as examples exquisite and pure models, not those that approach in any way
to some other form of poetry, such as the ballad, the elegy, the hymn, the
epigram, &c., we shall find that the peculiar nature of the lyric, in the
narrowest sense, is this: It is the subject of will, _i.e._, his own
volition, which the consciousness of the singer feels; often as a released
and satisfied desire (joy), but still oftener as a restricted desire
(grief), always as an emotion, a passion, a moved frame of mind. Besides
this, however, and along with it, by the sight of surrounding nature, the
singer becomes conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-less
knowing, whose unbroken blissful peace now appears, in contrast to the
stress of desire which is always restricted and always needy. The feeling
of this contrast, this alternation, is really what the lyric as a whole
expresses, and what principally constitutes the lyrical state of mind. In
it pure knowing comes to us, as it were, to deliver us from desire and its
stain; we follow, but only for an instant; desire, the remembrance of our
own personal ends, tears us anew from peaceful contemplation; yet ever
again the next beautiful surrounding in which the pure will-less knowledge
presents itself to us, allures us away from desire. Therefore, in the
lyric and the lyrical mood, desire (the personal interest of the ends),
and pure perception of the surrounding presented, are wonderfully mingled
with each other; connections between them are sought for and imagined; the
subjective disposition, the affection of the will, imparts its own hue to
the perceived surrounding, and conversely, the surroundings communicate
the reflex of their colour to the will. The true lyric is the expression
of the whole of this mingled and divided state of mind. In order to make
clear by examples this abstract analysis of a frame of mind that is very
far from all abstraction, any of the immortal songs of Goethe may be
taken. As specially adapted for this end I shall recommend only a few:
“The Shepherd’s Lament,” “Welcome and Farewell,” “To the Moon,” “On the
Lake,” “Autumn;” also the songs in the “Wunderhorn” are excellent
examples; particularly the one which begins, “O Bremen, I must now leave
thee.” As a comical and happy parody of the lyrical character a song of
Voss strikes me as remarkable. It describes the feeling of a drunk plumber
falling from a tower, who observes in passing that the clock on the tower
is at half-past eleven, a remark which is quite foreign to his condition,
and thus belongs to knowledge free from will. Whoever accepts the view
that has been expressed of the lyrical frame of mind, will also allow,
that it is the sensuous and poetical knowledge of the principle which I
established in my essay on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and have
also referred to in this work, that the identity of the subject of knowing
with that of willing may be called the miracle κατ᾽ εξοχην; so that the
poetical effect of the lyric rests finally on the truth of that principle.
In the course of life these two subjects, or, in popular language, head
and heart, are ever becoming further apart; men are always separating more
between their subjective feeling and their objective knowledge. In the
child the two are still entirely blended together; it scarcely knows how
to distinguish itself from its surroundings, it is at one with them. In
the young man all perception chiefly affects feeling and mood, and even
mingles with it, as Byron very beautifully expresses—
“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling.”
This is why the youth clings so closely to the perceptible and outward
side of things; this is why he is only fit for lyrical poetry, and only
the full-grown man is capable of the drama. The old man we can think of as
at the most an epic poet, like Ossian, and Homer, for narration is
characteristic of old age.
