(_αα_) And we may start at once by drawing attention to a

characteristic which is common alike to the genuine national poetry

of all peoples and in every period of past history, namely, that the

historical and formal aspect of that poetry is entirely national,

that is to say, it retains nothing incongruous to the people for whom

it is composed. This is a feature shared alike by the great epics of

India, the Homeric poems and the Greek drama. Sophocles never made

his Philoctetes, Antigone, Ajax, Orestes, Œdipus, his choregi and

choruses speak in the speech and manner that would have been entirely

appropriate to their own times. The Spaniards have written their

romances of the Cid under the same guiding principle. Tasso in his

"Jerusalem Liberated" celebrated the universal interests of Catholic

Christendom. Camoens, the poet of Portugal, depicted the discovery of

the seaway to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and all the

infinitely various adventures of the sea heroes that made it possible;

and these acts of daring were the acts of his own people. Shakespeare

threw into dramatic form the tragic history of his own country and even

a Voltaire wrote his "Henriade." Far indeed have we Germans strayed

from the path thus marked for us when we hope to work up into national

epics histories remote from our own, which carry no longer with them

a national interest of any kind. Bodmer's "Noachide" and Kloptock's

"Messias" have started a new fashion of their own, ay, as they have

overturned that old one which taught us that it redounds to a nation's

glory to have its Homer, to say nothing of its Pindar and Sophocles.

Those biblical stories, it is true, present points of special affinity

with the national imagination owing to our close acquaintance with the

old and new Testaments; but the historical material in its association

with ancient custom and the like remains for all that only intelligible

to the savant, and all the most of us can pick up from such epics is

the prosaic interfusion of events and characters, which, in such a

process of translation, have merely some novel form of speech thrust

into their mouths, and the final result can only impress us as hollow

and artificial.

(_ββ_) At the same time art cannot be restricted wholly to material

borrowed from one nation. And as a matter of fact the more

nationalities have come into contact with one another, the more

their poets have looked abroad among all nations and times for the

subject-matter of their poems. But however this may be the case, it

is none the less an error to suppose that the mere fact that a poet

is able, so to speak, to live into times aloof from his own at once

stamps him as a man of creative genius. It is more to the point to

recollect that this historical framework must, in the co-ordination of

a poem, be retained only in strict subordination, and as a means of

expressing that which permanently belongs to our humanity. Precisely in

this way the Middle Ages long ago borrowed much from antiquity, but so

absolutely suffused it with the content of its own epoch that, in this

respect verging on the opposite extreme, we really get nothing from

that antiquity but the bare names of Alexander, Aeneas, and the emperor

Octavius.

First in importance, then, is this permanent condition of true art,

immediate intelligibility. It will be found an invariable truth that

all nations have emphasized precisely that in this life which was

most agreeable to their artistic sense, their desire being always to

find what was most intimate to themselves, their life and existence

in their art. It was this independent flavour of patriotism which

Calderon worked into such characters as his Zenobia and Semiramis; and

Shakespeare in the same way was able to imprint upon the most varied

subject-matter the hall-mark of his English ancestry, although he

knew how to preserve along with it the essential traits of historical

characters belonging to nations foreign to his own, the Roman for

example, in a far profounder degree than was possible to the Spanish

poets. Even the Greek tragedians had their eyes constantly directed to

the actual conditions of their times and the particular city in which

they lived. The "Œdipus Colonus" in its local references is not merely

in a peculiar way associated with Athens but, by virtue of the fact

that Œdipus dies in this locality, at once indicates him as the future

Preserver of that city. In somewhat other associations the "Eumenides"

of Aeschylus is, owing to the decisive sentence of the Areopagus,

marked by an interest of more vital interest to the Athenians[401].

On the other hand Greek mythology, despite all the varied and oft

repeated use that has been made of it since the revival of the arts

and learning, has never fully come home to the general sense of modern

emotions and in various degrees in the plastic arts and still more

in poetry, despite its very extensive influence here, has failed to

arouse real enthusiasm. No one thinks now of writing an ode to Venus,

Zeus, or Pallas[402]. Sculpture, it is true, can hardly get along even

in modern times without the assistance of the Greek Pantheon, but for

that very reason it is mainly only appreciated by and intelligible to a

select circle of cultivated men who are either connoisseurs or critics.

As one of these, Goethe spared no pains in his endeavour to arouse

in contemporary artists an enthusiasm which should go so far as to

imitate the pictures of Philostratus, but for the most part his pains

were thrown away. Such examples of the work of antiquity, on account

of the very flavour of past time and a life that has vanished, which

clings to them, remain as strange to contemporary art as they do to

the general public. As a contrary example of real success on the part

of Goethe we may instance the far profounder insight he has shown us

during the later period of his poetic activity in fusing by means of

his "Westöstlicher Divan" the colour of the East with the poetry that

really appeals to us to-day, giving to the Orient, in fact, its modern

embodiment. In this process of assimilation he has clearly shown

himself alive to the fact that he is a poet of the West and a German

as well, and consequently while preserving the fundamental key-note of

the Oriental spirit in his delineation of characters and situations to

which it was appropriate, was able at the same time fully to satisfy

the claims of the modern spirit and those of his own personality.

Subject to such reservations it is undoubtedly in the province of a

poet to borrow his material from remote regions, past centuries and

foreign nations, maintaining in their broad and most characteristic

outlines the historical form of ancient mythology, custom, and

institution. At the same time he will take care to utilize such forms

only as the external frame of his delineations, never permitting the

essential content of such productions to fall into any disharmony

with the profounder instincts of his own native world. As the most

extraordinary example of this Goethe's "Iphigenia" still stands without

a rival.

In their relation to such a transformation the several arts dispose of

their material very differently. In the love-poems of lyrical poetry

very little use is made of local associations depicted with historical

accuracy. The emotional situation and the movement of sentiment is

here the main thing. We receive, for example, in the sonnets of

Petrarch a very small substratum of natural fact relatively to Laura,

hardly anything more than her name, which might just as well have

been another. Of local interest we get the barest scraps, and that

entirely of general significance, such as the existence of the fountain

of Vaucluse and things of that kind. Epical poetry, on the contrary,

requires the greatest detail in its natural descriptions, and we are

most readily pleased with their historical truth, provided always that

the picture is both clear and intelligible. The use of the external

truth of historical facts presents the greatest pitfalls to dramatic

art, more particularly in reference to its theatrical presentation,

where everything is directly addressed to an audience, or purports to

strike upon sense with the vividness of life, so that we are willing

to recognize and entrust ourselves therein with equal directness. Here

the delineation of historical truth in its external aspects must for

the most part be of subsidiary importance, in fact retain little more

than the framework of it. It must, in short, remain true to that

natural relation we find in love-poetry, in which at the same time that

we are able completely to sympathize with the feelings expressed in

every way another name is given to the beloved than that of the lady

most loved by ourselves[403]. It does not here in the least signify

whether or no our critics fail to discover absolute precision in the

picture presented of the particular manners, culture, and emotional

expression of the time. In Shakespeare's historical dramas we find a

great deal that remains strange to us and of no considerable interest.

We are contented enough on a mere reading, but in the theatre our

enjoyment ceases. Critics and men of learning no doubt stick fast to

their idea that such exquisite scraps of genuine history should be

presented on the stage on their own merits and come down severely

upon the wretched taste of the public, when it lets us see how bored

it is over such things. Unfortunately a work of art and the direct

enjoyment we receive from it is in no sense particularly for critics

or savants, but for this very public. Critics have really no reason

to give themselves such airs. They are after all but units of this

public, and the mere attention to historical detail can be of as little

serious interest to them as any other members of it. For this reason

the English nowadays in their theatrical performances only include such

scenes from the Shakespearean drama which require nothing further to

make them clear and intelligible, being happily free from the pedantry

of our aesthetic professors who held that all that is most remote in

historical incident from the apprehension of an average audience should

be thrust before their eyes. It follows also from our view of the

matter that when foreign dramas are reproduced on the stage the public

is clearly entitled to have them considerably remodelled[404]. Even

that which is excellent in itself may require some alteration. No doubt

it will be contended that what is essentially first-rate art retains

its excellence for all times; but a work of art has also an aspect of

transitory worth, which yields to the years, and it is this of course

which requires remodelling. As people change so too the sense of beauty

alters; and it is important that the particular public, before whom any

work is represented, should feel themselves quite at home in the whole

of such a work including that aspect which derives all its significance

from external history.

It is this conditional acceptance of historical truth which at once

explains and justifies that which is generally known in Art as

_anachronism_, and which is usually attributed to artists as a serious

defect. Primarily such examples of anachronism will be found to attach

to matters of purely external interest. That a Falstaff should talk

about pistols is no matter of consequence whatever. The case is more

serious when we have a violin placed in the hands of Orpheus, for here

the association of such prehistorical times with an instrument so

essentially modern as the violin, one which everybody knows was not

invented in those days, presents too glaring a violation of truth.

For this reason it is now the fashion in theatrical circles to bestow

incredible pains and care upon the historical accuracy of details in

the matter of costume and the getting up of a piece, as, for example,

the infinite trouble lavished upon the historical procession in the

"Maid of Orleans."[405] Such efforts are in the majority of eases

lost labour, for the simple reason that they only concern matters of

relative interest or points that might be wholly passed over. The

more important type of anachronisms has nothing whatever to do with

stage costume and all that with which stage business is concerned,

but consists in making characters express their emotions and ideas,

venture upon soliloquies and actions in a form or of a substance which

absolutely contradicts the conditions of their times and culture,

their religious and general preconceptions. It is common to apply the

conception of natural truth to such examples of anachronism, in other

words, to say that it is unnatural for characters to speak or act

otherwise than they would have spoken and acted in their own days. If

we stick, however, too closely to the logic of this naturalism we shall

only land ourselves in further complications[406]. For an artist, in

depicting the emotional life with all that results from it, and the

fundamental passions that belong to it, being mainly interested in the

affirmation of individuality, ought not merely to repeat that life

under its ordinary daily dress; it is rather his business to show every

true manifestation of pathos in the particular light which best reveals

its real quality. The whole object of his attainment as an artist is

not merely to understand what is of vital significance in the truth

he faces, but to be able to give it the precise form which will best

direct our own eyes and ears and heart to his own discovery. To attain

this it is obvious that he must keep in view the particular culture of

his own time no less than all its various powers of expression. In the

time of the Trojan war the kind of speech in general use, and indeed

the whole fabric of social life, was as far removed from the type of

culture which is reflected on us from the pages of the "Iliad" as the

mass of the nation and the pre-eminent worthies of the royal houses

then reigning in Greece were separated from the fully developed form

of ideas and expression such as arouse our wonder when we read our

Aeschylus, or behold the perfected beauty of the style of Sophocles.

