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An essay is presented on the vital reception of sound in the animal sculptures of Romantic sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. It offers the description of art theorist and critic Charles Blanc to the works of Barye. The author comments on the invocations of aural sensations which allowed art critics to instill terror and a sublime experience into their reports of Barye's animal sculptures. The author adds that repeated references to animal sound senses mark the reception of the sculptures.

The article focuses on the photograph "Aims" by Albert Renger-Patzsch published in his book "Die Welt ist schön." According to Renger-Patzsch, the subjective impulses associated with fine art, such as private expression and emotional lyricism, were out of place in the scientific and visual rhyming. The author relates that the impulse to totality apparent in his works must be set in its historical context to grasp its significance, for it comes in the wake of a wide-scale withdrawal from the modern world of necessity in the realms of metaphysics, religion, and politics.