richard A. Etlin, "'Les Dedans.'
Jacques-FranqoisBlondel and the System of the Home,"
Gazette des Beaux-Arts91 (April 1978): 146, and Symbolic
Space: French EnlightenmentArchitectureand Its Legacy
(University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 14, 144.
35. On Le Camusde Mezieres and Boullee, see Etlin, The
Architectureof Death, pp. 115-119, and Symbolic Space,
p. 15.
36. Volkelt, Der Symbol-Begriff,in Mallgrave and Ikon-
omou, eds. and trans.,Empathy,Form,and Space, pp. 42; 77,
n. 130: "Erst wenn das unpersdnlicheObjektive auf diese
Weise anthropomorphisirtoder-urn unsere gewohnliche
Bezeichnungzu gebrauchen-zum Symbole erhobenwurde,
ist es fahig, uns isthetischanzusprechen"("Only when the
impersonal objective has thus been anthropomorphized
or-to use our familiarexpression-raised to a symbol, is it
capable of appealing to us aesthetically").
37. Vischer,"Onthe Optical Sense of Form,"p. 92.
38. AlthoughMallgraveand Ikonomou(p. 22) and Ernest
K. Mundt,in "ThreeAspects of GermanAesthetic Theory,"
16
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 17 (1959): 291,
commenton the inadequacyof "empathy"as a translationof
the word Einfahlung,there is a psychological aptness here.
Einfiihlungpartakesof whatMinkowski terms the "principe
de penetration"(principle of penetration),which he finds to
be a crucial component of "la sympathie"(empathy) in its
etymological sense of "ce don merveilleuxque nous portons
en nous de faire notres les joies et les peines de nos sem-
blables" (Le Temps vecu, pp. 59-61; Minkowski, Lived
Time, p. 67). In Le Tempsvecu, p. 62 (Lived Time, p. 68),
Minkowski refers to "la sympathie" as "un phenomene
primitifet essentiel de la vie" just as he refersto lived space
as "primitivespace"in Versune Cosmologie (pp. 69-78).
39. G6ller,"StyleChange,"pp. 197, 199, 200, 204. In Das
asthetische Geffihl:Eine Erkldrungder Schinheit und Zer-
gliederung ihres Erfassens auf psychologischer Grundlage
(Stuttgart:von Zeller and Schmidt, 1905), p. 251, Goller
gives as synonymsEigenform,Forman sich, and reineForm.
40. Vischer, "On the Optical Sense of Form," pp. 106-
107.
41. Ibid., pp. 97, 99.
42. We find EdmundBurke,for example, taking a similar
approachin his explanation of "Why DARKNESS is terri-
ble" (A PhilosophicalEnquiryinto the Origins of OurIdeas
of the Sublimeand the Beautiful, ed. J. T. Boulton [Univer-
sity of Notre Dame Press, 1968], pp. 145-146). In Herder's
Aesthetic and the EuropeanEnlightenment(CornellUniver-
sity Press, 1991), pp. 190-193, Robert E. Norton discusses
the importance of physiological explanationsto Sulzer and
then Herder,the latter in VomErkennenund Empfindender
menschlichen Seele (On Cognition and Sensation of the
Human Soul) offering his "humble opinion [that] no psy-
chology is possible that is not at every step precise physiol-
ogy." In Herderand the Philosophyand History of Science
(Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Assocation,
1970), H. B. Nisbet reviews Herder'sdebt to Burke on this
matter(p. 260) and places the work of both writerswithin a
broadercontext:"As[HermannSamuel] Reimarusobserves,
it was very fashionable in the second half of the eighteenth
century to provide a physiological basis for psychological
theoriesin general(especially in the Britishempiricalschool
and the French materialistschool, and those who were in-
fluenced by them)" (p. 262). We see the legacy of this out-
look in the early writings of the Einfiihlungphilosophers.
43. Wolfflin, "Prolegomena,"p. 150.
44. Ibid., pp. 150-15 1; Goller, "Style Change,"pp. 200-
201. In Formand Feeling, p. 64, Langer also addresses this
issue, which she finds in the laterwritings of TheodorLipps
and VernonLee [Violet Paget].
