ABSTRACT
Warburg as an “energetic switch” (meaning a switch from positive to nega
tive energy in the polar setup o f a Pathos formel), the very concept of transsubstantiation, is, in Warburgs interpretation o f the function of
The last plate thus illustrates-visualizes-all the constitutive terms of
Warburg’s theory. What we have not been able to account for in this reading
is the “engramme”— a 19th century term o f the physiology o f the act o f
memory on the level o f the individual and on that o f the species. These
theories were first sketched out by Ewald Hering and later elaborated by
Richard Semon. One point of departure for the kind of questions they asked
is the nature o f the human capacity to learn a language: the fact that a child
must learn to speak and communicate but learns it at a pace which points to
the existence of “brain-matter which reproduces the thousands of years of
work of his forebears.” 53 Apart from the fact that the time-span involved can
be said to be thoroughly underestimated, these questions are still being
asked today and with even more fervor and high hopes to unravel the
mystery of consciousness and the working of the mind than a hundred years
ago. The role of art in these processes, as they probably predate all making of
art, may be discarded with, as Gombrich pointed out. The metaphorical use
Warburg puts the term to, however, is extremely interesting. The engramme
accounts for our capability to represent a sign in our minds, it fills a space
that is neither the sign nor the signified. Structurally, it is the equivalent of
the elusive and all-important “ interpretant” in Peircean semiotics. The
impossibility to settle the question o f the physiology o f our capacity to
transmit “meaning” from one person to another and down the generations
does not, in my view, render the model obsolete.
