In the stimulus of epic poetry is the desire to hear the thing or
matter which is unfolded on its own account, and independently of
the poet,[2] as an objective and essentially exclusive totality. In
the lyric, on the contrary, it is the converse need which finds its
satisfaction in self-expression and the coming to a knowledge of the
soul in this expression of itself. With regard to the nature of this
effusion,[3] we may enumerate its most important constituents as
follows:
_First,_ there is the _content_ in which soul-life is aware of itself
and reflects itself in idea.
_Secondly_, there is the _form,_ in virtue of which the expression of
this content becomes lyric poetry.
_Thirdly_, there is the stage of conscious life and culture from which
the person thus lyrically viewed discloses his feelings and ideas.
(_a_) The content of the lyric work of art cannot comprise the
development of an objective action in its possibilities of expansion
into all the breadth and wealth of a world. It is the single person,
and along with him the isolated fact of situation and objects, no less
than the mode and manner in which the soul is made aware of itself in
such content, with its private judgments, its joy, its wonder, its
pain, and its feeling, which it presents to our vision. Through this
principle of division and particularity, as present in the Lyric, the
content may be of the greatest variety, associated with every tendency
of national life. There is, however, this essential distinction, that
whereas the Epos combines in one and the same work the spirit of a
people in all its breadth, and in its actual deed and fashion, the more
definite content of lyrical poetry limits itself to one particular
aspect, or at least is unable successfully to attain to the explicit
completeness and exposition which the Epos ought at least to possess.
The entire wealth of lyrical poetry in a nation may, therefore, no
doubt embrace the collective exuberance of national interest, idea, and
purpose; but it is not the single lyrical poem that can do this.
The Lyric is not called upon to produce Bibles such as we have
discovered in Epic poetry. It does, however, enjoy the advantage
of being able to touch upon every conceivable aspect of national
development; whereas the true Epos is limited to distinct epochs of
a primitive age, and its success in our more recent times of prosaic
culture is very jejune.
(_α_) Within this field of particularization we have, to start with,
the _universal_ as such--the supreme height and depth of human belief,
imagination, and knowledge--the essential content of religion, art, ay,
even of scientific thought, in so far as the same is adaptable to the
form of imagination and creation, and can enter the sphere of emotions.
Consequently general opinions, what is of permanent substance in a view
of the world, the profounder grasp of far-reaching social conditions
are all not excluded from the Lyric; and a considerable part of the
material I have referred to[4] when discussing the more incomplete
types of the Epic falls rightly, and with pertinency into the sphere
now under review.
(_β_) And along with such essentially universal topics we have
associated the aspect of _particularity_, which can be so interwoven
with what is thus substantive that any specific situation, feeling, or
idea is thereby seized in its profounder significance and expressed in
a way wholly accordant thereto. This is, for example, almost always
the case in Schiller's lyrical work, as also in his ballads; in this
connection I will merely recall the superb description of the Eumenides
chorus in the Cranes of Ibicus, which is neither dramatic nor epic,
but lyrical. From a further point of view we may have this combination
so asserted that a variety of particular traits, moods, occurrences
are introduced by way of testimony to comprehensive views and maxims,
interlaced in vital coalescence by virtue of the general principle.
This style of writing is frequently employed in the elegy and epistle,
and generally in reflections upon life of a comprehensive character.
(_γ_) In conclusion, inasmuch as in lyrical composition what is
self-expressed is the _individual person_, a content, which is
extremely slight, will primarily suffice for this purpose. It is, in
other words, the soul itself, subjective life simply, which is the
true content. The emphasis is therefore throughout upon the animation
of feeling, rather than upon the more immediate object. The most
fleeting moods of the moment, the overjoyment of the heart, the swiftly
passing gleams or clouds of careless merriment and jest, sorrow,
melancholy, and complaint, in a word, all and every phase of emotion
are here seized in their momentary movement or isolated occurrence,
and rendered permanent in their expression. What we find here in the
domain of poetry may be paralleled with what I previously referred to
when describing _genre_ paintings. The content, the subject-matter, is
here the wholly contingent, and what is over and above this important
is exclusively the character of the individual conception and mode of
presentment, the charm of which in the Lyric will either consist in
the aroma of exquisite feeling, or in the novelty of arresting points
of view, and the genial suggestion of literary phrases and turns which
surprise.
