appeal. Compare many lyrics of Shelley; Spenser. The description of
the dwelling of Morpheus in _The Faery Queen_. Poetry in which the
dominant appeal is through imaginative vision. Compare what is most
characteristic in Dante and Shakespeare.
=Relation of poetry to human life.=--Poetry combining in a new union
the functions of the other arts without replacing them in their
own fields. Poetry the most complex and universal of the fine arts
in many-sided power to express and interpret all aspects of human
experience. Compare in the lyric; the epic; the drama.
Prose literature in relation to poetry. The same functions fulfilled on
another plane. The rhythm of prose. The novel as a prose epic and drama
set in a lower key.
=The three types of art in relation.=--The different functions of the
arts illustrated in great masterpieces. Compare Dante’s _Divine Comedy_
with the _Last Judgment_ of Michael Angelo and a mediæval cathedral,
and with a fugue of Bach and a symphony of Beethoven.
Compare Cormon’s _Cain_, Wagner’s music in _The Twilight of the Gods_,
and Shakespeare’s _King Lear_.
Compare Watts’ painting of _Francesca and Paolo_, Wagner’s music in
_Tristan und Isolde_, and the fifth canto of Dante’s _Inferno_.
=Unity in the arts.=--The spirit of man a unity, hence also the appeal
of the arts. In all, thought, emotion and imagination; in all, the same
principles of form, of beauty and harmony.
This evident in efforts to combine the arts in a more composite art.
Compare the union of poetry and music in song; the union of all types
of art in the Wagnerian opera. Inevitable sacrifice of something on
the part of each of the arts so combined; peculiar adaptation of the
composite art to the modern spirit. The question which art should be
central in the composite whole.
=The service of poetry.=--Danger in poetry as in the other arts. Evil
of seeking merely sensuous beauty; evil of portraying life to satisfy a
morbid and decadent taste. Yet the evil but indicating the correlative
power in the true ministration of art to the human spirit.
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on
simplicity,--I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered
mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an
euphemism for folly.”
--Plato, _Republic_, book III, section 400.
“I believed that I might form the theory that every _individual_
branch of art follows out a development of its powers that finally
leads it to their limits; and that it cannot pass these limits without
the danger of losing itself in the unintelligible and absolutely
fantastic--even in the absurd. I thought that I saw in this point the
necessity for it to join companionship at this stage with another
class of art, related to it, and the only one capable of going on
from this position. And as I was of necessity keenly interested
(having regard to my own ideal) in following out this tendency in
each special kind of art, I finally believed that I could recognize
it most distinctly in the relation of poetry to music,--especially
considering the remarkable importance modern music has assumed. And as
I thus endeavored to imagine that work of art in which all branches
of art could unite in their highest perfection, I came as a matter
of course to the _conscious_ contemplation of that ideal which had
_unconsciously_ gradually formed within me, and had hovered before the
seeking artist.”
--Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” _Art Life and Theories_, p.
147.
“If it is true that painting and poetry in their imitations make use
of entirely different means or symbols--the first, namely, of form
and colour in space, the second of articulated sounds in time--if
these symbols indisputably require a suitable relation to the thing
symbolized, then it is clear that symbols arranged in juxtaposition
can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts exist in
juxtaposition; while consecutive symbols can only express subjects of
which the wholes or parts are themselves consecutive.
“Subjects whose wholes or parts exist in juxtaposition are called
bodies. Consequently, bodies with their visible properties are the
peculiar subjects of painting.
“Subjects whose wholes or parts are consecutive are called actions.
Consequently, actions are the peculiar subject of poetry.
“Still, all bodies do not exist in space only, but also in time. They
endure, and in each moment of their duration may assume a different
appearance, or stand in a different combination. Each of these
momentary appearances and combinations is the effect of a preceding
one, may be the cause of a subsequent, one, and is therefore, as it
were, the centre of an action. Consequently, painting too can imitate
actions, but only indicatively, by means of bodies.
