No More Learning

For the understanding all is perfectly determined
and bounded in them--I need only here recall his Judas, his Pilate, his
Philo, his Solomon in the tragedy that bears that name--but for the
imagination all this wants form too much, and I must readily confess I do
not find that our poet is at all in his sphere here. His sphere is
always the realm of ideas; and he knows how to raise all he touches to
the infinite. It might be said that he strips away their bodily
envelope, to spiritualize them from all the objects with which he is
occupied, in the same way that other poets clothe all that is spiritual
with a body. The pleasure occasioned by his poems must almost always be
obtained by an exercise of the faculty of reflection; the feelings he
awakens in us, and that so deeply and energetically, flow always from
super-sensuous sources. Hence the earnestness, the strength, the
elasticity, the depth, that characterize all that comes from him; but
from that also issues that perpetual tension of mind in which we are kept
when reading him. No poet--except perhaps Young, who in this respect
exacts even more than Klopstock, without giving us so much compensation
--no poet could be less adapted than Klopstock to play the part of
favorite author and guide in life, because he never does anything else
than lead us out of life, because he never calls to arms anything save
spirit, without giving recreation and refreshment to sensuous nature by
the calm presence of any object. His muse is chaste, it has nothing of
the earthly, it is immaterial and holy as his religion; and we are forced
to admit with admiration that if he wanders sometimes on these high
places, it never happened to him to fall from them. But precisely for
this reason, I confess in all ingenuousness, that I am not free from
anxiety for the common sense of those who quite seriously and
unaffectedly make Klopstock the favorite book, the book in which we find
sentiments fitting all situations, or to which we may revert at all
times: perhaps even--and I suspect it--Germany has seen enough results of
his dangerous influence. It is only in certain dispositions of the mind,
and in hours of exaltation, that recourse can be had to Klopstock, and
that he can be felt. It is for this reason that he is the idol of youth,
without, however, being by any means the happiest choice that they could
make. Youth, which always aspires to something beyond real life, which
avoids all stiffness of form, and finds all limits too narrow, lets
itself be carried away with love, with delight, into the infinite spaces
opened up to them by this poet. But wait till the youth has become a
man, and till, from the domain of ideas, he comes back to the world of
experience, then you will see this enthusiastic love of Klopstock
decrease greatly, without, however, a riper age changing at all the
esteem due to this unique phenomenon, to this so extraordinary genius, to
these noble sentiments--the esteem that Germany in particular owes to his
high merit.

I have said that this poet was great specially in the elegiac style, and
it is scarcely necessary to confirm this judgment by entering into
particulars. Capable of exercising all kinds of action on the heart, and
having graduated as master in all that relates to sentimental poetry, he
can sometimes shake the soul by the most sublime pathos, at others cradle
it with sweet and heavenly sensations. Yet his heart prefers to follow
the direction of a lofty spiritual melancholy; and, however sublime be
the tones of his harp and of his lyre, they are always the tender notes
of his lute that resound with most truth and the deepest emotion. I take
as witnesses all those whose nature is pure and sensuous: would they not
be ready to give all the passages where Klopstock is strong, and bold;
all those fictions, all the magnificent descriptions, all the models of
eloquence which abound in the "Messiah," all those dazzling comparisons
in which our poet excels,--would they not exchange them for the pages
breathing tenderness, the "Elegy to Ebert" for example, or that admirable
poem entitled "Bardalus," or again, the "Tombs Opened before the Hour,"
the "Summer's Night," the "Lake of Zurich," and many other pieces of this
kind? In the same way the "Messiah" is dear to me as a treasure of
elegiac feelings and of ideal paintings, though I am not much satisfied
with it as the recital of an action and as an epic.

