Introduction--Spirit of True Criticism--Difference of Taste between the
Ancients and Moderns--Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art--Division of
Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic
Poets.
The object of the present series of Lectures will be to combine the theory
of Dramatic Art with its history, and to bring before my auditors at once
its principles and its models.
It belongs to the general philosophical theory of poetry, and the other
fine arts, to establish the fundamental laws of the beautiful. Every art,
on the other hand, has its own special theory, designed to teach the
limits, the difficulties, and the means by which it must be regulated in
its attempt to realize those laws. For this purpose, certain scientific
investigations are indispensable to the artist, although they have but
little attraction for those whose admiration of art is confined to the
enjoyment of the actual productions of distinguished minds. The general
theory, on the other hand, seeks to analyze that essential faculty of
human nature--the sense of the beautiful, which at once calls the fine
arts into existence, and accounts for the satisfaction which arises from
the contemplation of them; and also points out the relation which subsists
between this and all other sentient and cognizant faculties of man. To the
man of thought and speculation, therefore, it is of the highest
importance, but by itself alone it is quite inadequate to guide and direct
the essays and practice of art.
Now, the history of the fine arts informs us what has been, and the theory
teaches what ought to be accomplished by them. But without some
intermediate and connecting link, both would remain independent and
separate from one and other, and each by itself, inadequate and defective.
This connecting link is furnished by criticism, which both elucidates the
history of the arts, and makes the theory fruitful. The comparing
together, and judging of the existing productions of the human mind,
necessarily throws light upon the conditions which are indispensable to
the creation of original and masterly works of art.
Ordinarily, indeed, men entertain a very erroneous notion of criticism,
and understand by it nothing more than a certain shrewdness in detecting
and exposing the faults of a work of art. As I have devoted the greater
part of my life to this pursuit, I may be excused if, by way of preface, I
seek to lay before my auditors my own ideas of the true genius of
criticism.
We see numbers of men, and even whole nations, so fettered by the
conventions of education and habits of life, that, even in the
appreciation of the fine arts, they cannot shake them off. Nothing to them
appears natural, appropriate, or beautiful, which is alien to their own
language, manners, and social relations. With this exclusive mode of
seeing and feeling, it is no doubt possible to attain, by means of
cultivation, to great nicety of discrimination within the narrow circle to
which it limits and circumscribes them. But no man can be a true critic or
connoisseur without universality of mind, without that flexibility which
enables him, by renouncing all personal predilections and blind habits, to
adapt himself to the peculiarities of other ages and nations--to feel
them, as it were, from their proper central point, and, what ennobles
human nature, to recognise and duly appreciate whatever is beautiful and
grand under the external accessories which were necessary to its
embodying, even though occasionally they may seem to disguise and distort
it. There is no monopoly of poetry for particular ages and nations; and
consequently that despotism in taste, which would seek to invest with
universal authority the rules which at first, perhaps, were but
arbitrarily advanced, is but a vain and empty pretension. Poetry, taken in
its widest acceptation, as the power of creating what is beautiful, and
representing it to the eye or the ear, is a universal gift of Heaven,
being shared to a certain extent even by those whom we call barbarians and
savages. Internal excellence is alone decisive, and where this exists, we
must not allow ourselves to be repelled by the external appearance.
Everything must be traced up to the root of human nature: if it has sprung
from thence, it has an undoubted worth of its own; but if, without
possessing a living germ, it is merely externally attached thereto, it
will never thrive nor acquire a proper growth. Many productions which
appear at first sight dazzling phenomena in the province of the fine arts,
and which as a whole have been honoured with the appellation of works of a
golden age, resemble the mimic gardens of children: impatient to witness
the work of their hands, they break off here and there branches and
flowers, and plant them in the earth; everything at first assumes a noble
appearance: the childish gardener struts proudly up and down among his
showy beds, till the rootless plants begin to droop, and hang their
withered leaves and blossoms, and nothing soon remains but the bare twigs,
while the dark forest, on which no art or care was ever bestowed, and
which towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears every
blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with religious awe.
Let us now apply the idea which we have been developing, of the
universality of true criticism, to the history of poetry and the fine
arts. This, like the so-called universal history, we generally limit (even
though beyond this range there may be much that is both remarkable and
worth knowing) to whatever has had a nearer or more remote influence on
the present civilisation of Europe: consequently, to the works of the
Greeks and Romans, and of those of the modern European nations, who first
and chiefly distinguished themselves in art and literature. It is well
known that, three centuries and a-half ago, the study of ancient
literature received a new life, by the diffusion of the Grecian language
(for the Latin never became extinct); the classical authors were brought
to light, and rendered universally accessible by means of the press; and
the monuments of ancient art were diligently disinterred and preserved.