“On the other hand, actions cannot exist by themselves, they must
depend on certain beings. So far, therefore, as these beings are
bodies, or are regarded as such, poetry paints bodies, but only
indicatively, by means of actions.
“In its coexisting compositions painting can only make use of a single
instant of the action, and must therefore choose the one which is most
pregnant, and from which what precedes and what follows can be most
easily gathered.
“In like manner, poetry, in its progressive imitations, is confined to
the use of a single property of bodies, and must therefore choose that
which calls up the most sensible image of the body in the aspect in
which she makes use of it.”
--Lessing, _Laokoön_, pp. 91, 92.
“As to Homer, it is as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. The
descriptions, similes and so on appear to us poetical, and are yet
unspeakably natural, though of course drawn with a purity, an inward
truth enough to strike us poor moderns dumb. The very strangest
fictions are characterised by a naturalness I never felt so much as
in the presence of the objects described. To express the antithesis
briefly; _they_ presented the thing, _we_ usually present the effect;
_they_ described the dreadful, _we_ describe dreadfully; _they_ the
agreeable, _we_ agreeably, and so on. This will explain all our
extravagance, our affectation, our false grace, our inflation; for
once you elaborate and strain after effect, you fancy you can never
make it strong enough.”
--Goethe, _Travels in Italy_, p. 322.
“In instruments, the primal organs of creation and nature find their
representation; they cannot be sharply determined and defined, for
they but repeat primal feelings as they came forth from the chaos
of the first creation, when there were perhaps no human beings in
existence to receive them in their hearts. With the genius of the
human voice it is entirely otherwise; this represents the human
heart, and its isolated, individual emotion. Its character is
therefore limited, but fixed and defined. Let these two elements be
brought together, then; let them be united! Let those wild primal
emotions that stretch out into the infinite, that are represented
by instruments, be contrasted with the clear, definite emotions of
the human heart, represented by the human voice. The addition of the
second element will work beneficently and soothingly upon the conflict
of the elemental emotions, and give to their course a well-defined
and united channel; and the human heart itself, in receiving these
elemental emotions, will be immeasurably strengthened and broadened;
and made capable of feeling clearly what was before an uncertain
presage of the highest ideal, now changed into a divine knowledge.”
--Wagner, in “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven,” _Art Life and Theories_, p.
63.
“I admit that the exercises of the gymnasium form athletic bodies;
but beauty is only developed by the free and equal play of the limbs.
In the same way the tension of the isolated spiritual forces may make
extraordinary men; but it is only the well-tempered equilibrium of
these forces that can produce happy and accomplished men.”
--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 43.
“The highest problem of any art is to produce by appearance the
illusion of a higher reality. But it is a false endeavour to realize
the appearance until at last only something commonly real remains.”
--Goethe, _Autobiography_, Bohn Library translation (George Bell &
Sons, London, 1891), vol. 1, p. 422.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. What likenesses can you discover between poetry on the one hand and
sculpture and painting on the other?
2. What likenesses can you discover between poetry and music?
3. What poets make the strongest appeal through imaginative vision?
What poets make the dominant appeal through music?
4. Compare what is given in Shakespeare’s sonnet beginning “That time
of year thou mayst in me behold” with a painting of an autumn scene.
5. Compare Shelley’s lyric _To the Night_ with the music of Chopin.
6. Study carefully what is given in Millet’s _Man with the Hoe_ with
what is given in Markham’s poem on the same subject.
7. Estimate the value and limitations of Lessing’s theory of the arts
as given in _Laokoön_.
8. What elements of content and of form are common to all the arts?
9. Compare in expression of thought, feeling and imagination and in
type of appeal, the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the _Last Judgment_ of
Michael Angelo and the _Ninth Symphony_ of Beethoven.
10. What powers has poetry that are not present in the other arts?
REFERENCES
Ambros, _Boundaries of Music and Poetry_. Aristotle, _Poetic_.
Beeching, _The Study of Poetry_. Bradley, _Poetry for Poetry’s Sake_.