(_b_) In the _second_ place we may observe in general with respect
to the _form_, wherein the Lyric is composed, that here too it is
the individual person, in the intimacy of his ideas or emotion that
constitutes the focal centre. The growth of the whole is rooted in the
heart and temperament; it starts, to be more precise, from a particular
mood and situation of the poet. By virtue of this fact the content and
conjunction of the particular aspects of its growth are not inferred
from it objectively as a substantively independent content, or from
its external manifestation as some really self-exclusive event, but
are borrowed from the individual subject as such. But for this reason
it is essential that the individual in question should himself appear
poetical, rich in fancy and feeling, or imposing and profound in his
views and reflections, and above all should be essentially independent,
the possessor of a unique ideal world, from which the servility and
caprice of a prosaic nature is excluded.
The lyric poem, then, retains a mode of unity wholly different from
that of the Epos, in other words, the mysterious intimacy of the
mood or reflection, which expatiates upon itself, mirrors itself
in the objective world, describes itself, or concerns itself as it
wills with any other matter, always, however, retaining the right
in the pursuit of such an interest to begin and break off very much
as it pleases. Horace, for instance, very frequently comes to a stop
at the very point, where, in the commonplace view of its literary
treatment, we might suppose he had only just started with his subject.
In other words, what he describes is simply his feelings, commands or
arrangements for a banquet, say, without giving us further information
as to how it went off. In the same way we have every conceivable mode
of progression and combination supplied by the nature of the mood, the
actual condition of the individual soul-life, the degree of passion,
its excitement or rapid transition of conflicting emotion, or the
tranquillity of the heart or the mind in some long-drawn process of
contemplation. As a rule, in respect to all such subject-matter, we
are able to determine very little that is fixed, owing to the repeated
changes in the ever varied facets of the soul. I will therefore
restrict myself to a few salient points of distinction.
(_α_) Just as we met with several specific kinds of epic poetry which
showed a tendency to adopt a lyric vein of expression, so, too, the
Lyric may accept as its subject-matter and its form an occurrence,
which, so far as content and external appearance are concerned, are
epic, and to this extent it will approximate to the latter type. Heroic
songs, romances, and ballads belong to such a class. The form of the
whole is in such examples narrative, inasmuch as it is the progressive
advance of a situation or event, as among other instances, a particular
direction in the fate of a nation, which is communicated. And yet at
the same time the fundamental temper is wholly lyric, inasmuch as the
main object is not to give us a description and representation of the
actual fact apart from all relation to the narrator, but rather to
disclose his personal attitude to it in the way he conceives and feels
it, whether with delight or complaint, whether as a stimulus to good
or depressed spirits, the mood in short that rings throughout it. And
similarly the nature of the impression which the poet endeavours to
produce thereby is entirely that of the province of the lyric. In other
words, what the poet seeks to effect in his audience is precisely that
state of emotion, which the recounted event has produced in himself,
and which he therefore has attached to his composition. He expresses
his dejection, mourning, merriment, his fire of patriotism, and so
forth, in an appropriate occurrence in such a way that it is not this
fact so much which contributes, as it were, the focus, but rather the
state of his emotional life we find reflected therein. And for this
reason he, above all emphasizes those traits, and depicts the same with
feeling, which are in accord with his own personal impulses; and in
the degree of vivacity with which these are expressed by them the same
feelings are likely to be excited in his audience. And thus, though the
content may be epic, the treatment is lyrical.
(_αα_) To come yet more directly to detail there is, first, the
example of the _epigram_, in such a case where it is not merely an
inscription which states concisely the bald nature of some fact, but
further associates with this an emotional state; where, in short, the
content, regarded as the bare statement of external fact, is merged
in a condition of the soul. In other words, the writer here ceases
to surrender himself wholly to the object: rather he makes his own
personality expressive in it; he records his desires with regard to it;
he attaches to it his own sportive fancies, his acute or unexpected
suggestions and associations. The Greek Anthology contains many such
witty epigrams which have lost the epic manner. In more recent times
we find similar examples in the piquante couplets of the French,
abundantly illustrated in their Vaudevilles. We Germans have much the
same thing in our didactic distiches, Xenien, and the like. Even tomb
inscriptions frequently approximate to this lyrical character in virtue
of the strong emotions expressed.
