(_a_) In so far as the _content_ appropriate to poetical composition
is concerned we may, relatively speaking at any rate, exclude the
external world of natural fact. It is spiritual interests rather than
the sun, mountains, landscape, or the bodily human form, and the
like, which are its proper subject-matter. For, although it naturally
embraces the element of sensuous impression and perception, it remains
none the less, even in this respect, an activity of mind. Its main
object is an intuition of ideality, to which it stands as spiritual
activity in closer relation and affinity than is possible for external
objects, as presented in their concrete substance to the senses. The
world of Nature therefore only enters into the content of poetry in so
far as mind discovers therein a stimulus or a material upon which to
exercise its own energy; as, for example, where it is regarded as the
environment of man, merely possessing essential worth in its relation
to the ideality of conscious life, which moreover can put forward no
claim to be itself the independent object of poetry. The object, in
short, which fully corresponds to its appeal is the infinite realm of
Spirit. For the medium of language, the most plastic medium possessed
immediately by conscious life, and the one most competent to grasp its
interests and movements in their ideal vitality, precisely as is the
case with the material of the other arts, such as stone, colour, and
tone, must necessarily and above all be employed to express that which
it is most qualified to express. It is consequently the pre-eminent
task of poetry to bring before our vision the energies of the life of
Spirit, all that surges to and fro in human passion and emotion, or
passes in tranquillity across the mind, that is the all-embracing realm
of human idea, action, exploit, fatality, the affairs of this world and
the divine Providence. It has been the most universal and cosmopolitan
instructor of the human race and is so still. Instruction and learning
are together the knowledge and experience of what is. Stars, animals
and plants are ignorant of their law--it does not come into their
experience; but man only then exists conformably to the principle of
his being when he knows what he is and by what he is surrounded. He
must recognize the powers by which he is driven or influenced; and it
is just such a knowledge which poetry, in its original and vital[2]
form, supplies.
(_b_) It is, however, also a content of the same character which
belongs to man's _ordinary_ conscious life. This too instructs him in
general laws, as such at least are interpreted by the motley crowd of
human life, in their distinction, coordination, and significance. The
question therefore arises, as previously observed, as to the nature of
the distinction between the mode of conception severally adopted by
prose and poetry, a similarity in the content of each being assumed as
possible.
(_α_) Poetry is of greater antiquity than speech modelled in the
artistic form of elaborate prose. It is the _original_ imaginative
grasp of truths a form of knowledge, which fails as yet to separate
the universal from its living existence in the particular object,
which does not as yet contrast law land phenomena, object and means,
or relate the one to the other in subordination to the process of
human reason, but comprehends the one exclusively in the other and by
virtue of the other. For this reason it does not merely, under the mode
of imagery, express a content already essentially apprehended in its
universality; on the contrary it lingers, conformably to its unmediated
notion, in the unity of concrete life itself, which has not as yet
effected such a separation or such an association of mere relationship.
(_αα_) Under the above forms of envisualization, poetry posits all that
it comprehends as an exclusive and consequently independent totality,
which, despite its capacity for a rich content and an extensive range
of condition, individuals, actions, events, emotions and ideas of
every kind, nevertheless is forced to exhibit the same in all their
wide complexity as an essentially self-determined whole, as displayed
and motived by the unity, whose individual expression this or that
fact in its singularity actually is. And consequently the universal
or rational principle is not expressed in poetry in its abstract
universality, or in the complexus which lies open to philosophical
exposition or under the relation of its varied aspects apprehended
by science, but on the contrary as a vital union, in its phenomenal
presence, possessed with soul and self-determined throughout; and it is
further expressed in such a way that the all-embracing unity, the real
soul of its vitality, is only suffered to be operative in mysterious
guise from within outwards.
(_ββ_) The character of this mode of apprehending, reclothing and
expressing fact is throughout one of construction. It is not the fact
itself and its _contemplative_[3] existence, but reconstruction and
speech which are the object of poetry. Its entrance on the scene dates
from the first efforts of man at self-expression. What is expressed
is simply made use of to satisfy this desire. The instant man, in the
midst of his practical activities and imperative duties, seeks to
summarize this effect for mind and to communicate himself to others,
then we have some kind of artistic expression, some accord with what
is poetical. To mention one from a host of examples, there is that
distich which we read in Herodotus referring to the slain heroes
of Thermopylae. As for its content it is simply the fact, the bare
announcement that four thousand Peloponesians on a certain spot fought
the battle with three hundred myriads. The main interest is, however,
the composition of an inscription which communicates to contemporary
life and posterity the historical fact, and is there exclusively to
do so. In other words, the expression of this fact is poetical; it
testifies to itself as a deed (εἱν ποιείν) which leaves the content in
its simplicity, but expresses the same with a definite purpose. The
language, in which the idea is embodied, is to that extent of such
increased value that an attempt is made to distinguish it from ordinary
speech; we have a distich in lieu of a sentence.
