No More Learning

The feeling of which I speak is calculated rather
to humble than to flatter our self-love; and if it gives us the idea of
some advantage, this advantage is at all events not on our side.

We are moved in the presence of childhood, but it is not because from the
height of our strength and of our perfection we drop a look of pity on
it; it is, on the contrary, because from the depths of our impotence, of
which the feeling is inseparable from that of the real and determinate
state to which we have arrived, we raise our eyes to the child's
determinableness and pure innocence. The feeling we then experience is
too evidently mingled with sadness for us to mistake its source. In the
child, all is disposition and destination; in us, all is in the state of
a completed, finished thing, and the completion always remains infinitely
below the destination. It follows that the child is to us like the
representation of the ideal; not, indeed, of the ideal as we have
realized it, but such as our destination admitted; and, consequently, it
is not at all the idea of its indigence, of its hinderances, that makes
us experience emotion in the child's presence; it is, on the contrary,
the idea of its pure and free force, of the integrity, the infinity of
its being. This is the reason why, in the sight of every moral and
sensible man, the child will always be a sacred thing; I mean an object
which, by the grandeur of an idea, reduces to nothingness all grandeur
realized by experience; an object which, in spite of all it may lose in
the judgment of the understanding, regains largely the advantage before
the judgment of reason.

Now it is precisely this contradiction between the judgment of reason and
that of the understanding which produces in us this quite special
phenomenon, this mixed feeling, called forth in us by the sight of the
simple--I mean the simple in the manner of thinking. It is at once the
idea of a childlike simplicity and of a childish simplicity. By what it
has of childish simplicity it exposes a weak side to the understanding,
and provokes in us that smile by which we testify our superiority (an
entirely speculative superiority). But directly we have reason to think
that childish simplicity is at the same time a childlike simplicity--that
it is not consequently a want of intelligence, an infirmity in a
theoretical point of view, but a superior force (practically), a
heart-full of truth and innocence, which is its source, a heart that has
despised the help of art because it was conscious of its real and
internal greatness--directly this is understood, the understanding no
longer seeks to triumph. Then raillery, which was directed against
simpleness, makes way for the admiration inspired by noble simplicity.
We feel ourselves obliged to esteem this object, which at first made us
smile, and directing our eyes to ourselves, to feel ourselves unhappy in
not resembling it. Thus is produced that very special phenomenon of a
feeling in which good-natured raillery, respect, and sadness are
confounded. It is the condition of the simple that nature should triumph
over art, either unconsciously to the individual and against his
inclination, or with his full and entire cognizance. In the former case
it is simplicity as a surprise, and the impression resulting from it is
one of gayety; in the second case, it is simplicity of feeling, and we
are moved.

With regard to simplicity as a surprise, the person must be morally
capable of denying nature. In simplicity of feeling the person may be
morally incapable of this, but we must not think him physically
incapable, in order that it may make upon us the impression of the
simple. This is the reason why the acts and words of children only
produce the impression of simplicity upon us when we forget that they are
physically incapable of artifice, and in general only when we are
exclusively impressed by the contrast between their natural character and
what is artificial in us. Simplicity is a childlike ingenuousness which
is encountered when it is not expected; and it is for this very reason
that, taking the word in its strictest sense, simplicity could not be
attributed to childhood properly speaking.

But in both cases, in simplicity as a surprise and simplicity as a
feeling, nature must always have the upper hand, and art succumb to her.

Until we have established this distinction we can only form an incomplete
idea of simplicity. The affections are also something natural, and the
rules of decency are artificial; yet the triumph of the affections over
decency is anything but simple. But when affection triumphs over
artifice, over false decency, over dissimulation, we shall have no
difficulty in applying the word simple to this. Nature must therefore
triumph over art, not by its blind and brutal force as a dynamical power,
but in virtue of its form as a moral magnitude; in a word, not as a want,
but as an internal necessity. It must not be insufficiency, but the
inopportune character of the latter that gives nature her victory; for
insufficiency is only a want and a defect, and nothing that results from
a want or defect could produce esteem. No doubt in the simplicity
resulting from surprise, it is always the predominance of affection and a
want of reflection that causes us to appear natural. But this want and
this predominance do not by any means suffice to constitute simplicity;
they merely give occasion to nature to obey without let or hinderance her
moral constitution, that is, the law of harmony.

The simplicity resulting from surprise can only be encountered in man and
that only in as far as at the moment he ceases to be a pure and innocent
nature. This sort of simplicity implies a will that is not in harmony
with that which nature does of her own accord. A person simple after
this fashion, when recalled to himself, will be the first to be alarmed
at what he is; on the other hand, a person in whom simplicity is found as
a feeling, will only wonder at one thing, that is, at the way in which
men feel astonishment. As it is not the moral subject as a person, but
only his natural character set free by affection, that confesses the
truth, it follows from this that we shall not attribute this sincerity to
man as a merit, and that we shall be entitled to laugh at it, our
raillery not being held in check by any personal esteem for his
character. Nevertheless, as it is still the sincerity of nature which,
even in the simplicity caused by surprise, pierces suddenly through the
veil of dissimulation, a satisfaction of a superior order is mixed with
the mischievous joy we feel in having caught any one in the act. This is
because nature, opposed to affectation, and truth, opposed to deception,
must in every case inspire us with esteem. Thus we experience, even in
the presence of simplicity originating in surprise, a really moral
pleasure, though it be not in connection with a moral object.

I admit that in simplicity proceeding from surprise we always experience
a feeling of esteem for nature, because we must esteem truth; whereas in
the simplicity of feeling we esteem the person himself, enjoying in this
way not only a moral satisfaction, but also a satisfaction of which the
object is moral. In both cases nature is right, since she speaks the
truth; but in the second case not only is nature right, but there is also
an act that does honor to the person. In the first case the sincerity of
nature always puts the person to the blush, because it is involuntary; in
the second it is always a merit which must be placed to the credit of the
person, even when what he confesses is of a nature to cause a blush.

We attribute simplicity of feeling to a man, when, in the judgments he
pronounces on things, he passes, without seeing them, over all the
factitious and artificial sides of an object, to keep exclusively to
simple nature. We require of him all the judgments that can be formed of
things without departing from a sound nature; and we only hold him
entirely free in what presupposes a departure from nature in his mode of
thinking or feeling.

If a father relates to his son that such and such a person is dying of
hunger, and if the child goes and carries the purse of his father to this
unfortunate being, this is a simple action. It is in fact a healthy
nature that acts in the child; and in a world where healthy nature would
be the law, he would be perfectly right to act so. He only sees the
misery of his neighbor and the speediest means of relieving him. The
extension given to the right of property, in consequence of which part of
the human race might perish, is not based on mere nature. Thus the act
of this child puts to shame real society, and this is acknowledged by our
heart in the pleasure it experiences from this action.

If a good-hearted man, inexperienced in the ways of the world, confides
his secrets to another, who deceives him, but who is skilful in
disguising his perfidy, and if by his very sincerity he furnishes him
with the means of doing him injury, we find his conduct simple. We laugh
at him, yet we cannot avoid esteeming him, precisely on account of his
simplicity. This is because his trust in others proceeds from the
rectitude of his own heart; at all events, there is simplicity here only
as far as this is the case.

