Poetry is not, however, exhausted by the imaginative idea alone: it
must necessarily proceed to make itself articulate and complete in the
_poetical work of art._
Such an object of study opens a large field of investigation. We may
conveniently arrange and classify the course of our discussion as
follows:
_First,_ we shall endeavour to point out what is of most importance
relatively to the _poetical composition generally._
_Secondly_, we shall distinguish it from the principal types of _prose
composition_, in so far as the same are compatible with artistic
treatment.
We shall then, _finally_ be in a position to deduce with some
completeness the notion of the _free art-product._
(_a_) In respect to the poetical work of art under its generic aspect
all that is necessary is once more to enforce our previous contention
that it must, no less than any other production of an unfettered
imagination, receive the form and independence of an organic whole.
This demand can only receive satisfaction as follows:
(_α_) In the _first_ place that which constitutes a homogeneous
content, whether it be a definite object of action and event, or a
specific emotion and passion, must before everything else possess
intrinsic unity.
(_αα_) All else must be posited under relation to this bond of unity,
and thereby combine to form a freehand concrete coherence of all parts.
This is only possible under the condition, that the content selected is
not conceived as abstract _universal_, but as the action and emotion of
men, as the object and passion which are actually present in the mind,
soul, and volition of definite individuals, arising as such from the
distinctive basis of an individual nature in each case.
(_ββ_) The universal, which is to receive representation, and the
individuals, in whose character events and actions the manifestation
of poetry is asserted must not consequently fall into fragments, or be
so related that the individuals are merely of service as an abstract
universal; both aspects must combine in vital coalescence. In the
Iliad, for example, the contest of Greeks and Trojans, and the victory
of the former is inseparably bound up with the wrath of Achilles,
which for this reason becomes the common focus welding all together.
No doubt we also find poetical works in which the fundamental content
is partly more abstract in its generalization, and also partly is
executed in a way that expresses a universal of more significance.
Dante's great epic poem is an illustration, which not only embraces the
world divine throughout, but displays individuals of the most varied
character in their relation to the punishments of hell, purgatory and
the blessedness of Paradise. But even here we find no entirely abstract
separation, of the two points of view, no mere relation of service
between the particular objects. For in the Christian world the focus
of conscious life is not conceived as nothing more than an accident of
Godhead, but as essential and infinite cause or end itself, so that
here the universal purpose, that is the divine justice in condemnation
and salvation can verily appear as immanent fact, the eternal interest
and being of the individual himself. In this divine world the
individual is throughout of pre-eminent importance. In that of the
State he can of course be sacrificed in order to save the universal,
that is the State. In his relation to God, however, and in the kingdom
of God he is essentially and exclusively the end.
(_γγ_) We must, however, _thirdly_, conceive the universal, which
supplies the content of human emotion and action as self-subsistent,
intrinsically complete where it is, and constituting as such in
itself a definitive and exclusive world. When, for instance, in our
contemporary life mention is made of any officer, official, general,
professor, and so forth, and we try to imagine what kind of action such
a man or personality is likely to attempt or carry out under his own
particular conditions of environment, we place before ourselves simply
a content of interest and activity, which in part is not itself a
rounded and self-substantive whole, but one which stands in infinitely
manifold external connections, relations and conditions, in part also,
if we regard it as abstract totality, one which can receive the form
of a universal concept in its separation from the individuality of
the, in other respects, entire personality, as for instance that of
personal obligation. Conversely we may have no doubt a content of
sterling character, making, that is to say, an essentially independent
whole, which, despite of this, and without further development and
advance, is complete in one sentence. It is really impossible to say
whether a content of this nature belongs more properly to poetry or
prose. The grand affirmation of the old Testament, "God said Let their
be Light and there was Light," is at once in its penetration, no less
than the precision of its embrace,[7] as much essentially sublime
poetry as it is ordinary prose. Of a similar nature is the command, "I
am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods but me"; or that,
"Honour thy father and thy mother." The golden epigrams of a Pythagoras
and the wise sayings of Solomon are of the same type. Phrases, so
rich in content as the above, have their origin in a world where the
distinction between poetry and prose is as yet absent. We can, however,
hardly affirm of such that they are a poetical work of art, even though
many such phrases may be combined together. The independence and
rounding off of a genuine poetical work must be assumed at the same
time to be of the nature of a process, and a differentiation of parts:
we assume it therefore to be a unity, the true character of which is
only made explicit by emphatic insistence upon its diversity. This
process, absolutely essential in the plastic arts, regarded at least
according to the requirements of their form, is also more generally of
the greatest moment in a poetical composition.
(_β_) This introduces us, then, to a _second_ feature of the work
of art, namely, the organic differentiation of its several parts,
essential to it not merely that it may be presented as an organic
unity, but that the elaboration of all it implies may be rendered
complete.
(_αα_) The most obvious reason of this necessity is referable to the
fact that Art in general tends instinctively to particularization.
