The fundamental difference between understanding and logical thinking in aesthetics is that it uses imagination as the hub. Jean Paul, a modern German aesthete, said: "Imagination can make the idea of the absolute and infinite in the intellect more intimate and vividly present to human beings with finite life." Paul's contemporary philosopher Schelling simply distilled the relationship between reason and imagination into a proposition: "In art, this image of the intellect is imagination." In fact, imagination is not only about understanding and reason, but it is also "the essential essence of other mental functions," according to Paul.

In theatrical aesthetics, the most basic task of the imagination is to enrich the stage image. Jean Paul said, "Imagination transforms all fragments into a complete whole, and a defective world into a complete world; It makes everything complete, even the infinite, all-encompassing universe. ”

According to Goethe, theatrical perception mainly acts on the external senses of the audience, and the theatrical scene seen by the eyes is limited, and only when the external perception is connected to the audience's inner senses, their impression will be strong and profound, and the inner senses are mainly imagination. The role of imagination is to create an impression of the whole film in the viewer's mind. Once the whole impression is formed, it in turn creates an illusion (hallucination) in the external senses. Facing the fragment is just like facing the whole, and facing the defect is just like facing the whole. Citing Shakespeare's plays, he pointed out:

The eye is perhaps the clearest of senses, through which things can be communicated most easily. But the inner senses are clearer than that, and people convey information to the inner senses most perfectly and quickly through the means of language. Language blossoms and bears fruit, while what the eye sees is external and does not have such a profound impact on people. Shakespeare appeals entirely to people's inner senses, and through people's inner sensory fantasy, the whole world of images is also enlivened, so the whole impression is produced. We don't know how to explain this effect, as if it were the illusion that makes us think that everything is happening right in front of our eyes.

Hamlet in New York

The audience is more interested in this imaginary illusion than the dramatist, because it gives them a little more freedom in the theater. In this freedom, understanding is to imagine the way, to imagine to understand the drum wings, to fly together to the whole impression of what Goethe said.

In 1918, the set design of the "Magic Flute" by the German stage designer M. Kariou

The generation of the audience's whole impression is the repair of the stage image. Psychologists call this imagination reproducible imagination. The French pantomime artist Marceau and the Austrian mime artist Morchaud took the stage empty-handed and performed silently, while the audience followed them into a dramatic situation, which is a typical example of inducing and borrowing the reproducible imagination of the audience. The audience is delighted that they understand this particular language, and even more so that they have further created a world of illusions through imagination with the mime. For example, it is pleasing to understand that a mime actor is now imitating an acrobat walking a tightrope on a stage without a tightrope. But after watching it for a while, the audience slowly felt the shaking of the tightrope, the interference of the wind, the unsteady legs, and they didn't dare to look down, and they couldn't help but look down with sweat...... The audience is very satisfied with this "illusion", and often the deeper the "illusion", the louder the applause. It's a pleasure to enjoy the imagination caused by the skill of acting.

The audience's imagination can expand the performance effect a hundredfold. For example, a pantomime performers perform an elderly woman on a bench in the middle of the street talking to her neighbors while knitting yarn, moving her lips, tongue and cheeks as swiftly and with the same agility as the movement of her woollen hands. In fact, there is no yarn on the stage, no neighbors, and no sound of conversation, but all this can be supplemented with the help of the audience's imagination, and it is more vivid than the real thing, the real person, and the real voice.

If pantomime performance is a special case of exerting the imagination of the audience, then traditional Chinese opera is a common case of exerting the imagination of the audience. As the pantomime master Marceau said, the gestures and postures of Chinese artists are varied and wonderful, and this symbolic art is shocking, and the simpler it seems, the more difficult it becomes.

Gai Zhaotian said that in opera performances, "green mountains, white clouds, rocky peaks and rugged mountain roads all depend on the actors' figures to express, so that the audience can live in this mirage with the actors."

Imaginary scenes can also be more expanded or microscopic than actual scenes. Mei Lanfang vividly described the shape, color, and fragrance of the flowers appreciated by Yang Guifei in "The Drunken Concubine". The senses of smell, taste, and touch do not belong to the realm of theatrical perception, but through imagination, they can supplement and strengthen theatrical perception.

