Arno Holz's Formula of Art

14 Pages·2014·0.22 MB·English

by  Gunhild Berg

10.3726/8561(cid:24)_37
Arno Holz’s Formula of Art
Aesthetics as an Experimental, Mathematical
Science
Gunhild Berg
In Art. Its Nature and its Laws [Die Kunst. Ihr Wesen und ihre Gesetze]
(1891), Arno Holz describes an aesthetic experiment which, by
means of scientific methodology (a theoretically founded hypo-
thesis, experimentation, quantification, verification), leads to his
discovery of the (natural) law of art expressed in the mathematical
formula: “art = nature – x”1. Because Holz scholarship generally
does not understand his treatise on art as a diary-like protocol of an
experimental process but as autobiographical “anecdotes”2, it ig-
nores the argumentative and epistemological nature of its argu-
ments, which are not intended as entertainment but rather
scientific proof. The memories that Holz conveys are not arbitrary
digressions or arabesque memoirs but rather part of a polished ex-
periential and evidential process, arranged as a linear protocol of a
discovery due to discrepancies with the actual historical course of
his cooperation with Johannes Schlaf.3 I do not intend to judge the
scientific or philosophical validity, success or appropriateness of
Holz’s procedure.4 Rather, the intent of this article is to illustrate
the historical constellation of discourses on experimental and
mathematical approaches to aesthetics in which Holz is situated as

1 Arno HOLZ, Die Kunst. Ihr Wesen und ihre Gesetze, Berlin: Issleib, Schuhr, 1891 [= K], 112.
2 Helmut Scheuer says “personal embellishment and decoration”, cf. Helmut SCHEUER, Arno
Holz im literarischen Leben des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts (1883–1896). Eine biographische
Studie, München: Winkler, 1971, 119; “writing peppered with anecdotes”, cf. Walter
FÄHNDERS, Avantgarde und Moderne 1890–1933, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1998, 30; “anecdotes on
own text production”, cf. Dieter BURDORF, Poetik der Form. Eine Begriffs- und
Problemgeschichte, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001, 374; “Experiential report” is found in Klaus R.
SCHERPE, “Der Fall Arno Holz. Zur sozialen und ideologischen Motivation der
naturalistischen Literaturrevolution”, in: Gert Mattenklott (ed.), Positionen der literarischen
Intelligenz zwischen bürgerlicher Reaktion und Imperialismus, Kronberg (Ts.): Scriptor, 1973,
121–178, 151.
3 On this cooperation see Scheuer, Arno Holz, 99f.
4 For such judgements see Helmut SCHEUER, “Naturalismus und Naturwissenschaften”, in:
Klaus Bohnen (ed.), Fin de siècle, Kopenhagen: Fink, 1984, 9–25, 20–23; Stefan HAJDUK,
“Experiment und Revolution. Zur ästhetischen Theorie des historischen Naturalismus”,
Weimarer Beiträge 51/2 (2005), 236–253.
Variations 21 (2013)
38 Gunhild Berg
he proceeds in legitimizing his literary activities through scientific
methods.
Holz explains his newly postulated law of art through its act
of becoming: “‘A new conception can only be understood through
its historical genesis’ [...] I will therefore [...] simply tell how it
gradually came into being within me” (K, 5f.).5 His representation
of the theory is therefore a detailed, empirical-inductive, biograph-
ically verified process of insight, which is necessarily chronological
and author-centric. The process, however, demonstrates the devel-
opment of a thought, in the sense of the “general principles of all
phenomena” (K, 87), in which Holz is less the subject than the pas-
sive bearer of that which came into being within him. He does not
want to present himself as “an incomprehensible thing, no longer
explicable based on its environment and only an object of praise for
the masses who need to adore something.“ (K, 7f.) In a workshop
report (K, 7), he rejects distinguishing artists through “inspiration”,
“intuition” (K, 6) or “genius” (K, 7) in favor of the true replication
of “facts” (K, 6). In meticulous detail, Holz recapitulates his empiri-
cal, experimental working process: first, in his own artistic practice,
then in his autodidactic, theoretical studies which lead to an exper-
imental process of isolation, iteration, measurement and evaluation
and finally result in his quasi-mathematical, formalized result: the
law of art.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that Holz draws on his youth at
the time he wrote his first literary works, published in the Book of
Time. Songs of a Modern Poet [Buch der Zeit. Lieder eines Modernen]
(1885). His poetic production documents his experience as an au-
thor, thereby fulfilling an indispensible argumentative function.
This was analogous to the practical experience and theoretical
knowledge considered to be the necessary foundation for success-
ful experimentation in the natural sciences. To these ends, laborato-
ry courses were offered along with lectures as an integral compo-
nent of the natural science curricula at German universities since
the 1820s.6