(_ββ_) In much the same way the Lyric accepts a wider range in
descriptive narrative. I will merely mention, as a composition of this
class, the _romance._ It is the most obvious and simple form of it, in
so far that is as it isolates the different scenes of an event, and
then depicts rapidly and with the full force of their most important
characteristics each on its own account, in descriptions marked
throughout by sympathetic feeling. Such a consistent and well-defined
grasp of the characteristic features of a situation, together with an
emphatic assertion of the writer's absolute sympathy with his subject,
is above all nobly represented in Spanish literature and makes such
romances strikingly impressive. A peculiar clarity of atmosphere
surrounds these lyrical representations which rather identifies them
with the clear-cut definition of objective vision, than with the ideal
world of the imagination.
(_γγ_) The class of the _ballad_, in contrast to the above, includes
for the most part, if in less degree than the truly epic poem, the
completeness of an independent event, whose reflection, of course, it
merely embodies in the most conspicuous of its phases, while it seeks
at the same time to give full, if concentrated and ideal emphasis, to
the depth of the sentiment with which it is throughout interwoven, and
therein the plaint, dejection, joy, and so forth, of the soul. English
literature above all contains many such poetic compositions in the
early and more primitive epoch of its history; and, generally, popular
poetry delights in the narration of such histories and collisions,
usually unfortunate, with a true and emotional emphasis calculated
to make both heart and voice thrill and falter with anguish. But in
more recent times also among ourselves Bürger and, most famous of all,
Goethe and Schiller, have composed masterpieces in this field; Bürger
in virtue of his sombre tone of naïveté; Goethe through the impeccable
clarity of his emotional, no less than imaginative vision, which
forms the lyrical thread throughout; and Schiller, on account of his
superb emotional emphasis on the fundamental thought which he seeks,
in a wholly lyrical manner, to express under the form of an event, in
order thereby to affect the hearts of his readers with a similar lyric
movement of feeling and contemplation.
(_β_) The purely _personal_ element of lyric poetry is rightly
emphasized in those cases, when the fact of a given situation is taken
by the poet as an effective means of expressing his _own_ individuality
therein. Such is the case in the so-called poems _d'occasion._ So far
back as the poems of Callinus and Tyrtaeus we find elegies of battle
based on conditions regarded as real, which are made the stimulus
of a personal enthusiasm, albeit the poet's own individuality, his
purely private affections and feelings, are as yet not so much in
evidence. The Pindaric Odes also bring to light in their panegyrics
of particular contests, victors, and circumstances, a vein or impulse
that is more private; and yet more in some of the odes of Horace we
mark a definitely personal motive, or rather expressed thought to
the effect, "I will as myself a man of culture and fame, write a poem
on this subject." But the best illustration of all we have in our own
Goethe, whose partiality for such a style was due to the fact that he
discovered a poem in every incident of his life.
(_αα_) If, however, the lyric work of art is to be divested of all
_dependence_ of external occasion and purpose, that may be implied in
it, and to be composed as a self-subsistent whole on its own account,
it is obviously essential that the poet also only make use of such
external stimulus as an opportunity to express _himself,_ his mood,
delight, sorrow, or modes of thought and reflection generally. The
condition of most importance to such an intimate mode of personal
expression consists in the poet's ability to absorb the real content
absolutely, converting it thereby into his own possession. The true
lyric poet lives a life of introspection, he grasps relations in the
light of his poetic individuality; and, however in varied fashion his
inner life may be blended with the world around him, in its conditions
and destiny, what he presents to us exclusively in such material is the
unique and independent animation of his own emotions and observations.
When, to take our former example, Pindar was invited to celebrate a
victor of the Hellenic games, or undertakes this uninvited, he made
himself so entirely master of his subject-matter, that his composition
no longer so much appears a poem _on_ the victor as an effusion of song
created from his own resources.