The effect of the scientific faculty is that what is particular and
singular fails to receive its complete vindication. And this is so
not merely because the understanding apprehends the manifold, as such
theoretic faculty, starting from its principles of generalization,
causing the particular fact thereby to evaporate in its abstract
deductions and categories; but also because it makes this manifold
subserve ends of purely practical import. Severe adherence to that
purely relative value, which strictly belongs to the nature of the
process, appears to the understanding as useless and tedious. To the
conception and composition of poetry on the contrary every part, every
phase in the result must remain of essential interest and vital.
It dallies therefore with delight in detail, depicts the same with
enthusiasm, and treats every part as an independent whole. However
great, therefore, in addition the content may be of a poetical work
in its central interest, the organic completeness is equally asserted
in subordinate detail, precisely as in the human organism every
member, every finger is rounded with exquisite delicacy in its unified
completeness, and as a rule, we find in Nature that every particular
existence is enclosed within a perfect world of its own. The advance of
poetry is therefore more slow than that compatible with the judgments
and conclusions of the understanding, where we find that, whether
regarded theoretically as science or with reference to practical
conduct and action, the main stress is on the final result, this
rather than on the path by which it is reached. As for the degree in
which poetry approaches realization in its tenderness for such detail
we have already pointed out that it is not its vocation to describe
with excessive diffuseness what is exterior in the form of its sensuous
appearance. If it therefore undertakes extensive descriptions without
making them reflect at the same time the claims and interests of
soul-life it becomes heavy and tedious. Above all it must take care not
to enter into deliberate rivalry with the actual detail, in its exact
completeness, presented by natural fact itself. Even painting in this
respect should aim at circumspection and restriction. We have therefore
here and in the case of poetry a twofold point of view to consider.
On the one hand we must remember that the impression is on our mental
vision; and on the other the art can only place before the mind the
object, which in Nature we can survey and comprehend in a single
glance in a series of separate traits. For this reason it is important
that poetry does not carry its elaboration of detail so far, that the
vision of the whole in its entirety becomes inevitably disturbed,
confused, or lost. It is obvious therefore that difficulties of an
exceptional nature have to be overcome when the attempt is made to
place an action or event of varied nature before our vision, and where
in actual life such happen in a single moment of time, and in close
connection with such immediacy, for all it can do is to present the
same in a continuous series. As respects this difficulty, no less than
the general way in which poetry, as already described, approaches the
detail of Nature, we find the demand of the several generic types of
the art differs very considerably. Epic poetry, for instance, attaches
itself to the particularity of the external world with an emphasis
totally different from that of dramatic poetry, with its rapidity of
forward movement, or from that of lyrical poetry with its exclusive
insistence on the ideally significant.
(_ββ_) It is through an elaboration of this kind that the several parts
of a composition secure _subsistency._ No doubt this appears to stand
in direct contradiction to the unity which we established as a primary
condition: as a matter of fact the opposition is merely apparent.
This independence should not, that is to say, assert itself in such
a way that the several parts are placed in absolute separation from
each other: it must on the contrary only be carried so far that the
several aspects and members of the whole are clearly seen on their own
account to be asserted in the vital form peculiar to each, and to stand
on their own free basis of independence. If, on the contrary, this
individualized life is absent from the several parts, the composition
becomes, precisely as Art generally can only invest the universal with
determinate existence under the form of actual particularity, cold and
defunct.
(_γγ_) Despite of this self-subsistency, however, these several parts
must remain likewise in conjunction to the extent that the _one_
fundamental motive or purpose, made explicit and manifest in and
through them, must declare itself as the unity which pervades the
whole, and in which the parts coalesce and to which they return. This
is the condition of art, and pre-eminently so of poetry, where it falls
short of its noblest reach, upon which it most readily is wrecked, and
the work of art declines from the realm of a free imagination into
that of mere prose. To put it in another way, the connexion into which
the parts fall must not merely be one of final _cause and effect._ For
in the relation of teleology the end is the universal as essentially
presupposed and willed, which it is true succeeds in making the several
aspects tally with the process, yet employs them none the less as means
and to this extent robs them of all really free stability and thereby
of every sort of vitality. In such a case the parts merely fall under
a relation of purpose to one end, which is asserted imperiously to the
disadvantage of all else, and which accepts the same in abstraction
as subservient and subordinate to itself. The freedom and beauty of
art contradict flatly this servile relation of the abstract faculty of
science.
(_γ_) On these grounds the unity, asserted in the several parts of the
composition, must be of another character. The definition of this may
be stated under two aspects of conception, as follows.
(_αα_) In the _first_ place, the vital presence we have already
referred to as peculiar to every part separately must be maintained.