In the more objective kinds of poetry, especially in the romance, the
epic, and the drama, the end, the revelation of the Idea of man, is
principally attained by two means, by true and profound representation of
significant characters, and by the invention of pregnant situations in
which they disclose themselves. For as it is incumbent upon the chemist
not only to exhibit the simple elements, pure and genuine, and their
principal compounds, but also to expose them to the influence of such
reagents as will clearly and strikingly bring out their peculiar
qualities, so is it incumbent on the poet not only to present to us
significant characters truly and faithfully as nature itself; but, in
order that we may get to know them, he must place them in those situations
in which their peculiar qualities will fully unfold themselves, and appear
distinctly in sharp outline; situations which are therefore called
significant. In real life, and in history, situations of this kind are
rarely brought about by chance, and they stand alone, lost and concealed
in the multitude of those which are insignificant. The complete
significance of the situations ought to distinguish the romance, the epic,
and the drama from real life as completely as the arrangement and
selection of significant characters. In both, however, absolute truth is a
necessary condition of their effect, and want of unity in the characters,
contradiction either of themselves or of the nature of humanity in
general, as well as impossibility, or very great improbability in the
events, even in mere accessories, offend just as much in poetry as badly
drawn figures, false perspective, or wrong lighting in painting. For both
in poetry and painting we demand the faithful mirror of life, of man, of
the world, only made more clear by the representation, and more
significant by the arrangement. For there is only one end of all the arts,
the representation of the Ideas; and their essential difference lies
simply in the different grades of the objectification of will to which the
Ideas that are to be represented belong. This also determines the material
of the representation. Thus the arts which are most widely separated may
yet throw light on each other. For example, in order to comprehend fully
the Ideas of water it is not sufficient to see it in the quiet pond or in
the evenly-flowing stream; but these Ideas disclose themselves fully only
when the water appears under all circumstances and exposed to all kinds of
obstacles. The effects of the varied circumstances and obstacles give it
the opportunity of fully exhibiting all its qualities. This is why we find
it beautiful when it tumbles, rushes, and foams, or leaps into the air, or
falls in a cataract of spray; or, lastly, if artificially confined it
springs up in a fountain. Thus showing itself different under different
circumstances, it yet always faithfully asserts its character; it is just
as natural to it to spout up as to lie in glassy stillness; it is as ready
for the one as for the other as soon as the circumstances appear. Now,
what the engineer achieves with the fluid matter of water, the architect
achieves with the rigid matter of stone, and just this the epic or
dramatic poet achieves with the Idea of man. Unfolding and rendering
distinct the Idea expressing itself in the object of every art, the Idea
of the will which objectifies itself at each grade, is the common end of
all the arts. The life of man, as it shows itself for the most part in the
real world, is like the water, as it is generally seen in the pond and the
river; but in the epic, the romance, the tragedy, selected characters are
placed in those circumstances in which all their special qualities unfold
themselves, the depths of the human heart are revealed, and become visible
in extraordinary and very significant actions. Thus poetry objectifies the
Idea of man, an Idea which has the peculiarity of expressing itself in
highly individual characters.
Tragedy is to be regarded, and is recognised as the summit of poetical
art, both on account of the greatness of its effect and the difficulty of
its achievement. It is very significant for our whole system, and well
worthy of observation, that the end of this highest poetical achievement
is the representation of the terrible side of life. The unspeakable pain,
the wail of humanity, the triumph of evil, the scornful mastery of chance,
and the irretrievable fall of the just and innocent, is here presented to
us; and in this lies a significant hint of the nature of the world and of
existence. It is the strife of will with itself, which here, completely
unfolded at the highest grade of its objectivity, comes into fearful
prominence. It becomes visible in the suffering of men, which is now
introduced, partly through chance and error, which appear as the rulers of
the world, personified as fate, on account of their insidiousness, which
even reaches the appearance of design; partly it proceeds from man
himself, through the self-mortifying efforts of a few, through the
wickedness and perversity of most. It is one and the same will that lives
and appears in them all, but whose phenomena fight against each other and
destroy each other. In one individual it appears powerfully, in another
more weakly; in one more subject to reason, and softened by the light of
knowledge, in another less so, till at last, in some single case, this
knowledge, purified and heightened by suffering itself, reaches the point
at which the phenomenon, the veil of Mâya, no longer deceives it. It sees
through the form of the phenomenon, the _principium individuationis_. The
egoism which rests on this perishes with it, so that now the _motives_
that were so powerful before have lost their might, and instead of them
the complete knowledge of the nature of the world, which has a _quieting_
effect on the will, produces resignation, the surrender not merely of
life, but of the very will to live. Thus we see in tragedies the noblest
men, after long conflict and suffering, at last renounce the ends they
have so keenly followed, and all the pleasures of life for ever, or else
freely and joyfully surrender life itself. So is it with the steadfast
prince of Calderon; with Gretchen in “Faust;” with Hamlet, whom his friend
Horatio would willingly follow, but is bade remain a while, and in this
harsh world draw his breath in pain, to tell the story of Hamlet, and
clear his memory; so also is it with the Maid of Orleans, the Bride of
Messina; they all die purified by suffering, _i.e._, after the will to
live which was formerly in them is dead. In the “Mohammed” of Voltaire
this is actually expressed in the concluding words which the dying Palmira
addresses to Mohammad: “The world is for tyrants: live!” On the other
hand, the demand for so-called poetical justice rests on entire
misconception of the nature of tragedy, and, indeed, of the nature of the
world itself. It boldly appears in all its dulness in the criticisms which
Dr. Samuel Johnson made on particular plays of Shakespeare, for he very
naïvely laments its entire absence. And its absence is certainly obvious,
for in what has Ophelia, Desdemona, or Cordelia offended? But only the
dull, optimistic, Protestant-rationalistic, or peculiarly Jewish view of
life will make the demand for poetical justice, and find satisfaction in
it. The true sense of tragedy is the deeper insight, that it is not his
own individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin, _i.e._,
the crime of existence itself:
“Pues el delito mayor
Del hombre es haber nacido;”
(“For the greatest crime of man
Is that he was born;”)
as Calderon exactly expresses it.