(_ββ_) If we consider more closely the manner of presentment of such a
poem _d'occasion,_ we shall, no doubt, be ready to admit that the same
can to a real extent borrow its more defined material and character,
no less than its conceived organization as an artistic work, from the
actual features of the occurrence or individual which constitute its
content. It is, in fact, precisely from this content that the emotional
movement of the poet proceeds. As the most illuminating, though an
extreme example, I will merely mention Schiller's "Song of the Bell,"
which makes out of the varied stages of bell-foundry the significant
and arresting moments in the composition of the entire poem, and only
subject to this introduces the emotional element relevant thereto,
as also the various observations upon human life and the description
of its conditions. In a somewhat different manner, too, Pindar makes
use of the place of birth of the victor, the exploits of the family
to which he belongs, or other relations of life as an opportunity in
his own person to exalt certain gods to the exclusion of others, or to
mention these particular exploits and results alone, or to emphasize
exclusively the observations or maxims he has interpolated. From a
further point of view, however, the lyric poet is absolutely free,
inasmuch as it is not the external occasion as such, but rather the
poet's _own_ soul-life which is here the subject; and consequently it
entirely depends on the particular views of the poet and the character
of his general mood, what aspects of the subject-matter and in what
threads of connection and sequence they shall be composed. In other
words, we are unable to predict decisively and _a priori_ the degree
in which the objective occasion with its given content, or the purely
personal factor of poet, shall be predominant, or whether both aspects
shall on equal terms coalesce.
(_γγ_) Furthermore, it is not the incentive and its positive reality,
but the ideal movement and conception of the individual soul which
supplies the _focus of unity._ The particular mood or general review,
which is aroused poetically by the occasion, these constitute the
centre, radiating from which not merely the colour of the whole, but
also the embrace of the particular features unfolded, the very mode of
the execution and construction, and therewith the build and coalescence
of the poem as a work of art are determined. In this way, to return
to our previous example, Pindar possesses in the life-conditions
of his victors a genuine core of reality for differentiation or
amplification. In the particular poems, however, which he has written
it is invariably other points of view, another mood altogether,
whether it be of warning, comfort, or exaltation, which he makes most
pervasive, and which, although such exclusively belong to the poet in
his creative capacity, do none the less give him precisely that grasp
of all he wishes to touch upon, execute, and hand to posterity in
those historical facts, while unfolding therewith the illuminating and
constructive power of genius, without which he would fail to secure the
lyric effect intended.
(_γ_) But, _thirdly_, it is not absolutely necessary for the genuine
lyrical poet to start from the external occurrence, which he recounts
in a medium rich with emotion, or, indeed, from any such objectively
real stimulus of his efforts. He is, let us repeat, a truly exclusive
world _in himself._ He may find there both the original incentive
and content, and consequently go no further than this ideal world of
condition, event, and passion discovered in his own heart and soul.
This is that domain in which man becomes, in virtue of his private
inner life, himself the work of art; while the epic poet avails himself
exclusively of the hero and his exploits and experiences for this
purpose.
(_αα_) And yet in this field, too, an element of narrative may enter,
where, as in the case of the songs of Anacreon, bright little pictures
of adventure with Eros and the like receive the finish of delightful
miniatures. Such an event, however, must obviously rather resemble the
unveiling of a condition of personal soul-life. In a somewhat different
mode of the same thing Horace, in his _Integer vitæ_ makes use of the
fact of his meeting a wolf, not to the extent that we can, therefore,
call his poem the verse _d'occasion_, but rather regarding this fact
as the prompting force of his first sentence and the serenity of the
feelings of affection with which he concludes.