Corson, _Aims of Literary Study_. Dabney, _Musical Basis of Verse_.
Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann_; _Maxims and Reflections_.
Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_; _Handbook of Poetics_. Gurney,
_The Power of Sound_. Holden, _Audiences_. Holmes, _What is Poetry?_
Hugo, _William Shakespeare_. Knight, _The Philosophy of the
Beautiful_. Lanier, _Music and Poetry_; _Science of English Verse_.
Lessing, _Laokoön_. Moyse, _Poetry as a Fine Art_. Newman, _Poetry,
with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics_. Palgrave, _Golden Treasury_;
_Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts_. Plato, _Republic_, books
II. and III. Poe, _The Rationale of Verse and The Poetic Principle_.
Puffer, _The Psychology of Beauty_, chapters vi.-viii. Raymond,
_Poetry as a Representative Art_; _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and
Music_. Santayana, _Elements and Function of Poetry_. Schiller,
_Essays_. Shairp, _Aspects of Poetry_. Shelley, _A Defence of Poetry_.
Sidney, _Defense of Poesy_. Stedman, _Nature and Elements of Poetry_.
Wagner, _Art Life and Theories of_. Wilde, _The Critic as Artist_.
Winchester, _Some Principles of Literary Criticism_.
VII. LITERATURE AND LIBERAL CULTURE
“It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be
specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of existence
their problem; and this is a subject upon which they will every one of
them in some form provide mankind with a new revelation.”
--Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_, p. 55.
=Significance of poetry for education.=--Each art supreme in its own
field and function. Thus impossibility of classing one as highest.
Of them all, poetry the most universal in function, combining in one
something of each of the great types of art, and broadest in power to
express and interpret human life. Permanence of poetry. Accessibility
of poetry as contrasted with the other arts. Thus whatever art appeals
most powerfully to the individual, poetry having a place in the
education of all. Hence reason for choosing this art for separate
discussion.
=What is literature?=--Relation of poetry to other forms of literature.
Two-fold distinction of artistic literature from other writing:
Requirement that it should be human in appeal, written for the man and
not the specialist, and that it should be adequate and harmonious in
expression. The vast field comprised within these limits.
=The study of literature.=--Literature many things to many men. Thus
studied for a multitude of special purposes. Compare the use of
literature as a mere text-book for philology, or as an opportunity for
expounding a particular philosophy. Frequent misuse of literature in
education.
The great value of literature, not in contributing to some phase of
special training, but in developing liberal culture. What such culture
means in the development of intellect, emotions and imagination.
The reasons for the vast development of specialization in our education
recently. Need that special training should rest always on a basis of
liberal culture. Thus the significance of the study of literature as
the art most broadly expressing human life, and thus contributing to
the liberal cultivation of the man as compared with the training of the
specialist.
=The four avenues of approach.=--Literature possessing a soul of
thought, feeling and imagination and a body of artistic expression.
Compare how all true art must be both significant and beautiful. Thus
two great aspects of literature: possible to focus attention on either
one. Which appeals more powerfully to the student as somewhat a matter
of temperament.
Content and form studied directly with the aim of understanding
significance and appreciating beauty; both aspects of literature
studied as embodying historical forces. Thus the four aspects of the
study of literature, with the aim of liberal culture.
=The direct study of the content of literature.=--The range of thought
given in literature. The problems constantly treated. Thought never
expressed alone in literature, but always transfused with feeling
and transfigured with imagination. Thus the appeal to the whole man.
Resulting education and its value. Compare in developing appreciation
of the beauty and sublimity of Nature, of the dignity, comedy and
tragedy of human life. Illustrations in the poetry of the sunset hour;
in the poetry of human experience.
=The second avenue of approach.=--The soul of literature given a
further meaning when studied in relation to the forces behind it.