Simplicity in the mode of thinking cannot then ever be the act of a
depraved man; this quality only belongs to children, and to men who are
children in heart. It often happens to these in the midst of the
artificial relations of the great world to act or to think in a simple
manner. Being themselves of a truly good and humane nature, they forget
that they have to do with a depraved world; and they act, even in the
courts of kings, with an ingenuousness and an innocence that are only
found in the world of pastoral idyls.

Nor is it always such an easy matter to distinguish exactly childish
candor from childlike candor, for there are actions that are on the
skirts of both. Is a certain act foolishly simple, and must we laugh at
it? or is it nobly simple, and must we esteem the actors the higher on
that account? It is difficult to know which side to take in some cases.
A very remarkable example of this is found in the history of the
government of Pope Adrian VI. , related by Mr. Schroeckh with all the
solidity and the spirit of practical truth which distinguish him.
Adrian, a Netherlander by birth, exerted the pontifical sway at one of
the most critical moments for the hierarchy--at a time when an
exasperated party laid bare without any scruple all the weak sides of the
Roman Church, while the opposite party was interested in the highest
degree in covering them over. I do not entertain the question how a man
of a truly simple character ought to act in such a case, if such a
character were placed in the papal chair. But, we ask, how could this
simplicity of feeling be compatible with the part of a pope? This
question gave indeed very little embarrassment to the predecessors and
successors of Adrian. They followed uniformly the system adopted once
for all by the court of Rome, not to make any concessions anywhere. But
Adrian had preserved the upright character of his nation and the
innocence of his previous condition. Issuing from the humble sphere of
literary men to rise to this eminent position, he did not belie at that
elevation the primitive simplicity of his character. He was moved by the
abuses of the Roman Church, and he was much too sincere to dissimulate
publicly what he confessed privately. It was in consequence of this
manner of thinking that, in his instruction to his legate in Germany, he
allowed himself to be drawn into avowals hitherto unheard of in a
sovereign pontiff, and diametrically contrary to the principles of that
court "We know well," he said, among other things, "that for many years
many abominable things have taken place in this holy chair; it is not
therefore astonishing that the evil has been propagated from the head to
the members, from the pope to the prelates. We have all gone astray from
the good road, and for a long time there is none of us, not one, who has
done anything good. " Elsewhere he orders his legate to declare in his
name "that he, Adrian, cannot be blamed for what other popes have done
before him; that he himself, when he occupied a comparatively mediocre
position, had always condemned these excesses. " It may easily be
conceived how such simplicity in a pope must have been received by the
Roman clergy. The smallest crime of which he was accused was that of
betraying the church and delivering it over to heretics. Now this
proceeding, supremely imprudent in a pope, would yet deserve our esteem
and admiration if we could believe it was real simplicity; that is, that
Adrian, without fear of consequences, had made such an avowal, moved by
his natural sincerity, and that he would have persisted in acting thus,
though he had understood all the drift of his clumsiness. Unhappily we
have some reason to believe that he did not consider his conduct as
altogether impolitic, and that in his candor he went so far as to flatter
himself that he had served very usefully the interests of his church by
his indulgence to his adversaries. He did not even imagine that he ought
to act thus in his quality as an honest man; he thought also as a pope to
be able to justify himself, and forgetting that the most artificial of
structures could only be supported by continuing to deny the truth, he
committed the unpardonable fault of having recourse to means of safety,
excellent perhaps, in a natural situation, but here applied to entirely
contrary circumstances. This necessarily modifies our judgment very
much, and although we cannot refuse our esteem for the honesty of heart
in which the act originates, this esteem is greatly lessened when we
reflect that nature on this occasion was too easily mistress of art, and
that the heart too easily overruled the head.

True genius is of necessity simple, or it is not genius. Simplicity
alone gives it this character, and it cannot belie in the moral order
what it is in the intellectual and aesthetical order. It does not know
those rules, the crutches of feebleness, those pedagogues which prop up
slippery spirits; it is only guided by nature and instinct, its guardian
angel; it walks with a firm, calm step across all the snares of false
taste, snares in which the man without genius, if he have not the
prudence to avoid them the moment he detects them, remains infallibly
imbedded. It is therefore the part only of genius to issue from the
known without ceasing to be at home, or to enlarge the circle of nature
without overstepping it. It does indeed sometimes happen that a great
genius oversteps it; but only because geniuses have their moments of
frenzy, when nature, their protector, abandons them, because the force of
example impels them, or because the corrupt taste of their age leads them
astray.

The most intricate problems must be solved by genius with simplicity,
without pretension, with ease; the egg of Christopher Columbus is the
emblem of all the discoveries of genius. It only justifies its character
as genius by triumphing through simplicity over all the complications of
art. It does not proceed according to known principles, but by feelings
and inspiration; the sallies of genius are the inspirations of a God (all
that healthy nature produces is divine); its feelings are laws for all
time, for all human generations.

This childlike character imprinted by genius on its works is also shown
by it in its private life and manners. It is modest, because nature is
always so; but it is not decent, because corruption alone is decent. It
is intelligent, because nature cannot lack intelligence; but it is not
cunning, because art only can be cunning. It is faithful to its
character and inclinations, but this is not so much because it has
principles as because nature, notwithstanding all its oscillations,
always returns to its equilibrium, and brings back the same wants. It is
modest and even timid, because genius remains always a secret to itself;
but it is not anxious, because it does not know the dangers of the road
in which it walks. We know little of the private life of the greatest
geniuses; but the little that we know of it--what tradition has
preserved, for example, of Sophocles, of Archimedes, of Hippocrates, and
in modern times of Ariosto, of Dante, of Tasso, of Raphael, of Albert
Duerer, of Cervantes, of Shakespeare, of Fielding, of Sterne, etc. --
confirms this assertion.

Nay, more; though this admission seems more difficult to support, even
the greatest philosophers and great commanders, if great by their genius,
have simplicity in their character. Among the ancients I need only name
Julius Caesar and Epaminondas; among the moderns Henry IV. in France,
Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden, and the Czar Peter the Great. The Duke of
Marlborough, Turenne, and Vendome all present this character. With
regard to the other sex, nature proposes to it simplicity of character as
the supreme perfection to which it should reach. Accordingly, the love
of pleasing in women strives after nothing so much as the appearance of
simplicity; a sufficient proof, if it were the only one, that the
greatest power of the sex reposes in this quality. But, as the
principles that prevail in the education of women are perpetually
struggling with this character, it is as difficult for them in the moral
order to reconcile this magnificent gift of nature with the advantages of
a good education as it is difficult for men to preserve them unchanged in
the intellectual order: and the woman who knows how to join a knowledge
of the world to this sort of simplicity in manners is as deserving of
respect as a scholar who joins to the strictness of scholastic rules the
freedom and originality of thought.

