THE SIXTH SENSE OF IMPRESSIONISM Béla Balázs’ Philosophy of Art

Abstract

The theoretical interpretation of the Art Nouveau needs to start with elaborating a model apt to explain the threestages of European modernism: in the absence of such model, one could easily wander lost in the maze of periods, tendencies, genres,and perceptions. Precise delimitation of the second stage, and within it, of Thinker Impressionism, would be downright impossible without such interpretation.The essentialist Impressionism, relevant for Béla Balázs, is one of the mainversions of the Central-European intellectual culture duringthe second periodof Universal Europe. It does not make up in itself the entire second period, and it equally is not the only type of impressionism. Balázs' existential impressionism, which was shared for a time by the young Georg Lukács, is one of the most remarkable, and bearing Europe-wide relevance,phenomena in the Hungarianculture at turn of the century;it makes up a significant portion of the conceptual basis for the opera"The Castle of the Bluebeard”by Bartók.