(_ββ_) As a rule we may also observe that the situation under which the
poet depicts himself should not restrict itself merely to the _inner
personal_ life as such. It must rather attest itself as concrete,
and thereby we may even say external totality. The poet, in short,
reveals himself not merely in that inward personal life, but as one
of the objects of the external world. In the example just cited of
the Anacreon odes the poet depicts himself among roses, fair maidens,
and youths in the merry enjoyment of wine and dance, without regret
or yearning, without obligation, and yet without dislike of loftier
aims, which, indeed, are not present at all; reveals himself rather
as a hero, who freely and without reserve, and consequently without
hesitation or loss, is just this unity, is what he is, a man of his own
type, and figures as such in this intimate artistic presentment. In the
love-songs of Hafis also we may observe the entire vital individuality
of the poet in all its changes of content, pose, and an expression
which approaches close to self-conscious humour. And yet his poetry
is without any specific theme, any objective picture, any god, or
mythology; or, rather, when we peruse these light-hearted ebullitions,
one feels as though it would be impossible for the Oriental to possess
any such definite picture and constructive art. He passes easily from
one object to another; he takes his walks abroad, but it is a scene
in which the entire man, with his wine, his damsels, his court-life,
and all the rest of it, is placed before us with delightful unreserve,
without passion or self-seeking in the simplicity of his enjoyment eye
to eye and soul to soul. Improvisations of this type adapt themselves
in the most various ways not merely to a reflection of the soul-life,
but also to external condition. If, however, the poet is absorbed in
his own individual experience, we are not so much concerned to hear
his particular fancies, love affairs, domestic arrangements, and the
history of his uncles and aunts. We are so invited, for instance,
in Klopstock's Eidli and Fanny, as to nave some vision given us of
what is of universal human interest, in order that our sympathies may
be roused. From this point of view, therefore, such lyrical poetry
can readily degenerate into the spurious assumption that what is
essentially private and particular must necessarily awaken interest.
On the contrary, it would be no incorrect description of many songs
of Goethe if we called them "Songs of _Comradeship_," although they
are not exactly executed by the poet under such a category. In other
words, it is not so much himself that a man offers in society; rather
he places his particularity in the background, and converses with the
help of something else, whether it be a story or an anecdote, seizing
its specific features in some particular mood, and communicating them
agreeably to such a temper. In a case like this it is not exactly the
poet, and yet it is himself for all that. It is not himself he gives
us, but something else as best he can. He is, in short, an actor, who
runs through an infinite variety of parts. First he lingers on this,
then on that; he reviews momentarily a scene, then maybe a group of
people. But whatever he may endeavour to reproduce, it is throughout
his individual artistic soul-life, his own experience, his own feeling,
which is vitally interwoven with it.
(_γγ_) But, further, in so far as the individuality of self-conscious
life is the true source of the Lyric, the poet is justified in limiting
his expression to his own moods and reflections without any further
combination of them in a concrete situation that includes a truly
objective character. It is in this direction that examples of what is
little more than an empty fluting for fluting's sake, the song and
trill simply on its own account, will yet give us genuine lyrical
satisfaction. In such the words are to a more or less extent merely
the vehicle of cheerfulness or sorrow, whose effect, moreover, very
readily serves as an invitation to musical accompaniment. Folk-songs
especially very often amount to little more than this. In the songs of
Goethe, too, though we may no doubt discover here a more defined and
abundant mode of expression, it is not unfrequently simply a single and
transitory bit of merriment that is vouchsafed, a passing mood that the
poet does not attempt to throw aside, but on the tune of which he pipes
for a moment in his tiny song. In others, of course, his treatment of
similar moods is on a larger scale, even systematic, as, for instance,
in the poem: "_Ich hab mein Sach' auf nichts gestellt_," in which the
poet passes before us as things that come and vanish, first, money
and property, then women, travel, fame, honour, and, last of all,
fight and war, retaining throughout as the ever-recurring refrain of
stability his own free and careless cheerfulness. Conversely, however,
the intimate individual life may from the same point of view grow in
depth and expansion, in conditions of the soul of the most imposing
proportions and ideas that embrace the world itself. A considerable
number of Schiller's poems are of this type. What is great, what opens
to intelligence, this is the incentive of his heart. But he will
neither celebrate in hymn fashion a religious or otherwise profound
subject; nor will he be the minstrel who looks for inspiration without
him to the pertinent fact or occasion. He sings in the presence of, and
inspired by, his own soul-life, the highest interest of which are the
ideals of life, beauty, and the imperishable claims and thoughts of our
humanity.
