The German philosophy has made a distinction between the Subjective
and the Objective, which has been found so convenient that it has been
already naturalized and is almost acclimated in our literature.
The distinction is this: in all thought there are two factors, the
thinker himself, and that about which he thinks. All thought, say our
friends the Germans, results from these two factors: the subject, or
the man thinking; and the object, what the man thinks about. All that
part of thought which comes from the man himself, the Ego, they call
subjective; all that part which comes from the outside world, the
non-Ego, they call objective.
I am about to apply this distinction to literature and art; but instead
of the terms Subjective and Objective, I shall use the words Lyric and
Dramatic.
For example, when a writer or an artist puts a great deal of himself
into his work, I call him a lyric writer or artist. Lyrical, in poetry,
is the term applied to that species of poetry which directly expresses
the individual emotions of the poet. On the other hand, I call an
artist or poet dramatic when his own personality disappears, and is
lost in that which he paints or describes. A lyric or subjective writer
gives us more of himself than of the outside world; a dramatic or
objective writer gives us more of the outside world than of himself.
Lyric poetry is that which is to be sung; the lyre accompanies song.
Now, song is mainly personal or subjective. It expresses the singer's
personal emotions, feelings, desires; and for these reasons I select
this phrase "lyric" to express all subjective or personal utterances in
art.
The drama, on the other hand, is a photograph of life; of live men
and women acting themselves out freely and individually. The dramatic
writer ought to disappear in his drama; if he does not do so he is not
a dramatic writer, but a lyrist in disguise.
The dramatic element is the power of losing one's self--opinions,
feeling, character--in that which is outside and foreign, and
reproducing it just as it is. In perfect dramatic expression the
personal equation is wholly eliminated. The writer disappears in his
characters; his own hopes and fears, emotions and convictions, do not
color his work.
But the lyric element works in the opposite way. In song, the singer
is prominent more than what he sings. He suffuses his subject with
his own thoughts and feelings. If he describes nature, he merely gives
us the feelings it awakens in his own mind. If he attempts to write a
play, we see the same actor thinly disguised reappearing in all the
parts.
Now, there is a curious fact connected with this subject. It is that
great lyric and dramatic authors or artists are apt to appear in duads
or pairs. Whenever we meet with a highly subjective writer, we are
apt to find him associated with another as eminently objective. This
happens so often that one might imagine that each type of thought
attracts its opposite and tends to draw it out and develop it. It may
be that genius, when it acts on disciples who are persons of talent,
draws out what is like itself, and makes imitators; when it acts on a
disciple who himself possesses genius, it draws out what is opposite
to itself and develops another original thinker. Genius, like love,
is attracted by its opposite, or counterpart. Love and genius seek to
form wholes; they look for what will complete and fulfill themselves.
When, therefore, a great genius has come, fully developed on one side,
he exercises an irresistible attraction on the next great genius,
in whom the opposite side is latent, and is an important factor in
his development. Thus, perhaps, we obtain the duads, whose curious
concurrence I will now illustrate by a few striking instances.
Beginning our survey with English literature, who are the first two
great poets whose names occur to us? Naturally, Chaucer and Spenser.
Now, Chaucer is eminently dramatic and objective in his genius; while
Spenser is distinctly a lyrical and subjective poet.
Chaucer tells stories; and story-telling is objective. One of the most
renowned collections of stories is the "Arabian Nights;" but who knows
anything about the authors of those entertaining tales? They are merely
pictures of Eastern life, reflected in the minds of some impersonal
authors, whose names even are unknown.
Homer is another great story-teller; and Homer is so objective, so
little of a personality, that some modern critics suppose there may
have been several Homers.
Chaucer is a story-teller also; and in his stories everything belonging
to his age appears, except Chaucer himself. His writings are full of
pictures of life, sketches of character; in one word, he is a dramatic
or objective writer. He paints things as they are,--gives us a panorama
of his period. Knights, squires, yeomen, priests, friars, pass before
us, as in Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott."
The mind of an objective story-teller, like Chaucer, is the faithful
mirror, which impartially reflects all that passes before it, but
cracks from side to side whenever he lets a personal feeling enter his
mind, for then the drama suddenly disappears and a lyric of personal
hope or fear, gladness or sadness, takes its place.
Spenser is eminently a lyric poet. His own genius suffuses his stories
with a summer glow of warm, tender, generous sentiment. In his
descriptions of nature he does not catalogue details, but suggests
impressions, which is the only way of truly describing nature. There
are some writers who can describe scenery, so that the reader feels as
if he had seen it himself. The secret of all such description is that
it does not count or measure, but suggests. It is not quantitative
but qualitative analysis. It does not apply a foot rule to nature,
but gives the impression made on the mind and heart by the scene. I
have never been at Frascati nor in Sicily, but I can hardly persuade
myself that I have not seen those places. I have distinct impressions
of both, simply from reading two of George Sand's stories. I have in
my mind a picture of Frascati, with deep ravines, filled with foliage;
with climbing, clustering, straggling vines and trees and bushes; with
overhanging crags, deep masses of shadow below, bright sunshine on
the stone pines above. So I have another picture of Sicilian scenery,
wide and open, with immense depths of blue sky, and long reaches of
landscape; ever-present Etna, soaring snow-clad into the still air; an
atmosphere of purity, filling the heart with calm content. It may be
that Catania and Frascati are not like this; but I feel as if I had
seen them, not as if I had heard them described.
It is thus that Spenser describes nature; by touching some chord of
fancy in the soul. Notice this picture of a boat on the sea:--
"So forth they rowëd; and that Ferryman
With his stiff oars did brush the sea so strong
That the hoar waters from his frigate ran,
And the light bubbles dancëd all along
Whiles the salt brine out of the billows sprang;
At last, far off, they many islands spy,
On every side, floating the floods among."
You notice that you are in the boat yourself, and everything is told
as it appears to you there; you see the bending of the "stiff oars"
by your side, and the little bubbles dancing on the water, and the
islands, not as they _are_, rock-anchored, but as they _seem_ to you,
floating on the water. This is subjective description,--putting the
reader in the place, and letting him see it all from that point of
view. So Spenser speaks of the "oars sweeping the watery wilderness;"
and of the gusty winds "filling the sails with fear."
Perhaps the highest description ought to include both the lyric and
dramatic elements. Here is a specimen of sea description, by an almost
unknown American poet, Fenner, perfect in its way. The poem is called
"Gulf Weed:"--
"A weary weed washed to and fro,
Drearily drenched in the ocean brine;
Soaring high, or sinking low,
Lashed along without will of mine;
Sport of the spoom of the surging sea,
Flung on the foam afar and near;
Mark my manifold mystery,
Growth and grace in their place appear.
"I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;
My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er
White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar
Gracefully grow I, night and day.
"Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
(Something whispers soft to me,)
Restless and roaming for evermore,
Like this weary weed of the sea;
Bear they yet on each beating breast
The eternal Type of the wondrous whole,
Growth unfolding amidst unrest,
Grace informing the silent soul."
All nature becomes alive in the Spenserian description. Take, for
example, the wonderful stanza which describes the music of the "Bower
of Bliss:"--
"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade
Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet;
Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made
To the instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the bass murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now loud, now low, unto the winds did call;
The gentle warbling winds low answerëd to all."