A violation of the so-called "path of Nature" of this kind is in art

an anachronism implied in her laws. The inward kernel of that which

she reveals remains unaffected, but the more developed power at the

artist's command, in revealing and disclosing this essential core

of his subject, renders some change in the mode of its expression

inevitable. It is a wholly different matter when a modification of this

kind proceeds so far as to impose ideas and conceptions of a later form

of the religious and moral consciousness on a century or a nation whose

entire spiritual outlook is opposed to such more recent conceptions.

The Christian religion has gathered in its train forms of the moral

life, which were entirely foreign to the moral consciousness of

ancient Greece. That inward introspection of conscience, for example,

ever on the alert to decide the ethical significance of action, with

its accompanying remorse and repentance, first appears in the moral

culture of a more modern date. The heroic character knows nothing of

a repentance which sets itself in hostility to its past. What it has

done it abides by. Orestes does not repent of his mother's murder. The

Furies that rise out of the shadow of his action pursue him, no doubt;

but the Eumenides are, at the same time, represented as universal

powers, and not as voices that cry out to him from his own conscience

simply. This very heart and substance of a given period of man's

history a poet must master, and only when we find him interfusing with

this central core of reality matter that directly contradicts it is he

guilty of any truly grave anachronism. In conclusion, then, we may say

that it is indeed part of the poet's function to live into the spirit

of past times and foreign peoples, for this substance of their life,

if it be truly such, remains a possession for all time; but to attempt

to reflect with every accuracy of detail all the definition of that

external show now buried beneath the rust of antiquity is merely the

effort of a learning essentially childish, intent on preserving what is

itself shadow rather than substance. No doubt even in this direction,

the truth of general outlines should be carefully respected, but never

to such lengths as would compel art to forfeit her claim of drawing

upon the fiction of her invention, and the truth of fact with equal

impartiality.

(_γγ_) We are now in a better condition to understand all that is

really implied in the assimilation by art of that which is strange in

the external features of remote history, and the true conception of the

_objective_ life of her creations. A work of art must primarily enclose

for us within its embrace the higher interests of spirit and volitional

power, all that is essentially human, and possesses real weight, the

depths, that is to say, of man's emotional life. The main thing of

all is that this embodied content[407] should transpierce all purely

external conditions of manifestation, should ring, as it were, through

all that is less vital in its significance[408] this fundamental

chord of truth. The real objectivity, therefore, unfolds as from a

sheath, the _pathos_, that is the substantive content of a situation,

unfolds, moreover, the rich and powerful personality in which the

essential phases of spirit are alive, and find their realization and

expression. For such embodiment all that is absolutely indispensable

is a definition and determination of the real, which is generally

suitable to the object thus defined, and which requires nothing further

to explain it. If we have once got hold of such a form unfolded in

strict accordance with our Ideal principle, then we have a work of art

essentially objective in the true sense, and the question whether each

and every historical detail is justified is of no further importance.

We have before us a work of art which appeals directly to our inner

life, and one which is our own possession. Once possessed of that, and

we may take as much as we please of that element of the form which lay

more closely to periods of life which have passed; but the eternal

foundation is that which appeals to all men in all places, which is

carried forward with a power that never wanes or fails to influence us,

and it does so because the objective life it reveals is the same that

abounds in and overflows our own souls. That which is merely historical

in the appearance is, on the contrary, the element that vanishes; and,

in dealing with works of art created in days remote from our own, we

must do our best to resolve the discordance, and, indeed, must be fully

prepared to blot out from our vision similar defects in works that

spring from our own times. Thus it is that the Psalms of David, with

their immortal celebration of the Lord in His goodness, and the wrath

of His almightiness, no less than the profound sorrows of the Hebrew

prophets as they face Babylon and Zion, touch men with the same force

to-day as they did of old time: nay, even a moral diatribe, such as

is sung by Sarastro in the "Zauberflöte," may come home to the hearts

of us all, including the sons of Egypt[409], owing to the soul and

vitality which rings through its melodies.

And we may add that every individual to whom a work of art objective

in this, the true sense, is presented, must on his part discard his

own false prepossessions, wherein he merely wishes to find his own

idiosyncrasies repeated. On the first reproduction of "William Tell,"

it appears, not a single Swiss among the audience was satisfied. In

much the same way, when the most beautiful love-songs have been sung,

many another, failing to find therein his own passions reflected, has

presumed to think the beauty untrue to life; just as so many more,

whose knowledge of love is confined to the perusal of romances, have

imagined that the love-god would only then be their immortal possession

when they found themselves face to face with precisely the same

emotions and situations their favourite studies had propounded.

C. THE ARTIST

We have, in this first part of our aesthetical philosophy, examined as

a first step the universal Idea of beauty; we then proceeded to inquire

in what respects it was defective in its existence as the beauty of

Nature, and after thus clearing the way we were in a position to grasp

the complete notion of the Ideal as the adequate realization of beauty.

We developed the Ideal, _first_, as conceived abstractly according to

the _general_ notion of it, and having determined that were assisted

thereby to elucidate the modes of its _particular_ manifestations.

Inasmuch, however, as a work of art has its origin in the human spirit

it requires the pregnant activity of an individual life from which it

proceeds, and as the creation of the same exists for others, that is,

a Public which is emotionally receptive. This spiritual and informing

activity is the imagination of the _artist_. We have consequently now,

and this is the _third_ and last aspect of the Ideal to which we shall

refer, to raise the question how it comes about that this product of

men's inner world is not the direct and native growth[410] of that

world, but receives its due form through the _creative impulse_ of

particular men, in other words, by virtue of the genius and talent

of the artist. At the same time we must admit that the question is

only raised that we may be able to add the statement that it really

is excluded from the sphere of scientific investigation, or, at the

most, we can only furnish a few general remarks towards its solution.

Yet it is undoubtedly a question frequently raised this, namely, from

what source an artist receives the gift and faculty of conception and

execution with which he creates his work. We should all of us like, no

doubt, to have a ready prescription, a recipe of what we must exactly

do, what conditions we must impose on ourselves to produce something as

wonderful. We would emulate Cardinal von Este when he asked Ariosto,

with reference to his raging Roland: "But, Master Louis, where in the

world did you get all this damned stuff from?" Raphael replied to a

similar question in a letter we still possess, that he was hunting

after a certain idea.

The more obvious aspects of artistic activity we propose to examine

under the following heads of discussion:

_First_, we will give our definition of the general conception of

artistic _genius_ and the inspiration it implies.

_Secondly_, we will make a few observations on the _objective_

character of this creative activity.

_Thirdly_, we will endeavour to ascertain in virtue of what real

artistic _originality_ consists.

1. IMAGINATION, GENIUS, AND INSPIRATION

Before inquiring more closely into the meaning of the term "genius"

we must obviously limit the field within which we propose to discuss

it. Genius is an expression of very wide connotation, and is used

not merely in its application to artists, but equally when we refer

to great generals and kings, as also to the heroic captains of

scientific discovery. For the sake of simplification we would once

more discuss the distinctions involved under a triple division of our

subject-matter.

_(a) The Imagination_[411]

The most conspicuous faculty of an artist which arrests our attention

when we direct it expressly upon the capacities implied in artistic

productivity is the _imagination._ And we must be careful here not

to confuse it with a _visionary fancy_ which is wholly passive. The

imagination creates.

(_α_) And, in the first place, we shall find that this creative

activity carries with it in possession and endowment a peculiar power

of _grasping reality_ and the forms it presents, all that through the

channels of alert eyes and ears imprints pictures of infinite variety

caught from the external world upon the mind, and further implies an

exceptionally retentive _memory_ wherein to store up this varied world

of innumerable reflections. The artist, therefore, in this initial

stage of our analysis is not merely thrown back upon images of his own

creation, but is rather compelled to turn aside from the dull level

of ideals falsely so called and to boldly enter the fields of Nature

and Life. To attempt art or poetry merely with fanciful ideas of our

own is always a suspicious way of starting on our journey; for the

artist must mould his creations from the abundance of his life and by

no means from the overplus of abstract generalities. It is not, as in

philosophy, thoughts, but the real external forms of what actually

exists which furnishes the material for artistic production. In contact

with this raw material to work upon the artist must feel thoroughly

at home. He must have seen much, heard much, and stored away a great

deal as well; and in illustration of this we almost invariably find

that a great personality is distinguished by a capacious memory. All

that interests mankind he will lay hold of, and the more profound his

spirit the more it will enlarge the field of its interests in countless

directions. This was the way in which we find the genius of Goethe

first opened its wings, and throughout his life the circle of his

spirit's restless horizon broadened and broadened. This peculiar gift

of receptiveness, this interest in the comprehension of facts after

their true definitions and colour, their steadfast adherence to the

truth of experience is the first thing we look for in a great artist.

And this accurate knowledge of the truth of form must be accompanied

in equal measure by a proved acquaintance with the souls of men, the

passions that rise in the heart, and everything that it yearns and

strives for. And, in addition to this twofold armory of knowledge, he

must understand yet further all the various ways that this world of the

human soul expresses itself on the face of the reality which confronts

his senses, transpiercing thus the outer veil.

(_β_) But, in the second place, this imaginative power is not exhausted

with merely receiving that which is presented to the senses, or is

inferred as the content of the human soul. The ideal work of art does

not merely embrace the outward semblance of the inward spirit as

clothed in the forms of its actual existence, but should rather succeed

in manifesting the essential truth and reason of the real itself. This

_element of reason_, as determined in the particular object the artist

has selected, must not merely be pressed in his own consciousness,

as an active influence, but must already have been reflected upon in

that essential and rich significance which brings it into relation

with the entire breadth and depth of reality. Without reflection no

man can grasp fully the wealth that is in him, and it is consequently

an inseparable feature of any great work of art that everything which

attaches to it both as a whole and in its detail has been long and

deeply weighed and thought out. No artistic work of real sterling value

can be thrown off with any mere imaginative _tour de force._[412] We

do not, of course, suggest that the artist must therefore comprehend

in the form of _philosophical_ thought this essential core of reason

in his experience; albeit such is the fundamental rock upon which

religion no less than philosophy and art is based. Philosophy is by

no means essential to his outfit; and, in fact, if he once begins to

think about things as a philosopher, he busies himself with modes of

thought which are diametrically opposed to that which should engage

an artist's attention. For what the imagination undertakes to do and

only to do is not to bring to consciousness this inner core of reason

in the form of general propositions and conceptions, but to apprehend

it clothed in the concrete form of actual existence and individuality.

All that ferments within his life the artist must reproduce in the

body and envisagement, whose connected picture and general outlines

he has already assimilated from the world outside, making such so

far subservient to his creative effort that they in their turn may

participate in the truth of his own substance and enable him to crown

it with complete expression. In this interfusion of an intelligible

content with an embodiment received from actual existence the artist

will avail himself of the ever wakeful circumspection of his reflective

faculties no less than the deep resources of emotional life which

leave the stamp of vitality on his work. It is consequently but one

more sample of critical aberration to imagine that poems such as the

Homeric were introduced to our poet in his sleep. Without intelligent

alertness, division, and distinctions of each part as related to the

whole, an artist will be unable to assert his mastery over any form

whatsoever that he may wish for; only fools are of the opinion that the

genuine artist does not in the least know what his hands and senses are

about.