45. Wolfflin, "Prolegomena,"p. 151.
46. Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism: A
Studyin the History of Taste(1914; reprint,New York:W.W.
Norton, 1974),pp. 165-166; VernonLee [Violet Paget], The
Beautiful:An Introductionto PsychologicalAesthetics(Cam-
bridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1913; reprint,Folcroft
LibraryEditions, 1970).
47. Arthur Schopenhauer,The Worldas Will and Idea,
trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London: 1883; reprint,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), vol. 3, p. 191.
48. See Martha Ward, Pisarro, Neo-Impressionism,and
the Spaces of the Avant-Garde(University of Chicago Press,
1996), pp. 124-146 (chap. 6, "PsychophysicalAesthetics").
49. ChristopherDresser,Principles of DecorativeDesign,
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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
4th ed. (1870; London:Cassell,Petter,Galpin,n.d.), pp. 5-6,
14-17.
50. Sullivan, KindergartenChats, pp. 162, 167.
51. Kasimir Malevich, The Non-ObjectiveWorld,trans.
Howard Dearstyne (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1959); John
F. A. Taylor,Design and Expressionin the VisualArts (New
York:Dover, 1964), pp. 74-78. See also Langer,Feelingand
Form,pp. 63ff.
52. Schmarsow,"TheEssence of ArchitecturalCreation,"
pp. 288-289. Consideralso Schmarsow'sremarksaboutthe
"intuited form of space, which surroundsus whereverwe
may be and which we then always erect aroundourselves":
"Assoon as we havelearnedto experienceourselvesand our-
selves alone as the center of this space, whose coordinates
intersectin us, we have found the preciouskernel,the initial
capital investmentso to speak, on which architecturalcre-
ation is based"(pp. 286-287). LaterGerman-languagetexts
written in Schmarsow'smannerare cited in ChristianNor-
berg-Schulz's Existence, Space & Architecture (London:
Studio Vista, 1971), pp. 9-36. In 'At the Still Point of the
TurningWorld,"Connections(HarvardGraduateSchool of
Design, 1971), pp. 21-31, I hazarded the notion that the
primitiveritualsof founding a communitywhich involve (1)
the consecrationof a centralpoint, usually understoodas the
locus for establishingcontactwith the gods aboveand below
the earth, and (2) the delimitationof boundarieswhich sep-
arate the space of the community from the outside world,
may have involved a projectioninto the social realm of this
basic existential condition of having an inner center and
then filling the surroundingspace with one's sense of self. I
returnedbriefly to this notion in SymbolicSpace, pp. xix-xx.
53. Schmarsow, "The Essence," p. 292: "Consequently,
ourphilosophersof art haveerredin thinkingof architecture
itself as the ideal representationof the laws of gravity that
regulate the universe or as the emotional representationof
the concepts of force and load-as if this apparentlydidac-
tic task were its main purpose. ... And it is for this reason
thatthey preferto articulatethe structureand the exteriorof
the building,completely neglecting the inventionof space as
such.... They therefore lose sight of the inner aspect of ar-
chitecturalcreationand of the perennialmotive thatsupplies
its psychological explanation."
54. Martin Heidegger,"BauenWohnenDenken,"in Vor-
trige undAufsdtze,3rded. (n.p.:Neske, 1967), vol. 2, p. 32.
Elsewherein this essay Heideggercommentson the unitybe-
tween humansand the space aroundthem by rejecting stark
dichotomiesbetween one and the other:"Whenwe speak of
man and space, it sounds as though man stood on one side,
space on the other. Yet space is not something that faces
man. It is neitheran externalobject nor an innerexperience.
It is not that there are men and in addition space" (Poetry,
Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter [New York:
Harperand Row, 1971], p. 156 [translationmodified]).
55. As quoted by GastonBachelardin "LaPhenomenolo-
gie du rond"(chap. 10),"in La Poetiquede lespace, 6th ed.
(Paris: Presses Universitairesde France, 1970), p. 208.
56. Schmarsow,"TheEssence of ArchitecturalCreation,"
p. 293.
57. Le CorbusierTalkswith Studentsfrom Schools of Ar-
chitecture, trans. Pierre Chase (New York: Orion Press,
1961), pp. 44-45.
58. Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l'architecture (Paris:
EdouardRouveyre,[1899]), vol. 1, p. 60.
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
59. Rosiland Krauss,as quoted in ClaraWeyergraf-Serra
and MarthaBuskirk,eds., The Destruction of "TiltedArc":
Documents (Cambridge,MA: OCTOBER Books and MIT
Press, 1991), p. 81.
60. RichardSerra,as quoted in ibid., p. 66.
61. Aldo van Eyck, "LabyrinthianClarity,"in WorldAr-
chitecture 3, ed. John Donat (New York: Studio/Viking,
1966), p. 122: "Thereis a kind of spatialappreciationwhich
makes us envy birds in flight; there is also a kind which
makes us recall the shelteredenclosureof our origin. Archi-
tecturewill fail if it neglects either the one kind or the other.
To gratify Ariel means gratifying Caliban also, for there is
no man who is not both at once, LabyrinthianClarity,at any
rate, sings of both!" For the response to Ariel and Caliban
through combinations of single- and double-height spaces
in Le Corbusier'sarchitectureand for juxtaposed volumes
with different ceiling heights accompanied by spatial se-
quences that satisfy what Jay Appletonhas termedthe time-
less human need for "prospect"and "refuge"as found in
Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, see Richard A. Etlin,
FrankLloydWrightand Le Corbusier:TheRomanticLegacy,
henceforth abbreviated as Romantic Legacy (Manchester
UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 27-53, 61-62, 68, 74-75.
62. Bachelard, La Poetique de lespace, pp. 17, 27. See
also and especially his L'Eau et les reves.Essai sur l'imagi-
nation de la matiere (1942), LAir et les songes. Essai sur
l'imaginationdu mouvement(1943), La Terreet les reveries
du repos (1948), and La Terreet les reveries de la volonte
(1948). Bachelard'swork spurredother studiesrelatedto the
phenomenologicalexperience of space and time, most no-
tably Oliver Marc'sPsychanalyse de la maison (1972).
63. Le Corbusier,La Ville radieuse.Elements d'une doc-
trine d'urbanisme pour 1' quipement de la civilisation
machinists (1935; reprint, Paris: Vincent, Fr6al et Cie,
1964), p. 54: "Nos 6paules ont sur elles les plafonds qui
conviennent."
64. FranzKafka, The Trial,trans. Willa Muir and Edwin
Muir,rev. trans. E. M. Butler (New York:Schocken, 1974),
p. 106.
65. MarcelProust,A 1'Ombredesjeunesfilles enfleurs, in
A la Recherche du temps perdu, vol. 1, Du c6te de chez
Swann, eds. Piere Clarac and Andr6 Ferr6.Bibliotheque de
la Pleiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 666.
66. Ibid., p. 667.
67. In LivedTime,pp. 432-433, Minkowskirelatesthe ac-
count of a patient studied by Franz Fischer in "Ueber das
Raumliche in der Schizophrenie" (1931) which conveys
these sentiments. Fischer's study was taken up also by
Schilder ("Psycho-Analysis of Space," pp. 277-278), who
comments on its use by Binswanger as well. For a different
type of disruptionin the normal or healthy image of self in
which the body and its space are in harmony,see Louis A.
Sass, who observes,"Manyschizophrenicpatientsoften feel
separatedfrom the lived-body: 'Body and soul don't belong
together;there's no unity,' stated one of ManfredBleuler's
patients"(The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein,Schre-
ber. and the SchizophrenicMind [Cornell University Press,
1994], p. 48). Other relevant literatureis reviewed in Boll-
now, Menschund Raum,passim.
68. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-
Halton, The Meaningof Things:Domestic Symbolsand the
Self (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1981), p. 17.