If we direct our attention, however, to that which in fact justifies
the introduction of any detail whatever into the composition, we
find the point of departure to be _one_ fundamental idea which the
same as a whole is undertaken to manifest or interpret. Consequently
everything defined and particular must announce that as the source of
its own specific appearance. In other words, the content of a poetical
work must not be itself intrinsically abstract, but concrete, one
that by reason of its own wealth conducts us to a rich unravelment of
its varied aspects. And when this variety, even assuming that in its
realization it falls to every appearance into plain contradictions,
yet is as a matter of fact rooted in the essentially unified content
we have adverted to, in that case we may affirm that by necessity
the content itself, in a form agreeable to its notion and being,
comprises what is fundamentally an exclusive and harmonious totality
of particular characteristics, which it possesses as its own, and in
the continuous expatiation of which what it is in its real significance
is in truth rendered explicit. It is only _these_ several parts, which
originally belong to the content, and which consequently should be
carried into the composition under the mode of actual and essentially
sound and vital existence. In this respect, therefore, despite all
appearance the display of particular characteristics present of
opposition to others, they are throughout combined in a union of
mysterious accord, rooted in its own nature.
(_ββ_) _Secondly,_ since the composition is presented under the form
of _natural_ phenomena, the unity must, in order to preserve the vital
appearance of such reality, only be the _ideal_ bond, which to all
appearance without intention holds together the parts and includes
them in an organic whole. It is just this animating union of organic
life which alone is able to bring into being true poetry as contrasted
with the expressed intention of plain prose. That is to say whenever
particularity exclusively appears as means to a definite end, it does
not possess and cannot conceivably possess an independent and unique
vitality of its own; what it does testify to, on the contrary, is that
it exists for the sake of something else, that is the end proposed.
Purpose of this type declares its sovereignty over the objective facts
through which it is fulfilled. An artistic composition should, however,
confer upon all that is particular within it, all in the expatiation
of which it displays continuously the central and fundamental content
selected, the appearance of an unfettered stability. This is absolutely
necessary, because what we here comprise under the term particularity
is just that content itself under the mode of the reality which
corresponds with it. We may therefore recall to our minds the analogous
task of speculative thought, which in the same way has on the one
side to develop the particular to the point of self-subsistency or
freedom from that which is at first an indefinite universality; and
likewise, too, it is called on to demonstrate how within this totality
of what is particular, in which that and that only is divulged which
essentially reposes in the universal, the unity is on this very account
once more asserted, and indeed then and only then is truly concrete
unity, established through its own differences and their mediation.
Speculative philosophy is thus, in the same way, through the method of
dialectic above adverted to, responsible for works which resemble in
this respect those of poetry, containing, that is, by virtue of the
content, an essential identity of self-seclusiveness and a revelation
of differentiated material in accord with it. We must, however, despite
this similarity between these two activities, and apart from the
obvious difference between the evolution of pure thinking and creative
art, draw attention to a further essential distinction. The deduction
of philosophy no doubt vindicates the necessity and actuality of
particularity, but none the less, in virtue of the dialectic process in
which this aspect of reality is asserted, it is expressly demonstrated
of this particularity and all of it, that it for the first time
discovers its truth and its stability in the concrete unity.[8] Poetry,
on the contrary, does not proceed to any such express demonstration.
The concordant unity must no doubt be completely vindicated in every
one of its creations, and be operative there in all their manifold
detail as the soul and vital core of the whole; but this presence
remains for Art an ideal bond which is implied rather than expressly
posited, precisely as the soul is immediately made vital in all the
bodily members, without robbing the same of the appearance of an
independent existence. We have the same truth illustrated by colour and
tone. Yellow, blue, green and red are different colours which admit
of the most absolute contrast; but none the less, on account of the
fact that as colour they all essentially belong to one totality, they
maintain a harmony throughout; and it is not, moreover, necessary that
this union as such should be expressly declared in them. In a similar
way the dominant, the third and the fifth remain independent as tones,
and yet for all that give us the harmony of the trichord; or, rather,
we should put it that they only produce this harmony so long as each
tone is permitted to assert its own essentially free and characteristic
sound.
(_γγ_) In connection with this organic unity and articulate synthesis
of a poetical composition we have further to consider essential
_features of distinction_ which are due to the particular _artistic
form_ appropriate to the composition under review, no less than the
particular _type_ of poetry in which we discover the specific character
of its working out. Poetry, for example, of symbolic art is unable,
owing to the more abstract and indefinite traits which constitute its
essential and significant content, to attain to a fully organic fusion
in the degree of transparency possible to the works of the classical
art-form. In symbolism generally, as we have already established in the
first part of this enquiry, the conjunction of general significance
and the actual phenomenon, in association with which Art embodies
its content, is of a less coherent character: as a result of this we
find that what is particular in one direction preserves a greater
consistency; in another, as in the case of the Sublime, only so far
asserts this quality in order, through the negation thus implied, to
render more intelligible the _one_ supreme power and substance, or
merely to advance the process to a condition of mysterious association
of particular, but at the same time heterogeneous no less than related
traits and aspects of natural and spiritual facts. Conversely, in
the romantic type, wherein the ideality of truth reveals itself in
essential privacy to soul-life only, we find a wider field for the
display of the detail of rational reality in its self-subsistency; in
this latter case the conjunction of all parts and their union must
necessarily be present, but the nature of their elaboration can neither
be so clear or secure as in the products of classical art.