Moreover, the concentration of the artist's emotional life on each

aspect of his work is also as necessary to its success as the

concentration of his mind. For it is mainly through the impression of

emotion, which permeates and gives a vital colour to the entire work,

that the artist asserts his claim to the substance and embodiment of

his creation as a part of his own spiritual substance, as something

he, a given personality, may peculiarly call his own. For the external

aspect of his work, the mere picture of it as we may say, tends rather

to place us outside it and apart; it is the emotional energy it

expresses which primarily unites it with affinity to our very souls.

Only when thus understood shall we be able to realize the truth that

an artist must not merely have much looked about him in the world and

assimilated a rich knowledge both of its outward show and the very

substance of its life, but, further, must himself have experienced many

things and great things, things that have moved him to the quick and

left their life-roots in his own heart and spirit--he must, as we say,

have "gone through much" and "lived abundantly"--before he will find

himself able to build from his stores in the concrete types of his art

something approaching Life's unsounded repletion. And this will at once

explain and justify the bluster and ferment of genius in its youth, as

amply reflected in the lives of Goethe and Schiller. But only the age

of maturity and gray hairs will bring us the perfect work of art in all

its rounded ripeness[413].

_(b) Talent and Genius_

This productive activity of the imagination by means of which the

artist gives, by a process of elaboration to that which is essentially

rational in its nature, a real embodiment, a creation more his own than

anything else--this is what is usually summarized as genius and talent.

(_α_) We have already drawn attention to those characteristics which

are most obviously referable to genius. Genius is the general capacity

of creating a genuine example of fine art no less than the energy

implied in the execution and elaboration of the same. Moreover, this

capability and the power which goes with it is essentially the property

of a human soul; that is to say, self-conscious individuality alone is

able to create in this sense that a spiritual creation of this quality

is just what it sets before itself to produce. Critics, intent on

closer definition, are wont to distinguish sharply between genius and

talent. And, in fact, they are not absolutely the same things, although

it is necessary to find them united in the artist who would give us

artistic work of the highest class. To be more exact, Art, in so far

as it generally becomes a _particular_ art, and is exemplified for us

in the real and definite appearance of its products, requires various

accomplishments appropriate to the peculiar modes of its realization.

Such forms of executive versatility we may call with propriety talent,

as we may say that anyone possesses a talent for perfect playing on

the violin, or anyone else for singing. But a mere talent for this or

that can only effect for us anything really good in the, so to speak,

insulated nooks and corners of art[414]; it moreover itself requires

for its true perfection something of more universal art-capacity as

also that soul-animation, something more which is essentially the

hall-mark of genius. Talent, in short, without the vital spark of

genius, never gets much beyond a purely mechanical facility.

(_β_) It is also an opinion very commonly held that superior talent and

genius are _inborn._ Here again we must distinguish; for if there is a

sense in which this is true, from another point of view it is equally

mistaken. No doubt every man, by virtue of his humanity, receives

at his birth the potential gifts of religion, thought, and science.

In other words he would not strictly be a man if he did not already

possess a capacity to grasp the idea of a Supreme Being, and generally

to become the subject of a thinking consciousness. All that he requires

to gain these things, in addition to the fact of his human birth, are

education, culture, and perseverance. With art, however, the matter

stands differently. Art requires _specific_ aptitude[415], in which

unquestionably natural endowment plays an essential part. As, that is

to say, beauty is itself the Idea realized in that which is apprehended

as real by the senses, and a work of art embodies the workings of

Spirit in a form of existence immediately cognized by the eye and the

ear, in the same way the artist must discover and embody the content of

his art not in the exclusively spiritual form of thought, but within

the sphere of sensuous perception and feeling, and indeed as creator

in actual relation to a given sensuous material and within the limits

of the same. This artistic creativeness consequently encloses within

itself, as art does throughout, the aspect of immediacy envisaged with

the directness of Nature's own creations, and it is this appearance,

which the individual is unable to evolve from himself, but has to find

it, if he finds it at all, as immediately presented to him. Herein lies

the significance of the statement, and herein alone, that genius and

talent are innate.

In much the same way the several arts adapt themselves as by a kind

of natural affinity to particular nations. Song and melody are, we may

almost say, the birth-gift of an Italian; with our northern peoples,

on the contrary, music[416] and the opera, though seriously cultivated

and with great success, are as far from being a real home growth as the

orange trees. The Greeks are conspicuous for the native and elaborate

beauty of their epic poetry, and most of all for the unique perfection

of their sculpture. The Romans never possessed an art that was in any

strict sense exclusively their own. All that grew into blossom on their

soil was transplanted from the gardens of Greece. The art whose growth

has the widest natural range is that of poetry; and the reason of this

is that in it we require least to draw upon a sensuous vehicle for its

expressed presentment. Within the province of poetry the folk-song is

most of all native to a people and inseparably yoked with their natural

conditions. For this very reason the folk-song breaks into blossom

even in times of the rudest culture and for the most part retains the

unconscious simplicity of Nature herself. Of this Goethe himself is an

example. Though he produced works in every type of poetical expression

his first songs still go deepest and carry least dust from the study.

In them, too, there is least the flavour of culture. The latter-day

Greek is still a living witness to a people whose native gift it is

both to write poetry and sing. Fauriel has published a collection of

modern Greek songs, taken for the most part just as women, nurses,

and school-girls were heard singing them, who could not for the world

understand what he found so wonderful in them. And this is a good

illustration of the way that we find Art and its specific appearance

associate itself with a particular national type. In the same way the

art of improvization is more than anywhere else the native growth

of Italy and exemplified there with quite extraordinary talent. An

Italian will even to-day improvize for you a five-act drama, and not a

word of it is committed to memory; all grows up out of his experience

of human passions and situations and the deeply-excited inspiration

of the moment. As an example we mention the fact that a certain poor

improvizer after rhapsodizing in this way for a considerable time, and

then finally trudging off on his round to collect his pence from the

bystanders in a battered hat, was still in such a fume of poetic frenzy

that he could not bring his declamations to a stop, waved about in fact

so lustily with his arms and hands that in the end all the money he had

begged was shaken to the winds.

(_γ_) It is, thirdly[417], a characteristic of genius that it should

possess, and indeed it is a part of this natural endowment[418],

facility in creating that which it is impelled to create, and in

adapting itself to the technical requirements of all the subsidiary

aspects of artistic work. We talk, for instance, of the fetters with

which the verse, measure, and rhyme shackle a poet; or, when referring

to a painter, of the endless difficulties that draughtsmanship,

knowledge of tints, chiaroscuro, and the rest fling in the way of

invention and execution. Unquestionably a long course of study is a

necessary condition of success in all the arts, a perseverance that

never tires, a facility that is continually assisted by repetition;

the greater the native strength, however, of the genius or superior

gift, and the richer its resources the less it will feel the weight of

its effort in securing all the necessary accomplishments involved in

creative excellence[419]. A really first-rate artist has the lust of

work _born in him_ and an imperative impulse akin to any other natural

want to give artistic form to his emotional and imaginative life that

is in him. His emotional life and his ideas irresistibly run into this

artistic mould; he finds as it were the instrument already within him

made to the hand, so fitted to express his soul-life that all the pains

it takes him to learn it are as nothing. A musician can thus unfold to

us in his melodies the depths of all that stirs and moves his soul and

only by this means. What he feels is at once wafted into melody, just

as the life of a painter is impressed upon form and colour, or that

of a poet is transmuted into the creations of his imagination, that

poetry which clothes his ideas in the beauty and music of the written

word. And this gift of vital form the artist does not merely possess

as an imaginative power, a phantasy, an emotional impulse "that leaves

not a wrack behind," but as a direct stimulus of feeling to active

enterprise, as a gift, that is, of real executive accomplishment. Both

of these aspects are united in the real artist. What springs to life in

his imagination is immediately alert upon his mobile fingers, precisely

as the sudden thought of our mind breaks into word from the tips, or

as our most intimate thoughts, ideas, and emotions are reflected on

the outward man and his demeanour. Genius of the real stamp, whenever

and wherever found, is easily quit of the difficulties presented by

the technical workshop; and indeed has found the most beggarly and

apparently impracticable material to accept and embody as it pleased

the inward shapes of imagination. No doubt the endowment which the

artist finds as a direct gift to himself must be kept alive and alert

by indefatigable recourse to it, but he must also possess naturally a

practical power of immediate execution. Without this all the facility

he may have acquired in imaginative conception will never produce an

essentially creative work of art. The very notion of art demands of us

that both things should go together hand in hand, the productive energy

of the soul and its technical realization in the forms of art.

_(c) Inspiration_

The activity of the imagination, then, and the power of technical

execution, taking both together as the inseparable antecedents of a

real artist, are commonly understood as _inspiration._[420]

(_α_) The first question that presents itself to us for solution with

regard to it is under what conditions it arises, as to which many

different views have been held.

(_αα_) There is, for instance, the strange notion, to some extent

arising from the general truth of the peculiar intimacy with which

genius attaches itself to the worlds of conscious life and Nature, that

inspiration can be conjured up through mere excitation of the senses.

But making our blood dance will not carry us far; we are still a long

way off from the Muses, despite the champagne bottle, Such, at least,

was the experience of Marmontel, for he tells us that he tried it in

a wine-cellar with six thousand bottles of champagne to choose from;

but not a breath of the Muses passed over him[421]. Ay, your genius

may be as great as he lists, and for all that stretch himself many a

time morning and evening on the green grass, while the fresh breeze

floats over him, and stare up into the sky, and not a whisper shall the

inspired Muses breathe in his ear.

(_ββ_) Just as little is it likely that we shall make the charmed gates

of inspiration spring open by merely presenting ourselves before them

with a desire to enter. Whoever fondly imagines that he is in the right

mood to compose a poem, or paint a picture, or run off a first-rate

melody without already possessing the stuff in him to quicken that

spark into vital form, and has first to hunt about for something to

say, despite all his talent, will find himself no better off for his

best intuitions, quite unable, at any rate, to conceive any complete

thing of beauty, or perfect a really sterling work of art. Neither the

mere tickling of our senses nor any act of will or determination can

father on us true inspiration. To attempt such things simply proves

that both the emotional life and the imagination have as yet no real

object of artistic interest. When once we have the artistic impulse of

the real kind, we may conclude the interest there has already its fixed

seal and object, a content that it intends to master.