69. Vischer, "On the Optical Sense of Form," p. 109;
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17
Ueber das optische Formgefiihl.Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik
(Leipzig: HermannCredner,1873), p. 28: "Fragenwir nun
abernach der Ursachedieser merkwiirdigenVerschmelzung
von Subjektund Objektin der Geffihlsvorstellung,so gibt es
wohl keine andere Auskunft,als eben wiederumdas Wesen
des Gefuhils.Dieser symbolisirendenThitigkeit kann nichts
Anderes zu Grundeliegen, als der pantheistischeDrang zur
Vereinigungmit derWelt."Mundt,in "ThreeAspects of Ger-
man Aesthetic Theory,"p. 292, terms this passage "a key
sentence of Vischer's."See also other such remarksby Vis-
cher, as well as by his fatherFriedrichTheodor Vischer and
by Johannes Volkelt, as summarized by Mallgrave and
Ikonomuon pp. 20, 26, 28, 77 (n. 135), 116.
70. Vischer, "On the Optical Sense of Form,"p. 112: "A
stricter emphasis on the purely aesthetic approach would
thus find a spiritual,instinctive, ideal intensificationof the
end in itself, which previously held only a purely sensuous
value in the perceptionand imagination.... I feel in orderto
enjoy the universalin me or in the world."
71. Goller, "Style Change,"p. 198.
72. Samuel H. Monk, The Sublime: A Study of Critical
Theoriesin XVIII-CenturyEngland(Universityof Michigan
Press, 1960),p. 73; Baillie, AnEssay on the Sublime,p. 4 (see
also p. 6). Baillie's generalizationabout "every"person re-
acting in this mannerneeds to be qualified. One has only to
recallthe rangeof responsesto Beethoven'sFifth Symphony
humorously surveyed at the opening of chap. 5 in E. M.
Forster'sHoward'sEnd ( 1910) wherein a partyof six people
it is only Margaret"whocan only see the music"ratherthan
other,usually associative, thoughtsor feelings, rangingfrom
patriotismto "heroesand shipwrecks,"to recognizeBaillie's
optimism, or perhapsnaivet6.Whereas most people are ei-
ther readily aware-or easily can be made aware-of their
spatial sense of self, the more phenomenologicallyprimal,
the more deeply spiritual,and the more profoundlyfelt aes-
thetic dimensionof this sense of self often escapes people of
a more rationalistdisposition. In Das Heilige, Rudolf Otto
addressedthis matterby remindingthe readerof the nature
of experiencethat was his subject:"The readeris invited to
direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experi-
ence, as little as possible qualified by other forms of con-
sciousness. Whoevercannotdo this, whoeverknows no such
moments in his experience, is requestedto read no farther;
for it is not easy to discuss questionsof religious psychology
with one who can recollect the emotions of his adolescence,
the discomfortsof digestion, or say, social feelings, but can-
not recall any intrinsicreligious feelings." Otto continues in
this vein to addressthe natureof both aestheticand religious
experiencewhich dependupon this deepertype of response.
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey
(1917; Oxford UniversityPress, 1923), p. 8.
73. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, p. 126.
74. Ibid., pp. 125-126.
75. On the artificial infinite, see Burke, A Philosophical
Enquiry, pp. 74-76, 139-142. On the antecedents to this
book, see MarjorieHope Nicholson, MountainGloom and
MountainGlory: The Developmentof the Aesthetics of the
Infinite(New York:Norton, 1963). In TheArchitecturalUn-
canny:Essays on the ModernUnhomely(MIT Press, 1992),
p. 3, Anthony Vidler links the psychic fears associated with
the spatial sense of the self found in the literatureof the
modem era with that other aspect of "the Burkeansublime"
which is the feeling of terrorthatit can prompt.In this essay
18
I am concentratingon the sentimentof transcendenceasso-
ciated with the sublime and its relationship to existential
space.
76. For Leroy, see Etlin, Symbolic Space, pp. 119-120.
For a comparableuse of the word "metaphysical"to desig-
nate aesthetic experience, see also Michel-PaulGuy de Cha-
banon, Observationssur la musiqueet principalementsur la
mtaphysique de l'art (Paris, 1779), especially p. ii, and
Dresser,Principles of Decorative Design, p. 14. I am grate-
ful to Ghyslaine Guertin for bringing Chabanon'swork to
my attention.
77. Schmarsow,"The Essence":"the basic difference be-
tween the art of space and the science of space" (p. 291),
"the poetics of space"(p. 293).
78. Etienne-Louis Boull6e, Architecture,essai sur lart,
ed. Jean-Marie P6rouse de Montclos (Paris: Hermann,
1968), p. 85 (folio 91).