All this powerfully excited the human mind, and formed a decided epoch in
the history of human civilisation; its manifold effects have extended to
our times, and will yet extend to an incalculable series of ages. But the
study of the ancients was forthwith most fatally perverted. The learned,
who were chiefly in the possession of this knowledge, and who were
incapable of distinguishing themselves by works of their own, claimed for
the ancients an unlimited authority, and with great appearance of reason,
since they are models in their kind. Maintaining that nothing could be
hoped for the human mind but from an imitation of antiquity, in the works
of the moderns they only valued what resembled, or seemed to bear a
resemblance to, those of the ancients. Everything else they rejected as
barbarous and unnatural. With the great poets and artists it was quite
otherwise. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and however
determined their purpose of entering into competition with them, they were
compelled by their independence and originality of mind, to strike out a
path of their own, and to impress upon their productions the stamp of
their own genius. Such was the case with Dante among the Italians, the
father of modern poetry; acknowledging Virgil for his master, he has
produced a work which, of all others, most differs from the Aeneid, and in
our opinion far excels its pretended model in power, truth, compass, and
profundity. It was the same afterwards with Ariosto, who has most
unaccountably been compared to Homer, for nothing can be more unlike. So
in art with Michael Angelo and Raphael, who had no doubt deeply studied
the antique. When we ground our judgment of modern painters merely on
their greater or less resemblance to the ancients, we must necessarily be
unjust towards them, as Winkelmann undoubtedly has in the case of Raphael.
As the poets for the most part had their share of scholarship, it gave
rise to a curious struggle between their natural inclination and their
imaginary duty. When they sacrificed to the latter, they were praised by
the learned; but by yielding to the former, they became the favourites of
the people. What preserves the heroic poems of a Tasso and a Camoëns to
this day alive in the hearts and on the lips of their countrymen, is by no
means their imperfect resemblance to Virgil, or even to Homer, but in
Tasso the tender feeling of chivalrous love and honour, and in Camoëns the
glowing inspiration of heroic patriotism.
Those very ages, nations, and ranks, who felt least the want of a poetry
of their own, were the most assiduous in their imitation of the ancients;
accordingly, its results are but dull school exercises, which at best
excite a frigid admiration. But in the fine arts, mere imitation is always
fruitless; even what we borrow from others, to assume a true poetical
shape, must, as it were, be born again within us. Of what avail is all
foreign imitation? Art cannot exist without nature, and man can give
nothing to his fellow-men but himself.
Genuine successors and true rivals of the ancients, who, by virtue of
congenial talents and cultivation have walked in their path and worked in
their spirit, have ever been as rare as their mechanical spiritless
copyists are common. Seduced by the form, the great body of critics have
been but too indulgent to these servile imitators. These were held up as
correct modern classics, while the great truly living and popular poets,
whose reputation was a part of their nations' glory, and to whose
sublimity it was impossible to be altogether blind, were at best but
tolerated as rude and wild natural geniuses. But the unqualified
separation of genius and taste on which such a judgment proceeds, is
altogether untenable. Genius is the almost unconscious choice of the
highest degree of excellence, and, consequently, it is taste in its
highest activity.
In this state, nearly, matters continued till a period not far back, when
several inquiring minds, chiefly Germans, endeavoured to clear up the
misconception, and to give the ancients their due, without being
insensible to the merits of the moderns, although of a totally different
kind. The apparent contradiction did not intimidate them. The groundwork
of human nature is no doubt everywhere the same; but in all our
investigations, we may observe that, throughout the whole range of nature,
there is no elementary power so simple, but that it is capable of dividing
and diverging into opposite directions. The whole play of vital motion
hinges on harmony and contrast. Why, then, should not this phenomenon
recur on a grander scale in the history of man? In this idea we have
perhaps discovered the true key to the ancient and modern history of
poetry and the fine arts. Those who adopted it, gave to the peculiar
spirit of _modern_ art, as contrasted with the _antique_ or _classical_,
the name of _romantic_. The term is certainly not inappropriate; the word
is derived from _romance_--the name originally given to the languages
which were formed from the mixture of the Latin and the old Teutonic
dialects, in the same manner as modern civilisation is the fruit of the
heterogeneous union of the peculiarities of the northern nations and the
fragments of antiquity; whereas the civilisation of the ancients was much
more of a piece.