Simplicity in our mode of thinking brings with it of necessity simplicity
in our mode of expression, simplicity in terms as well as movement; and
it is in this that grace especially consists. Genius expresses its most
sublime and its deepest thoughts with this simple grace; they are the
divine oracles that issue from the lips of a child; while the scholastic
spirit, always anxious to avoid error, tortures all its words, all its
ideas, and makes them pass through the crucible of grammar and logic,
hard and rigid, in order to keep from vagueness, and uses few words in
order not to say too much, enervates and blunts thought in order not to
wound the reader who is not on his guard--genius gives to its expression,
with a single and happy stroke of the brush, a precise, firm, and yet
perfectly free form. In the case of grammar and logic, the sign and the
thing signified are always heterogenous and strangers to each other: with
genius, on the contrary, the expression gushes forth spontaneously from
the idea, the language and the thought are one and the same; so that even
though the expression thus gives it a body the spirit appears as if
disclosed in a nude state. This fashion of expression, when the sign
disappears entirely in the thing signified, when the tongue, so to speak,
leaves the thought it translates naked, whilst the other mode of
expression cannot represent thought without veiling it at the same time:
this is what is called originality and inspiration in style.

This freedom, this natural mode by which genius expresses itself in works
of intellect, is also the expression of the innocence of heart in the
intercourse of life. Every one knows that in the world men have departed
from simplicity, from the rigorous veracity of language, in the same
proportion as they have lost the simplicity of feelings. The guilty
conscience easily wounded, the imagination easily seduced, made an
anxious decency necessary. Without telling what is false, people often
speak differently from what they think; we are obliged to make
circumlocutions to say certain things, which however, can never afflict
any but a sickly self-love, and that have no danger except for a depraved
imagination. The ignorance of these laws of propriety (conventional
laws), coupled with a natural sincerity which despises all kinds of bias
and all appearance of falsity (sincerity I mean, not coarseness, for
coarseness dispenses with forms because it is hampered), gives rise in
the intercourse of life to a simplicity of expression that consists in
naming things by their proper name without circumlocution. This is done
because we do not venture to designate them as they are, or only to do so
by artificial means. The ordinary expressions of children are of this
kind. They make us smile because they are in opposition to received
manners; but men would always agree in the bottom of their hearts that
the child is right.

It is true that simplicity of feeling cannot properly be attributed to
the child any more than to the man,--that is, to a being not absolutely
subject to nature, though there is still no simplicity, except on the
condition that it is pure nature that acts through him. But by an effort
of the imagination, which likes to poetise things, we often carry over
these attributes of a rational being to beings destitute of reason. It
is thus that, on seeing an animal, a landscape, a building, and nature in
general, from opposition to what is arbitrary and fantastic in the
conceptions of man, we often attribute to them a simple character. But
that implies always that in our thought we attribute a will to these
things that have none, and that we are struck to see it directed
rigorously according to the laws of necessity. Discontented as we are
that we have ill employed our own moral freedom, and that we no longer
find moral harmony in our conduct, we are easily led to a certain
disposition of mind, in which we willingly address ourselves to a being
destitute of reason, as if it were a person. And we readily view it as
if it had really had to struggle against the temptation of acting
otherwise, and proceed to make a merit of its eternal uniformity, and to
envy its peaceable constancy. We are quite disposed to consider in those
moments reason, this prerogative of the human race, as a pernicious gift
and as an evil; we feel so vividly all that is imperfect in our conduct
that we forget to be just to our destiny and to our aptitudes.

We see, then, in nature, destitute of reason, only a sister who, more
fortunate than ourselves, has remained under the maternal roof, while in
the intoxication of our freedom we have fled from it to throw ourselves
into a stranger world. We regret this place of safety, we earnestly long
to come back to it as soon as we have begun to feel the bitter side of
civilization, and in the totally artificial life in which we are exiled
we hear in deep emotion the voice of our mother. While we were still
only children of nature we were happy, we were perfect: we have become
free, and we have lost both advantages. Hence a twofold and very unequal
longing for nature: the longing for happiness and the longing for the
perfection that prevails there. Man, as a sensuous being, deplores
sensibly the loss of the former of these goods; it is only the moral man
who can be afflicted at the loss of the other.

Therefore, let the man with a sensible heart and a loving nature question
himself closely. Is it your indolence that longs for its repose, or your
wounded moral sense that longs for its harmony? Ask yourself well, when,
disgusted with the artifices, offended by the abuses that you discover in
social life, you feel yourself attracted towards inanimate nature, in the
midst of solitude ask yourself what impels you to fly the world. Is it
the privation from which you suffer, its loads, its troubles? or is it
the moral anarchy, the caprice, the disorder that prevail there? Your
heart ought to plunge into these troubles with joy, and to find in them
the compensation in the liberty of which they are the consequence. You
can, I admit, propose as your aim, in a distant future, the calm and the
happiness of nature; but only that sort of happiness which is the reward
of your dignity. Thus, then, let there be no more complaint about the
loads of life, the inequality of conditions, or the hampering of social
relations, or the uncertainty of possession, ingratitude, oppression, and
persecution. You must submit to all these evils of civilization with a
free resignation; it is the natural condition of good, par excellence, of
the only good, and you ought to respect it under this head. In all these
evils you ought only to deplore what is morally evil in them, and you
must do so not with cowardly tears only. Rather watch to remain pure
yourself in the midst of these impurities, free amidst this slavery,
constant with yourself in the midst of these capricious changes, a
faithful observer of the law amidst this anarchy. Be not frightened at
the disorder that is without you, but at the disorder which is within;
aspire after unity, but seek it not in uniformity; aspire after repose,
but through equilibrium, and not by suspending the action of your
faculties. This nature which you envy in the being destitute of reason
deserves no esteem: it is not worth a wish. You have passed beyond it;
it ought to remain for ever behind you. The ladder that carried you
having given way under your foot, the only thing for you to do is to
seize again on the moral law freely, with a free consciousness, a free
will, or else to roll down, hopeless of safety, into a bottomless abyss.

But when you have consoled yourself for having lost the happiness of
nature, let its perfection be a model to your heart. If you can issue
from the circle in which art keeps you enclosed and find nature again, if
it shows itself to you in its greatness and in its calm, in its simple
beauty, in its childlike innocence and simplicity, oh! then pause before
its image, cultivate this feeling lovingly. It is worthy of you, and of
what is noblest in man. Let it no more come into your mind to change
with it; rather embrace it, absorb it into your being, and try to
associate the infinite advantage it has over you with that infinite
prerogative that is peculiar to you, and let the divine issue from this
sublime union. Let nature breathe around you like a lovely idyl, where
far from artifice and its wanderings you may always find yourself again,
where you may go to draw fresh courage, a new confidence, to resume your
course, and kindle again in your heart the flame of the ideal, so readily
extinguished amidst the tempests of life.

If we think of that beautiful nature which surrounded the ancient Greeks,
if we remember how intimately that people, under its blessed sky, could
live with that free nature; how their mode of imagining, and of feeling,
and their manners, approached far nearer than ours to the simplicity of
nature, how faithfully the works of their poets express this; we must
necessarily remark, as a strange fact, that so few traces are met among
them of that sentimental interest that we moderns ever take in the scenes
of nature and in natural characters. I admit that the Greeks are
superiorly exact and faithful in their descriptions of nature. They
reproduce their details with care, but we see that they take no more
interest in them and more heart in them than in describing a vestment, a
shield, armor, a piece of furniture, or any production of the mechanical
arts. In their love for the object it seems that they make no difference
between what exists in itself and what owes its existence to art, to the
human will. It seems that nature interests their minds and their
curiosity more than moral feeling. They do not attach themselves to it
with that depth of feeling, with that gentle melancholy, that
characterize the moderns. Nay, more, by personifying nature in its
particular phenomena, by deifying it, by representing its effects as the
acts of free being, they take from it that character of calm necessity
which is precisely what makes it so attractive to us. Their impatient
imagination only traverses nature to pass beyond it to the drama of human
life. It only takes pleasure in the spectacle of what is living and
free; it requires characters, acts, the accidents of fortune and of
manners; and whilst it happens with us, at least in certain moral
dispositions, to curse our prerogative, this free will, which exposes us
to so many combats with ourselves, to so many anxieties and errors, and
to wish to exchange it for the condition of beings destitute of reason,
for that fatal existence that no longer admits of any choice, but which
is so calm in its uniformity;--while we do this, the Greeks, on the
contrary, only have their imagination occupied in retracing human nature
in the inanimate world, and in giving to the will an influence where
blind necessity rules.