5 All original quotations in German are translated by William J. Waltz.
6 After offering only occasional courses at universities, Justus von Liebig introduced
permanent laboratory training in chemistry since the 1820s in Gießen and Wilhelm Weber
since the 1830s in physics in Göttingen; see Justus LIEBIG, Ueber das Studium der
Naturwissenschaften und über den Zustand der Chemie in Preußen, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1840,
25, 35–39; and Friedrich KOHLRAUSCH, Leitfaden der praktischen Physik zunächst für das
physikalische Prakticum in Göttingen, Leipzig: Teubner, 1870.
Arno Holz’s Formula of Art 39
Furthermore, Holz tells of his autobiographical novel project
Golden Times [Goldene Zeiten] (K, 53), which was supposed to begin
with a chapter on his childhood but instead, as a literary experi-
ment, became the point of departure for his aesthetic, theoretical
endeavors. He began recording his memories of his childhood
house with the peculiar ‘Dutch’ double roof which had aroused in
him as a child the “most adventurous ideas” (K, 56) of Holland,
that “‘must be a magical country! [...] In Holland the birds of para-
dise must sing much more beautifully and the carob trees grow
much, much wilder!’ I put the pen aside. That pleased me. [...] ‘...
and the carob trees grow much, much wilder!’ And I repeated the
words.” (K, 56) Here, Holz for the first time questions the special
pleasure he finds in this sentence in free indirect speech.7 He re-
ports that he starts to be fascinated by the question that motivates
the natural scientist: “why?” (K, 56) By repeating the sentence, he
wants to assure himself of the phenomenon and then examine spe-
cifically cause and effect. By running the text through iterations to
test its effect, it thereby becomes part of an experimental proce-
dure. Holz takes pains to capture in nuance the repeated aesthetic
impressions in order to protocol them precisely, because sensory
perceptions are unable to be described directly and accurately, but
can only be described when transformed into language. “And so I
read aloud the whole, well-written page through once again and
carefully registered every impression that I sensed [...].” (K, 57)
As observer, subject, and transcriber of this self-experiment,
Holz concentrates wholly on the sensual impression of the aesthe-
tic phenomenon, its exact measurement, and “careful” registration.
His text forms the experimental arrangement that Holz goes over
again and again in order to observe the subtlest deviations of its
aesthetic effect, to ‘measure’ them as precisely as possible, and to
note: “I found it too lively: that before and between did not impress
me half as much!” (K, 57) His self-test grows into a quantifiable
series. The differing degrees of aesthetic pleasure that the test sen-
tences provoke allow Holz to conclude that he has only an intui-
tive, although not willful, command over the artistic means which
cause these effects. He himself was rather “controlled by them!” (K,
58)