The distinction which we have just stated can hardly fail to appear well
founded, if it can be shown, so far as our knowledge of antiquity extends,
that the same contrast in the labours of the ancients and moderns runs
symmetrically, I might almost say systematically, throughout every branch
of art--that it is as evident in music and the plastic arts as in poetry.
This is a problem which, in its full extent, still remains to be
demonstrated, though, on particular portions of it, many excellent
observations have been advanced already.
Among the foreign authors who wrote before this school can be said to have
been formed in Germany, we may mention Rousseau, who acknowledged the
contrast in music, and showed that rhythm and melody were the prevailing
principles of ancient, as harmony is that of modern music. In his
prejudices against harmony, however, we cannot at all concur. On the
subject of the arts of design an ingenious observation was made by
Hemsterhuys, that the ancient painters were perhaps too much of sculptors,
and the modern sculptors too much of painters. This is the exact point of
difference; for, as I shall distinctly show in the sequel, the spirit of
ancient art and poetry is _plastic_, but that of the moderns
_pìcturesque_.
By an example taken from another art, that of architecture, I shall
endeavour to illustrate what I mean by this contrast. Throughout the
Middle Ages there prevailed, and in the latter centuries of that aera was
carried to perfection, a style of architecture, which has been called
Gothic, but ought really to have been termed old German. When, on the
general revival of classical antiquity, the imitation of Grecian
architecture became prevalent, and but too frequently without a due regard
to the difference of climate and manners or to the purpose of the
building, the zealots of this new taste, passing a sweeping sentence of
condemnation on the Gothic, reprobated it as tasteless, gloomy, and
barbarous. This was in some degree pardonable in the Italians, among whom
a love for ancient architecture, cherished by hereditary remains of
classical edifices, and the similarity of their climate to that of the
Greeks and Romans, might, in some sort, be said to be innate. But we
Northerns are not so easily to be talked out of the powerful, solemn
impressions which seize upon the mind at entering a Gothic cathedral. We
feel, on the contrary, a strong desire to investigate and to justify the
source of this impression. A very slight attention will convince us, that
the Gothic architecture displays not only an extraordinary degree of
mechanical skill, but also a marvellous power of invention; and, on a
closer examination, we recognize its profound significance, and perceive
that as well as the Grecian it constitutes in itself a complete and
finished system.
To the application!--The Pantheon is not more different from Westminster
Abbey or the church of St. Stephen at Vienna, than the structure of a
tragedy of Sophocles from a drama of Shakspeare. The comparison between
these wonderful productions of poetry and architecture might be carried
still farther. But does our admiration of the one compel us to depreciate
the other? May we not admit that each is great and admirable in its kind,
although the one is, and is meant to be, different from the other? The
experiment is worth attempting. We will quarrel with no man for his
predilection either for the Grecian or the Gothic. The world is wide, and
affords room for a great diversity of objects. Narrow and blindly adopted
prepossessions will never constitute a genuine critic or connoisseur, who
ought, on the contrary, to possess the power of dwelling with liberal
impartiality on the most discrepant views, renouncing the while all
personal inclinations.
For our present object, the justification, namely, of the grand division
which we lay down in the history of art, and according to which we
conceive ourselves equally warranted in establishing the same division in
dramatic literature, it might be sufficient merely to have stated this
contrast between the ancient, or classical, and the romantic. But as there
are exclusive admirers of the ancients, who never cease asserting that all
deviation from them is merely the whim of a new school of critics, who,
expressing themselves in language full of mystery, cautiously avoid
conveying their sentiments in a tangible shape, I shall endeavour to
explain the origin and spirit of the _romantic_, and then leave the
world to judge if the use of the word, and of the idea which it is
intended to convey, be thereby justified.
The mental culture of the Greeks was a finished education in the school of
Nature. Of a beautiful and noble race, endowed with susceptible senses and
a cheerful spirit under a mild sky, they lived and bloomed in the full
health of existence; and, favoured by a rare combination of circumstances,
accomplished all that the finite nature of man is capable of. The whole of
their art and poetry is the expression of a consciousness of this harmony
of all their faculties. They invented the poetry of joy.
Their religion was the deification of the powers of nature and of the
earthly life: but this worship, which, among other nations, clouded the
imagination with hideous shapes, and hardened the heart to cruelty,
assumed, among the Greeks, a mild, a grand, and a dignified form.
Superstition, too often the tyrant of the human faculties, seemed to have
here contributed to their freest development. It cherished the arts by
which it was adorned, and its idols became the models of ideal beauty.