Whence can arise this difference between the spirit of the ancients and
the modern spirit? How comes it that, being, for all that relates to
nature, incomparably below the ancients, we are superior to them
precisely on this point, that we render a more complete homage to nature;
that we have a closer attachment to it; and that we are capable of
embracing even the inanimate world with the most ardent sensibility. It
is because nature, in our time, is no longer in man, and that we no
longer encounter it in its primitive truth, except out of humanity, in
the inanimate world. It is not because we are more conformable to
nature--quite the contrary; it is because in our social relations, in our
mode of existence, in our manners, we are in opposition with nature.
This is what leads us, when the instinct of truth and of simplicity is
awakened--this instinct which, like the moral aptitude from which it
proceeds, lives incorruptible and indelible in every human heart--to
procure for it in the physical world the satisfaction which there is no
hope of finding in the moral order. This is the reason why the feeling
that attaches us to nature is connected so closely with that which makes
us regret our infancy, forever flown, and our primitive innocence. Our
childhood is all that remains of nature in humanity, such as civilization
has made it, of untouched, unmutilated nature. It is, therefore, not
wonderful, when we meet out of us the impress of nature, that we are
always brought back to the idea of our childhood.

It was quite different with the Greeks in antiquity. Civilization with
them did not degenerate, nor was it carried to such an excess that it was
necessary to break with nature. The entire structure of their social
life reposed on feelings, and not on a factitious conception, on a work
of art. Their very theology was the inspiration of a simple spirit, the
fruit of a joyous imagination, and not, like the ecclesiastical dogmas of
modern nations, subtle combinations of the understanding. Since,
therefore, the Greeks had not lost sight of nature in humanity, they had
no reason, when meeting it out of man, to be surprised at their
discovery, and they would not feel very imperiously the need of objects
in which nature could be retraced. In accord with themselves, happy in
feeling themselves men, they would of necessity keep to humanity as to
what was greatest to them, and they must needs try to make all the rest
approach it; while we, who are not in accord with ourselves--we who are
discontented with the experience we have made of our humanity--have no
more pressing interest than to fly out of it and to remove from our sight
a so ill-fashioned form. The feeling of which we are treating here is,
therefore, not that which was known by the ancients; it approaches far
more nearly that which we ourselves experience for the ancients. The
ancients felt naturally; we, on our part, feel what is natural. It was
certainly a very different inspiration that filled the soul of Homer,
when he depicted his divine cowherd [Dios uphorbos, "Odyssey," xiv. 413,
etc. ] giving hospitality to Ulysses, from that which agitated the soul of
the young Werther at the moment when he read the "Odyssey" [Werther, May
26, June 21, August 28, May 9, etc. ] on issuing from an assembly in which
he had only found tedium. The feeling we experience for nature resembles
that of a sick man for health.

As soon as nature gradually vanishes from human life--that is, in
proportion as it ceases to be experienced as a subject (active and
passive)--we see it dawn and increase in the poetical world in the guise
of an idea and as an object. The people who have carried farthest the
want of nature, and at the same time the reflections on that matter, must
needs have been the people who at the same time were most struck with
this phenomenon of the simple, and gave it a name. If I am not mistaken,
this people was the French. But the feeling of the simple, and the
interest we take in it, must naturally go much farther back, and it dates
from the time when the moral sense and the aesthetical sense began to be
corrupt. This modification in the manner of feeling is exceedingly
striking in Euripides, for example, if compared with his predecessors,
especially Aeschylus; and yet Euripides was the favorite poet of his
time. The same revolution is perceptible in the ancient historians.
Horace, the poet of a cultivated and corrupt epoch, praises, under the
shady groves of Tibur, the calm and happiness of the country, and he
might be termed the true founder of this sentimental poetry, of which he
has remained the unsurpassed model. In Propertius, Virgil, and others,
we find also traces of this mode of feeling; less of it is found in Ovid,
who would have required for that more abundance of heart, and who in his
exile at Tomes sorrowfully regrets the happiness that Horace so readily
dispensed with in his villa at Tibur.

It is in the fundamental idea of poetry that the poet is everywhere the
guardian of nature. When he can no longer entirely fill this part, and
has already in himself suffered the deleterious influence of arbitrary
and factitious forms, or has had to struggle against this influence, he
presents himself as the witness of nature and as its avenger. The poet
will, therefore, be the expression of nature itself, or his part will be
to seek it, if men have lost sight of it. Hence arise two kinds of
poetry, which embrace and exhaust the entire field of poetry. All poets
--I mean those who are really so--will belong, according to the time when
they flourish, according to the accidental circumstances that have
influenced their education generally, and the different dispositions of
mind through which they pass, will belong, I say, to the order of the
sentimental poetry or to simple poetry.

The poet of a young world, simple and inspired, as also the poet who at
an epoch of artificial civilization approaches nearest to the primitive
bards, is austere and prudish, like the virginal Diana in her forests.
Wholly unconfiding, he hides himself from the heart that seeks him, from
the desire that wishes to embrace him. It is not rare for the dry truth
with which he treats his subject to resemble insensibility. The whole
object possesses him, and to reach his heart it does not suffice, as with
metals of little value, to stir up the surface; as with pure gold, you
must go down to the lowest depths. Like the Deity behind this universe,
the simple poet hides himself behind his work; he is himself his work,
and his work is himself. A man must be no longer worthy of the work, nor
understand it, or be tired of it, to be even anxious to learn who is its
author.

Such appears to us, for instance, Homer in antiquity, and Shakespeare
among moderns: two natures infinitely different and separated in time by
an abyss, but perfectly identical as to this trait of character. When,
at a very youthful age, I became first acquainted with Shakespeare, I was
displeased with his coldness, with his insensibility, which allows him to
jest even in the most pathetic moments, to disturb the impression of the
most harrowing scenes in "Hamlet," in "King Lear," and in "Macbeth,"
etc. , by mixing with them the buffooneries of a madman. I was revolted
by his insensibility, which allowed him to pause sometimes at places
where my sensibility would bid me hasten and bear me along, and which
sometimes carried him away with indifference when my heart would be so
happy to pause. Though I was accustomed, by the practice of modern
poets, to seek at once the poet in his works, to meet his heart, to
reflect with him in his theme--in a word, to see the object in the
subject--I could not bear that the poet could in Shakespeare never be
seized, that he would never give me an account of himself. For some
years Shakespeare had been the object of my study and of all my respect
before I had learned to love his personality. I was not yet able to
comprehend nature at first hand. All that my eyes could bear was its
image only, reflected by the understanding and arranged by rules: and on
this score the sentimental poetry of the French, or that of the Germans
of 1750 to 1780, was what suited me best. For the rest, I do not blush
at this childish judgment: adult critics pronounced in that day in the
same way, and carried their simplicity so far as to publish their
decisions to the world.