7 See Rob BURNS, The Quest for Modernity. The Place of Arno Holz in Modern German Literature,
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1981, 80f.
40 Gunhild Berg
As a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon Holz first
turns to Émile Zola’s dictum: “‘Une œuvre d’art est un coin de la
nature vu à travers un tempérament‘.“ (K, 58f.) Although Zola’s
insight may be true, it is “only a partial truth!” (K, 60) Compared to
Zola, Holz historicizes the “temperament” of the artist by referenc-
ing the transformation of his artistic self in the course of his bio-
graphical development (K, 60). His (inadequate) ability to recall his
childlike frame of mind to recreate a mnemonic image as authenti-
cally as possible in the present results in the differing degrees of
deviations from the desired ideal of optimal representation. “And
should not the whole page have influenced me infinitely more di-
rectly, if in writing it down just now […] I had succeeded in these
sentences as well in limiting my arranging [...] self to the furthest
extent possible?” (K, 60)
That the artist’s self inhibits a completely authentic repre-
sentation is Holz’s first stage of insight. In another act of research,
numbered as second, Holz dedicates a whole summer and winter
to the study of artistic and scientific theories in addition to his
readings of Zola on his Paris trip. “I put [...] Aristotle,
Win[c]kelmann and Lessing on my writing desk, [...] people like
Mill, Comte, Spencer and the modern natural scientists” (K, 85), in
order to “finally force [the books] to answer my questions” (K, 84).
With this martial formulation borrowed from the 18th century’s
understanding of experimentation,8 Holz describes theories as arti-
facts which become objects of manipulation in order to yield
knowledge.
As a result he accepts Hippolyte Taine’s hypothesis of the
“general principles of all phenomena” (K, 87) which will lead to a
“science of humanity as humanity”, to a “sociology” (K, 90) in
which “art perennially [participates] as a partial condition of the
perennial total condition of society” (K, 96). Holz now wants to
give the impetus to finally create “from our knowledge of art [...] a
science of art” (K, 100). For this he favors the inductive method of
empiricism. Yet when faced with an overwhelming amount of po-
tential objects of investigation, he decides for an empirical, induc-
tive analogy, the generalization of conclusions from the individual
case to others. (K, 100f.) Holz terms the following explicitly an “ex-
periment”, quoted from his papers (K, 107). For this experiment it

8 See e. g. Johann Samuel Traugott GEHLER, “Versuch”, Physikalisches Wörterbuch IV, Leipzig:
Schwickert, 1791, 469–472, 470.
Arno Holz’s Formula of Art 41
is necessary to possess an overview of its potential arrangements in
order to be able “to control [its] conditions” (K, 106). For according
to the contemporary understanding, in experimentation “the bod-
ies are artificially put into such relationships [...] that they are sub-
ject only to the influence of a specific number of forces as
determined arbitrarily by the experimenter.”9
The object of experimentation Holz thus selects is simple and
manageable in terms of its production conditions, i. e. isolatable:
“the scribbles of a small boy on his slate” (K, 106). The following
passages alternate from the preterit to present tense – from the ge-
nealogy of insight to the presence of the conducted experiment –
and thereby purport to be a real-time protocol of the experiment.
Holz reports on the indecipherable drawings of a boy that the
young artist declares a “Suldat!” [“suldier”] (K, 108). The boy’s
pronunciation “Suldat!” marks the deviation from the standard
High German phonation l'amour physique est sans issue Soldat’.
Even the boy’s repetition of the word does not increase its similari-
ty to the ideal standard ‘Soldat’; the “Suldat” is and remains a de-
rivative of the phonetic norm: ‘Soldat’ – x, just as the reproduction
of nature by the artist does not reach an ideal but remains only a
derivative (N – x). The phonetic, typographically marked realiza-
tion (pronounced “Suldat”) as well as the artistic representation
(the scribbled painting) demonstrate the deviation of ‘x’: the dis-
crepancy between the ideal and the result of the (artistic) act of
production. From this results
the following cute little formula: smearage = Soldat – x. Or further, if
I place “artwork” for smearage and for “Soldat” the beloved “piece
of nature”: artwork = piece of nature – x. Or even further, if I place
for artwork altogether “art” and for the piece of nature “nature” it-
self: art = nature – x. (K, 112)
Holz illustrates that not only ‘x’, as Zola supposed, is the result of
the artist’s temperament (K, 114) but more generally of the “respec-
tive conditions of reproduction and their manipulation” (K, 117), of
a conglomeration of social milieu, (artistic) historical circumstanc-
es, and individual disposition.
As a scientific experiment, the process of insight must be repli-
cable. In a further step, therefore, Holz verifies the discovered nat-