I ought, perhaps, before quitting this department, to recall the merits
in this style of Uz, Denis, Gessner in the "Death of Abel"--Jacobi,
Gerstenberg, Hoelty, De Goeckingk, and several others, who all knew how
to touch by ideas, and whose poems belong to the sentimental kind in the
sense in which we have agreed to understand the word. But my object is
not here to write a history of German poetry; I only wished to clear up
what I said further back by some examples from our literature. I wished
to show that the ancient and the modern poets, the authors of simple
poetry and of sentimental poetry, follow essentially different paths to
arrive at the same end: that the former move by nature, individuality, a
very vivid sensuous element; while the latter do it by means of ideas and
a high spirituality, exercising over our minds an equally powerful though
less extensive influence.

It has been seen, by the examples which precede, how sentimental poetry
conceives and treats subjects taken from nature; perhaps the reader may
be curious to know how also simple poetry treats a subject of the
sentimental order. This is, as it seems, an entirely new question, and
one of special difficulty; for, in the first place, has a subject of the
sentimental order ever been presented in primitive and simple periods?
And in modern times, where is the simple poet with whom we could make
this experiment? This has not, however, prevented genius from setting
this problem, and solving it in a wonderfully happy way. A poet in whose
mind nature works with a purer and more faithful activity than in any
other, and who is perhaps of all modern poets the one who departs the
least from the sensuous truth of things, has proposed this problem to
himself in his conception of a mind, and of the dangerous extreme of the
sentimental character. This mind and this character have been portrayed
by the modern poet we speak of, a character which with a burning
sensuousness embraces the ideal and flies the real, to soar up to an
infinite devoid of being, always occupied in seeking out of himself what
he incessantly destroys in himself; a mind that only finds reality in his
dreams, and to whom the realities of life are only limits and obstacles;
in short, a mind that sees only in its own existence a barrier, and goes
on, as it were, logically to break down this barrier in order to
penetrate to true reality.

It is interesting to see with what a happy instinct all that is of a
nature to feed the sentimental mind is gathered together in Werther: a
dreamy and unhappy love, a very vivid feeling for nature, the religious
sense coupled with the spirit of philosophic contemplation, and lastly,
to omit nothing, the world of Ossian, dark, formless, melancholy. Add to
this the aspect under which reality is presented, all is depicted which
is least adapted to make it lovable, or rather all that is most fit to
make it hated; see how all external circumstances unite to drive back the
unhappy man into his ideal world; and now we understand that it was quite
impossible for a character thus constituted to save itself, and issue
from the circle in which it was enclosed. The same contrast reappears in
the "Torquato Tasso" of the same poet, though the characters are very
different. Even his last romance presents, like his first, this
opposition between the poetic mind and the common sense of practical men,
between the ideal and the real, between the subjective mode and the
objective mode of seeing and representing things; it is the same
opposition, I say, but with what a diversity! Even in "Faust" we still
find this contrast, rendered, I admit--as the subject required--much more
coarsely on both hands, and materialized. It would be quite worth while
if a psychological explanation were attempted of this character,
personified and specified in four such different ways.

It has been observed further back that a mere disposition to frivolity of
mind, to a merry humor, if a certain fund of the ideal is not joined to
it, does not suffice to constitute the vocation of a satirical poet,
though this mistake is frequently made. In the same way a mere
disposition for tender sentiments, softness of heart, and melancholy do
not suffice to constitute a vocation for elegy. I cannot detect the true
poetical talent, either on one side or the other; it wants the essential,
I mean the energetic and fruitful principle that ought to enliven the
subject, and produce true beauty. Accordingly the productions of this
latter nature, of the tender nature, do nothing but enervate us; and
without refreshing the heart, without occupying the mind, they are only
able to flatter in us the sensuous nature. A constant disposition to
this mode of feeling ends necessarily, in the long run, by weakening the
character, and makes it fall into a state of passivity from which nothing
real can issue, either for external or for internal life. People have,
therefore, been quite right to persecute by pitiless raillery this fatal
mania of sentimentality and of tearful melancholy which possessed Germany
eighteen years since, in consequence of certain excellent works that were
ill understood and indiscreetly imitated. People have been right, I say,
to combat this perversity, though the indulgence with which men are
disposed to receive the parodies of these elegiac caricatures--that are
very little better themselves--the complaisance shown to bad wit, to
heartless satire and spiritless mirth, show clearly enough that this zeal
against false sentimentalism does not issue from quite a pure source. In
the balance of true taste one cannot weigh more than the other,
considering that both here and there is wanting that which forms the
aesthetic value of a work of art, the intimate union of spirit with
matter, and the twofold relation of the work with the faculty of
perception as well as with the faculty of the ideal.