I shall allow myself only one remark, more closely concerning the
treatment of tragedy. The representation of a great misfortune is alone
essential to tragedy. But the many different ways in which this is
introduced by the poet may be brought under three specific conceptions. It
may happen by means of a character of extraordinary wickedness, touching
the utmost limits of possibility, who becomes the author of the
misfortune; examples of this kind are Richard III., Iago in “Othello,”
Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Franz Moor, Phædra of Euripides,
Creon in the “Antigone,” &c., &c. Secondly, it may happen through blind
fate, _i.e._, chance and error; a true pattern of this kind is the Œdipus
Rex of Sophocles, the “Trachiniæ” also; and in general most of the
tragedies of the ancients belong to this class. Among modern tragedies,
“Romeo and Juliet,” “Tancred” by Voltaire, and “The Bride of Messina,” are
examples. Lastly, the misfortune may be brought about by the mere position
of the _dramatis personæ_ with regard to each other, through their
relations; so that there is no need either for a tremendous error or an
unheard-of accident, nor yet for a character whose wickedness reaches the
limits of human possibility; but characters of ordinary morality, under
circumstances such as often occur, are so situated with regard to each
other that their position compels them, knowingly and with their eyes
open, to do each other the greatest injury, without any one of them being
entirely in the wrong. This last kind of tragedy seems to me far to
surpass the other two, for it shows us the greatest misfortune, not as an
exception, not as something occasioned by rare circumstances or monstrous
characters, but as arising easily and of itself out of the actions and
characters of men, indeed almost as essential to them, and thus brings it
terribly near to us. In the other two kinds we may look on the prodigious
fate and the horrible wickedness as terrible powers which certainly
threaten us, but only from afar, which we may very well escape without
taking refuge in renunciation. But in the last kind of tragedy we see that
those powers which destroy happiness and life are such that their path to
us also is open at every moment; we see the greatest sufferings brought
about by entanglements that our fate might also partake of, and through
actions that perhaps we also are capable of performing, and so could not
complain of injustice; then shuddering we feel ourselves already in the
midst of hell. This last kind of tragedy is also the most difficult of
achievement; for the greatest effect has to be produced in it with the
least use of means and causes of movement, merely through the position and
distribution of the characters; therefore even in many of the best
tragedies this difficulty is evaded. Yet one tragedy may be referred to as
a perfect model of this kind, a tragedy which in other respects is far
surpassed by more than one work of the same great master; it is “Clavigo.”
“Hamlet” belongs to a certain extent to this class, as far as the relation
of Hamlet to Laertes and Ophelia is concerned. “Wallenstein” has also this
excellence. “Faust” belongs entirely to this class, if we regard the
events connected with Gretchen and her brother as the principal action;
also the “Cid” of Corneille, only that it lacks the tragic conclusion,
while on the contrary the analogous relation of Max to Thecla has it.(61)
§ 52. Now that we have considered all the fine arts in the general way
that is suitable to our point of view, beginning with architecture, the
peculiar end of which is to elucidate the objectification of will at the
lowest grades of its visibility, in which it shows itself as the dumb
unconscious tendency of the mass in accordance with laws, and yet already
reveals a breach of the unity of will with itself in a conflict between
gravity and rigidity—and ending with the consideration of tragedy, which
presents to us at the highest grades of the objectification of will this
very conflict with itself in terrible magnitude and distinctness; we find
that there is still another fine art which has been excluded from our
consideration, and had to be excluded, for in the systematic connection of
our exposition there was no fitting place for it—I mean _music_. It stands
alone, quite cut off from all the other arts. In it we do not recognise
the copy or repetition of any Idea of existence in the world. Yet it is
such a great and exceedingly noble art, its effect on the inmost nature of
man is so powerful, and it is so entirely and deeply understood by him in
his inmost consciousness as a perfectly universal language, the
distinctness of which surpasses even that of the perceptible world itself,
that we certainly have more to look for in it than an _exercitum
arithmeticæ occultum nescientis se numerare animi_,(62) which Leibnitz
called it. Yet he was perfectly right, as he considered only its immediate
external significance, its form. But if it were nothing more, the
satisfaction which it affords would be like that which we feel when a sum
in arithmetic comes out right, and could not be that intense pleasure with
which we see the deepest recesses of our nature find utterance. From our
standpoint, therefore, at which the æsthetic effect is the criterion, we
must attribute to music a far more serious and deep significance,
connected with the inmost nature of the world and our own self, and in
reference to which the arithmetical proportions, to which it may be
reduced, are related, not as the thing signified, but merely as the sign.