(_γγ_) True inspiration consequently is fixed in the presence of a

specific content, which the imagination takes up in order to give

artistic expression to it. It is, in fact, the object of this active

process of giving form both as inwardly made visible to the mind, and

as outwardly reproduced in the execution of a work of art. Inspiration

is equally necessary for both these aspects of artistic activity. The

question once more presents itself to us, in what way such a material

will come to an artist, in order to bring about this inspiration. We

find many various opinions expressed on this head. On the one hand

it is frequently required of an artist that the material of his work

should be drawn up from the world within him. No doubt this may be so

when "the poet sings as a bird from the bough." His own cheerfulness

of spirit is then the incentive which enables him to represent a

particular mood of his own as the content of his production, and by

this very expression of it he gives vent to his enjoyment of the same.

A song of this kind, straight from the heart[422], is indeed a rich

reward. But quite as often, however, the greatest works of art are

created from the suggestion of objects wholly external to himself.

The odes of Pindar were frequently the result of direct commissions;

and, in the same way, the object and subject has times without number

been given to artists both for buildings and pictures, and they have

been able to arouse in themselves an enthusiasm for such. Indeed, it

is only too frequently the express complaint of artists that they have

not the subject-matter on which to work. Such a reference to things

outside, and its stimulus to artistic production, presents just that

relation of the artist to Nature and her immediacy which is essential

to the notion of superior executive gifts[423], and is at the same time

a condition to the appearance of genuine inspiration. If we consider

the artist from this point of view, we shall find that it is here that

this natural endowment relates itself immediately to a material already

found for him, and through the incentive thereby offered him, through

the inspiration of actual fact, or as, for example, was the case with

Shakespeare, through that which was presented by old tales, ballads,

romances, and chronicles, proceeds to embody such material in artistic

form, and thereby generally to express his own personality. The impulse

to production can therefore be given by something entirely outside the

artist's life, and the only condition essential to a successful result

is that the interest, which fixes the artist's attention should be of

real artistic significance, and that he is able to reproduce the same

in all its vitality. Such conditions virtually imply the presence of

rare inspiration. And an artist who is really alive and awake himself,

by reason of this very vitality of his own powers, discovers endless

opportunities for actively asserting the same, and feeling inspired

while doing so, opportunities which pass over other people without

similarly affecting them.

(_β_) If we ask further, viz., of what precisely this artistic

inspiration consists, we may perhaps best describe it by saying that

it is the capacity of being entirely absorbed in a given subject, a

capacity not merely wholly to realize it, but incapable of resting

until the same is completely minted anew, and rounded off in its

artistic form.

(_γ_) Moreover, when an artist has thus entirely appropriated his

subject, it is but saying the same thing the other way to affirm that

he must know how to forget his own individual idiosyncrasies, and all

that accidentally attaches to them; he must, in short, on his part lose

himself in the matter on hand. He must make his artistic personality

the pure form under which the content he has assimilated is clothed and

embodied. An inspiration in which the particular individual receives

too emphatic a predominance and assertion, rather than being the

vitally active instrument which displays the ideal significance of the

material worked upon, is an inferior type of inspiration. This truth

opens the way to a fuller consideration of what is generally understood

as the objective character of artistic production.

2. THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF THE REPRESENTATION

(_a_) In the ordinary sense of the word we understand objectivity to

mean that the content in any work of art necessarily receives the

form of the reality already given, and in its artistic embodiment we

have the same clearly repeated. In this sense, that we desire to see

objective truth reproduced for us, we are entitled to call Kotzebue an

objective poet. In his work we undoubtedly find ordinary reality simply

as it is again. The object of art is, however, more precisely stated,

to strip away not merely the appearance, but the actual content of all

that meets us every day, and by means of the spiritual activity of the

artist most personal to himself, to work out that which is essentially

rational in that content in its really adequate external form. Indeed,

if we look at yet better examples of art than Kotzebue's, such as those

we have already glanced at in the youthful productions of Goethe,

we shall find that this realistic type of objectivity can be made

essentially living in its expression, and by virtue of this quality

prove highly attractive to ourselves, and yet, on account of the fact

that the artistic form remains defective, fail to arrive at the real

beauty of art. Purely external objectivity, therefore, which still

lacks the abiding and substantial significance, is not that for which

an artist should strive.

(_b_) A second type of objective realization presents itself to us in

the case where we find the external is not the artistic aim, but the

artist has seized hold of his subject with all the depth and strength

of his emotional life. This inward aspect of his work remains, however,

so entirely enclosed within itself and concentrated that it fails to

assert itself with a clearness thoroughly possessed, or to unfold

itself in its full truth. The eloquence of pathos simply restricts

itself by means of illustrations external to it, without possessing

either the power or the culture to be able to present the fulness of

that content in an explicit form. Folksongs pre-eminently belong to

such a mode of artistic production. Extremely simple as they are in

their form, they suggest an emotional life which lies at their root

of still wider range and depth, but which they are unable clearly to

express. Their art, in fact, is itself not sufficiently elaborate

or complete enough to carry into the light of day with transparent

reflection all that it would unfold, and is forced to rest satisfied

with suggesting to our sympathies the same by means of an external

symbolism. The heart remains thrown back and concentrated upon itself,

and in order to make its life intelligible to others, casts but a

fainter reflection of its world upon entirely finite and external

circumstances and phenomena, which, no doubt, are thus eloquent in a

degree, albeit we receive from them only a far-off echo of the emotions

and life they would bring home to us. Goethe has himself written many

quite exquisite songs of this kind. "The Shepherd's Lament" is one of

the most beautiful. In this refrain a heart that is broken with pain

and yearning still remains silent and reserved beneath the purely

external traits which would fain relieve it; and, despite of this, we

hear, as through an undertone, all the concentrated depth of emotion it

fails to express. In the "Erl-king," and many other of his songs, we

hear the same tone. This tone, however, we may also meet in degenerate

form right down to the most futile barbarism, unable to grasp either

the essential character of the facts or the situation, merely clinging

to their most finite aspects in all their crudeness and absence of

artistic taste. An example we may give from the "Drummer-comrade of the

boy Wunderhorn,"[424] such inanities as "O thou dwelling house of man,

O gallows," or "Adjutant sir corporal," expressions which are supposed

to move us deeply. When on the contrary Goethe sings:

Der Strauss, den ich gepflücket,

Grüsse Dich viel tausendmal,

Ich habe mich oft gebücket

Und ihn aus Herz gedrücket,

Ach, wie viel tausendmal[425].

strong emotion is suggested in a very different way, which brings

before our mind nothing trivial or contrary to the main idea. What

however is, as a rule, defective in this particular type of poetical

realization is the expression of emotion in all its true intensity.

This, in the rarest art, should not be suffered to remain a depth shut

away, which merely reflects a distant echo through the external objects

presented: it should either break forth in its full character, or be

seen through the vehicle with complete transparency. Schiller, for

example, brings out his soul in its full strength in the pathos of his

work, withal a great soul, which penetrates to the very core of his

subject, and is able to express its very deepest significance in the

freest and most perspicuous way through the wealth and music of his

verse.

(_c_) In conformity, then, with the notion of the Ideal, we may

conclude that even when we are dealing with the mere expression of

emotional life, we shall never fully establish our title to truly

objective art so long as any part of all that is comprised in the

subject-matter, which stirs the artistic inspiration, remains still

wrapped up within the soul that seeks to express itself; rather all

that lies there should be completely unfolded, and unfolded in a way

which not merely shall reveal to us the essential soul and substance

of the content selected, but shall embody it in some completely

homogeneous type of individual art, through which, as through a

transparency, both soul and substance shall radiate. For that which is

highest and most excellent is not by any means that we are unable to

express, as though the poet contained in himself still greater depths

than those expressed on the face of his work. The work of an artist is

the consummate fruit of that artist, and reflects precisely what he is,

and only what he is, and all that remains behind in the temple of his

soul is a naught or nothing[426].

3. MANNER, STYLE, AND ORIGINALITY

However much it may be imperatively required of the artist that he

should give to his work an objective character such as we have above

indicated, this must not make us oblivious to the fact that the

artist's production is at the same time the work of _his_ inspiration;

it is he alone who has, by his entire identification of his personality

with the specific subject-matter and its artistic embodiment, brought

into being the entire creation out of the life of his _own_ emotional

nature and imagination. And it is this identity of the free personality

of the artist and the truly objective construction of his artistic

creation which constitutes the third fundamental aspect of his activity

as set forth above and which we must now shortly consider, in so far as

we may be thus enabled to unite that which we have hitherto separated

in our independent consideration of the conceptions of genius and

the objective presentment of a work of art. We may characterize such

a unity as the conception of true artistic _originality._ Before,

however, we come to close quarters with all that is implied in this

conception, it is necessary to clearly grasp two points of view already

related to it whose insufficiency we have to expose on the ground of

their one-sidedness before a true conception of originality can be

fully appreciated. These may be sufficiently indicated by the terms

"subjective _manner_"[427] and _style_.

_(a) The Subjective Manner_

The point of first importance in discussing the meaning of the

expression "artistic manner" is to differentiate it fundamentally from

artistic originality. The term "manner," in our view, is only used

in direct relation to the _specific_ and consequently _accidental

idiosyncrasies_ of the artist, that is, merely in so far as such

qualities assert themselves as effective in his work without being

called forth by the nature of the subject itself and its ideal

exposition.

(_α_) A manner thus interpreted has no connection with the universal

types of art, that is to say, types which require an essentially

different mode of representation, as, for instance, the landscape

painter necessarily treats the objects of Nature in quite a different

way from that under which a historical painter would so treat them; or

the epic poet would handle similar subject-matter in a different way

from that appropriate to the dramatic poet. On the contrary, "a manner"

is a form of artistic expression wholly emanating from a particular

individuality, an entirely supposititious idiosyncrasy of executive

ability which may be carried so far as to contradict absolutely the

true notion of the Ideal. As thus defined "manner" stands at the

bottom of the scale among the forms which may characterize an artist's

general handling. An artist who thus expresses his individuality simply

gives free rein to any chance notions of his own without testing them

as subject to the substantive claims of art. But it is a fundamental

principle of art that it should abolish precisely all that is merely

accidental to its content no less than to its artistic or rather

external mode of presentment. And this is only to say that it requires

of the artist that he should efface from his work all traces of purely

personal tastes and idiosyncrasies he shares with no one else[428].

(_β_) And for these reasons we would point out that "a manner"

of this kind is not so much to be contrasted directly with the true

exposition of art as to be considered in relation to the purely

external aspects of art where the individuality of the particular mode

of treatment comes into play. This kind of manner is most conspicuous

in the arts of painting and music for the reason that these arts[429]

present to the artist the widest variety of external characterization

for him to seize upon and reproduce. What we find here is a certain

artificial manner of general execution entirely peculiar to some

particular artist and the school of imitators or pupils who follow him,

which through constant repetition degenerates into mere habit.