(_c_) There is a _third_ consideration we have to deal with in
connection with the general character of lyric poetry. It is the nature
of the general stage of human development and culture from which the
isolated poem originates.
In this respect, too, the Lyric occupies a position which is to be
contrasted with Epic poetry. In other words, while we regarded as
necessary for the full bloom of the true Epos a phase in the nation's
growth which was, speaking generally, undeveloped, at least in the
sense that it had not ripened in the prosaic acceptance of its actual
life, the times which favour most of all lyrical composition are those
which already are in possession of a more or less fixed organization
of social condition. It is in such a period that the individual seeks
a reflection of his intimate personal life in contrast to this outer
world, creating from it and within its limits an independent whole
of emotion and idea. For in the Lyric it is not, we repeat, the
objective solidarity and individual action, but the individual person
as self-conscious life which supplies both content and form. This,
however, must not be understood in such a way as though the individual,
in order to express himself in lyrical form, must perforce disjoin
himself from every connection with national interests and the opinions,
and with rigid and exclusive severity remain as he stands.
On the contrary, with such an abstract self-subsistency we should only
have left us for content the wholly contingent and particular passion,
the mere caprice of concupiscence and affection, false idiosyncrasies
and distorted originality would have unlimited opportunities. Genuine
lyrical poetry, like all other poetry, has no doubt to express the
content of the human heart in its truth. Yet none the less, regarded as
the content of the Lyric, what is most a matter of fact and substantial
must appear absorbed in personal feeling, vision, imagination, and
thought. And, in the _second_ place, the question here is not so much
simply expression of the personal inner life, is not so much concerned
with a primary and direct statement in the epic fashion, what the facts
are, as with an expression of the poetical nature in a manner both
artistically fruitful and wholly different from chance and ordinary
modes. It follows that the Lyric requires, precisely on account of the
fact that the concentrated life of the heart unfolds itself in manifold
feelings and comprehensive views, and the individual is conscious
of the poetry of his most intimate life as nested in a world that
is already more prosaically organized--an artistic culture already
secured, which must assert itself as the flower and independent product
of the individual's natural endowment thus trained to a perfect result.
For these reasons the Lyric is not limited to particular epochs of the
spiritual development of a people, but is the rich blossom of the most
varied. To an exceptional degree is it favoured in more recent times,
in which everybody is entitled to have and express his own views and
emotions.
I will, however, draw attention, in the interest of really important
distinction, to the following general considerations.
(_a_) In the _first_ place, we have the type of lyrical expression
peculiar to _folk-songs._
(_αα_) In these above all we have witness to the varied and distinct
qualities of national character. It is on account of this, and
consonant with the widely-prevailing curiosity of our generation, that
great efforts are made to collect folk-songs of every kind, in order
to increase our acquaintance with the peculiarities of every national
spirit, and therewith our sympathies and vital contact with such.
Already Herder has done much in this direction. Goethe, too, with the
help of his own more independent imitations, has materially assisted an
approach to very different examples of this style of poetry. Complete
sympathy is, however, only possible for the songs of one's own people;
and however much we Germans are able to make ourselves at home in
the work of foreign lands, the fact remains that the ultimate aroma
in song[5] of the intimate life of another folk can only appear as
alien, that we shall only catch the echo of the tone of feeling that
truly belongs to it, with the assistance of a more native reflection
of its content.[6] This Goethe has imported into his songs of a
foreign subject-matter, stamped as they are with the finest sympathy
and beauty. We may take as an example the lament of the noble spouse
of Asan Aga, imitated from the Icelandic--only so far as to retain
throughout the unique spirit of such poems unimpaired.