79. Etlin, Symbolic Space, pp. 121-122, and The Archi-
tectureof Death, pp. 134-136.
80. Jay Appleton, The Symbolismof Habitat:An Interpre-
tation of Landscape in the Arts, The Jesse and John Danz
Lectures (University of WashingtonPress, 1990), p. 34.
81. Ibid., p. 33.
82. Marcel Proust, Jean Santeuil, ed. Pierre Clarac with
D'Yves Sandre. Bibliotheque de la Pl6iade (Paris: Galli-
mard, 1971),pp. 306-307: 'And you, reader,olderthanJean,
from the enclosureof a gardensituatedon an eminence, have
you not sometimes had the feeling that these were not
merely other fields, other trees which spreadthemselvesout
before you, but a certain country underits special sky? The
few trees which came up to the enclosure where you were
leaning on your elbows, they were like the real trees in the
first plane of a panorama;they served as a transition be-
tween what you knew, the garden which you had come to
visit and that mysterious, unreal thing, a country which
spreaditself out before you underthe appearanceof plains,
developing richly into valleys, allowing the sun to play
across the ground in this frozen moment and which from its
own sky had sent it luminous and puffy clouds. Here there
are still real things which we know, the little plot of rose
bushes ... But climb up to the last rose bushes and all of a
sudden you have a prospect of that immensity of fields
where shade alternateswith sunlight, where green hills are
followed by blue hills. You had thought yourself to be in a
garden, ... in this cultivated,constructed,enclosed place, but
that furtheron it is something else, ... mysterious
83. Appleton, The Symbolismof Habitat,p. 34.
84. RobertRosenblum,ModernPaintingand the Northern
RomanticTradition:Friedrichto Rothko(New York:Harper
and Row, 1975), pp. 32-33.
85. Rosenblum'suse of the word symbol would be apt if it
were understoodin the same way in which the Einfiihlung
philosophersdiscussed the engagementof lived space or ex-
istential space throughthe empatheticmergerof the subject
with the viewed object, which they termeda process of sym-
bolization or raising to the level of a symbol. See, for exam-
ple, notes 36, 69 above.
86. Rosenblum,ModernPainting,pp. 13-15.
87. By presentingthe humanfigure in both paintings dis-
cussed here from the rear,the so-called Rfickenfigur,Fried-
rich facilitates this type of response. On this featureof the
painter'swork, see JosephLeo Koerner'sdiscussion in Cas-
par David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape (Yale
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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
University Press, 1990), where his observationaboutFried-
rich'sRackenfigurin one particularcanvas can be general-
ized to explain its use throughouthis work: "Whathe medi-
ates is not a meaning, but an experienceof the full presence
of landscape"(p. 164).
88. JayAppleton, TheExperienceof Landscape(London:
JohnWiley and Sons, 1975), pp. 129-136.
89. The aspect of the mask, consideredwith regardto the
expression on the girl's face, appearsanalogous to the dou-
bling of the self in Vermeer'sGirl Reading a Letter at an
OpenDoor (c. 1657), virtuallya contemporaneouspainting
accordingto the scholarly chronology.In this lattercanvas,
the face and bodice are reflected in the mirrorwith signifi-
cant variationsbetween the two images such that the reflec-
tion suggests the portrayal of an inner mental state. As
ArthurK. Wheelock, Jr.,has observed,"thereflection of her
image in the glass emphasizes the inward nature of her
thoughts"(JanVermeer[New York:HarryN. Abrams,1988],
p. 58). If any of the symbolic meanings of the mask as found
in emblem books available at Vermeer's time and as re-
viewed by Madlyn Millner Kahrin "Vermeer'sGirl Asleep:
A MoralEmblem,"MetropolitanMuseumJournal6 (1972):
129-132, applies, the one from Ripa's famous compendium
relatingto the searchfor "trueknowledge"seems to pertain
most closely to all aspects of the painting, especially with
respect to the spatialconstructionthat I discuss below.