People have turned Siegwart ["Siegwart," a novel by J. Mailer, published
at Ulm, 1776] and his convent story into ridicule, and yet the "Travels
into the South of France" are admired; yet both works have an equal claim
to be esteemed in certain respects, and as little to be unreservedly
praised in others. A true, though excessive, sensuousness gives value to
the former of these two romances; a lively and sportive humor, a fine
wit, recommends the other: but one totally lacks all sobriety of mind
that would befit it, the other lacks all aesthetic dignity. If you
consult experience, one is rather ridiculous; if you think of the ideal,
the other is almost contemptible. Now, as true beauty must of necessity
accord both with nature and with the ideal, it is clear that neither the
one nor the other of these two romances could pretend to pass for a fine
work. And notwithstanding all this, it is natural, as I know it by my
own experience, that the romance of Thummel should be read with much
pleasure. As a fact it only wounds those requirements which have their
principle in the ideal, and which consequently do not exist for the
greater part of readers; requirements that, even in persons of most
delicate feeling, do not make themselves felt at the moments when we read
romances. With regard to the other needs of the mind, and especially to
those of the senses, this book, on the other hand, affords unusual
satisfaction. Accordingly, it must be, and will be so, that this book
will remain justly one of the favorite works of our age, and of all
epochs when men only write aesthetic works to please, and people only
read to get pleasure.

But does not poetical literature also offer, even in its classical
monuments, some analogous examples of injuries inflicted or attempted
against the ideal and its superior purity? Are there not some who, by
the gross, sensuous nature of their subject, seem to depart strangely
from the spiritualism I here demand of all works of art? If this is
permitted to the poet, the chaste nurseling of the muses, ought it not to
be conceded to the novelist, who is only the half-brother of the poet,
and who still touches by so many points? I can the less avoid this
question because there are masterpieces, both in the elegiac and in the
satirical kind, where the authors seek and preach up a nature quite
different from that I am discussing in this essay, and where they seem to
defend it, not so much against bad as against good morals. The natural
conclusion would be either that this sort of poem ought to be rejected,
or that, in tracing here the idea of elegiac poetry, we have granted far
too much to what is arbitrary.

The question I asked was, whether what was permitted by the poet might
not be tolerated in a prose narrator too? The answer is contained in the
question. What is allowed in the poet proves nothing about what must be
allowed in one who is not a poet. This tolerancy in fact reposes on the
very idea which we ought to make to ourselves of the poet, and only on
this idea; what in his case is legitimate freedom, is only a license
worthy of contempt as soon as it no longer takes its source in the ideal,
in those high and noble inspirations which make the poet.

The laws of decency are strangers to innocent nature; the experience of
corruption alone has given birth to them. But when once this experience
has been made, and natural innocence has disappeared from manners, these
laws are henceforth sacred laws that man, who has a moral sense, ought
not to infringe upon. They reign in an artificial world with the same
right that the laws of nature reign in the innocence of primitive ages.
But by what characteristic is the poet recognized? Precisely by his
silencing in his soul all that recalls an artificial world, and by
causing nature herself to revive in him with her primitive simplicity.
The moment he has done this he is emancipated by this alone from all the
laws by which a depraved heart secures itself against itself. He is
pure, he is innocent, and all that is permitted to innocent nature is
equally permitted to him. But you who read him or listen to him, if you
have lost your innocence, and if you are incapable of finding it again,
even for a moment, in a purifying contact with the poet, it is your own
fault, and not his: why do not you leave him alone? it is not for you
that he has sung!

Here follows, therefore, in what relates to these kinds of freedoms, the
rules that we can lay down.