Expression of the character of the artist in his work: Compare Milton
in _Paradise Lost_; Carlyle in _Sartor Resartus_. Embodiment of the
spirit of the epoch and race in literature. Deeper expression of what
is common to humanity in all time: Compare the _Antigone_ of Sophocles.
=The study of literary art.=--The analytical study of form in
literature as only a means to an end--the end of synthetic
appreciation. The need always to find the relation of the body of art
to the soul of thought, feeling and imagination expressed through it.
No accidents in art. The melody of a line or word always determined by
law, whether or not the poet was conscious of the law. Possible thus
for the student to discover the laws the art follows. Illustration of
these in the succession of poetic forms from common speech to the most
highly differentiated stanzas. The aim of art never merely to create
the sensuously pleasing, but to give adequate and harmonious expression.
=The fourth avenue of approach.=--The body of literature as much
as the soul an expression of historical forces. Evidence in the
contrasting imagery of Shelley and Wordsworth. The Elizabethan age
naturally creating the drama, modern life the lyric. Expression of
racial characteristics in the music of words and the stanzas of poetry.
Contrast _Beowulf_ and the _Iliad_.
=The culture given by literature.=--Type of education resulting from
all four lines of the study of literature. The widened relation to man
and Nature. The true cosmopolitanism of the spirit. Thus the service
of literature in making possible the discovery of the divine in the
commonplace and of the ideal in the real.
ILLUSTRATIONS
“To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the
unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words
stamps the man of genius.”
--Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_, p. 30.
“We know that the sensibility of the mind depends, as to degree, on
the liveliness, and for extent on the richness, of the imagination.
Now the predominance of the faculty of analysis must necessarily
deprive the imagination of its warmth and energy, and a restricted
sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. It is for this reason
that the abstract thinker has very often a _cold_ heart, because he
analyses impressions, which only move the mind by their combination or
totality; on the other hand, the man of business, the statesman, has
very often a _narrow_ heart, because shut up in the narrow circle of
his employment his imagination can neither expand nor adapt itself to
another manner of viewing things.”
--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, pp. 41, 42.
“One should not study contemporaries and competitors, but the great
men of antiquity, whose works have, for centuries, received equal
homage and consideration. Indeed, a man of really superior endowments
will feel the necessity of this, and it is just this need for an
intercourse with great predecessors, which is the sign of a higher
talent. Let us study Molière, let us study Shakespeare, but above all
things, the old Greeks, and always the Greeks.”
--Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann and Soret_, p. 236.
“There is a fine art of passion, but an impassioned fine art is a
contradiction in terms, for the infallible effect of the beautiful
is emancipation from the passions. The idea of an instructive fine
art (didactic art) or improving (moral) art is no less contradictory,
for nothing agrees less with the idea of the beautiful than to give a
determinate tendency to the mind.”
--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 92.
“To read a philosopher’s biography, instead of studying his thoughts,
is like neglecting a picture and attending only to the style of its
frame, debating whether it is carved well or ill, and how much it cost
to gild it.”
--Schopenhauer, _The Art of Literature_, p. 146.
“Any one who is sufficiently young, and who is not quite spoiled,
could not easily find any place that would suit him so well as a
theatre. No one asks you any questions: you need not open your mouth
unless you choose; on the contrary, you sit quite at your ease like a
king, and let everything pass before you, and recreate your mind and
senses to your heart’s content. There is poetry, there is painting,
there are singing and music, there is acting, and what not besides.
When all these arts, and the charm of youth and beauty heightened to
an important degree, work in concert on the same evening, it is a
bouquet to which no other can compare.”
--Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann and Soret_, p. 120.
“It is therefore not going far enough to say that the light of the
understanding only deserves respect when it reacts on the character;
to a certain extent it is from the character that this light proceeds;
for the road that terminates in the head must pass through the
heart. Accordingly, the most pressing need of the present time is to
educate the sensibility, because it is the means, not only to render
efficacious in practice the improvement of ideas, but to call this
improvement into existence.”
--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 48.
“A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never
does all he can.”