In a similar way the Epic gives us a more extensive picture of the
external world; it even lingers by the way in episodical events
and deeds, whereby the unity of the whole, owing to this increased
isolation of the parts, appears to suffer diminution. The drama, in
contrast to this, requires a more strenuous conjunction, albeit, even
in the drama, we find that romantic poetry permits the introduction of
a type of variety in the nature of episode and an elaborate analysis
of characteristic traits in its presentation of soul-life no less than
that of external fact. Lyric poetry, as it changes conformably to the
fluctuation of its types, adapts itself to a mode of presentment of
the greatest variety: at one time it is bare narration; at another
the exclusive expression of emotion or contemplation; at another it
restricts its vision, in more tranquil advance, to the central unity
which combines; at another it shifts hither and thither in unrestrained
passion through a range of ideas and emotions apparently destitute of
any unity at all.
This, then, must suffice us on the general question of a poetical
composition.
(_b_) In order now,--this is our _second_ main head in the present
discussion,--to examine more closely the distinction which obtains
between the organic poem as above considered and the prose composition,
we propose to direct attention to those specific types of _prose_
which, despite their obvious limitations, do none the less come into
closest affinity with art. Such are, without question, the arts of
history and oratory.
(_α_) As regards history, there can be no doubt that we find ample
opportunity here for _one_ aspect of genuine artistic activity.
(_αα_) The evolution of human life in religion and civil society,
the events and destinies of the most famous individuals and peoples,
who have given emphasis to life in either field by their activity,
all this presupposes great ends in the compilation of such a work,
or the complete failure of what it implies. The historical relation
of subjects and a content such as these admits of real distinction,
thoroughness and interest: and however much our historian must
endeavour to reproduce actual historical fact, it is none the less
incumbent upon him to bring before our imaginative vision this motley
content of events and characters, to create anew and make vivid the
same to our intelligence with his own genius.[9] In the creation
of such a memorial he must, moreover, not rest satisfied with the
bare letter of particular fact; he must bring this material into a
co-ordinated and constructive whole; he must collectively conceive
and embrace single traits, occurrences and actions under the unifying
concept; with the result that on the one hand we have flashed before us
a clear picture of nationality, epoch of time, external condition and
the spiritual greatness or weakness of the individuals concerned in the
very life and characterization which belonged to them; and on the other
that the bond of association, in which the various parts of our picture
stand to the ideal historical significance of a people or an event, is
asserted from such without exception. It is in this sense that we, even
in our own day, speak of the art of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon,
Tacitus, and a few others, and cannot cease to admire their narratives
as classical products of the art of human language.
(_ββ_) It is nevertheless true that even these fine examples of
historical composition do not belong to free Art. We may add that we
should have no poetry even though we were to assume with such works the
external form of poetry, the measure or rhyme of verse and so forth.
It is not exclusively the manner in which history is written, but the
nature of its _content_, which makes it prose. Let us look at this
rather more closely.
Genuine history, both in respect to aim and performance, only begins
at the point where the heroic age, which in its origination it is the
part of poetry and art to vindicate, ceases, for the reason that we
have here the moment when the distinct outlines and prose of life, in
its actual conditions, no less than the way they are conceived and
represented, come into being. Herodotus does not for instance describe
the Greek expedition to Troy, but the Persian wars, and takes pains,
in a variety of ways, with tedious research and careful reflection, to
base the narrative proposed on genuine knowledge. The Hindoos, indeed
we may say the Orientals generally, with almost the single exception
of the Chinese, do not possess this instinct of prose sufficiently
to produce a genuine history. They invariably digress either into
an interpretation and reconstruction of facts of a purely religious
character, or such as are fantastic inventions. The element of prose
then native to the historical age of any folk may be briefly described
as follows.
In the _first_ place, in order that we may have history we must
presuppose a common life, whether we consider the same on its religious
side, or that of a polity, with its law, institutions, and the like,
established on their own account, and possessing originally or in their
subsequent modification a validity as laws or conditions of general
application.