Let us remark in the first place that nature only can justify these
licenses; whence it follows that you could not legitimately take them up
of your own choice, nor with a determination of imitating them; the will,
in fact, ought always to be directed according to the laws of morality,
and on its part all condescending to the sensuous is absolutely
unpardonable. These licenses must, therefore, above all, be simplicity.
But how can we be convinced that they are actually simple? We shall hold
them to be so if we see them accompanied and supported by all the other
circumstances which also have their spring of action in nature; for
nature can only be recognized by the close and strict consistency, by the
unity and uniformity of its effects. It is only a soul that has on all
occasions a horror of all kinds of artifice, and which consequently
rejects them even where they would be useful--it is only that soul which
we permit to be emancipated from them when the artificial
conventionalities hamper and hinder it. A heart that submits to all the
obligations of nature has alone the right to profit also by the liberties
which it authorizes. All the other feelings of that heart ought
consequently to bear the stamp of nature: it will be true, simple, free,
frank, sensible, and straightforward; all disguise, all cunning, all
arbitrary fancy, all egotistical pettiness, will be banished from his
character, and you will see no trace of them in his writings.

Second rule: beautiful nature alone can justify freedoms of this kind;
whence it follows that they ought not to be a mere outbreak of the
appetites; for all that proceeds exclusively from the wants of sensuous
nature is contemptible. It is, therefore, from the totality and the
fulness of human nature that these vivid manifestations must also issue.
We must find humanity in them. But how can we judge that they proceed in
fact from our whole nature, and not only from an exclusive and vulgar
want of the sensuous nature? For this purpose it is necessary that we
should see--that they should represent to us--this whole of which they
form a particular feature. This disposition of the mind to experience
the impressions of the sensuous is in itself an innocent and an
indifferent thing. It does not sit well on a man only because of its
being common to animals with him; it augurs in him the lack of true and
perfect humanity. It only shocks us in the poem because such a work
having the pretension to please us, the author consequently seems to
think us capable, us also, of this moral infirmity. But when we see in
the man who has let himself be drawn into it by surprise all the other
characteristics that human nature in general embraces; when we find in
the work where these liberties have been taken the expression of all the
realities of human nature, this motive of discontent disappears, and we
can enjoy, without anything changing our joy, this simple expression of a
true and beautiful nature. Consequently this same poet who ventures to
allow himself to associate us with feelings so basely human, ought to
know, on the other hand, how to raise us to all that is grand, beautiful,
and sublime in our nature.

We should, therefore, have found there a measure to which we could
subject the poet with confidence, when he trespasses on the ground of
decency, and when he does not fear to penetrate as far as that in order
freely to paint nature. His work is common, base, absolutely
inexcusable, from the moment it is frigid, and from the moment it is
empty, because that shows a prejudice, a vulgar necessity, an unhealthy
appeal to our appetites. His work, on the other hand, is beautiful and
noble, and we ought to applaud it without any consideration for all the
objections of frigid decency, as soon as we recognize in it simplicity,
the alliance of spiritual nature and of the heart.

Perhaps I shall be told that if we adopt this criterion, most of the
recitals of this kind composed by the French, and the best imitations
made of them in Germany, would not perhaps find their interest in it; and
that it might be the same, at least in part, with many of the productions
of our most intellectual and amiable poets, without even excepting his
masterpieces. I should have nothing to reply to this. The sentence
after all is anything but new, and I am only justifying the judgment
pronounced long since on this matter by all men of delicate perceptions.
But these same principles which, applied to the works of which I have
just spoken, seem perhaps in too strict a spirit, might also be found too
indulgent when applied to some other works. I do not deny, in fact, that
the same reasons which make me hold to be quite inexcusable the dangerous
pictures drawn by the Roman Ovid and the German Ovid, those of Crebillon,
of Voltaire, of Marmontel, who pretends to write moral tales! --of
Lacroix, and of many others--that these same reasons, I say, reconcile me
with the elegies of the Roman Propertius and of the German Propertius,
and even with some of the decried productions of Diderot. This is
because the former of those works are only witty, prosaic, and
voluptuous, while the others are poetic, human, and simple.




IDYL.