The same thing happened to me in the case of Homer, with whom I made
acquaintance at a later date.
I remember now that remarkable passage of
the sixth book of the "Iliad," where Glaucus and Diomed meet each other
in the strife, and then, recognizing each other as host and guest,
exchange presents. With this touching picture of the piety with which
the laws of hospitality were observed even in war, may be compared a
picture of chivalrous generosity in Ariosto. The knights, rivals in
love, Ferragus and Rinaldo--the former a Saracen, the latter a Christian
--after having fought to extremity, all covered with wounds, make peace
together, and mount the same horse to go and seek the fugitive Angelica.
These two examples, however different in other respects, are very similar
with regard to the impression produced on our heart: both represent the
noble victory of moral feeling over passion, and touch us by the
simplicity of feeling displayed in them. But what a difference in the
way in which the two poets go to work to describe two such analogous
scenes! Ariosto, who belongs to an advanced epoch, to a world where
simplicity of manners no longer existed, in relating this trait, cannot
conceal the astonishment, the admiration, he feels at it. He measures
the distance from those manners to the manners of his own age, and this
feeling of astonishment is too strong for him. He abandons suddenly the
painting of the object, and comes himself on the scene in person. This
beautiful stanza is well known, and has been always specially admired at
all times:--

"Oh nobleness, oh generosity of the ancient manners of chivalry! These
were rivals, separated by their faith, suffering bitter pain throughout
their frames in consequence of a desperate combat; and, without any
suspicion, behold them riding in company along dark and winding paths.
Stimulated by four spurs, the horse hastens his pace till they arrive at
the place where the road divides. " ["Orlando Furioso," canto i. , stanza
32. ]

Now let us turn to old Homer. Scarcely has Diomed learned by the story
of Glaucus, his adversary, that the latter has been, from the time of
their fathers, the host and friend of his family, when he drives his
lance into the ground, converses familiarly with him, and both agree
henceforth to avoid each other in the strife. But let us hear Homer
himself:--

"'Thus, then, I am for thee a faithful host in Argos, and thou to me in
Lycia, when I shall visit that country. We shall, therefore, avoid our
lances meeting in the strife. Are there not for me other Trojans or
brave allies to kill when a god shall offer them to me and my steps shall
reach them? And for thee, Glaucus, are there not enough Achaeans, that
thou mayest immolate whom thou wishest? But let us exchange our arms, in
order that others may also see that we boast of having been hosts and
guests at the time of our fathers. ' Thus they spoke, and, rushing from
their chariots, they seized each other's hands, and swore friendship the
one to the other. " [Pope's "Iliad," vi. 264-287. ]

It would have been difficult for a modern poet (at least to one who would
be modern in the moral sense of the term) even to wait as long as this
before expressing his joy in the presence of such an action. We should
pardon this in him the more easily, because we also, in reading it, feel
that our heart makes a pause here, and readily turns aside from the
object to bring back its thoughts on itself. But there is not the least
trace of this in Homer. As if he had been relating something that is
seen everyday--nay, more, as if he had no heart beating in his breast--he
continues, with his dry truthfulness:--

"Then the son of Saturn blinded Glaucus, who, exchanging his armor with
Diomed, gave him golden arms of the value of one hecatomb, for brass arms
only worth nine beeves. " ["Iliad," vi. 234-236. ]

The poets of this order,--the genuinely simple poets, are scarcely any
longer in their place in this artificial age. Accordingly they are
scarcely possible in it, or at least they are only possible on the
condition of traversing their age, like scared persons, at a running
pace, and of being preserved by a happy star from the influence of their
age, which would mutilate their genius. Never, for ay and forever, will
society produce these poets; but out of society they still appear
sometimes at intervals, rather, I admit, as strangers, who excite wonder,
or as ill-trained children of nature, who give offence. These
apparitions, so very comforting for the artist who studies them, and for
the real connoisseur, who knows how to appreciate them, are, as a general
conclusion, in the age when they are begotten, to a very small degree
preposterous. The seal of empire is stamped on their brow, and we,--we
ask the Muses to cradle us, to carry us in their arms. The critics, as
regular constables of art, detest these poets as disturbers of rules or
of limits. Homer himself may have been only indebted to the testimony of
ten centuries for the reward these aristarchs are kindly willing to
concede him. Moreover, they find it a hard matter to maintain their
rules against his example, or his authority against their rules.




SENTIMENTAL POETRY.


I have previously remarked that the poet is nature, or he seeks nature.
In the former case, he is a simple poet, in the second case, a
sentimental poet.

The poetic spirit is immortal, nor can it disappear from humanity; it can
only disappear with humanity itself, or with the aptitude to be a man, a
human being. And actually, though man by the freedom of his imagination
and of his understanding departs from simplicity, from truth, from the
necessity of nature, not only a road always remains open to him to return
to it, but, moreover, a powerful and indestructible instinct, the moral
instinct, brings him incessantly back to nature; and it is precisely the
poetical faculty that is united to this instinct by the ties of the
closest relationship. Thus man does not lose the poetic faculty directly
he parts with the simplicity of nature; only this faculty acts out of him
in another direction.

Even at present nature is the only flame that kindles and warms the
poetic soul. From nature alone it obtains all its force; to nature alone
it speaks in the artificial culture-seeking man. Any other form of
displaying its activity is remote from the poetic spirit. Accordingly it
may be remarked that it is incorrect to apply the expression poetic to
any of the so-styled productions of wit, though the high credit given to
French literature has led people for a long period to class them in that
category. I repeat that at present, even in the existing phase of
culture, it is still nature that powerfully stirs up the poetic spirit,
only its present relation to nature is of a different order from
formerly.

As long as man dwells in a state of pure nature (I mean pure and not
coarse nature), all his being acts at once like a simple sensuous unity,
like a harmonious whole. The senses and reason, the receptive faculty
and the spontaneously active faculty, have not been as yet separated in
their respective functions: a fortiori they are not yet in contradiction
with each other. Then the feelings of man are not the formless play of
chance; nor are his thoughts an empty play of the imagination, without
any value. His feelings proceed from the law of necessity; his thoughts
from reality. But when man enters the state of civilization, and art has
fashioned him, this sensuous harmony which was in him disappears, and
henceforth he can only manifest himself as a moral unity, that is, as
aspiring to unity. The harmony that existed as a fact in the former
state, the harmony of feeling and thought, only exists now in an ideal
state. It is no longer in him, but out of him; it is a conception of
thought which he must begin by realizing in himself; it is no longer a
fact, a reality of his life. Well, now let us take the idea of poetry,
which is nothing else than expressing humanity as completely as possible,
and let us apply this idea to these two states. We shall be brought to
infer that, on the one hand, in the state of natural simplicity, when all
the faculties of man are exerted together, his being still manifests
itself in a harmonious unity, where, consequently, the totality of his
nature expresses itself in reality itself, the part of the poet is
necessarily to imitate the real as completely as is possible. In the
state of civilization, on the contrary, when this harmonious competition
of the whole of human nature is no longer anything but an idea, the part
of the poet is necessarily to raise reality to the ideal, or, what
amounts to the same thing, to represent the ideal. And, actually, these
are the only two ways in which, in general, the poetic genius can
manifest itself. Their great difference is quite evident, but though
there be great opposition between them, a higher idea exists that
embraces both, and there is no cause to be astonished if this idea
coincides with the very idea of humanity.