9 Heinrich August PIERER, “Experiment”, Universal-Lexikon VI, Altenburg: Pierer, 41858, 41.
42 Gunhild Berg
ural law, stating that it “stands every test that I made [...]. And I
made innumerable.” (K, 125) For Holz, the truth of the law results
from his conviction in both the correctness of his inductive meth-
odology (K, 125) as well as “innumerable” types of verification
which produced no deviations. Moreover, he finds additional con-
firmation for his results from deriving deductions from a “sociolo-
gy of art” (K, 127f.) in his so-called open letter to Zola (K, 128–146).
In the third section of the treatise Holz quotes Theodore Fontane’s
theater review of the performance of Family Selicke [Familie Selicke]
(K, 151f.) as further external proof.
The basis of Holz’s theory is Claude Bernard’s definition of
experimentation in the natural sciences, which he and Zola share:
An experiment is “une observation provoquée dans un but quel-
conque” (K, 78), an intentionally provoked observation which, be-
cause it is caused by humans, must be replicable. The possibility of
replication also distinguishes the artistic process from the scientific,
experimental procedure. Whereas the scientific experimenter ‘ques-
tions’ nature in an artificial, controlled environment with technical
means to wrest forth answers through replicable experiments on
natural objects arranged by humans – also valid for interrogating
human artifacts, like the scribbles of a child –, the artist, as a human
creator, cannot achieve his normative ideal of imitating nature
through replication but, at best, through reproducing ever-closer
approximations; for nature is not an artifact, but the product of a
creative process beyond human control. Accordingly one must dif-
ferentiate between two procedures: on the one hand, the artistic
reproduction of nature10, and on the other hand, the experimenta-
tion with objects manipulated as artifacts (paintings, language,
texts) that can produce knowledge for the science of aesthetics,
namely through law of art, since they can be produced and manip-
ulated by the experimenter. Because of this differentiation Holz
rejects the notion of artistic products as experiments. Holz thereby
continues the distinction which Hippolyte Taine had shown as the
two “paths” [“voies”] to knowledge:
la première, qui est la science, par laquelle, dégageant [ces causes et
ces lois fondamentales, il les exprime en formules exactes et en

10 Moreover, not until his later theoretical works does Holz consider that the artist already
(re)produces only a figurative representation of nature but not the natural object itself e. g. in
Revolution der Lyrik (1899); see Burdorf, Poetik der Form, 377.
Arno Holz’s Formula of Art 43
termes abstraits; la seconde, qui est l’art, par laquelle il manifeste ces
causes et ces lois fondamentales, [...] non seulement à la raison, mais
encore aux sens ez au cœr [...].11
Holz applies the scientific, experimental procedure to the realm of
art in order to apprehend its “basic laws” [“lois fondamentales”]
“in exact formulas and abstract terms” [“formules exactes et termes
abstraits”].12 A work of art can itself grant knowledge, but not
through scientific means, rather only through aesthetic means
unique to the work itself.
One must therefore strictly differentiate the levels on which
one analyzes experiments in literary texts.13 For Holz the process of
artistic production can at best be an experiment. Retrospectively he
refers to his actual cooperation with Johannes Schlaf in the ‘labora-
tory’ of their little Berlin attic room explicitly as an “experiment”14
and their working objects, the texts of “New Tracks” [Neue Gleise] as
“prose experiments”.15 But, according to Holz, one can only exper-
iment with textual and linguistic phenomena. On the narrative lev-
el, in the realm of fiction, no experiment is possible in the scientific
sense: “‘An experiment conducted in the imagination’ [...] is simply
an absurdity”, states Holz (K, 79f). Fiction may be empirically satu-
rated, follow the recognized laws of nature and replicate detailed
observations, but it occurs in the imagination, not in reality.
Here Holz differs significantly from Zola, who wanted to im-
plement the experimental approach of the natural scientists in lit-
erature in Le Roman expérimental (1879); Zola’s writer was supposed
to conduct like the experimental physiologist, according to Claude
Bernard, as an observer and experimenter:
L’observateur chez lui donne les faits tels qu’il les a observés, pose le
point de départ, établit le terrain solide sur lequel vont marcher les
personnages et se développer les phénomènes. Puis l’expériment-

