Bodmer_Publication

than that of a stocktaking of everything that exists, which also comprises flora and
fauna. Together with the superimposed perspectives of the sublime, the pastoral,
and the picturesque, this produces “character.” In the portraits, finally, characteristic
expression, or the expression of character, and the aesthetic appeal of the
skin, the body painting, and the dress become one. 25 And the result is beautiful:
knowledge and aesthetics, once again, coincide. When the inner form – the
individuality of a face, let us say – becomes visible, this is not only a moment of
cognition, but also an aesthetic experience.
In relation to the portraits, however, the question remains what is the precise
significance of character: the individuality of the person represented, the reflex
of a group’s or people’s character in the individual, or maybe something else?
The answer is: all three, and the “something else” concerns us here, because it leads
on to a further question. For “character” here is patently also a nobility that can
be found in similar forms elsewhere, too, 26 in what has loosely been called the
pattern of the Noble Savage. It manifests itself in the poses taken by individuals as
well as their facial expression and the treatment of their skin. The painter here
borrows from the repertoire of his time, and what he borrows is conventionally not
restricted to the representation of the “other”; rather, it serves the general purpose
of elaborating the noble character of any individual. 27 Dignity is then combined
with comeliness and grace, and strength with delicacy, in the production of
a positive image of man. One pattern that would merit separate discussion in this
context is that of androgyny: the transgression of the border between what is
conventionally coded as male and what is coded as female, as can be found in
the young Assiniboin in Tableau 32.
The objection could be raised that searching for the noble in foreign cultures,
when nobility in post-Napoleonic Europe itself was experiencing a crisis of legitimation,
constitutes an illegitimate act of appropriating and expropriating the
“other.” And undeniably the notion of character is problematic: potentially,
there is a short step from it, and from “inner form,” to stereotype. 28 But already
in Herder, this road is blocked, at least to a degree, by the fact that alongside the
notion of the Volk there appears that of humanity, alongside the single language
a conception of language as a general competence of humanity, and alongside
the perspective of a single culture an interest in Culture as such. Individual character
would therefore, at least ideally, be embedded in and mediated with the
universality of humanity. It would be embedded in an egalitarian perspective.
It may be that such mediation is more easily achieved by a visual medium than
by others, and Wied’s text necessarily oscillates between different perspectives
where Bodmer’s portraits again and again successfully present their subjects
as ethnically “other” and characteristic, and as individuals that are close to the
viewer in their humanity and beauty. 29
Here lies the beginning of a solution to a problem that remains unsolved in
Wied and Humboldt. In both we find cultural relativism and a tendency to establish
hierarchies among cultures, so that all cultures have their specific value and
they are of different value. In Humboldt, the problem turns up in more systematic
form than with Wied, since Kosmos is based on a story of progress: “In these two
epochs of cognition, the first awakening of the peoples’ awareness and the final,
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