It is out of such a common life, _secondly_, that we mark the birth
of definite activities for the preservation or change of the same,
which may be of universal import, and in fact constitute the end or
motive of their continuance, and to complete and carry into effect
which we have to presuppose individuals fitted for such a task. These
individuals are great and eminent in so far as they show themselves,
through their effective personality, in co-operation with the common
end, which underlies the ideal notion of the conditions which confront
them: they are little when they fail to rise in stature to the demand
thus made on their energy: they are depraved when, instead of facing as
combatants of the practical needs of the times,[10] they are content
merely to give free rein to an individual force which is, with its
implied caprice, foreign to all such common ends. Where, however, any
of such conditions obtain we do not have either a genuine content or a
condition of the world such as we established in the first part of our
inquiry as essential to the art of poetry. Even in the case of personal
greatness the substantive aim of its devotion is to a large or less
extent something given, presupposed, and enforced upon it, and to that
extent the unity of individuality is excluded, wherein the universal,
that is the entire personality should be selfidentical, an end
exclusively for itself, an independent whole in short. For however much
these individuals discover their aims in their own resources, it is for
all that not the freedom or lack of it in their souls and intelligence,
in other words the vital manifestation of their personality, but the
accomplished end, and its result as operative upon the actual world
already there, and essentially independent of such individuality, which
constitutes the object of history. And, moreover, from a further point
of view we find manifested in the historical condition the play of
contingency, that breach between what is implicitly substantive and
the relativity of particular events and occurrences, no less than of
the specific subjectivity of characters displayed in their personal
passions, opinions and fortunes, which in this prosaic mode of life
present far more eccentricity and variation than do the wonders of
poetry, which through all diversity must remain constant to what is
valid in all times and places.
And _finally_, in respect to the actual execution of affairs within
the cognisance of history we find here again the introduction of
a prosaic element, if we contrast it with the impulse of genuine
poetry, partly in the division asserted by personal idiosyncracy
from a consciousness of laws, principles, maxims and so forth, which
is thereby necessarily absorbed in the universal condition or fact;
and in part also the realization of the ends proposed involve much
preparation and arrangement, the means to effect which extend far,
and embrace many necessary or subservient relations, which have to be
readjusted and adapted, in order to carry out the course proposed,
with intelligence, prudence and prosaic circumspection. The work in
short cannot be undertaken offhand, but only to a large extent after
extensive introduction. The result of this is that the particular acts
of execution, which, it is here assumed, come into effect for the _one_
main purpose, are often either wholly contingent in respect to their
content, and remain without ideal union, or are asserted under the
form of a practical utility regulated by a mind dominated by the aims
proposed; in other words, they do not proceed unmediated from the core
of free and independent life itself.[11]
(_γγ_) The historian then has no right to expunge these prosaic
characteristics of his content, or to convert them into others more
_poetical;_ his narrative must embrace what lies actually before him
and in the shape he finds it without amplification,[12] or at least
poetical transformation. However much, therefore, it may become a
part of his labours to make the ideal significance and spirit of an
epoch, a people, or the particular event depicted, the ideal focus
and bond which holds all together in one coherent whole, he is not
entitled to make either the conditions presented him, the characters or
events, wholly subordinate to such a purpose, though he may doubtless
remove from his survey what is wholly contingent and without serious
significance; he must, in short, permit them to appear in all their
objective contingency, dependence and mysterious caprice. No doubt in
biography the full animation of personality and an independent unity is
conceivably possible, because in such a work the individual, no less
than all which proceeds from him and is operative in moulding such
a figure, is throughout the focus of the composition. A historical
character is, however, exclusively one of two opposed extremes. For
although we deduce a unity of subject from the same, none the less from
another point of view various events and transactions obtrude, which
in part are without any essential ideal connection, and in part come
into contact with such individuality without any free co-operation on
the part of the same, and to this extent involve the same within the
contingency of such an external condition. So, for example, Alexander
is without question a personality, pre-eminent above all others of his
epoch, and one which, in virtue of its unique forces, falling as they
do in accord with contemporary world conditions, becomes engaged in the
Persian invasion. The continent of Asia none the less, which Alexander
vanquishes, is in the capricious variety of its nationalities a whole
united by no necessary bond.[13] Historical events pass before him as
the bare panorama of purely objective phenomena. And, finally, if the
historian adds to his survey his private reflections as a philosopher,
attempting thereby to grasp the absolute grounds for such events,
rising to the sphere of that divine being, before which all that is
contingent vanishes and a loftier mode of necessity is unveiled, he
is none the less debarred, in reference to the actual conformation of
events, from that exclusive right of poetry, namely, to accept this
substantive resolution as the fact of most importance. To poetry alone
is the liberty permitted to dispose without restriction of the material
submitted in such a way that it becomes, even regarded on the side of
external condition, conformable with ideal truth.
(_β_) _Secondly_, _oratory_ appears to have a closer affinity with the
freedom of art.
