Pathosformel jako muzyczna magia afektu. O symbolu, patosie i operze na marginesie koncepcji Aby’ego Warburga
Pathosformel as the Musical Magic of Affect. On Symbol, Pathos, and Opera on the Margin of Aby Warburg’s Concept

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to discuss the concept of Pathosformel in the context of music, and opera (musical drama) in particular. The starting point for the considerations is Gary Tomlinson’s claim that Aby Warburg’s notion of Pathosformel has been reserved exclusively for the visual arts, and that its span has been limited to the image in the narrow sense of the word. Tomlinsonpro poses to extend the meaning of “image” toward the imagination, so that the Pathosformel category is also applicable within the musical arts and sound-phantasmic activity of man. To this end, he refers to Giambattista Vico’s theory, and especially to the concept of sapienza poetica (poetic wisdom), in which imaginative metaphysics meets the emotional, pathetic song of archaic peoples. The article traces five “pictures of pathos,” which Tomlinson recognizes starting with Aby Warburg’s theory, through Vico’s historiosophy and Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonism, and ending with Claudio Monteverdi’s operas. The last two pictures of pathos, emerging from Monteverdi’s various operas, mark the transition from an affect operating on the principle of sympathetic magic (presentation) to an affect encapsulated in symbolic form (representation). The article proposes a complementary, sixth “picture of pathos” that can be interpreted from Sergei Eisenstein’s works on film art. Significantly, Eisenstein was the creator of an alternative (and abundant in musical references) concept of the “pathos formula.”

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