(_γγ_) For this reason, even from the point of view of language, poetry
makes an effort to keep its domain singular and distinct from ordinary
parlance, and to accomplish this elevates its expression to a higher
virtue than that of merely articulate expression. We must, however, not
only in this particular respect, but for the purposes of our present
inquiry generally, make an essential distinction between a primitive
poetry, which arises _previous to_ the creation of ordinary artificial
prose, and that mode of poetical composition and speech the development
of which is effected where already the conditions of our everyday life
and prosaic expression exist. The first is poetical without intention,
in idea no less than speech; the latter, on the contrary, is fully
conscious of the sphere, from which its task is to detach itself, in
order that it may establish itself on the free basis of art. It is
consequently quite aware of the distinction and contrast implied in its
self-creation to the world of prose.
(_β_) _Secondly_, the kind of _prose life_, from which poetry has to
separate itself, postulates an entirely different nature of conception
and speech.
(_αα_) In other words, looked at from one point of view, such a
consciousness regards the wide expanse of reality according to that
association of cause and effect, object and means, and all other
categories of the mode of reflection which deals with _finite_
conditions and the objective world generally, that is, the limited
categories of science or the understanding. It is a feature of such
thought that every particular trait should at one moment appear with
a false subsistency, at another should be placed in the position
of _bare_ relation to something else, that as such it should be so
apprehended in its relativity and dependence that no unity of a
free nature whatever is possible, no unity, that is, which remains
essentially throughout, and in all its branches and separate filaments,
a complete and free totality, no unity, in short, where we find that
the individual aspects are simply the appropriate explication and
phenomenal presence of _one_ content which constitutes the point of
focus, the soul that unites all together, and which also finds its
vital principle in this all-pervading centre of animation. Rather the
type of conception we above refer to as that of science goes no further
than the discovery of particular laws in phenomena, and persists for
this reason in the separation, or bare relation, of the particular
existence with its general law, the laws themselves under this view
tending to harden from each other in their isolate singularity; that
their relation is, in fact, conceived exclusively under external and
finite conditions.
(_ββ_) And, furthermore, man's _ordinary_ consciousness has nothing
to do with what we call the ideal principle of association, the
essential core of facts, their bases, causes, ends, and so forth. It
rests satisfied with the acceptance of the mere fact that something
exists or happens as distinct from something else; or, in other words,
with its insignificant contingency. It is no doubt true that the
unity of life is not, in such a case, deliberately cancelled by any
express separation; that unity, I mean, in which the intuition of the
poet arrests the ideal _rationale_ of the fact, its expression and
determinate existence. What, however, is absent here, is just that
flash of insight into this core of reason and significance, which
becomes consequently for our intelligence a thing essentially vacant,
possessing no further claim on our minds to a rational interest. The
comprehension of a rational cosmos; and its relations is exchanged then
and there for a mere flux and contiguity of indifference, which it
is true may possess a large expanse of external animation, but which
none the less suffers the profounder impulse of reason[4] to remain
unsatisfied. True vision, no less than soul-life in its full vigour,
can only obtain satisfaction, where such are made aware in phenomena,
through feeling no less than contemplation, of the reality in its
essence and truth which is compatible with such a world. The life which
is a mere external show is defunct to our deeper sense, if all that is
ideal and intrinsically rich in significance fails to shine through as
the very soul thereof.
(_γγ_) These defects, thirdly, in the conceptions of science and our
ordinary conscious life _speculative thought_ effaces. It stands,
therefore, in one respect in affinity with the imagination of the poet.
The cognizance of reason[5] is not solely, or even mainly, concerned
with contingent singularity, nor does it overlook in the phenomenal
world the essence of the same. It does not rest satisfied with the
differentiations and external relations proper to the conceptions and
deductions of the understanding; it unites them in a free totality,
which in the apprehension of our finite faculty in part fails to
preserve its self-consistency, and in part is posited in a relation
that possesses no synthetic unity. Pure thought, however, can have
but one result, namely thoughts. It evaporates the mode of reality
in that of the pure notion. And although it grasps and comprehends
actual things in their essential separation and their actual
existence, it does also nevertheless translate this particularity
into the ideal element of the universal, in which alone thought is
at home with itself. Consequently there arises, in contrast to the
world of phenomena, a world that is new in this sense, that though
the truth of the Real is present, it is not displayed in _reality_
itself as the power itself which gives it form and the veritable soul
thereof. Thinking is simply a reconciliation of truth with reality in
_Thought._ The creations and reconstruction, however, of the poet is a
reconciliation under the mode of phenomenal reality itself, albeit such
a _real appearance_ is merely ideally conceived.