(_ββ_) The general character of the lyrical folk-song is comparable to
the primitive Epos in virtue of the fact that here too the poet does
not make himself his subject-matter, but is absorbed in his selected
material. Although, therefore, intensity of soul in its extreme
concentration may express itself in the folk-song, it is nevertheless
not a single person with the artistic expression of whose private
experience we are made acquainted. It is rather a national state of
feeling, which the author completely assimilates, in so far as it
possesses, when taken by itself, no intimate form of idea or feeling
wholly independent of the nation's existence and interests. And a
condition is necessary, as the presupposition for such an inseparable
union, in which independent personal reflection and culture is not
yet awakened, so that the poet is simply in his creative capacity
merely the vehicle in the background, by means of whom the national
life is expressed in its lyrical emotion and general outlook. This
directly primitive character no doubt communicates to the folk-song an
unconscious freshness of downright grasp and striking veracity, which
is often very effective; but it receives thereby along with it very
readily a fragmentary appearance; it is defective in the continuity
of its exposition, which may amount to actual obscurity. The feeling
dives into depth, but cannot and will not attain to full utterance.
Moreover, as before observed, what is absent from such a point of view
throughout, however much the form in general is wholly lyric, in other
words subjective, is just the lyrical individuality, which expresses
this form and its content as the possession of its _own_ heart and
mind, and the creation of its _own_ artistic resources.
(_γγ_) Peoples, therefore, which confine themselves to poetry of this
type, and do not combine such composition with that of the further
stages of lyrical, epic, or dramatic work, are as a rule in great
measure barbarous nations, uncultured, characterized by transitory
feud and catastrophes. If they themselves, in such heroic ages, really
combined to form a truly pregnant whole, whose particular aspects
were already fused together in an independent and withal harmonious
objective union, which could supply the ground for essentially
concrete and individually distinct exploits, we should find in them,
along with such primitive poetry, epic poets as well. The condition,
out of which such songs assert themselves as the single and ultimate
mode of poetic expression, is therefore rather limited to the field
of family life and the association of clans, without any further
organization such as belongs already to the riper perfection of the
heroic community. If we are reminded here and there of national
exploits, such are for the most part conflicts waged against foreign
aggressors, expeditions of pillage, reprisals of savagery with
savagery, or deeds of one individual against another in the same
people, in the narration of which lament and dejection or ecstatic
jubilation over one conqueror after another, are the moods throughout
prevailing. The national life as it actually is, as yet unfolded in its
wholly free development, is relegated to the background in contrast
with the world of more personal feeling, which also, on its own
account, betrays an immaturity; and, however much thereby we gain in
concentration of effect, the result only too frequently remains, so far
as content is concerned, rude and barbarous. The question then, whether
folk-songs should possess for us a poetic interest, or on the contrary
repel us to some extent, depends on the kind of situation and emotion
they portray. That which appears admirable to the imagination of one
people, will readily strike another as wanting in taste, horrible, and
offensive. There is, for example, a folk-song which tells us the story
of a wife who was immured at the command of her husband, and all that
her plea for mercy could effect was that apertures should be left open
for her breasts, in order that she might suckle her child; we are told
that she remained alive until her child was weaned. This is a barbarous
and frightful situation. And in the same way tales of robbery, exploits
of the bluster or sheer savagery of individuals, possess nothing
in them in which alien peoples of a higher culture can sympathize.
Folksongs, consequently, very often run into great detail as to the
quality of which there is no fixed standard of comparison, because such
is too far removed from our common humanity. When we consequently, in
more recent times, are made acquainted with the songs of the Iroquois,
the Esquimaux, and other wild nationalities, the circle of a true
poetic enjoyment is in no wise thereby enlarged.
(_β_) Further, inasmuch as the Lyric is the entire expression of the
inward life of Spirit, it can neither restrict itself to the mode of
expression nor the content of the genuine folksong, or of later poems
composed in a similar spirit.
(_αα_) In other words, on the one hand, it is of essential importance,
as already remarked, that the wholly self-absorbed soul should detach
itself from this absolute concentration and its direct introspection,
and should pass on instead to the free grasp of itself which, in the
conditions above described, is only incompletely the case. On the
other, it is necessary that it should expand in a world abundant in
ideas, passions, varied conditions, and conflicts, in order to endow
with ideal expression everything that the human heart is essentially
able to apprehend, and then communicate as the birth of its own spirit.
For the collective wealth of lyrical poetry should express in poetic
form all that the inner life comprises, so far as the same can pass
into poetry, and therefore finds itself at home alike in all phases of
spiritual culture.