90. These visual discrepanciesare noted and describedin
detail by Kahr in ibid., p. 118. Kahr,though, regardsthese
visual distortions merely as Vermeer'seffort "to stress the
perspective recession"by "exaggeratingthe appearanceof
both the near and the more distant areas."Kahr'sparticular
assessment of this feature must be considered within her
overalloutlook aboutthis painting, which she feels "betrays
some awkwardnessin the representationof spatialrelations"
(p. 119). In offering this judgment, Kahr does not consider
Hans Jantzen'searlier discussion of Vermeer'sskillful and
purposeful distortion of rational depictions of space, nor
does she address the possibility that Vermeermight have
been utilizing such distortions in ways analogous to earlier
Manneristart, as discussed below in n. 92. In Vermeerand
the Art of Painting (Yale University Press, 1995), ArthurJ.
Wheelock Jr.offers an account similar to Kahr's of the dif-
ferences in the near and far tapestry patterns (p. 44) but
nonethelessrecognizes the disruptiveeffects caused both by
objects in the foreground and by the spatial disjunction:
"The viewer, moreover,cannot easily situatehimself or her-
self in relationto the interiorspace because it seems to drop
away so rapidly. Vermeerheightens this feeling by estab-
lishing visual barrierswith the chair and the drawn-uptap-
estry on the table thatpreventeasy access into the painting"
(p. 47). With respect to A Girl Asleep, Wheelock notes still
anothertype of spatial disjunctionthat separatesthe viewer
from the entire scene: the "rapidlyrising sense of space"ef-
fectuatedby constructingthe horizon"atthe level of the mir-
ror in the back room"that does not blend visually with the
viewer's position in front of "the table in the immediate
foreground."As Wheelock notes, this juxtaposition"creates
a disorientingsensation"(p. 47).
91. Both LawrenceGowing and Daniel Arasse refermore
generally to the objects in the foregroundthat function as
barriersand encumbrances(Gowing) or obstacles (Arasse),
which Vermeerusually places between the viewer and the
person(s) depicted in his interiorscenes. Arasse furtherob-
Etlin Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self
serves that these obstacles create "a 'reserved'space, a place
where the humanfigure is present,even close, but protected,
as it were, from all approachto discovery,all direct commu-
nication." See Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer,2nd ed. (Lon-
don: Faberand Faber, 1970), p. 34, and Daniel Arasse, Ver-
meer: Faith in Painting, trans. Terry Grabar (Princeton
University Press, 1994), pp. 65-66.
92. As Martin Pops has observed, space in Vermeer's
paintings is ontological in character,such that a room often
becomes a veritable "chamberof being" (Vermeer:Con-
sciousness and the Chamberof Being [Ann Arbor:UMI Re-
searchPress, 1984]). One means by which Vermeerachieved
this effect was through a purposeful distortion of perspec-
tive. The particulardistortionused in A Girl Asleep for phe-
nomenological and ultimately symbolic ends occurs else-
where in his work and is precededby analogous alterations
to rationallyconstructed spatial forms in the Manneristpe-
riod. For example, in Mannerism (Harmondsworth:Pen-
guin, 1967), pp. 73-74, John Shearmanexplores the play of
spatial contrastsand ambiguitiescreatedby Michelangelo's
tabernacles in the Medici Chapel (Florence, 1521). Simi-
larly, in ThePoetics of Perspective(CornellUniversityPress,
1994), pp. 154-156, James Elkins uses Pontormo's Visita-
tion (1528) to illustratehis point thatMannerists"disassem-
bled, sheared,and disjointedperspective"in a manneranal-
ogous to what I have describedin Vermeer'sA Girl Asleep.
For a discussion of a different type of distortedperspec-
tive in Vermeer'spainting, whereby receding diagonals are
made unequal, see Edward A. Snow, A Study of Vermeer
(University of California Press, 1979), pp. 88, 164-165,
n. 3, where the authorassigns differentmeaning to the two
differentspatialconditions. WritingaboutA Ladyat the Vir-
ginals with a Gentleman (c. 1662-1664), Snow observes,
"The diagonal leading throughthe edge of the table and the
chair appears to measure a much shorter distance to the
woman than the one indicatedby the lines of the wall on the
left" (p. 88). In A Girl Asleep "the short diagonal leads past
an area of material,sensual density to the sleeping girl; the
long one through empty space into a sparsely furnished,
meditative space in the far background of the painting"
(p. 165, n. 3). Snow finds a "similaruse of long and short
crossing diagonals"in WomanPouringMilk(ibid.). Although
Snow and I offer differentaccountsof how the eye is led into
the far room of A Girl Asleep, he too believes that the far
room has a special psychological significance: "The open-
ing in the backgroundof the painting can likewise be read
either as an extension of the girl's reverie,as a metaphorfor
her openness to us, or as the destination toward which our
own contemplation tends. The private significance for the
viewer of this thresholdand the absence thatis palpablyvis-
ible beyond it is stressed in severalways."