That in some sense music must be related to the world as the
representation to the thing represented, as the copy to the original, we
may conclude from the analogy of the other arts, all of which possess this
character, and affect us on the whole in the same way as it does, only
that the effect of music is stronger, quicker, more necessary and
infallible. Further, its representative relation to the world must be very
deep, absolutely true, and strikingly accurate, because it is instantly
understood by every one, and has the appearance of a certain
infallibility, because its form may be reduced to perfectly definite rules
expressed in numbers, from which it cannot free itself without entirely
ceasing to be music. Yet the point of comparison between music and the
world, the respect in which it stands to the world in the relation of a
copy or repetition, is very obscure. Men have practised music in all ages
without being able to account for this; content to understand it directly,
they renounce all claim to an abstract conception of this direct
understanding itself.
I gave my mind entirely up to the impression of music in all its forms,
and then returned to reflection and the system of thought expressed in the
present work, and thus I arrived at an explanation of the inner nature of
music and of the nature of its imitative relation to the world—which from
analogy had necessarily to be presupposed—an explanation which is quite
sufficient for myself, and satisfactory to my investigation, and which
will doubtless be equally evident to any one who has followed me thus far
and has agreed with my view of the world. Yet I recognise the fact that it
is essentially impossible to prove this explanation, for it assumes and
establishes a relation of music, as idea, to that which from its nature
can never be idea, and music will have to be regarded as the copy of an
original which can never itself be directly presented as idea. I can
therefore do no more than state here, at the conclusion of this third
book, which has been principally devoted to the consideration of the arts,
the explanation of the marvellous art of music which satisfies myself, and
I must leave the acceptance or denial of my view to the effect produced
upon each of my readers both by music itself and by the whole system of
thought communicated in this work. Moreover, I regard it as necessary, in
order to be able to assent with full conviction to the exposition of the
significance of music I am about to give, that one should often listen to
music with constant reflection upon my theory concerning it, and for this
again it is necessary to be very familiar with the whole of my system of
thought.
The (Platonic) Ideas are the adequate objectification of will. To excite
or suggest the knowledge of these by means of the representation of
particular things (for works of art themselves are always representations
of particular things) is the end of all the other arts, which can only be
attained by a corresponding change in the knowing subject. Thus all these
arts objectify the will indirectly only by means of the Ideas; and since
our world is nothing but the manifestation of the Ideas in multiplicity,
though their entrance into the _principium individuationis_ (the form of
the knowledge possible for the individual as such), music also, since it
passes over the Ideas, is entirely independent of the phenomenal world,
ignores it altogether, could to a certain extent exist if there was no
world at all, which cannot be said of the other arts. Music is as _direct_
an objectification and copy of the whole _will_ as the world itself, nay,
even as the Ideas, whose multiplied manifestation constitutes the world of
individual things. Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy
of the Ideas, but the _copy of the will itself_, whose objectivity the
Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and
penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows,
but it speaks of the thing itself. Since, however, it is the same will
which objectifies itself both in the Ideas and in music, though in quite
different ways, there must be, not indeed a direct likeness, but yet a
parallel, an analogy, between music and the Ideas whose manifestation in
multiplicity and incompleteness is the visible world. The establishing of
this analogy will facilitate, as an illustration, the understanding of
this exposition, which is so difficult on account of the obscurity of the
subject.