(_αα_) And its tendency is to develop on one of two ways in which

we may regard the artistic work. First, there is the aspect of its

composition. To take painting, for example, we have all the variety

of ways under which the prevailing atmospheric tone, the arrangement

of foliage, the contrast of light and shade, in short the entire

scheme of colour may be treated. Most particularly in this feature

of the general scheme[430] of the colouring and lighting of a picture

we find that painters permit themselves the most varied freedom of

individual preference and distaste. Of course such a prevailing tone

may appear to us as that we do not find in Nature for the simple

reason that we have not had our attention directed to it although

it is really there. But we shall often find that such a scheme has

simply been adopted by this or that artist on grounds of personal

taste or convenience[431], and it becomes simply a habit in him to use

everything now as subject to that particular scheme. And what we have

observed with reference to colouring is equally true when applied to

the treatment of natural objects, their grouping, position, motion,

and general characterization. This inferior mode of treatment is

particularly to be observed in the works of the Dutch school. Take the

case of Van der Neer's night-scenes and his artificial presentation of

moonlight, or Van der Goyen's sand-hills in so many of his landscapes.

The ever-repeated reflections of light from satin and silk stuffs that

we find in so many pictures of other masters of the same school are

indications of the same artificial mode of handling.

(_ββ_) A manner of this type may be still further, traced in the

execution of other details, the handling of brush or pencil, the laying

on and blending of tints and many other features of executive work.

(_γγ_) The general conclusion we come to, after considering all such

examples of specialized handling and conception in which constant

repetition grows at last habitual to, and indeed becomes a second

nature of the artist, is this, that just in proportion as the manner

adopted is more specialized[432], there is an increasing and dangerous

tendency for it to degenerate into that which is nothing more than a

soulless and consequently arid repetition and mechanical exercise,

throughout which the artist is no longer present with the fulness of

his spiritual resources and the entire strength of his inspiration.

When this takes place his art necessarily sinks to the level of a

mere executive facility or accomplishment of his hands, and a manner,

otherwise innocent enough, may very readily grow starved and lifeless.

(_γ_) The more truly artistic "manner" has consequently to disengage

itself from such jejune peculiarities, to broaden out into a freer

atmosphere[433], so that no specialized mode of handling shall be

suffered to sterilize itself into what is simply a matter of habit. In

this way an artist will approach the facts of Nature with a breadth of

view more in keeping with her own, and will understand how to identify

his larger conceptions and the general technique of his craft with the

same ideal spirit. In something of the same sense we may describe it as

a peculiar manner of Goethe that he is particularly apt in concluding

not merely poems of society but also openings to works of a more

serious character with a sudden turn of pleasantry, in order to remove

the impression of or throw into the background the serious nature of

previous reflection or situation. We meet with the same characteristic

in the correspondence of Horace. It is, in fact, an application of the

art of conversation and general sociability, which, in order to avoid

following up any matter more deeply, comes to a stop, breaks off and

cleverly diverts the serious into more cheerful channels. Such a mode

of the literary art is undoubtedly part of the manner of the artist and

his individual style, but the individuality thus exemplified is based

upon a broader principle, and is asserted in a way wholly justified by

the artistic purpose of the work in hand. And this particular type of

an artistic manner will enable us to pass readily to the consideration

of "style" generally.

_(b) Style_

_Le style c'est l'homme même_ is a famous phrase of the French.

Style is here generally understood as the unique characterization of

personality, the particular mode of expression, however it may be

applied, which wholly reveals to us its substance. Herr von Rumohr,

on the other hand ("Italian Investigations," i, p. 87), endeavours

to interpret the expression as a mode habitual through its constant

repetition of bringing together the most vital characteristics of

the subject-matter artistically treated, by virtue of which the

sculptor informs his figures with reality, and the painter gives to

his the appearance of life. He further adds important observations

upon the appropriate form of representation which, in the case of

an art such as sculpture, the specific _sensuous_ material either

permits or proscribes. It is, however, not necessary to attach the

expression "style" solely to this aspect of sensuous material; we may

unquestionably extend it to all those determinations and rules of

artistic production which apply naturally to any particular type of

art, and in virtue of which an object is reproduced in the medium of

any one of them. We consequently distinguish in the art of music the

style of church music from that of opera, and in that of painting, the

historical style from the style of _genre_ painting. Style is therefore

a mode of artistic presentation, which not merely follows closely the

fundamental conditions of its material, but asserts itself as adequate

to all that any particular type of art demands for its composition and

execution and in strict conformity with the laws which apply to the

subject-matter on hand. Defect of style will then, in this extension

of the meaning, either imply an inability to present a composition

in accordance with such necessary conditions, or will amount to a

personal caprice which rather gives free rein to its own particular

predilections than accepts the conditions of composition which are

really proposed to it, in other words adopts an inferior "manner"

of its own. Consequently it is inadmissible, as Herr von Rumohr has

already pointed out, to apply principles peculiar to one type of art to

another, as Mengs has done in his famous museum in the villa Albani,

where both in the general conception and execution of his Apollo he

adopts the modes of colouring applicable only to sculpture. A defect

of the same kind may be traced in many of the pictures of Dürer, where

we see that even in painting, especially in the folding of his drapery,

he adopts the style of wood-cut in which he is so consummate a master.

_(c) Originality_

The final result, then, of our inquiry on this head is that true

originality does not consist in merely conforming to the paramount

conditions of style, but in a kind of inspired state[434] personal

to the artist which, instead of committing itself wholly to a

mere external manner of composition, seizes hold of a particular

subject-matter that is essentially rational, and by virtue of its own

resources and quality, re-clothes the same as from within the artist

himself and not merely in a way conformable to the essential notion of

the art adopted, but also in a form adequate to the universal notion of

the Ideal.

(_α_) True originality is consequently identical with true objectivity,

and combines that which is due to the personality of the artist and

the actual subject-matter of his work in such a way that both aspects

of his artistic product are held together in complete accord. Looked

at in one way, such a work appears to reveal to us the very essence

of the artist's personality, while regarded from another we only find

there the essence of the subject-matter artistically treated, so that

this very uniqueness of expression appears to arise from the unique

characteristics of the material to which it is applied; and we may

say with equal truth either that the expressed form is due to those

characteristics, or that this unique impression we obtain from them

proceeds from the creative unity of the artist.

(_β_) True originality must be entirely kept distinct from individual

caprice and every kind of personal expression that is due to fortuitous

causes. A common idea of originality is simply the stringing together

of so many curiosities, things which this particular individual and

no other could perpetuate or even faintly imagine. That is, however,

merely idiosyncracy gone mad. No people on earth are more original in

this meaning of the term than Englishmen, a country where every one

prides himself on committing some folly or other, which no man in his

senses is likely to repeat, and then fondly imagines his performance to

be original.

We may in this connection briefly refer to what has been so extolled,

and never more than in our own days as the originality of wit and

humour. An artist of this type of humour starts off from a point of

view or an experience wholly personal to himself, and constantly

recurs to the same so that the real object of his artistic production

is merely treated as the peg on which he may hang, or the field in

which he may give full play to, whatever wittiness, jest, quirks,

and sallies his mood may chance to light upon. In this way the real

object of his art and that which should render it vital in himself fall

entirely apart, and we have a capricious mode of artistic production,

in which the idiosyncrasy of the artist is made to appear as of first

importance. A humour of this kind is often replete with intellectual

brilliance and deep feeling, and in its general result is very apt to

impose on us; yet for all that it is not generally such a difficult

matter as is commonly believed. To constantly interrupt the rational

content of that which we are really dealing with, interrupting

all steady progress with a stream of capricious fresh starts and

conclusions, a sort of patchwork of whims and emotional excursions,

and thereby to create a caricature of imaginative vigour is far

easier than to develop and round off with completeness an artistic

whole of sterling quality throughout such as will testify to the real

Ideal. Moreover, our humour nowadays is only too ready to give us

the repulsive features of a talent for wit essentially crude, and is

constantly degenerating into coarse buffoonery and emptiness. We do

not often get from it real humour at all. The stalest trivialities are

wont to pass now for brilliancy and depth of soul provided they only

rig themselves out in the pretentious motley of humour. Shakespeare, on

the contrary, possessed a grand and profound sense of humour, but even

his works are by no means destitute of shallows. The humour of Jean

Paul too often surprises us with the depth of its wit and the beauty

of its sentiment, but we are quite as often repelled by the absurdly

eccentric way in which he hitches together his subjects, or rather

leaves them with the bare jointure to lie apart, and then floods all

he has to say with a kind of humour that leaves it almost impossible to

make head or tail of. No humourist, however great he may be, is likely

to find anything resembling it in his memory; and our main impression

is frequently, even in the case of Jean Paul's kaleidoscopic effects,

that they are rather the result of mechanical pasting together than

a spontaneous product from the crucible of genius. For this reason

Jean Paul finds it necessary, in order continually to present new

effects, to drag into books differing wholly in kind, botanical, legal

and philosophical disquisitions, no less than descriptions of travel;

whatever whim in fact may strike his fancy at the time is promptly

inserted. Even when his subject relates to scientific discovery he will

run together the most heterogeneous material such as a collection of

Brazilian plants and observations upon the old imperial chamber[435].

There are people who will praise a motley of this kind as original. But

it is really precisely the kind of caprice which originality of the

genuine stamp excludes.

While we are on this topic it will not be out of place to add some

further remarks upon irony, which particularly prides itself upon

presenting us with the very flower of originality on just those

occasions when it has ceased to treat any artistic material with

seriousness and converts the whole affair into a subject of witticism,

only worth notice for the sake of the wit it suggests. Looked at from

another point of view this irony rakes together a lot of things which

are quite foreign to the essence of the matter in hand, things the

deeper significance of which the poet keeps to himself, and his notion

seems to be that by this subtle exercise of his powers the imagination

will be enlarged. And it is just in external associations of this sort

that we get what we have already described as the poetry of a poetry,

wherein everything that is deepest and most excellent is concealed from

us for no other reason than this, that we must not be allowed to look

at it because it is so profound. And we really find in Friedrich von

Schlegel's poetry, more particularly when he became vain over his title

to the rank of poet, that which clearly is set forth as the aroma of

all is just that which is never expressed: no wonder this poetry of

poetry turns out to be the flattest prose.