This is not the place to pursue this thought any further, as it would
require a separate discussion to place it in its full light. But if we
only compare the modern and ancient poets together, not according to the
accidental forms which they may have employed, but according to their
spirit, we shall be easily convinced of the truth of this thought. The
thing that touches us in the ancient poets is nature; it is the truth of
sense, it is a present and a living reality modern poets touch us through
the medium of ideas.

The path followed by modern poets is moreover that necessarily followed
by man generally, individuals as well as the species. Nature reconciles
man with himself; art divides and disunites him; the ideal brings him
back to unity. Now, the ideal being an infinite that he never succeeds
in reaching, it follows that civilized man can never become perfect in
his kind, while the man of nature can become so in his. Accordingly in
relation to perfection one would be infinitely below the other, if we
only considered the relation in which they are both to their own kind and
to their maximum. If, on the other hand, it is the kinds that are
compared together, it is ascertained that the end to which man tends by
civilization is infinitely superior to that which he reaches through
nature. Thus one has his reward, because having for object a finite
magnitude, he completely reaches this object; the merit of the other is
to approach an object that is of infinite magnitude. Now, as there are
only degrees, and as there is only progress in the second of these
evolutions, it follows that the relative merit of the man engaged in the
ways of civilization is never determinable in general, though this man,
taking the individuals separately, is necessarily at a disadvantage,
compared with the man in whom nature acts in all its perfection. But we
know also that humanity cannot reach its final end except by progress,
and that the man of nature cannot make progress save through culture, and
consequently by passing himself through the way of civilization.
Accordingly there is no occasion to ask with which of the two the
advantage must remain, considering this last end.

All that we say here of the different forms of humanity may be applied
equally to the two orders of poets who correspond to them.

Accordingly it would have been desirable not to compare at all the
ancient and the modern poets, the simple and the sentimental poets, or
only to compare them by referring them to a higher idea (since there is
really only one) which embraces both. For, sooth to say, if we begin by
forming a specific idea of poetry, merely from the ancient poets, nothing
is easier, but also nothing is more vulgar, than to depreciate the
moderns by this comparison. If persons wish to confine the name of
poetry to that which has in all times produced the same impression in
simple nature, this places them in the necessity of contesting the title
of poet in the moderns precisely in that which constitutes their highest
beauties, their greatest originality and sublimity; for precisely in the
points where they excel the most, it is the child of civilization whom
they address, and they have nothing to say to the simple child of nature.

To the man who is not disposed beforehand to issue from reality in order
to enter the field of the ideal, the richest and most substantial poetry
is an empty appearance, and the sublimest flights of poetic inspiration
are an exaggeration. Never will a reasonable man think of placing
alongside Homer, in his grandest episodes, any of our modern poets; and
it has a discordant and ridiculous effect to hear Milton or Klopstock
honored with the name of a "new Homer. " But take in modern poets what
characterizes them, what makes their special merit, and try to compare
any ancient poet with them in this point, they will not be able to
support the comparison any better, and Homer less than any other. I
should express it thus: the power of the ancients consists in compressing
objects into the finite, and the moderns excel in the art of the
infinite.

What we have said here may be extended to the fine arts in general,
except certain restrictions that are self-evident. If, then, the
strength of the artists of antiquity consists in determining and limiting
objects, we must no longer wonder that in the field of the plastic arts
the ancients remain so far superior to the moderns, nor especially that
poetry and the plastic arts with the moderns, compared respectively with
what they were among the ancients, do not offer the same relative value.
This is because an object that addresses itself to the eyes is only
perfect in proportion as the object is clearly limited in it; whilst a
work that is addressed to the imagination can also reach the perfection
which is proper to it by means of the ideal and the infinite. This is
why the superiority of the moderns in what relates to ideas is not of
great aid to them in the plastic arts, where it is necessary for them to
determine in space, with the greatest precision, the image which their
imagination has conceived, and where they must therefore measure
themselves with the ancient artist just on a point where his superiority
cannot be contested. In the matter of poetry it is another affair, and
if the advantage is still with the ancients on that ground, as respects
the simplicity of forms--all that can be represented by sensuous
features, all that is something bodily--yet, on the other hand, the
moderns have the advantage over the ancients as regards fundamental
wealth, and all that can neither be represented nor translated by
sensuous signs, in short, for all that is called mind and idea in the
works of art.

From the moment that the simple poet is content to follow simple nature
and feeling, that he is contented with the imitation of the real world,
he can only be placed, with regard to his subject, in a single relation.
And in this respect he has no choice as to the manner of treating it. If
simple poetry produces different impressions--I do not, of course, speak
of the impressions that are connected with the nature of the subject, but
only of those that are dependent on poetic execution--the whole
difference is in the degree; there is only one way of feeling, which
varies from more to less; even the diversity of external forms changes
nothing in the quality of aesthetic impressions. Whether the form be
lyric or epic, dramatic or descriptive, we can receive an impression
either stronger or weaker, but if we remove what is connected with the
nature of the subject, we shall always be affected in the same way. The
feeling we experience is absolutely identical; it proceeds entirely from
one single and the same element to such a degree that we are unable to
make any distinction. The very difference of tongues and that of times
does not here occasion any diversity, for their strict unity of origin
and of effect is precisely a characteristic of simple poetry.

It is quite different with sentimental poetry. The sentimental poet
reflects on the impression produced on him by objects; and it is only on
this reflection that his poetic force is based. It follows that the
sentimental poet is always concerned with two opposite forces, has two
modes of representing objects to himself, and of feeling them; these are,
the real or limited, and the ideal or infinite; and the mixed feeling
that he will awaken will always testify to this duality of origin.
Sentimental poetry thus admitting more than one principle, it remains to
know which of the two will be predominant in the poet, both in his
fashion of feeling and in that of representing the object; and
consequently a difference in the mode of treating it is possible. Here,
then, a new subject is presented: shall the poet attach himself to the
real or the ideal? to the real as an object of aversion and of disgust,
or to the ideal as an object of inclination? The poet will therefore be
able to treat the same subject either in its satirical aspect or in its
elegiac aspect,--taking these words in a larger sense, which will be
explained in the sequel: every sentimental poet will of necessity become
attached to one or the other of these two modes of feeling.




SATIRICAL POETRY.


The poet is a satirist when he takes as subject the distance at which
things are from nature, and the contrast between reality and the ideal:
as regards the impression received by the soul, these two subjects blend
into the same. In the execution, he may place earnestness and passion,
or jests and levity, according as he takes pleasure in the domain of the
will or in that of the understanding. In the former case it is avenging
and pathetic satire; in the second case it is sportive, humorous, and
mirthful satire.