But however highly the Greeks may have succeeded in the Beautiful, and
even in the Moral, we cannot concede any higher character to their
civilisation than that of a refined and ennobled sensuality. Of course
this must be understood generally. The conjectures of a few philosophers,
and the irradiations of poetical inspiration, constitute an occasional
exception. Man can never altogether turn aside his thoughts from infinity,
and some obscure recollections will always remind him of the home he has
lost; but we are now speaking of the predominant tendency of his
endeavours.
Religion is the root of human existence. Were it possible for man to
renounce all religion, including that which is unconscious, independent of
the will, he would become a mere surface without any internal substance.
When this centre is disturbed, the whole system of the mental faculties
and feelings takes a new shape.
And this is what has actually taken place in modern Europe through the
introduction of Christianity. This sublime and beneficent religion has
regenerated the ancient world from its state of exhaustion and debasement;
it is the guiding principle in the history of modern nations, and even at
this day, when many suppose they have shaken off its authority, they still
find themselves much more influenced by it in their views of human affairs
than they themselves are aware.
After Christianity, the character of Europe has, since the commencement of
the Middle Ages, been chiefly influenced by the Germanic race of northern
conquerors, who infused new life and vigour into a degenerated people. The
stern nature of the North drives man back within himself; and what is lost
in the free sportive development of the senses, must, in noble
dispositions, be compensated by earnestness of mind. Hence the honest
cordiality with which Christianity was welcomed by all the Teutonic
tribes, so that among no other race of men has it penetrated more deeply
into the inner man, displayed more powerful effects, or become more
interwoven with all human feelings and sensibilities.
The rough, but honest heroism of the northern conquerors, by its admixture
with the sentiments of Christianity, gave rise to chivalry, of which the
object was, by vows which should be looked upon as sacred, to guard the
practice of arms from every rude and ungenerous abuse of force into which
it was so likely to sink.
With the virtues of chivalry was associated a new and purer spirit of
love, an inspired homage for genuine female worth, which was now revered
as the acmè of human excellence, and, maintained by religion itself under
the image of a virgin mother, infused into all hearts a mysterious sense
of the purity of love.
As Christianity did not, like the heathen worship, rest satisfied with
certain external acts, but claimed an authority over the whole inward man
and the most hidden movement of the heart; the feeling of moral
independence took refuge in the domain of honour, a worldly morality, as
it were, which subsisting alongside of, was often at variance with that of
religion, but yet in so far resembling it that it never calculated
consequences, but consecrated unconditionally certain principles of
action, which like the articles of faith, were elevated far beyond the
investigation of a casuistical reasoning.
Chivalry, love, and honour, together with religion itself, are the
subjects of that poetry of nature which poured itself out in the Middle
Ages with incredible fulness, and preceded the more artistic cultivation
of the romantic spirit. This age had also its mythology, consisting of
chivalrous tales and legends; but its wonders and its heroism were the
very reverse of those of the ancient mythology.
Several inquirers who, in other respects, entertain the same conception of
the peculiarities of the moderns, and trace them to the same source that
we do, have placed the essence of the northern poetry in melancholy; and
to this, when properly understood, we have nothing to object.
Among the Greeks human nature was in itself all-sufficient; it was
conscious of no defects, and aspired to no higher perfection than that
which it could actually attain by the exercise of its own energies. We,
however, are taught by superior wisdom that man, through a grievous
transgression, forfeited the place for which he was originally destined;
and that the sole destination of his earthly existence is to struggle to
regain his lost position, which, if left to his own strength, he can never
accomplish. The old religion of the senses sought no higher possession
than outward and perishable blessings; and immortality, so far as it was
believed, stood shadow-like in the obscure distance, a faint dream of this
sunny waking life. The very reverse of all this is the case with the
Christian view: every thing finite and mortal is lost in the contemplation
of infinity; life has become shadow and darkness, and the first day of our
real existence dawns in the world beyond the grave. Such a religion must
waken the vague foreboding, which slumbers in every feeling heart, into a
distinct consciousness that the happiness after which we are here striving
is unattainable; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls;
and that all earthly enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary illusion.
When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, [Footnote:
_Trauerweiden der verbannung_, literally _the weeping willows of
banishment_, an allusion, as every reader must know, to the 137th
Psalm. Linnaeus, from this Psalm, calls the weeping willow _Salix
Babylonica_.--TRANS.] breathes out its longing for its distant home,
what else but melancholy can be the key-note of its songs? Hence the
poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of
desire: the former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while
the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood
as affirming that everything flows in one unvarying strain of wailing and
complaint, and that the voice of melancholy is always loudly heard. As the
austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the
Greeks, so that romantic poetry whose origin I have been describing, can
assume every tone, even that of the liveliest joy; but still it will
always, in some indescribable way, bear traces of the source from which it
originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more inward,
their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative. In
nature, it is true, the boundaries of objects run more into one another,
and things are not so distinctly separated as we must exhibit them in
order to convey distinct notions of them.