(_αα_) For although the orator avails himself of the opportunity for
and content of his effort out of actual life and definite circumstances
and opinions, all that he utters remains none the less, in the _first_
place, subject to his free choice. His personal aims and views are
immanent therein, in virtue of which he can make the same a complete
and living expression of his personality. And, _secondly_, the
development of the subject of his oration and the mode of delivery
depends entirely on himself, so that the impression he makes is as
though we received in his speech a wholly independent expression
of mind. And, _finally_, it is his vocation not merely to address
himself to the trained or ordinary intelligence of his hearers, but to
work upon their entire humanity, their emotions, no less than their
judgment. The substance of what he has to say and in which he strives
to awake interest, is not merely the abstract aspect of it, nor is it
this aspect of his main purpose, in the fulfilment of which he invites
co-operation, but rather for the most part also a definite and very
real thing. For this reason the substance of the orator's address,
while embracing what is essentially substantive in its character,
ought equally to grasp his general principle under the form of its
specific manifestation, and render the same intelligible to conscious
life in the full concrete sense of the term. The orator then must not
merely satisfy our understanding with the cogency of his deductions
and conclusions, but has it in his power to address the soul itself,
to rouse human passion and carry it captive, to absorb the whole
attention, and by such means, through all the avenues of spirit, to
ravish and convince his audience.
(_ββ_) Despite, however, such considerations, looked at rightly we find
that it is just in the arts of oratory that this apparent freedom is
almost wholly subordinate to the rule of practical _utility_. In other
words what confers upon public speaking its unique motive force is not
implied in the particular purpose, to promote which the speech is made;
we must refer it to the general principle, the laws, rules, axioms
which the particular case suggests, and which are already essentially
present in this form of universality, partly, as actual laws of the
State, partly too as ethical, juristic or religious maxims, emotions,
dogmas, and so forth. The particular circumstance and end, which we
find here as the point of departure, and this universal are in every
respect separate from each other, and this separation is the relation
maintained throughout. No doubt the orator intends to make these two
aspects unite: what, however, in poetry, in so far as poetry is really
present, attests as already from the first accomplished, is present in
oratory merely as the personal aim of the orator, the fulfilment of
which lies outside the speech itself altogether.
The only alternative we have left us is a process of _subsumation_,
whereby the phenomenon, the actual and defined thing, here the concrete
case or end, is not unravelled in immediate unity with the universal as
such, and freely from its own substance, but only receives validity by
virtue of its dependence upon general principles and in its relation to
legislative acts, morality, customs, and the like, which on their own
account possess independent stability. It is not the spontaneous life
of the fact in its concrete manifestation, but the prosaic division
between notion and reality, a mere relation of both to each other and
a mere demand for their union, which constitutes the fundamental type
under consideration.
Such a process of thought is frequently adopted by the religious
teacher. For him religious doctrines, in their widest connotation, and
the principles of morality or of philosophy, political or otherwise,
which follow in their train, are in fact precisely the object whereto
he can refer cases of every conceivable variety; and they are this
for the reason that these doctrines have to be accepted, believed and
recognized by the religious consciousness as essentially and in their
own worth the substance of all particular appearance. No doubt the
preacher may at the same time appeal to our heart, may suffer the
divine laws to unveil from the depth of soul-life as their source, and
face to face with his audience may refer them to such a source. But it
is not in their absolutely individual guise that he must necessarily
present and assert them; on the contrary, he must bring effective
universality to consciousness under precisely this form of commands,
promises and maxims of faith. The oratory of courts of law is even
a better illustration. Here we find in addition the twofold point
of view, that while on the one hand all turns most obviously on the
particular case, yet conversely the subsumation of this case to general
considerations and laws is equally a necessity. As regards the _first_
aspect, we may remark that the element of prose is already implied in
the enforced investigation of the actual facts and the collocation
and able reconstruction of all singular circumstances and accidents;
a process such as this at once opens our eyes to the poverty involved
in this investigation of the truth of such a legal case, no less than
the tedious ingenuity engaged in its display, if we contrast it at
least with the free creations of poetry. We have in fact to carry our
analysis of the concrete facts to a yet further point. Such must not
merely be traced in a series that does justice to all features, but
every one of such features, no less than the whole case, have to be
referred back to the statute accepted from the first as of independent
validity. At the same time, even in this prosaic affair, we still have
considerable scope for an impression on the heart and emotions. For it
is possible so to present the rightness or wrongness of the case under
discussion to the imagination that we are no longer bound to acquiesce
in the bare knowledge of the facts and a general conviction; on the
contrary, the case in its entirety is capable of becoming, by virtue of
the style adopted in its exposition, so marked with the characteristics
of personality to everyone who hears it, that no one can fail to
discover there a personal interest as of something which concerns
himself.
_Secondly_, in the oratorical art, artistic delivery and elaboration
is not that which constitutes the ultimate and highest interest of the
speaker; he possesses in addition and beyond his art an ulterior aim,
that the entire form and working out of his discourse should rather
be used exclusively as the most effective means to promote an interest
which is outside. From this point of view the audience too have to be
influenced not on their own independent account, but the effort is
rather to excite emotion and conviction exclusively as a means toward
the attainment of the purpose, the fulfilment whereof the orator has
proposed from the first. The mode of presentation, therefore, ceases
to be an end for itself even to the listener; its claim becomes
exclusively that of a means to some particular conviction, or an
incentive to definite conclusions or activities.