Properly speaking, the object of poetry is not compatible either with the
tone of punishment or that of amusement. The former is too grave for
play, which should be the main feature of poetry; the latter is too
trifling for seriousness, which should form the basis of all poetic play.
Our mind is necessarily interested in moral contradictions, and these
deprive the mind of its liberty. Nevertheless, all personal interest,
and reference to a personal necessity, should be banished from poetic
feeling. But mental contradictions do not touch the heart, nevertheless
the poet deals with the highest interests of the heart--nature and the
ideal. Accordingly it is a hard matter for him not to violate the poetic
form in pathetic satire, because this form consists in the liberty of
movement; and in sportive satire he is very apt to miss the true spirit
of poetry, which ought to be the infinite. The problem can only be
solved in one way: by the pathetic satire assuming the character of the
sublime, and the playful satire acquiring poetic substance by enveloping
the theme in beauty.

In satire, the real as imperfection is opposed to the ideal, considered
as the highest reality. In other respects it is by no means essential
that the ideal should be expressly represented, provided the poet knows
how to awaken it in our souls, but he must in all cases awaken it,
otherwise he will exert absolutely no poetic action. Thus reality is
here a necessary object of aversion; but it is also necessary, for the
whole question centres here, that this aversion should come necessarily
from the ideal, which is opposed to reality. To make this clear--this
aversion might proceed from a purely sensuous source, and repose only on
a want of which the satisfaction finds obstacles in the real. How often,
in fact, we think we feel, against society a moral discontent, while we
are simply soured by the obstacles that it opposes to our inclination.
It is this entirely material interest that the vulgar satirist brings
into play; and as by this road he never fails to call forth in us
movements connected with the affections, he fancies that he holds our
heart in his hand, and thinks he has graduated in the pathetic. But all
pathos derived from this source is unworthy of poetry, which ought only
to move us through the medium of ideas, and reach our heart only by
passing through the reason. Moreover, this impure and material pathos
will never have its effect on minds, except by over-exciting the
affective faculties and by occupying our hearts with painful feelings; in
this it differs entirely from the truly poetic pathos, which raises in us
the feeling of moral independence, and which is recognized by the freedom
of our mind persisting in it even while it is in the state of affection.
And, in fact, when the emotion emanates from the ideal opposed to the
real, the sublime beauty of the ideal corrects all impression of
restraint; and the grandeur of the idea with which we are imbued raises
us above all the limits of experience. Thus in the representation of
some revolting reality, the essential thing is that the necessary be the
foundation on which the poet or the narrator places the real: that he
know how to dispose our mind for ideas. Provided the point from which we
see and judge be elevated, it matters little if the object be low and far
beneath us. When the historian Tacitus depicts the profound decadence of
the Romans of the first century, it is a great soul which from a loftier
position lets his looks drop down on a low object; and the disposition in
which he places us is truly poetic, because it is the height where he is
himself placed, and where he has succeeded in raising us, which alone
renders so perceptible the baseness of the object.

Accordingly the satire of pathos must always issue from a mind deeply
imbued with the ideal. It is nothing but an impulsion towards harmony
that can give rise to that deep feeling of moral opposition and that
ardent indignation against moral obliquity which amounted to the fulness
of enthusiasm in Juvenal, Swift, Rousseau, Haller, and others. These
same poets would have succeeded equally well in forms of poetry relating
to all that is tender and touching in feeling, and it was only the
accidents of life in their early days that diverted their minds into
other walks. Nay, some amongst them actually tried their hand
successfully in these other branches of poetry. The poets whose names
have been just mentioned lived either at a period of degeneracy, and had
scenes of painful moral obliquity presented to their view, or personal
troubles had combined to fill their souls with bitter feelings. The
strictly austere spirit in which Rousseau, Haller, and others paint
reality is a natural result, moreover, of the philosophical mind, when
with rigid adherence to laws of thought it separates the mere phenomenon
from the substance of things. Yet these outer and contingent influences,
which always put restraint on the mind, should never be allowed to do
more than decide the direction taken by enthusiasm, nor should they ever
give the material for it. The substance ought always to remain
unchanged, emancipated from all external motion or stimulus, and it ought
to issue from an ardent impulsion towards the ideal, which forms the only
true motive that can be put forth for satirical poetry, and indeed for
all sentimental poetry.

While the satire of pathos is only adapted to elevated minds, playful
satire can only be adequately represented by a heart imbued with beauty.
The former is preserved from triviality by the serious nature of the
theme; but the latter, whose proper sphere is confined to the treatment
of subjects of morally unimportant nature, would infallibly adopt the
form of frivolity, and be deprived of all poetic dignity, were it not
that the substance is ennobled by the form, and did not the personal
dignity of the poet compensate for the insignificance of the subject.
Now, it is only given to mind imbued with beauty to impress its
character, its entire image, on each of its manifestations, independently
of the object of its manifestations. A sublime soul can only make itself
known as such by single victories over the rebellion of the senses, only
in certain moments of exaltation, and by efforts of short duration. In a
mind imbued with beauty, on the contrary, the ideal acts in the same
manner as nature, and therefore continuously; accordingly it can manifest
itself in it in a state of repose. The deep sea never appears more
sublime than when it is agitated; the true beauty of a clear stream is in
its peaceful course.

The question has often been raised as to the comparative preference to be
awarded to tragedy or comedy. If the question is confined merely to
their respective themes, it is certain that tragedy has the advantage.
But if our inquiry be directed to ascertain which has the more important
personality, it is probable that a decision may be given in favor of
comedy. In tragedy the theme in itself does great things; in comedy the
object does nothing and the poet all. Now, as in the judgments of taste
no account must be kept of the matter treated of, it follows naturally
that the aesthetic value of these two kinds will be in an inverse ratio
to the proper importance of their themes.

The tragic poet is supported by the theme, while the comic poet, on the
contrary, has to keep up the aesthetic character of his theme by his own
individual influence. The former may soar, which is not a very difficult
matter, but the latter has to remain one and the same in tone; he has to
be in the elevated region of art, where he must be at home, but where the
tragic poet has to be projected and elevated by a bound. And this is
precisely what distinguishes a soul of beauty from a sublime soul. A
soul of beauty bears in itself by anticipation all great ideas; they flow
without constraint and without difficulty from its very nature--an
infinite nature, at least in potency, at whatever point of its career you
seize it. A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an
effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and
constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime
soul is only free by broken efforts; the other with ease and always.

The noble task of comedy is to produce and keep up in us this freedom of
mind, just as the end of tragedy is to re-establish in us this freedom of
mind by aesthetic ways, when it has been violently suspended by passion.
Consequently it is necessary that in tragedy the poet, as if he made an
experiment, should artificially suspend our freedom of mind, since
tragedy shows its poetic virtue by re-establishing it; in comedy, on the
other hand, care must be taken that things never reach this suspension of
freedom.