(_γ_) A genuine work of art must consequently be held intact from all

originality of this perverse type. True originality will be asserted

throughout by this and this alone, that the work has the appearance

of being the unique creation of _one_ individual mind, which does

not go about picking up scraps from around it and then make thereof

a patchwork, but permits the material of that work, in complete

accordance with the unity most congenial to its own substance, to bind

itself together in a whole all parts of which are strictly related,

as truly stamped with one mint as the founder's cast. When we find

scenes and motives introduced upon grounds that are foreign to the

real artistic purpose, that is to say, which do not directly grow out

of the true subject, we must inevitably lose that subtle and necessary

connection of all the parts which create this unity, and what we thus

interpolate will unavoidably impress us as something fortuitously

attached by personal caprice. Much in this way it has been the fashion

to give exceptional praise to the "Götz von Berlichingen" of Goethe

on the grounds of its great originality. No doubt it is true enough,

as we have above remarked, that in this drama Goethe has with much

intrepidity given the lie direct to and turned his back upon all that

had been taken as the established principles of the aesthetic science

of his age; the execution of this work, however, does not bear the

stamp of genuine originality. One finds, on the contrary, in this

youthful production indications of the poverty of the material upon

which it is founded, so that many traits and entire scenes appear

to have been raked together and united by connections foreign to

the subject from material of an interest contemporary with that of

the artist's life instead of being the genuine elaboration of the

fundamental subject-matter. The scene, for example, between Götz and

brother Martin, where Martin Luther is clearly suggested, contains

ideas which Goethe could only have borrowed from a time such as his own

when people began once more to wail over the conditions of monastic

life, how they durst not drink wine, could only sleep off their meals,

were at the mercy of evil desires and generally must submit to the

three intolerable vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Brother

Martin, on the other hand, grows enthusiastic over the knightly life

of Götz, how he recalled to memory the load of booty he took from

his foe, whom he ran through with lance on horseback before he could

shoot, then tumbled over, horse and all, and finally returned to his

castle and wife. Whereupon the good monk drinks the health of the dame

Elizabeth, wiping his eyes the while. With mundane reflections of

this sort Luther never started on his journey, but rather as a pious

monk who had penetrated to their depths the religious conceptions

and convictions of Augustine, another source altogether. Subject to

precisely similar defects are the pedagogical references to that period

which occur in the following scene and for which Vasedow is mainly

responsible. We are informed that children of that age are taught much

that is unintelligible, that the true method of instruction should

rather educate their minds through the senses and experience. Karl, for

example, repeats phrases to his father by heart precisely similar to

those current in Goethe's own younger days: "Junthausen is a village

and castle on the Junt and for two hundred years has been the ancestral

property of the lords of Berlichingen." When Götz asks him if he knows

any lord of Berlichingen personally the lad stares blankly at him and

through sheer over-teaching does not know his own father. Götz declares

that he knew every path and road in the country before he knew the

names of a single river, village, or mountain. All this kind of thing

is mere literary stucco which has nothing to do with the actual subject

at all. And when an occasion does arise in which we ought to find some

really characteristic grip of the very marrow of the subject, as in the

conversations between Götz and Weisslingen, we get nothing more than

cold reflections upon the times.

We find much the same association of irrelevant matter in the same

poet's "Wahlverwandschaften."[436] The laying out of pleasure grounds,

the living pictures, the observations upon pendulum oscillations, the

testing of metals, the headaches, the entire description of elective

affinities, which is borrowed straight from chemical science, are all

of this category. It may, of course, be freely admitted that in a

romance, referring to an essentially prosaic age, such things are _prima

facie_ admissible, and more particularly so when we have a Goethe to

introduce them so cleverly and apply them so charmingly; moreover no

work of art of any kind can be kept wholly unaffected by the culture

of the artist's own age. It is one thing to allow the reflection of

contemporary culture to appear as part of the artistic whole, quite

another to bring together such material of research in a way that

places it as something wholly outside and independent of the genuine

substance of the composition. For the true originality of the artist no

less than that of his work consists exclusively in their being vitally

bound up with that which is only intelligible as part of the real

subject-matter treated. When the artist has fully Appropriated this

objective reason, without mixing up with it, to the detriment of its

clarity, details he may have borrowed from his personal experience or

other sources which do not strictly belong to it; in that case alone

will he stamp the material with the genuine mark of his own artistic

mintage. This personal effect upon his work merely serves him as a

bridge of Life over which he passes to secure a work of art wholly

complete in itself, just as in all genuine thought and action true

freedom consists in allowing that which is of essential significance to

assert itself without restraint, so that it becomes itself the force

which dominates both the particular thought and volition of the man

who thus appropriates it, and by so doing reconciles every vestige of

opposition. In this way the originality of art absorbs every accidental

trait peculiar to a given personality; but it only absorbs it that the

artist may follow without reserve the impulse and bent of his genius as

inspired through every fibre of the material he moulds, and instead of

reflecting a purely barren wilfulness and caprice of his own may give

an objective form to his true artistic individuality conjoined with

consummate accomplishment. To have no "manner" was ever the one great

"manner," and in this sense alone can we ascribe originality to Homer,

Sophocles, Rafael, and Shakespeare.

[Footnote 271: _Einer specifischen Seele._ We certainly should not in

ordinary speech say that inorganic objects possessed a soul. The phrase

indeed is difficult to follow, except as explained by the previous

technical discussion of _Einzelheit._]

[Footnote 272: The expression _in dieser der Allgemeinheit

entgegengehobenen Äusserlichkeit_ refers to the manifold in opposition

to which the principle of universality is posited as a test for the

selection of those aspects which manifest it as vital individuality.]

[Footnote 273: _Seligkeit._]

[Footnote 274: _Heiterkeit._ I cannot satisfy myself with one English

word. It seems to combine both _blithesomeness_ and _cheerfulness_ in

the literal meaning of the word.]

[Footnote 275: _In das einfache Beisichseyn._ Self-containedness would

be more literal.]

[Footnote 276: _Eine Versöhnung des Gemüths._ I think this refers

to the emotions of the spectators. The use of the word in the next

sentence points to this.]

[Footnote 277: _Diese Festigkeit_, _e.g._, such a religiously austere

mode of treatment, rather this than "rigorously true," is I think the

sense.]

[Footnote 278: Compare that wonderful poem of G. Meredith,

"Theodolinda."]

[Footnote 279: _Schönthuerei._]

[Footnote 280: See Introduction, pp. 86, 87.]

[Footnote 281: Such appears to me the sense of the above passage, but

it is not very clearly expressed. Hegel states the case of those who

contend that a picture must be a good one because the ideal element is

the main thing and to get that you have merely to borrow from poetry.

He then takes an example to show this is not so.]

[Footnote 282: Here commences the more thorough exposition of the

difficulty.]

[Footnote 283: _Vorstellung_, "world of ideas" would be perhaps better.]

[Footnote 284: Apart from an error in punctuation I think this sentence

is not as Hegel wrote it, certainly it is not as he would have left

it after revision; as it stands the grammatical construction is

entirely split into two discordant sections. I have at least made it

grammatical.]

[Footnote 285: _Die Vorstellung_, _i.e._, the imaginative conception.]

[Footnote 286: There is, however, the question of positive

characterization imposed on the work by the artist. The work of

Michelangelo is of course an extreme example. This is here rather

overlooked.]

[Footnote 287: That is to say, it remains the potency of many forms; it

is left in its abstract formality to be variously formed by limbs in

their motion and not cut into the forms devised by a tailor.]

[Footnote 288: Infinite, of course, not in the sense of extension,

but because it is a constituent of the universal medium of thought,

infinite as the judgment is so.]

[Footnote 289: This analysis of Dutch painting is remarkable for its

insight and impartiality, and may be contrasted in this respect with

the writings of Ruskin.]

[Footnote 290: _Die höhere Seele._ The ideal atmosphere throughout.]

[Footnote 291: It will be recalled that it was precisely this picture,

or one much resembling, that Ruskin, with less sympathy, criticized

severely.]

[Footnote 292: No doubt these were other pictures in the exhibition of

pictures contemporary with the date of Hegel's lecture.]

[Footnote 293: Ideal.]

[Footnote 294: _Auf willkürlich festgesetzten Zeichen_.]

[Footnote 295: Not a very lucid sentence. I presume the words _bei

deren Anblick_ refer, to the forms, not to the beauty which reposes on

them. The abstractness of such a point of view is obvious.]

[Footnote 296: I think _sein eigenes Wollen_ must practically amount to

this. But it is all very vague.]

[Footnote 297: _Handlung._ See below.]

[Footnote 298: _Vollbringen des Menschen._ The bringing up to fuller

content.]

[Footnote 299: Lit., "turned outside upon to confront, like a coat

turned inside out that the inside may face external facts."]

[Footnote 300: The German term is _Selbständigkeit._ It may often be

better translated by "independence."]

[Footnote 301: _Durchgreifende._ That which penetrates the whole as the

_causa efficiens._ The whole passage is difficult and technical.]

[Footnote 302: _Für sich selbst._ That is to say, a substance that is

not dependent on another for its reality but is explicit as such out of

its own resources.]

[Footnote 303: _Für das Allgemeine_.]

[Footnote 304: _In einer Nacht._ A condensed description of the true

story apparently.]

[Footnote 305: That is to say, it is made up of units all ready to pull

in different directions.]

[Footnote 306: A remarkable instance of the type in our own days was

General Gordon. A perusal of his correspondence from Khartoum makes it

sufficiently clear that he considered it his duty to remain despite all

orders to the contrary, so long as the garrison remained unwithdrawn;

no doubt he considered the reverse course dishonourable to England, but

first of all it was dishonourable to himself.]

[Footnote 307: _Fürsicheinsiehen._]

[Footnote 308: _Das Vornehme._ There is probably here a further

allusion to the respectability associated with grandeur. The same is

true of the compositions of the great Italian painters.]

[Footnote 309: _Ausgebildeten._ I have hesitated to translate this

"cultivated" as the context appears to suggest rather the kind of

_regime_ we find in the highly official centralization of such

a monarchy as that of Prussia in Hegel's time or the artificial

eighteenth century. But the whole passage rings rather strangely to

modern ideas, or at least to English notions of democracy.]

[Footnote 310: _Götz von Berlichengen_ was Goethe's first drama,

published in the year 1773, though the first version of it was written

in 1771.]

[Footnote 311: _Das Waltende_, _e.g._, a force which is predominant.]

[Footnote 312: _Gehalt_, content, that is, in its configurative energy.]

[Footnote 313: _Sichverwirklichen_, that is, objective

self-realization.]

[Footnote 314: The whole of this passage is difficult to follow and

translate, and has roots, no doubt, in some of the most disputed

positions in Hegelian philosophy, such as the independent reality of

Nature, and the use that Hegel makes of such conceptions as Chance

(_Zufälligkeit_) in his explanation of it. All that can be attempted

here is to give some kind of intelligible interpretation of the

expressions employed literally. The student will do well to consult

Professor A. C. Bradley's criticism of Hegel's Idea of tragedy in his

"Lectures on Poetry."]

[Footnote 315: The situation without defined situation.]

[Footnote 316: _Festigkeit._ Staunchness is perhaps better.]

[Footnote 317: _Harmlosigkeit_, _e.g._, its inability to cause

conflict.]

[Footnote 318: Such as painting and sculpture.]

[Footnote 319: By positive he means that in themselves they are not

actually discordant or negative but only render such discordance

possible in their relation to spirit.]

[Footnote 320: That is, where a collision depends upon natural causes.]

[Footnote 321: Positive, that is, relative to a particular concrete

condition.]

[Footnote 322: Perhaps _Erfindung_ would here be better translated with

"invention." Both processes are involved in the word.]