Snow's analysis presents marked analogies with Hans
Jantzen's earlier discussion of Vermeer's painting, which
also is relevantto my argument.In Das niederldndischeAr-
chitekturbild(Leipzig: Klinckhardtand Biermann, 1910),
pp. 146-147, Jantzen,by studying Vermeer'sA Lady at the
Virginalswith a Gentlemanand The Art of Painting(1666-
1667), showed how Vermeerpioneered a mannerof spatial
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19
ambiguitywherebythe use of deep perspectivalrecession to
one side of a room pushes the scene shown at the far end of
the interiorinto a seemingly deep space (Fernraum),while
simultaneouslypositioning objects on the other side of the
painting to thrust the viewer into that far position by mo-
mentarilyabolishing the relativelygreat distance in favorof
a compressed shallow space, hence Nahraum.Jantzen'sob-
servationsteach us that Vermeerrepeatedlyused a paradox-
ical reversal of spatial conditions, employing at the same
time both Fernraumand Nahraum,which coexist in a geo-
metricallyambiguouscondition. (An analogousreadingcan
be found in Pops, Vermeer,pp. 11, 26.) As I argue, Vermeer
employed this type of dualistic spatialconstructionin A Girl
Asleep for specific narrative and symbolic purposes, sus-
tained by the phenomenologicalcategory of the beyond. Fi-
nally, Wheelock attributesVermeer'spurposeful distortion
of perspective as describedin Vermeerand the Art of Paint-
ing (1995), p. 47, and summarizedabove in n. 90, to the
artist'screative applicationof the technique of using multi-
ple and contrastingvantage points as found in the contem-
porary work of Carel Fabritius.
93. "Andthe focal point of the painting, as Madlyn Kahr
has observed, is not the woman but the [mirror]on the far
wall of the roombehindthe door"(Snow,A Studyof Vermeer,
p. 56). See also, Kahr,"Vermeer'sGirl Asleep," p. 127, for a
detailed accountof the severalreasons why the mirrorfunc-
tions as a "magnetfor the eyes of the observer."
94. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception,
p. 328. In the opening pages of A la Recherche du temps
perdu, p. 5, Proustexplores how sleep can loosen the moor-
ings of one's sense of the self and how awakening in the
night in such a state can occasion a primordialterror in
which the invading darkness abolishes any sense of self.
Here the memory of any room that one has once occupied is
needed to calm the feelings: "But all that was needed, even
when I was in my own bed, was for my sleep to be deep and
thus totally to loosen its hold upon my spirit, then my spirit
released itself from its moorings to the place where I was
sleeping and when I awoke in the middle of the night, since
I was unawareof where I was, for a moment I did not even
know who I was; I only had in its primordialsimplicity the
sentimentof existence as it might shudderin the depthsof an
animal;I was more denudedthan a cave man."Not knowing
where he was, Marcel no longer sensed who he was.
95. Tolstoy,Warand Peace, p. 224.
96. I am grateful to KathrynBrush, Denis Dutton, Chris-
tiane Hertel, Steven Mansbach, and Beatrice Rehl for hav-
ing offered helpful comments about earlier versions of my
manuscript.In addition, the two anonymousreadersfor the
JAAC,in conjunction with its editor, Philip Alperson, of-
fered insightful suggestions that have helped me to clarify
furtherthe text. Peter U. Beicken generouslydiscussed with
me fine points of German language. Any shortcomings in
my article that remain are, of course, my responsibility.Fi-
nally, Kathryn Brush and Nina James-Fowlerwere espe-
cially helpful in providing me with a couple of rare docu-
ments used in this study.