11 Hippolyte TAINE, Philosophie de l(cid:2285)art I, Paris: Hachette, 1909, 48.
12 Taine, Philosophie de l’art, 48.
13 On the differentiation of experimental levels in literary texts see Gunhild BERG, “Johann
Gottlob Benjamin Pfeils Versuch in moralischen Erzählungen (1757). Ein Experiment der
aufklärerischen Literatur”, in: Michael Gamper, Martina Wernli und Jörg Zimmer (eds.), “Es
ist nun einmal zum Versuch gekommen”. Experiment und Literatur I: 1580–1790, Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2009, 415–437.
14 Arno HOLZ and Johannes SCHLAF, “Vorwort”, Neue Gleise, Berlin: Fontane, 1892, 3–5. See
also Florian GELZER, “‘Ein einziges großes Experiment‘. Zu Arno Holz‘ und Johannes Schlafs
Neue Gleise (1892)”, Sprachkunst. Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft 39 (2008), 37–57.
15 Arno HOLZ, “Die neue Wortkunst”, Das Werk X, Berlin: Dietz, 1925, 504. See e. g. Fritz
MARTINI, Das Wagnis der Sprache, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 81993, 104 –130.
44 Gunhild Berg
ateur paraît et institue l’expérience, je veux dire fait mouvoir les per-
sonnages dans une histoire particulière […].16
The novel itself is for Zola the “le procés-verbal de l’expérience” (R,
1179). Methodologically the experimental novel is thus cha-
racterized by empirical observation, neutral description, and exact
documentation.17 The principle law of natural science is the human
double-determination through hereditary and milieu, i. e. through
physiological temperament, upbringing, and social conditioning.18
This determinism permits the experimental novel to generate new,
scientifically relevant insights into humans when the author con-
ducts the literary experiment scientifically: “toute l’opération con-
siste à prendre les faits dans la nature, puis à étudier le mécanisme
des faits, en agissant sur eux par les modifications des circons-
tances et des milieux, sans jamais s’écrater des lois de la nature” (R,
1179). For Zola the “le roman naturaliste […] est une expérience
véritable que la romancier fait sur l’homme […]” (R, 1179). Zola’s
novelist, therefore, does not act as if he were an experimental scien-
tist; he is one.
In stating that “‘an experiment conducted in the imagination’,
as one has already ‘astutely’ christened the Rougon-Macquart-
Cycle, [...] is simply an absurdity” (K, 79f.), Holz attacks Wilhelm
Bölsche, who had reviewed Zola positively in his Scientific Founda-
tions of Poetry. Prolegomena of a Realist Aesthetic [Natur-
wissenschaftliche Grundlagen der Poesie. Prolegomena einer realistischen
Ästhetik] (1887). Bölsche calls for the modern poet to close ranks
with the natural scientist by basing his poetry on the study of na-
ture and experimental methodology.19
Every poetic creation which strives to not cross the line of the natural
and the possible and to allow events to develop logically is, from the
standpoint of science, no more and no less than a simple experiment
conducted in the imagination, in the literal, scientific sense of the
word ‘experiment’. (N, 7)