(_γ_) We have, therefore, two distinct spheres of consciousness,
that of poetry and prose. In former times, in which there is neither
present a deliberate outlook on the world elaborated, in respect to
its religious belief and its general knowledge, under the co-ordinated
form of scientific ideas and cognition, nor an actual world of
human condition regulated conformably to such a standard, poetry is
confronted with a lighter task. Prose is not in such a case opposed to
it as an essentially independent field of ideal and external existence,
which it has first to overcome. Its problem is for the most part
simply limited to deepening all that is significant or transparent in
the forms of ordinary consciousness. If, on the contrary, the prose
of life has already appropriated within its mode of vision the entire
content of conscious life, setting its seal on all and every part
of it, the art of poetry is forced to undertake the task of melting
all down again and re-coining the same anew. In every direction it
finds itself involved in difficulties by the unresponsive nature of
prosaic existence. It has, in short, not only to wrest itself from the
adherence of ordinary consciousness to all that is indifferent and
contingent, and to raise the scientific apprehension of the cosmos of
fact to the level of reason's profounder penetration, or to translate
speculative thought into terms of the imagination, giving a body to
the same in the sphere of intelligence itself; it has further to
convert in many ways the _mode of expression_ common to the ordinary
consciousness into that appropriate to poetry; and, despite of all
deliberate intention enforced by such a contrast and such a process, to
make it appear as though all such purpose was absent, preserving the
original freedom essential to all art.
(_c_) We have now summarized in its most general terms that in which
the content of poetry consists. We have further distinguished the
form of poetry from that of prose. In conclusion, it is of importance
to draw attention to the particularization which the art of poetry,
to a degree unattained by the other arts, whose development is not
nearly so rich in results, admits of. We find, no doubt, architecture
illustrated in the arts of very varied peoples, and continuous through
many centuries. But of sculpture, at least, it is true that it reaches
its culminating point in the ancient world of Greece and Rome, just as
painting and music have done more recently in Christendom. The art of
poetry celebrates its epochs of brilliancy and bloom among all nations
and in all ages almost that present any real artistic activity at all.
It embraces the collective Spirit of mankind, and it is differentiated
through every kind of variation.
(_α_) Furthermore, inasmuch as poetry does not accept the universal in
scientific abstraction from its object, but seeks to represent what
is rational under the mode of individuality,[6] the specific traits
of national character are essential to its growth; the content and
the particular mode of its presentation are in fact conditioned by
the nature of these and the general outlook in each case. We find it
consequently adapting itself to every variety of form and peculiarity.
It matters not what the poetry may be, whether Oriental, Italian,
Spanish, English, Roman, Hellenic, or German, each and all differ
totally in their spirit, emotional impulse, general outlook and
expression.
A similar distinctive variety asserts itself in particular epochs as
they are favourable to the art of poetry or the reverse. The results
secured, for example, by our German poetry were impossible in the
Middle Ages, or the times of the thirty years' war. The particular
motives, which in our own day excite the greatest interest, are
inseparable from the entire evolution of contemporary life. And in the
same way every age has its own wider or more restricted, more exalted
and liberal, or more depressed phase of emotional life, in short its
specific outlook on the world, which it is the express aim of poetry
to bring home to the artistic consciousness in the most intelligible
and complete manner, inasmuch as language is the one medium capable of
expressing the human spirit wherever and in whatever form it may be
manifested.
(_β_) Among these national characteristics, or views and opinions
peculiar to particular epochs, some have closer affinity with the
poetic impulse than others. The Oriental consciousness is, for example,
in general more poetic than the Western mind, if we exclude Greece.
In the East the principle predominant is always that of coherence,
solidity, unity, substance. An outlook of this nature is intrinsically
most penetrative, even though it may fail to reach the freedom of the
Ideal. Our Western point of view, especially that of modern life, is
based on the endless breaking up and division of its boundless material
into fragments, in virtue of which process, the extreme emphasis laid
here on particular facts, what is merely finite becomes substantive for
the imagination, and despite of this must be once more subsumed under
the converse action of relativity. For the Oriental nothing persists as
really substantive, but everything appears as contingent, discovering
its supreme focus, stability and final justification in the One, the
Absolute, to which it is referred.
(_γ_) By means of this diversity of national traits and the
evolutionary process of the centuries we find that what is shared
by all mankind alike, no less than all that claims to be artistic,
is drawn as a common element within the reach of other nations and
epochs, intelligible and enjoyable to the same. It is in this twofold
connection that of late years to an exceptional degree Hellenic poetry
has roused the admiration and imitation of most diverse nationalities.
And this is so because in the content of it no less than in the
artistic form it receives the simply human is disclosed with most
beauty. The literature of India itself, however, despite all the
difficulties attendant on an outlook and artistic expression so alien
to our own, is not wholly outside our sympathy; and the boast is no
empty one that in our modern era pre-eminently a keen sense for all
that art and the human spirit embraces in every direction has begun to
unfold itself.
Were we in our present investigation of this impulse toward
individualization, pursued so persistently by poetry, under the
aspects we have already described, to restrict the same to a _general_
treatment of the art of poetry, such a generalization, however
established, could not fail to be abstract and devoid of content. It is
therefore of first importance, if our object be to consider poetry of
a really genuine type, that we include in our survey the forms of the
creative spirit as presented in their national form, the unique product
of one age; and further we must not overlook the individuality which
creates, the soul of the poet. Such, then, are the main points of view
to which I would draw attention by way of a general introduction to
poetical creation and conception.