For these reasons from this point of view also the art loses its
freedom of form; it becomes a means to a purpose, to a further
demand[14], which, this is a _third_ point, in relation to the
_consequence_, is not satisfied in the actual speech itself and its
artistic handling. The composition of poetry on the contrary has no
other object than the manifestation and enjoyment of beauty. End
and accomplishment reposes here immediately and essentially in the
independent work, which for that reason is complete; artistic activity
is no means to an essentially ulterior result, but an end which at
once is rounded in itself by virtue of its own execution. In oratory
art receives merely a position of service to something collateral;
the genuine end is therefore not as such consonant with art, but of a
practical character, that is to say, instruction, edification, judgment
of legal matters or political affairs, and therewith a reference to
some matter which has first to happen, or to a decision not yet carried
out, but which, however, are in neither case terminated or completed
through the resultant effect of the art in question, but can only be
so in various ways after a contact with quite other activities. A
speech in fact may often conclude with a dissonance, which the hearer
has first to resolve as judge, and only then is able to act agreeably
with such a verdict. Just as, for example, the oratory of the pulpit
starts from the point of the unconverted soul, and in the result makes
the hearer pass judgment over his own self and his soul's condition.
In such a case religious conversion is the object of the preacher; but
whether such a conversion follows as a result of all the edification
and excellence of his eloquent exhortations, and thus the end proposed
is carried out, is a point of view which the sermon itself cannot deal
with; it must be perforce relegated to subsequent conditions.
(_γγ_) In all these directions the notion of eloquence will fall rather
under the main principle of utility than maintain itself within the
free and organized whole of the poetical art-product. In short the
orator must necessarily and above all make it his mark to subordinate
the whole, no less than the parts, to that purpose in his mind, from
which his effort proceeds, a process in which the self-consistent
independence of his exposition disappears, and in lieu of which we must
assume a relation of service to a definite end that ceases to be of
artistic significance. And above all, inasmuch as the object in view
is one of practical influence upon human life, he must keep throughout
before his mind the nature of the place in which he speaks, the
degree of education, the receptive powers, and, in short, the general
atmosphere of his audience, that he may not fall short of the practical
success desired through an inability to meet the local conditions of
the moment, and the idiosyncrasies of his audience. By reason of this
very attachment to external conditions it is impossible that either
the entirety of his address or its parts can any longer originate in
a free artistic activity[15]; it will constantly tend in its detailed
elaboration to appropriate utilitarian points of association, and be
dominated by conceptions of cause and effect, and other categories more
proper to science.
(_c_) And, _thirdly_, we may, as flowing from the above distinction
between what is really poetical and the creations of the historian and
the orator, establish the following points pertinent to the poetical
composition itself.
(_α_) We found that in history the element of prose consisted above
all in this that however much the content thereof could be ideally
substantive and possessed of a downright penetrative power, the
actual form of the same was, however, invariably accompanied with
many conditions of relative validity, massed together with much that
was contingent, and finally often referable to caprice simply as its
ground, aspects of immediate objective fact which the historian was not
entitled to translate into the terms of a reality of profounder grasp.
(_αα_) The effort of such a transfiguration is in fact a fundamental
_desideratum_ of the poetical art when it, so far as its material is
concerned, steps into the arena of history. It is its business in short
in such a case to discover the mere ideal core and significance of an
event, action, or a national type, a famous historical personality,
and as decisively to brush aside aspects of contingency, everything in
fact purely incidental or indifferent, which plays round such types or
individuals, and stands to them in a purely relative connection. It
has then to establish, in the place of the circumstances and traits
it rejects, others which reveal the ideal essence of the facts in
their clarity, to the intent that in this transfigured presence such
shall so discover concrete truth in its fulness that the reason,
which has hitherto lain concealed, though implied in them, shall now
for the first time assert itself as evolved and declared in complete
realization. By this means alone poetry is able in the proposed work to
make its content coalesce in the secure unity of a centre, able as such
to round and unfold itself in a whole. And this is possible because
it not only is operative as a more effective bond between the parts,
but also because, without compromising the unity of the whole, all its
varied particularity is suffered to assert its claim to an independent
impression.
(_ββ_) Poetry may in this respect make a yet further advance, when, it
accepts as its main content, in lieu of the material and significance
of the historical fact, some fundamental idea, some human collision
in general associated with it in a close or more remote affinity, and
employs the historical _factum_ and personages, everything local
in short, merely in the guise or garment of individualization. The
difficulty to be encountered here is twofold: either the historically
ascertained data, when appropriated by the composition, may fall out of
line with the fundamental idea; or, conversely, it may be that the poet
in some measure retains these data, but also too in essential features
moulds them conformably to his purposes, and by doing this work fails
to harmonize the element of stability with that of original design
which were both essential to our conception of the poetical product.
To dispel such an opposition and to reassert the accordant note able
to do this is a difficult matter; it is none the less necessary, for
objective reality has itself too an unquestionable title to what is
essential in the character of its appearance.