--John Stuart Mill, _Autobiography_ (Henry Holt & Co., New York,
1887), p. 32.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. Define artistic literature as distinguished from other writings.
2. What characteristics give literature an exceptional place and value
as a means of liberal culture?
3. What education results from the study of thought, feeling and
imagination in literature?
4. Why is the poetry of sorrow filled with the imagery of the sea?
5. Is there a “pathetic fallacy” involved in using Nature as a language
for the expression of human emotions?
6. What place has the education of the emotions and the imagination in
relation to the whole of culture?
7. Study the imagery of Shelley and Wordsworth as expressing the
character of the two poets.
8. What is the cultural value of the analytical study of literary style?
9. Why was Elizabethan poetry characteristically dramatic, where modern
English poetry is predominantly lyrical?
10. What aspects of the study of literature are most important for
liberal culture, and why?
REFERENCES
Arnold, _The Study of Poetry_. Baldwin, _The Book-Lover_. Bates,
_Talks on the Study of Literature_. Beeching, _The Study of
Poetry_. Collins, _The_ _True Functions of Poetry_. Corson, _Aims
of Literary Study_. Crawshaw, _The Interpretation of Literature;
Literary Interpretation of Life_. Dabney, _Musical Basis of Verse_.
Hamerton, _The Intellectual Life_. Hugo, _William Shakespeare_.
Lewes, _Principles of Success in Literature_. Mabie, _Books and
Culture_. Mathews, _Music: Its Ideals and Methods_. Morison, _The
Great Poets as Religious Teachers_. Newman, _Poetry, with Reference to
Aristotle’s Poetics_. Palgrave, _Golden Treasury_. Pryde, _Highways of
Literature_. Santayana, _Elements and Function of Poetry_. Schiller,
_Essays_. Shairp, _Poetic Interpretation of Nature_. Sidney, _Defense
of Poesy_. Stedman, _Nature and Elements of Poetry_. Warner, _The
Relation of Literature to Life_. Winchester, _Some Principles of
Literary Criticism_.
VIII. BEAUTY AND THE CULTURE OF THE SPIRIT
“It is important, at the present time, to bear in mind that the human
soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real.
It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.
Would you realize the difference? Animals exist, man lives.”
--Victor Hugo, _William Shakespeare_, p. 295.
=The life of appreciation.=--Art appealing to the whole man--intellect,
emotion, imagination. Hence difficulty in endeavoring to put the
meaning of art into terms of the intellect. How we appreciate much that
we never understand. The joy of life depending largely on appreciation.
Compare how life is always in advance of the theory of life. The three
aspects of the life of appreciation: beauty, love, faith. The sense in
which wisdom also belongs to appreciation.
Contrasting significance of art and philosophy. The reason for the
permanent value of every great work of art. The test of an artistic
masterpiece its power to grow with our growth, revealing new deeps as
we bring the key of enlarged experience to its interpretation.
=The nature of beauty.=--The fact that beauty belongs to the life of
appreciation as explaining the difficulty in defining beauty. Possible
to define the relations upon which beauty depends rather than beauty
itself.
The relation of habit and custom in the appreciation of beauty.
Evidence of a conventional element in changes of taste and standard in
reference both to Nature and the arts.
The relation of the parts to the whole in Nature or art; and the
relation of an organism or a thing made to the function it is to
fulfil. Contrast deformity and beauty. The sublimity of a great machine.
The deeper relation of body to soul, of form to content, as a
determining principle of beauty. Beauty depending less upon what is
sensuously pleasing, than upon adequate and harmonious expression, the
perfect marrying of body and soul.
Still deeper relation behind all appreciation of beauty. The rhythm
or harmony that inevitably exists between man’s sensibilities and the
Nature-world in relation to which these senses have been evolved.
Since all forms utilized in the arts are drawn finally from Nature,
this principle behind all appreciation of beauty in the arts as well as
in Nature.
Unity of the life of appreciation. Hence all cultivation of the true
response to beauty deepening and refining the life of love and of
religion.