16 Émile ZOLA, “Le Roman expérimental”, Œuvres complètes X, Œuvres critiques I, ed. Henri
Mitterand, Paris: Cercle du livre précieux, 1968 [= R], 1178.
17 See Irene ALBERS, Sehen und Wissen. Das Photographische im Romanwerk Émile Zolas,
München: Fink, 2002, 189–225.
18 See Hans Ulrich GUMBRECHT, Zola im historischen Kontext. Für eine neue Lektüre des Rougon-
Macquart-Zyklus, München: Fink, 1978, 40.
19 See Wilhelm BÖLSCHE: Die naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Poesie. Prolegomena einer
realistischen Ästhetik, München: DTV, 1976 [= N], 4, 7.
Arno Holz’s Formula of Art 45
Just as Zola draws parallels to physiological research, Bölsche
compares poetry to chemistry:
The poet, who has people whose qualities he depicts as precisely as
possible get caught up in all sorts of conflicts by the power of cir-
cumstances [...], is in his own way an experimenter like the chemist
who mixes all sorts of materials [...]. Of course: the poet deals with
people, not chemicals. But [...] also [...] their passions, their reactions
to external circumstances, their whole play of thoughts follow cer-
tain laws. (N, 7f.)
According to Bölsche, although fiction cannot be explorative, it can
still offer “a reasoned premonition of that to come” (N, 20). Well-
versed in the writings of Darwin, Haeckel and Fechner, Bölsche
even dreamt of a poetry which could calculate a person’s psycho-
logy based upon the fundamental “fact of the un-free will“
[“Thatsache der Willensunfreiheit“] (N, 25).
Only in that we [...] realize that a human action [...] must be the final
result of certain factors, an external causation and an internal dispo-
sition, and that this disposition is also derived from given quantities,
– only then can we ever hope to reach a true mathematical compre-
hension of the complete conduct of a person [...]. [...] Yes, such a po-
etry would in fact be a kind of mathematics and, were it so, it would
have a right to designate its fantastic works with the proud name of
a psychological experiment. (N, 25)
Bölsche found the model for such experimental poetry less in the
experimental physiology of Bernard than in the research of Gustav
Theodor Fechner, who is regarded the founder of psychophysics
and therefore modern experimental psychology for his mathe-
matically evaluated data collections.
Fechner extended the mathematical modeling of the Weber
Law to the physiological principles of the relationship between sti-
muli and human sensual perception. His “measurement formula”
states the dependency of a stimulus value and quantity of the ac-
companying sensation that allows the calculation of the “measure
of sensation”.20 Fechner’s Law states that the alteration in the
strength of perception ‘E’ is proportional to the logarithm of the
relationship of the compared strengths of stimuli ‘I1’ and ‘I2’: E »

20 See Gustav Theodor FECHNER, Elemente der Psychophysik II, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
21889, 13, 17.
46 Gunhild Berg
log (I2/I1). Although Bölsche did not continue Fechner’s experi-
ments, the Prolegomena build upon the basis of Fechner’s teleology,
the development of harmonious relationships by improving reality
according to the laws of nature. Fechner’s panpsychistic suppo-
sition of the complete animation of the world,21 including physical
matter, unites a mechanistic materialism with an objective ideal-
ism, which is why Bölsche too combined his demand for scientific
principles in fiction with a demand for idealism from the “poetic
genius” (N, 8).22
More than 120 years after Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s
studies and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750–
1758), Fechner founded Experimental Aesthetics [Experimentale Aes-
thetik] (1871) in which he analyzed the relationships between exter-
nal sensual, aesthetic stimuli and their psychophysical reactions.
To these ends, he began the systematic application of modern scien-
tific, mathematical research methods to the realm of art.23 Accord-
ing to Fechner, scientific development is needed for “a doctrine [...]
which as yet was only an object of philosophical speculation and
artistic aperçus, i. e. aesthetics; in that here aspects and methods of
the same are sought whereby it steps into the realm of experimen-
tation, measurement, and calculation” (A, 556).
In his experiments Fechner pursued the question “whether
certain dimensions and proportional relationships of objects are
preferable in agreeability above others, and, in the case of an affir-
mation, which ones they are” (A, 558). In other words, he analyzed
the proportional relationships of geometric forms, the most promi-
nent of which since antiquity is the well-known golden section
(‘sectio aurea’). He thereby distinguished between the form that we
perceive and appraise and the idea or purpose that we associative-
ly relate to the form that is culturally acquired (A, 558). In terms of
ability to control the experimental arrangement, he attempted to
minimize the culturally acquired associations with the sensation of
pleasure by examining simple forms, such as decorative crosses (A,
559f.).

21 See Michael HEIDELBERGER: Die innere Seite der Natur. Gustav Theodor Fechners
wissenschaftlich-philosophische Weltauffassung, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1993.
22 “To construct a man who appears naturally authentic and still arises to the typical, to the
general, to the ideal so that he is able to interest us from more than one perspective, – that is
both the greatest and most difficult that a genius can create.” (N, 11)
23 Cf. Gustav Theodor FECHNER, “Zur experimentalen Aesthetik. 1. Theil”, Abhandlungen der
mathematisch-physischen Classe der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften IX,
Leipzig: Hirzel, 1871, 553–635 [= A], 556.