(_γγ_) We may extend the reach of poetry yet further and we shall
still find that the demand to be met is the same. In other words,
all that the art of poetry represents in external local condition,
characterization, actions, passions, situations, conflicts, events,
and human destiny, all this material is borrowed, far more so in fact
than is generally credited, from the facts of life itself. This being
so, poetry here too is on the historical arena; and, consequently, its
deviations or variations of such data must, in this field also, find
their point of departure in the rational core of the facts in question
and the demand of the art to discover for this ideal essence a form
that exhibits it with greatest adequacy and life. And this must not be
sought for in the poverty of a superficial knowledge, an inability to
penetrate what is really vital in fact, or in the moods of caprice and
with the craving after the quaint or perverse ingenuities of a spurious
originality.
(_β_) And further, as already stated, oratory is allied to prose on
account of the practical end which is thereby proposed, and, to carry
out which, it is forced to admit to the full the claims of utility.
(_αα_) In this respect poetry must take care to detach itself from
any end of this kind outside Art's domain, and the claim of artistic
enjoyment simply; that it may not fall into the sphere of prose. For if
any purpose of this sort is made to appear of essential importance, as
part of the entire conception and presentation, the composition at once
descends from that loftier region, in whose free atmosphere it floats
on its own account and on no other, and is drawn into that of relation
merely. As a result of this we have either a breach made between the
fundamental aim of art and the ends of ulterior intendments; or art
is used as a means simply, contradicts its substantive notion, and
becomes the menial of utility. The edifying effusions of many church
hymns are of this character. Particular ideas are simply admitted on
religious grounds, and receive a style of composition which is alien
to the beauty of poetry. And, speaking generally, poetry, simply as
poetry, has no right to edify in a _religious_ sense, or at least
_exclusively_ in this sense. If it does so we are carried into a
region, which no doubt possesses relationship with both poetry and art,
but is for all that distinct from it. We may say the same of teaching
generally, ethical instruction, political treatises, or writings of all
kinds written for our momentary recreation and enjoyment. All these
are objects, to whose attainment the art of poetry is, or can be more
than any other, contributory. But such contributions must not enter
into the purpose, if the spirit of the work is to assert itself freely
in its own character. In the poetical effort it is only what is really
poetic, eliminated from all that is foreign to this quality, which must
remain paramount as the end proposed and accomplished. And in fact such
ulterior aims as the above can be carried out far more appropriately by
quite other means.
(_ββ_) The art of poetry, however, from the converse point of view,
should strive to assert no absolute and isolated position; it ought,
as a part of life itself, to enter freely into life. Already in the
first part of this inquiry we found how many points of contact there
were between art and ordinary existence, whose content and phenomenal
appearance are repeated in its content and form. In poetry this vital
relation to actual existence and its specific circumstances, private
or public events, appears with most obvious variety in the so-called
_poems d'occasion._ With a broader interpretation of the expression we
may define as such most poetic compositions; in the more narrow and
correct meaning of the term, however, we should restrict it to those
productions whose origin is traceable to a single event of present
time, which it is the express aim of the poet to emphasize, adorn, and
celebrate. In this weaving together of the actual threads of life,
however, poetry tends once more to decline to a position of dependence;
it is therefore by no means unusual for writers on aesthetic to attach
a purely subordinate value to poetry of this class in general, although
as to a part of it, notably in the case of the lyric, we find here the
most famous compositions.
(_γγ_) The question consequently arises by virtue of what poetry may
be enabled to still maintain its independence even in the conflict
above described. The answer is simple. It must regard and assert the
occasional facts it borrows from life not as its essential aim, while
it is itself merely accepted as a means. Rather the reverse process
is the right one, which absorbs the material of such reality within
its own substance, and informs and elaborates the same conformably to
the claims of an unfettered imagination. In other words poetry has
nothing to do with the accidental or incidental fact as such. This
material supplies the external opportunity, that is the stimulus which
prompts the poet to draw upon his own profounder penetration and more
transparent mode of presentment: by this means he creates from his own
resources, as something newborn, that which, without such mediation,
would have, in the plain and blunt particular case, wholly failed to
impress us with the free spirit he communicates.
(_γ_) In conclusion then we may affirm that every genuine work of
poetry is an essentially infinite organism.[16] In content rich, it
unfolds this content under a mode of appearance which is adapted
to it. It is permeated with a principle of unity, but not one
referable to the form of utility, which subordinates the particular
to itself in an abstract relation, but rather one that absorbs the
same in the singularity relevant to one identical and entirely vital
self-consistency, in which the whole, without any visible intention, is
sphered within one rounded and essentially self-enclosed completeness.
It is indeed replete with the _materia_ of the visible world, but
is not on that account placed, either in relation to its content or
determinate existence, under a condition of dependence to any one
circle of life. Rather it freely creates out of its own plenitude,
striving to clothe the ideal notion of its material in its genuine
manifestation as truth, and to bring the world of external fact into
reconciled accord with its own most ideal substance.