The Grecian ideal of human nature was perfect unison and proportion
between all the powers,--a natural harmony. The moderns, on the contrary,
have arrived at the consciousness of an internal discord which renders
such an ideal impossible; and hence the endeavour of their poetry is to
reconcile these two worlds between which we find ourselves divided, and to
blend them indissolubly together. The impressions of the senses are to be
hallowed, as it were, by a mysterious connexion with higher feelings; and
the soul, on the other hand, embodies its forebodings, or indescribable
intuitions of infinity, in types and symbols borrowed from the visible
world.
In Grecian art and poetry we find an original and unconscious unity of
form and matter; in the modern, so far as it has remained true to its own
spirit, we observe a keen struggle to unite the two, as being naturally in
opposition to each other. The Grecian executed what it proposed in the
utmost perfection; but the modern can only do justice to its endeavours
after what is infinite by approximation; and, from a certain appearance of
imperfection, is in greater danger of not being duly appreciated.
It would lead us too far, if in the separate arts of architecture, music,
and painting (for the moderns have never had a sculpture of their own), we
should endeavour to point out the distinctions which we have here
announced, to show the contrast observable in the character of the same
arts among the ancients and moderns, and at the same time to demonstrate
the kindred aim of both.
Neither can we here enter into a more particular consideration of the
different kinds and forms of romantic poetry in general, but must return
to our more immediate subject, which is dramatic art and literature. The
division of this, as of the other departments of art, into the antique and
the romantic, at once points out to us the course which we have to pursue.
We shall begin with the ancients; then proceed to their imitators, their
genuine or supposed successors among the moderns; and lastly, we shall
consider those poets of later times, who, either disregarding the
classical models, or purposely deviating from them, have struck out a path
for themselves.
Of the ancient dramatists, the Greeks alone are of any importance. In this
branch of art the Romans were at first mere translators of the Greeks, and
afterwards imitators, and not always very successful ones. Besides, of
their dramatic labours very little has been preserved. Among modern
nations an endeavour to restore the ancient stage, and, where possible, to
improve it, has been shown in a very lively manner by the Italians and the
French. In other nations, also, attempts of the same kind, more or less
earnest, have at times, especially of late, been made in tragedy; for in
comedy, the form under which it appears in Plautus and Terence has
certainly been more generally prevalent. Of all studied imitations of the
ancient tragedy the French is the most brilliant essay, has acquired the
greatest renown, and consequently deserves the most attentive
consideration. After the French come the modern Italians; viz., Metastasio
and Alfieri. The romantic drama, which, strictly speaking, can neither be
called tragedy nor comedy in the sense of the ancients, is indigenous only
to England and Spain. In both it began to flourish at the same time,
somewhat more than two hundred years ago, being brought to perfection by
Shakspeare in the former country, and in the latter by Lope de Vega.
The German stage is the last of all, and has been influenced in the
greatest variety of ways by all those which preceded it. It will be most
appropriate, therefore, to enter upon its consideration last of all. By
this course we shall be better enabled to judge of the directions which it
has hitherto taken, and to point out the prospects which are still open to
it.
When I promise to go through the history of the Greek and Roman, of the
Italian and French, and of the English and Spanish theatres, in the few
hours which are dedicated to these Lectures, I wish it to be understood
that I can only enter into such an account of them as will comprehend
their most essential peculiarities under general points of view. Although
I confine myself to a single domain of poetry, still the mass of materials
comprehended within it is too extensive to be taken in by the eye at once,
and this would be the case were I even to limit myself to one of its
subordinate departments. We might read ourselves to death with farces. In
the ordinary histories of literature the poets of one language, and one
description, are enumerated in succession, without any further
discrimination, like the Assyrian and Egyptian kings in the old universal
histories. There are persons who have an unconquerable passion for the
titles of books, and we willingly concede to them the privilege of
increasing their number by books on the titles of books. It is much the
same thing, however, as in the history of a war to give the name of every
soldier who fought in the ranks of the hostile armies. It is usual,
however, to speak only of the generals, and those who may have performed
actions of distinction. In like manner the battles of the human mind, if I
may use the expression, have been won by a few intellectual heroes. The
history of the development of art and its various forms may be therefore
exhibited in the characters of a number, by no means considerable, of
elevated and creative minds.