[Footnote 323: _Auf den natürlichen äusserlichen Verlauf._]

[Footnote 324: This must be implied, for it can only be asserted with

qualification of sculpture and it is not true of music.]

[Footnote 325: _In betreff seiner Besinnung._ _Besinnung_ suggests, no

doubt, something more of mind than _Gemüth._ It is the entire content

of self-consciousness on its sensuous side.]

[Footnote 326: _Die allgemeinen Mächte._ This phrase is explained in

the paragraph which follows.]

[Footnote 327: _Die Bethätigung._ The actualization would be a better

word perhaps.]

[Footnote 328: It may surprise some readers in such a context suddenly

to be confronted with such serious matters. But with Hegel such

surprises must be expected. With him the root of all spiritual activity

is never far absent, and the relation of the State is founded on the

same basis as that of the Church. And if we mean anything by the phrase

of the Divine Immanence we shall at least be able to follow him.]

[Footnote 329: _Die ewigen._ Eternal because essentially belonging to

the explication of reason.]

[Footnote 330: _Würde._ Worthiness of personal characteristics, _i.e._,

ethical character.]

[Footnote 331: _Das nur äuserlich Feststehende_. The organizations of

Spirit are the most permanent realities is, I think, the meaning.]

[Footnote 332: _Etwas bizarres oder widriges_, _i.e._, that which

is arbitrary and merely awakes curiosity or excites a feeling of

repulsion.]

[Footnote 333: There is obviously a symbolic meaning in this poem of

Hartmann which Hegel appears to have overlooked, the sacrifice which

the monks prescribed not necessarily involving a physical sacrifice,

but merely the gift of a love which would be equal to such a sacrifice.]

[Footnote 334: This passage is not easy to follow. I think _der innre

Begriff_ must mean the entire notion of the personality evolved in

the action as distinct from all particular aspects which are negative

and evil. The main difficulty of the passage consists in the abstract

conception of evil or the negative upon which Hegel centres the

attention.]

[Footnote 335: _Halt_, _i.e._, stable self-consistency.]

[Footnote 336: _Die innre haltlose Zerrissenkeit._]

[Footnote 337: _Abgeschlossenheit_, _i.e._, self-exclusive

individuality.]

[Footnote 338: _Zur subjektiven Innerlichkeit._ That is to say, the

entire self-concentration on the spiritual centre of conscious life.]

[Footnote 339: Lit., Their individuality remains rather external form,

in such a way that it fails to penetrate through to absolutely inward

subjectivity.]

[Footnote 340: _Noth_, the constraint of necessary conditions.]

[Footnote 341: _Mit der Bestimmten_, _i.e._, with the definite

subject-matter of temporal life.]

[Footnote 342: In the conception, that is to say, which is at the root

of the Greek idea of Divinity.]

[Footnote 343: I presume what Hegel means is as individual gods.]

[Footnote 344: _Er nicht mit seinem eigenen Selbst dabei ist._ He fails

to obtain the determinate freedom of the self-excluding subject.]

[Footnote 345: _I.e._, between gods and men.]

[Footnote 346: _Ganz prosaisch._ Viewed practically, that is to say,

rather than metaphysically. The examples explain the meaning.]

[Footnote 347: _Das Thun geht stets herüber und hinüber._ Is a skein in

which the threads run over and under one another.]

[Footnote 348: "_Iliad_," I, v, 190.]

[Footnote 349: This view may be well contrasted with the less vital

criticism of Schiller on this subject, which induced him actually to

exclude the feature from his amended edition of the play. In fact Hegel

shows more insight here than Coleridge.]

[Footnote 350: _Nicht über Hamlet haltlos verfügt._ It is also obvious,

I think, that such a passage need not necessarily be opposed to

Goethe's main conception. Such ideas may readily be explained as the

excuses of a man who inherently shrinks from forming a grave resolve of

vigorous action. No doubts are suggested when Hamlet sees the ghost.]

[Footnote 351: _Den eigentlichen Mittelpunkt._ Between what? I think

the examples show that it is both between a work of human art and

Nature and between the work of art itself and those to whom it is

addressed.]

[Footnote 352: Lit., Screws itself like a corkscrew into.]

[Footnote 353: _Ausmalung_. The metaphor is taken from the art of

painting and technically refers to the finish of the same in all its

details. It is here used generally.]

[Footnote 354: Vol. i, p. 153. I do not know the book.]

[Footnote 355: _Als bewegendes Pathos._ This may mean "as the motive

principle of pathos," but I incline to the interpretation "as the

pathos which affects others."]

[Footnote 356: This appears at first sight to be somewhat contrary to

the statement made above (p. 309) that "We cannot affirm pathos of

the gods." But if my translation in the above passage is the right

one _Die Götter werden zum menschlichen Pathos_, I think we must

understand _Die Götter_ here in a more universal sense of the Divine

than in the former passage, and find the emphasis here is laid upon the

word _menschlichen._ It is, in fact, but another way of stating the

incarnation of the Divine in humanity.]

[Footnote 357: _Als totale Individualität_, _i.e._, all that is

comprised in its essential notion.]

[Footnote 358: _Der handelnden Character_, _i.e._, Character manifest

in the action.]

[Footnote 359: _Ausser sich_, "goes to the dogs," as we say in vulgar

parlance, _i.e._, ceases to be character in the true sense at all.]

[Footnote 360: This example shows us that by the expression _früheren

Götter_ above Hegel must be referring to prehistoric times and quite

archaic conceptions of Greek godhead.]

[Footnote 361: _Eines in sick gebildeten Innern. Gebildet_ here used in

the sense of perfected, rounded to a co-ordinated content.]

[Footnote 362: _Hineingegraben_, lit., buried in.]

[Footnote 363: I am unable to express in two words the contrast

presented by the German _tragen_ and _ertragen._]

[Footnote 364: It is not easy to strike the exact interpretation of

such a word as _Quetschlichkeit._ Apparently this or the more usual

term _Quabbelig_ have the sense of "shaking." I believe there is a

synonym for quaker's grass, viz., quatch-grass.]

[Footnote 365: _Und durch sie sich hindurchziehen._ The most obvious

sense of these words would be: and (_i.e._, the threads) carry

themselves on through it (_i.e._, externality). Perhaps the meaning is

that the relations in question not merely unite the Ideal to the world

but are carried beyond (with the Ideal) the natural external world into

that higher plane of the objective spiritual world. In my translation

I have practically evaded the difficulty and assumed there is either

something missing, or we must understand, I admit, a very harsh change

of subject.]

[Footnote 366: Through self-consciousness he is both the individual

subject and the form of an infinite content.]

[Footnote 367: _Eine subjektive Totalität._]

[Footnote 368: I have amplified this sentence to make it quite clear

to which of the three worlds, viz., (_a_) the subjective world in its

abstraction, (_b_) the external world in its abstraction or, finally,

the world of reality, in which _a_ and _b_ are mutually related, the

writer here refers.]

[Footnote 369: _In welche die in sick totale Einheit des Ideals nicht

mehr ihrer konkreten Geistigkeit nach hineinzuscheinen befähigt ist._

Lit., Into which the self-complete unity of the Ideal is no longer

capable of penetrating by virtue of the concrete spirituality which it

essentially is.]

[Footnote 370: An obvious distinction between the arts of architecture

and garden-construction is that in the former all the materials used

have been already informed by human hands at least where building is in

any advanced stage.]

[Footnote 371: Hegel's actual words would seem to imply that the fact a

garden is created for use and enjoyment is detrimental to its beauty.]

[Footnote 372: It must be admitted that this summary treatment of

gardens is not very satisfactory. No doubt the best authorities concur

in the view that the formal garden is more artistic than the landscape,

but hardly on the main ground given here. Landscape gardening such as

we find it in our great English country houses has a real justification

of its own. And with regard to the reason given that a garden should be

entirely subordinate to the human object do we not strike here upon a

weakness which is to a certain extent apparent also in Hegel's theory

of the artistic purpose of architecture. I think it must be admitted

that though it is true the object of both these arts is not entirely

for their own beauty, and in certain cases, not even primarily so,

as in the case of a senate-house or ordinary garden, yet where the

artistic purpose is manifested throughout with great deliberation they

may be essentially an independent work of art; take the case,.of a

cathedral, for example, or a really beautiful and homogeneous formal

garden.]

[Footnote 373: _Element_, subject-matter would be really a better word.]

[Footnote 374: _Kein bloss quantatives._ They are not like a heap of

stones, for example, but they possess relations which qualify each

other, as of course the heap of stones will do in so far as it is

distinguished by diversity of colour.]

[Footnote 375: I think this must be the meaning of the words _noch ah

blass aufgelöste Gegensätze auftreten._]

[Footnote 376: _Grau_ is the word Hegel uses, but I think he must

use it in the sense I have translated it. Gray in itself is a very

beautiful compound, and the subtlety of its use is that which is one of

the distinguishing characteristics of the very greatest colourists such

as Turner and Velazquez.]

[Footnote 377: I am not quite sure that Hegel means this exactly, but

it is no doubt what an artist would mean and in water-colour especially

it is of the utmost importance. Compare the flesh colour of the artists

such as our Watts or Titian with that of Leighton. One of the most

marvellous examples I know is a small picture of Titian, the subject

of which is Herodias with the head of John the Baptist, in one of the

palaces at Rome. But a modern critic would, apart from the question of

dirtiness, about which there can be no doubt, say that Hegel insists

too much, precisely as Ruskin does, on the superiority of the pure

single colour.]

[Footnote 378: Hegel appears to be himself slightly incorrect here.

No doubt a string may ring false if it is not tightly fastened or if

too slack or too long it may produce sounds the human ear is unable

to appreciate. But primarily what musicians mean by a string ringing

false, with wolf notes and so on, is due to the bad material or false

composition of the string itself.]

[Footnote 379: _Disparat_, _i.e._, composed of different elements, not

merely separate in position.]

[Footnote 380: I think the expression _ein blosses an-sich_ must mean

this here. Of course the usual meaning is that of something potential,

unrealized, but here I think it rather signifies "not objectively or

really valid." No doubt in relation to the heads of discussion it is

potential also.]

[Footnote 381: _Die traurige Bünkelsängerei._ I think the adjective

must here rather refer to the contrast than to the nature of the

poetry. I presume the Minnesingers are referred to.]

[Footnote 382: I do not know what book this is, nor have I ever heard

of a hero with the name of _Otnith._]

[Footnote 383: Or rather by virtue both of its medium and object.

_Ihrer Natur nach_ are Hegel's words.]

[Footnote 384: _Jenem ersten Ansichseyenden._ That is to say, a

relation indefinite, but essentially implying a further realization.]

[Footnote 385: _Es nur eine unwahre Abstraction bezeigen würde._ "Lack

of comprehensiveness" would, of course, be more literal.]

[Footnote 386: _In ihrem abstracten Gehalt._ That is, regarded simply

as the opinions of a private individual, and apart from all that may be

implied in it under more universal relations.]