Dramatist Jiao Juyin pointed out:

When appreciating opera, it is precisely because opera does not attempt to eliminate theatricality in the first place, that the audience participates in stage life with a positive attitude and quite actively as soon as they enter the theater. Their imagination has always been extremely active in the course of the play, and they use their active and active imagination to enrich and supplement life on stage.

Like the performance, the stage art of opera also emphasizes the important role of respecting the audience's imagination in the performance, and it tries to use the least amount of things to stimulate the maximum activity of the audience's imagination, so that the audience can participate in the stage life through their active imagination, supplement and enrich everything on the stage, and recognize everything on the stage.

In Jiao Juyin's view, mobilizing the imagination of the audience is a major mystery of Chinese opera art.

The ethereal and concise stage image has gradually been attached to many dramatists around the world because it can effectively carry imagination, and the tendency of symbolization and abstraction has further emerged. The mask advocated by O'Neill, mentioned earlier, is the symbolization and abstraction of the subject of the performance. O'Neill believes that an actor wearing a mask to play an ancient Roman is more realistic than a modern person without a mask, because the audience can add their own imagination of the Romans to the ethereal mask. However, it is not difficult to see that as a symbolic artistic means, whether it is a table and a chair in Chinese opera or O'Neill's mask, it cannot be admired too much, let alone made independent. Symbols are meaningful only in the structure as a whole, and valuable only in dynamic processes. Whether an actor with or without a mask can give the audience a sense of "ancient Roman" realism, and more importantly, whether the whole dramatic situation is "romanized". It is necessary to make the table and chair in Chinese opera reproduce in the imagination of the audience as other rich images, the kung fu is on the actors, and the kung fu is outside the table and chairs. Symbolization and abstraction are not ends in themselves, but are intended to arouse the imagination of the audience.

Going further than reproducible imagination is creative imagination.

At the beginning of this chapter, we gave examples of John Singer's The Man Who Rode to the Sea and O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. The audience hears the old woman of the fisherman's family talking to herself calmly after losing all her relatives, and can imagine her life experience, and can also think of the tragic struggle between man and nature; In the same way, the audience can also associate a lot of content when they hear the words of the person who was injured by the hairy ape when they are dying. This kind of association has gone far beyond the reproducible imagination, and thus becomes the creative imagination.

Not only good playwrights look forward to the creative imagination of the audience, but also good directors expect this. They are even more eager to use some creative artistic details to stimulate the creative imagination of the audience.

Here is an example of Meyerhold's "La Traviata" directed by Alexandre Dumas. When the male protagonist Armand and the heroine Marguerite first met, Armand fell in love with Marguerite, and he sprinkled flower petals on Marguerite's head one by one; Later, when he formally proposed, he sprinkled colored paper on her head; In the end, due to her father's obstruction, Armand misunderstood her and threw the remaining banknotes on her head. When the audience sees this, they can immediately think of how many cruel throws this poor woman has endured. It is this association that creates the symbolic meaning.

Another example is the first scene of the play, where the doctor examines Margaret's body, and the sunlight shining through the tall window shines on a green velvet chair with a dazzling black patch on the chair, and when the doctor picks up the black coat from the chair, the audience knows what the black is—in fact, they don't really understand it at this time. It wasn't until the end of the play that Margaret collapsed on a green velvet chair and died, and her black figure happened to be the same as the black in the first act, and the audience immediately associated, so they really understood the black shadow of death symbolized by the black in the first act.

Lee Simonson, The Gold of the Rhine, Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1948

Meyerhold's technique is still local, and some dramatists pursue the overall symbolism of the play, so they also put forward higher requirements for the creative imagination of the audience. For example, as early as the 30s of the 20th century, O'Neill had this message for American theater:

Most importantly, I want to expand the scope of the audience's imagination and definitely give the public a chance to do so. As far as I know, the public is growing year by year, and is increasingly spiritually eager to participate in imaginative interpretations of life, rather than merely equating theatre with faithful imitation of the superficial phenomena of life.

This demand for the imagination of the audience is closely linked to the pursuit of idealism in the field of theater, which is not just talking about a specific aesthetic psychological mechanism.