It is for this reason that the tragic poet invariably treats his theme in
a practical manner, and the comic poet in a theoretic manner, even when
the former, as happened with Lessing in his "Nathan," should have the
curious fancy to select a theoretical, and the latter should have that of
choosing a practical subject. A piece is constituted a tragedy or a
comedy not by the sphere from which the theme is taken, but by the
tribunal before which it is judged. A tragic poet ought never to indulge
in tranquil reasoning, and ought always to gain the interest of the
heart; but the comic poet ought to shun the pathetic and bring into play
the understanding. The former displays his art by creating continual
excitement, the latter by perpetually subduing his passion; and it is
natural that the art in both cases should acquire magnitude and strength
in proportion as the theme of one poet is abstract and that of the other
pathetic in character. Accordingly, if tragedy sets out from a more
exalted place, it must be allowed, on the other hand, that comedy aims at
a more important end; and if this end could be actually attained it would
make all tragedy not only unnecessary, but impossible. The aim that
comedy has in view is the same as that of the highest destiny of man, and
this consists in liberating himself from the influence of violent
passions, and taking a calm and lucid survey of all that surrounds him,
and also of his own being, and of seeing everywhere occurrence rather
than fate or hazard, and ultimately rather smiling at the absurdities
than shedding tears and feeling anger at sight of the wickedness of man.

It frequently happens in human life that facility of imagination,
agreeable talents, a good-natured mirthfulness are taken for ornaments of
the mind. The same fact is discerned in the case of poetical displays.

Now, public taste scarcely if ever soars above the sphere of the
agreeable, and authors gifted with this sort of elegance of mind and
style do not find it a difficult matter to usurp a glory which is or
ought to be the reward of so much real labor. Nevertheless, an
infallible text exists to enable us to discriminate a natural facility of
manner from ideal gentleness, and qualities that consist in nothing more
than natural virtue from genuine moral worth of character. This test is
presented by trials such as those presented by difficulty and events
offering great opportunities. Placed in positions of this kind, the
genius whose essence is elegance is sure infallibly to fall into
platitudes, and that virtue which only results from natural causes drops
down to a material sphere. But a mind imbued with true and spiritual
beauty is in cases of the kind we have supposed sure to be elevated to
the highest sphere of character and of feeling. So long as Lucian merely
furnishes absurdity, as in his "Wishes," in the "Lapithae," in "Jupiter
Tragoedus," etc. , he is only a humorist, and gratifies us by his sportive
humor; but he changes character in many passages in his "Nigrinus," his
"Timon," and his "Alexander," when his satire directs its shafts against
moral depravity. Thus he begins in his "Nigrinus" his picture of the
degraded corruption of Rome at that time in this way: "Wretch, why didst
thou quit Greece, the sunlight, and that free and happy life? Why didst
thou come here into this turmoil of splendid slavery, of service and
festivals, of sycophants, flatterers, poisoners, orphan-robbers, and
false friends? " It is on such occasions that the poet ought to show the
lofty earnestness of soul which has to form the basis of all plays, if a
poetical character is to be obtained by them. A serious intention may
even be detected under the malicious jests with which Lucian and
Aristophanes pursue Socrates. Their purpose is to avenge truth against
sophistry, and to do combat for an ideal which is not always prominently
put forward. There can be no doubt that Lucian has justified this
character in his Diogenes and Demonax. Again, among modern writers, how
grave and beautiful is the character depicted on all occasions by
Cervantes in his Don Quixote! How splendid must have been the ideal that
filled the mind of a poet who created a Tom Jones and a Sophonisba! How
deeply and strongly our hearts are moved by the jests of Yorick when he
pleases! I detect this seriousness also in our own Wieland: even the
wanton sportiveness of his humor is elevated and impeded by the goodness
of his heart; it has an influence even on his rhythm; nor does he ever
lack elastic power, when it is his wish, to raise us up to the most
elevated planes of beauty and of thought.

The same judgment cannot be pronounced on the satire of Voltaire. No
doubt, also, in his case, it is the truth and simplicity of nature which
here and there makes us experience poetic emotions, whether he really
encounters nature and depicts it in a simple character, as many times in
his "Ingenu;" or whether he seeks it and avenges it as in his "Candide"
and elsewhere. But when neither one nor the other takes place, he can
doubtless amuse us with his fine wit, but he assuredly never touches us
as a poet. There is always rather too little of the serious under his
raillery, and this is what makes his vocation as poet justly suspicious.
You always meet his intelligence only; never his feelings. No ideal can
be detected under this light gauze envelope; scarcely can anything
absolutely fixed be found under this perpetual movement. His prodigious
diversity of externals and forms, far from proving anything in favor of
the inner fulness of his inspiration, rather testifies to the contrary;
for he has exhausted all forms without finding a single one on which he
has succeeded in impressing his heart. We are almost driven to fear that
in the case of his rich talent the poverty of heart alone determined his
choice of satire. And how could we otherwise explain the fact that he
could pursue so long a road without ever issuing from its narrow rut?
Whatever may be the variety of matter and of external forms, we see the
inner form return everywhere with its sterile and eternal uniformity, and
in spite of his so productive career, he never accomplished in himself
the circle of humanity, that circle which we see joyfully traversed
throughout by the satirists previously named.




ELEGIAC POETRY.


When the poet opposes nature to art, and the ideal to the real, so that
nature and the ideal form the principal object of his pictures, and that
the pleasure we take in them is the dominant impression, I call him an
elegiac poet. In this kind, as well as in satire, I distinguish two
classes. Either nature and the ideal are objects of sadness, when one is
represented as lost to man and the other as unattained; or both are
objects of joy, being represented to us as reality. In the first case it
is elegy in the narrower sense of the term; in the second case it is the
idyl in its most extended acceptation.

Indignation in the pathetic and ridicule in mirthful satire are
occasioned by an enthusiasm which the ideal has excited; and thus also
sadness should issue from the same source in elegy. It is this, and this
only, that gives poetic value to elegy, and any other origin for this
description of poetical effusion is entirely beneath the dignity of
poetry. The elegiac poet seeks after nature, but he strives to find her
in her beauty, and not only in her mirth; in her agreement with
conception, and not merely in her facile disposition towards the
requirements and demands of sense. Melancholy at the privation of joys,
complaints at the disappearance of the world's golden age, or at the
vanished happiness of youth, affection, etc. , can only become the proper
themes for elegiac poetry if those conditions implying peace and calm in
the sphere of the senses can moreover be portrayed as states of moral
harmony. On this account I cannot bring myself to regard as poetry the
complaints of Ovid, which he transmitted from his place of exile by the
Black Sea; nor would they appear so to me however touching and however
full of passages of the highest poetry they might be. His suffering is
too devoid of spirit, and nobleness. His lamentations display a want of
strength and enthusiasm; though they may not reflect the traces of a
vulgar soul, they display a low and sensuous condition of a noble spirit
that has been trampled into the dust by its hard destiny. If, indeed, we
call to mind that his regrets are directed to Rome, in the Augustan age,
we forgive him the pain he suffers; but even Rome in all its splendor,
except it be transfigured by the imagination, is a limited greatness, and
therefore a subject unworthy of poetry, which, raised above every trace
of the actual, ought only to mourn over what is infinite.

Thus the object of poetic complaint ought never to be an external object,
but only an internal and ideal object; even when it deplores a real loss,
it must begin by making it an ideal loss. The proper work of the poet
consists in bringing back the finite object to the proportions of the
infinite. Consequently the external matter of elegy, considered in
itself, is always indifferent, since poetry can never employ it as it
finds it, and because it is only by what it makes of it that it confers
on it a poetic dignity. The elegiac poet seeks nature, but nature as an
idea, and in a degree of perfection that it has never reached in reality,
although he weeps over this perfection as something that has existed and
is now lost.