[Footnote 387: _Der Zustand der allgemeinen Bildung_, not an easy

phrase to translate: the "Culture-State" perhaps sums it up most

completely. "The state of universal education" is too indefinite or

goes too far.]

[Footnote 388: The whole spirit of this passage is a striking witness

to Hegel's admiration for classical art. Whether the arguments brought

forward are wholly sound when we consider them in connection with the

Elizabethan drama, for example, may readily admit of a question. At

the same time, as Hegel himself points out, Shakespeare unquestionably

throws the time back to what is practically a mythical age in at least

three of his greatest tragedies, "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and above all

"King Lear."]

[Footnote 389: For the element of beauty implied in ordinary

craftsmanship, and the modern view, pressed so strongly by William

Morris and others, of this aspect of art and its modern necessity, the

reader should peruse Professor Bosanquet's valuable "Three Lectures on

Aesthetic" (see particularly Lecture II, p. 61 _et seq._).]

[Footnote 390: Even an admirer of our author must admit, I think, here

that the argument is somewhat overstrained. That Hegel possessed real

humour and yet more irony few will deny who have studied him, but at

times "the man with a theory" rather tends, as is so frequently the

case with our German cousins, Goethe himself not excepted, to swallow

up such sanative juices altogether.]

[Footnote 391: I presume the meaning is that the poem in the shape we

now have it dates some 400 years after the Trojan war. But it is not

very clear from Hegel's language whether he regards Homer as the poet

who, as in the case of his example of the poet of the Niebelungenlied,

fused that together or no. For if he did how could he have lived

through the poems, an expression itself which is rather vague, more

particularly as the better opinion is that they represent a different

age themselves.]

[Footnote 392: _Vernürnbergert._ A word of course coined by Hegel. Made

them, that is to say, at home in the Nuremberg of Hans Sachs.]

[Footnote 393: "Best of all things water." Compare Meredith's exquisite

poem "Phoebus with Admetus," "Water, first of singers o'er rocky mount

and mead," etc., stanza 3.]

[Footnote 394: The drama of Racine.]

[Footnote 395: What this word means I do not know--possibly

quill-feathers.]

[Footnote 396: _Eine grosse Genialität._ "First-rate genius" is rather

too strong, "talents of the highest rank" would be more literal. We

have no word that expresses _Genialität._ As the passage is ironical I

have allowed "genius" to pass.]

[Footnote 397: _Wir haben schlecht gestanden._ Literally, "there is

some mistake between us." But the idiomatic sense I presume is, "You've

made a bad shot this time."]

[Footnote 398: What would Hegel have said of the first scene in the

"Merchant of Venice"? No doubt Shakespeare's play contains very much

more than such scenes, and there is a profound significance in that

opening scene, for it at once emphasizes the collision of families upon

which the entire tragedy turns. But is such a defence needed? There

appears to be indubitably a certain deficiency in the above criticism.

There is no reason that a scene in which a couple of peasants and two

troopers are the _dramatis personae_ should not be infinitely amusing

provided a Shakespeare, or even a Goethe, when he is not in one of his

dull moods, performs the office of teaching them how to speak.]

[Footnote 399: This surely goes too far unless "interest" is taken

strictly to mean artistic interest which would appear to be so from

the context. Everything that has once interested or affected mankind,

however remote, has at heart an historical and antiquarian interest,

and I am not sure that we should not be right in adding a general human

interest. At least such is almost a dogma with a poet of the type of

Browning.]

[Footnote 400: I do not know the Teutonic poem here referred to. But

what about Wagner's famous tetralogy? The above arguments, though

containing much that is true, appear to overlook for one thing the

symbolic significance of mythological history, and in a certain

sense to be lacking in sympathy for everything that is not modern or

Hellenic. How very differently Carlyle, for example, referred to this

very mythology, and his learning was not profound in the German sense.]

[Footnote 401: The intention of Aeschylus went, of course, much

farther than this, and the entire play is essentially one written by a

staunch conservative against modern innovation.]

[Footnote 402: It is strange that Hegel should have ventured such a

generalization in the face of his old friend Holderlein's poetry.

In England some fine poems have been written such as Lady Margaret

Sackville's hymn to Dionysus and Swinburne's to Proserpine. But for

a good essay in support of the main contention I know none equal to

Russell Lowell's Essay on Swinburne's "Atalanta." I think that both

our author and the critic who supports him somewhat fail to recognize

the permanent reality, whether symbolical or directly spiritual, that

an increasing number of men find in these Hellenic personalities, as

illustrated in the poetry of Meredith, to take the finest flavour of

the type.]

[Footnote 403: I presume this is the meaning of _unserer eigenen

Geliebten_, but from the example given of Petrarch's Laura one would

rather have expected that it was the poet's beloved whose name was not

given. In any case the sense is rather obscure.]

[Footnote 404: I think it must be admitted that Hegel goes too far

in the other extreme. The best tendency of our times is to reproduce

Shakespeare as near to the best authenticated text as possible.

No doubt our adaptation of French plays is in a certain sense an

illustration of Hegel's contention; but generally it is recognized that

where a work is great, as for example in the case of our Greek plays,

it is far better to let them speak for themselves, and attempt no

botching.]

[Footnote 405: Schiller's play.]

[Footnote 406: _Schiefheiten_, errors that divert truth from its path.]

[Footnote 407: We should rather have expected _Erhalt_ than _Gehalt_

here. _Gehalt_ means, therefore, the essential part of the entire

manifestation.]

[Footnote 408: _Durch all das anderweitige Getriebe_, _i.e._, through

all that is otherwise mechanical.]

[Footnote 409: I am not certain whether there is a definite allusion

here to anything in particular, or whether the Egyptian is taken

to signify any folk outside Western culture, with possibly some

subtle suggestion of those who held the favoured people in bondage,

Philistines in short.]

[Footnote 410: _Herausgeboren ist_, cast forth, that is to say, as the

natural growth of it--as Minerva from the head of Zeus.]

[Footnote 411: Imagination appears to me the best translation of

_Phantasie._ Our English word, however, seems rather to lie between

it and _Vorstellung_. Practically Hegel means here what we mean when

we distinguish it from fancy (_Einbildungskraft_), though in Ruskin's

original and most suggestive analysis of the terms, "fancy" of course

implied a limited power of creative activity or at least associative

activity.]

[Footnote 412: _Leichtfertigkeit der Phantasie_, _i.e._, a careless

facility of imaginative activity.]

[Footnote 413: It must not be overlooked, however, that, especially

in the arts of music and painting, genius may have reached maturity

at a very early period, as was the case with Mozart, Rafael, and many

another.]

[Footnote 414: _Ganz vereinzelten Seite._ It is a little strange to

find such an expression applied to the arts of violin-playing or

singing. But the emphasis is not so much on the art as a whole as to

the technical aspect of execution.]

[Footnote 415: _Anlage_, lit., a laying to, an impulse in a certain

direction.]

[Footnote 416: This statement is rather surprising from a fellow

countryman of Bach, Handel, Mozart, etc., down to Wagner and Strauss.

The explanation appears _first_ to be due to the distinction between

a national impulse toward popular singing which the Italian no doubt

possesses, and a deep-rooted emotional life which finally discovers

its supreme mode of expression in the art of instrumental music as

developed by the Teuton stock. _Secondly_, it is quite clear, I think,

from Hegel's correspondence that he had no real sympathy for orchestral

music though an enthusiastic admirer of opera, particularly Italian

opera.]

[Footnote 417: The other two aspects were: (_a_) That genius is a

spiritual activity and in its operation offers a contrast to talent,

where the personal initiative is not so prominent, (_b_) It has a

certain aspect which may be called innate.]

[Footnote 418: It is a little surprising to find Hegel tracing

technical accomplishment to the native gift. At least all technical

accomplishment has to be learned.]

[Footnote 419: This is the real point. Whatever ignoramuses may say of

the "shackles" of verse poets know only too well that they supply a

supreme stimulus to imaginative powers both in virtue of the atmosphere

of music into which they are thus carried and the suggestiveness of

the words themselves. What Hegel's analysis appears rather to fail in

is his perception of the unconscious work in the greatest men when

working in most inspired moments whether in painting or poetry--the

extraordinary power of their intuition.]

[Footnote 420: No doubt Hegel does not use our word "inspiration" in

quite the sense it is usually used, and I should have said even less

so the German word. At the same time we do apply the word inspiration

to the technical execution and most justly where it is used as a

distinction.]

[Footnote 421: Meredith in a letter to a correspondent expresses the

same conviction. He even adds that he thinks Schiller's compositions

were by no means improved by artificial stimulants.]

[Footnote 422: The Germans say, a song which "rings straight from the

throat," _der aus der Kehle dringt._]

[Footnote 423: _Welche zum Begriff des Talente gehört._ Talent no

doubt to some extent includes genius here, but mainly in its aspect of

productive power.]

[Footnote 424: I do not know the composition and cannot make much

of the quotations. For all I know _Tamboure-gesellen_ may be the

drummer-boy himself.]

[Footnote 425: This translation may pass perhaps:

"This little nosegay plucked by me

A thousand times may it greet thee!

How many thousand times have I

Bowed over it; how many times

Pressed it to heart; how many times!"

[Footnote 426: Or, as Hegel puts it, "_that_ he is not."]

[Footnote 427: We should rather say a personal or individual manner

perhaps.]

[Footnote 428: I have translated _Zufälligen_ here with the words "he

shares with no one else." The suggestion is that there is no warrant or

principle to support them.]

[Footnote 429: It is rather surprising to find Hegel including music

here rather than sculpture or architecture, especially the latter,

which seems peculiarly adapted to illustrate what I understand to be

his general point of view. His own illustrations throw no light on the

matter as they are borrowed from painting or poetry.]

[Footnote 430: I presume the difference here alluded to is such as we

may see if we contrast the tone of a Correggio, for instance, with that

of a Titian or a Rembrandt.]

[Footnote 431: _Er hat ihn sich angeeignet._ Lack of artistic power is

the main factor in an artificial style. Though there are doubtless many

examples of men forced to paint in a way much below their true powers

to obtain a living. But it must be admitted Hegel does not express

himself very clearly. Individuality of handling is essential to a great

master. The real point is that it should not crystallize into a _mere_

habit, as in the Bologna school of painters.]

[Footnote 432: "Artificial" would perhaps come closer to the mark.]

[Footnote 433: _In sich selbst zu erweitern._ The phrase at once

suggests by contrast that expression so frequently used by painters

of "tightness," incapacity to enlarge, which is such a characteristic

of artificial handling, and indeed of most academic work, and so

frequently gives to the original sketch of an artist a greater artistic

value than to the highly finished work.]

[Footnote 434: _In der subjektiven Begeistrung._]

[Footnote 435: The chamber at Wetzlar.]

[Footnote 436: Elective Affinities.]

END OF VOL. I