(_ββ_) And, _secondly_, with the advent of a free self-consciousness
is bound up the freedom of an assured _art_ of its own. The folk-song
sings forth, just as any natural song, straight from the heart. A free
art, however, is aware of itself; it requires a knowledge and desire of
that which it produces; and requires culture to promote this knowledge,
as also an executive power, which is expert in the finest composition.
When, consequently, genuine epic poetry has to conceal the individual
creative power of the poet, or rather it lies with the entire character
of the age of its origin that such should not yet be visible, this
result is merely because of the fact that the Epos deals with the
nation's positive existence rather than that which issues from the
personal life of the poet himself, and that it is not present in poetry
in such a close personal relation, but rather appears as a self-evolved
product essentially independent. In lyrical poetry, on the contrary,
the creative activity no less than the content are inseparable from the
inner life, and are bound to declare themselves as such in actual fact.
(_γγ_) In this respect, later forms of lyric art are expressly
distinguishable from the folk-song. There are, no doubt, folk-songs
which originate contemporaneously with the works of a genuine lyrical
_art._ These latter, however, belong to a range and type of individuals
such as--far from participating in more modern stages of artistic
culture--are, in the entire nature of their general outlook, not yet
liberated from the immediate popular sense. We must, however, not
regard this distinction between the Lyric of the folk-song and the
artistic poem as though it was only when reflection and the artistic
consciousness, in union with deliberate executive ability, appear
with all the elegance of such a union, that the Lyric attains to its
perfection. Such a notion would really amount to this--that a Horace,
for instance, and the Roman lyric poets generally, were to be reckoned
among the finest writers of this type, or even in their own range
that the Master Singers were preferable to the preceding epoch of
the genuine Minnesong. Such an extreme deduction from our previous
statement is not justified. What we ought to conclude is this, that
individual imagination and art directed to the service of this very
self-consistent personal life, which in fact constitutes its principle,
presupposes also, for the basis of their true perfection, a free and
self-trained recognition of imaginative idea no less than artistic
activity.
(_γ_) We have our _final_ phase of composition to distinguish from
those already discussed. The folk-song appears before the true
elaboration of a prosaically organized condition of actual conscious
life. Lyric poetry of the truly artistic type, on the other hand,
wrests itself away from the prosaic coordination which surrounds it,
and creates from the poet's imagination, in its acquired independence,
a new poetic world of inward observation and emotion, by means of
which, for the first time, the true content and type of expression
truly adequate to the human soul, as seen from within, becomes the
object of vital art. There is, however, over and above this, a form of
intelligence which, from this point of view, stands in a more exalted
position than the imagination of the emotional or conceptive life,
inasmuch as it is able, with more penetrative universality and more
necessary coalescence to bring its content before our free cognition
than is ever possible to art. This is _philosophical thought._
Conversely, however, this form is attached to the abstract condition of
being exclusively evolved in the medium of thought, posited as wholly
ideal universality; and, in consequence, the concrete man may find
himself also constrained to express the content and the results of his
philosophical consciousness in a concrete way, that is, as permeated by
his temperament and sensuous perception, his imagination and feeling,
in order thereby to possess and exhaust the absolute expression of all
that engages either soul or intellect.
From such a standpoint we may distinguish between two principal types
of conceptive activity. It may, in short, either be the imagination
which, straining beyond its own domain, struggles with the movement
of pure thinking, without successfully attaining the clarity and
secured exactness of philosophical exposition. In this case the Lyric
is for the most part the ebullition of a soul engaged in strife and
contention, which in its fermentation does violence both to art and
abstract thought. It transgresses one province without the ability to
make itself at home in another. Or we may find that it is rather the
tranquil movement of philosophical thought in its essential medium,
which may seek to animate its clearly grasped and systematically
developed thoughts with emotion, to make them perceptible to sensuous
apprehension, and to exchange the explicit scientific process and
sequence in its causal necessity for that free play of particular
aspects, beneath the apparently loose connection of which art is
the more compelled to conceal their ideal bonds of association in
proportion as it is disinclined to narrow itself to the jejune style of
purely didactic exposition. As an illustration of this latter tendency,
we may point to many of Schiller's poems.