It remains for me to say a few words about this third kind of sentimental
poetry--some few words and no more, for I propose to speak of it at
another time with the developments particularly demanded by the theme.

This kind of poetry generally presents the idea and description of an
innocent and happy humanity. This innocence and bliss seeming remote
from the artificial refinements of fashionable society, poets have
removed the scene of the idyl from crowds of worldly life to the simple
shepherd's cot, and have given it a place in the infancy of humanity
before the beginning of culture. These limitations are evidently
accidental; they do not form the object of the idyl, but are only to be
regarded as the most natural means to attain this end. The end is
everywhere to portray man in a state of innocence: which means a state of
harmony and peace with himself and the external world.

But a state such as this is not merely met with before the dawn of
civilization; it is also the state to which civilization aspires, as to
its last end, if only it obeys a determined tendency in its progress.
The idea of a similar state, and the belief of the possible reality of
this state, is the only thing that can reconcile man with all the evils
to which he is exposed in the path of civilization; and if this idea were
only a chimera, the complaints of those who accuse civil life and the
culture of the intelligence as an evil for which there is no
compensation, and who represent this primitive state of nature that we
have renounced as the real end of humanity--their complaints, I say,
would have a perfectly just foundation. It is, therefore, of infinite
importance for the man engaged in the path of civilization to see
confirmed in a sensuous manner the belief that this idea can be
accomplished in the world of sense, that this state of innocence can be
realized in it; and as real experience, far from keeping up this belief,
is rather made incessantly to contradict it, poetry comes here, as in
many other cases, in aid of reason, to cause this idea to pass into the
condition of an intuitive idea, and to realize it in a particular fact.
No doubt this innocence of pastoral life is also a poetic idea, and the
imagination must already have shown its creative power in that. But the
problem, with this datum, becomes infinitely simpler and easier to solve;
and we must not forget that the elements of these pictures already
existed in real life, and that it was only requisite to gather up the
separate traits to form a whole. Under a fine sky, in a primitive
society, when all the relations are still simple, when science is limited
to so little, nature is easily satisfied, and man only turns to savagery
when he is tortured by want. All nations that have a history have a
paradise, an age of innocence, a golden age. Nay, more than this, every
man has his paradise, his golden age, which he remembers with more or
less enthusiasm, according as he is more or less poetical. Thus
experience itself furnishes sufficient traits to this picture which the
pastoral idyl executes. But this does not prevent the pastoral idyl from
remaining always a beautiful and an encouraging fiction; and poetic
genius, in retracing these pictures, has really worked in favor of the
ideal. For, to the man who has once departed from simple nature, and who
has been abandoned to the dangerous guidance of his reason, it is of the
greatest importance to find the laws of nature expressed in a faithful
copy, to see their image in a clear mirror, and to reject all the stains
of artificial life. There is, however, a circumstance which remarkably
lessens the aesthetic value of these sorts of poetry. By the very fact
that the idyl is transported to the time that precedes civilization, it
also loses the advantages thereof; and by its nature finds itself in
opposition to itself. Thus, in a theoretical sense, it takes us back at
the same time that in a practical sense it leads us on and ennobles us.
Unhappily it places behind us the end towards which it ought to lead us,
and consequently it can only inspire us with the sad feeling of a loss,
and not the joyous feeling of a hope. As these poems can only attain
their end by dispensing with all art, and by simplifying human nature,
they have the highest value for the heart, but they are also far too poor
for what concerns the mind, and their uniform circle is too quickly
traversed. Accordingly we can only seek them and love them in moments in
which we need calm, and not when our faculties aspire after movement and
exercise. A morbid mind will find its cure in them, a sound soul will
not find its food in them. They cannot vivify, they can only soften.
This defect, grounded in the essence of the pastoral idyll, has not been
remedied by the whole art of poets. I know that this kind of poem is not
without admirers, and that there are readers enough who prefer an Amyntus
and a Daphnis to the most splendid masterpieces of the epic or the
dramatic muse; but in them it is less the aesthetical taste than the
feeling of an individual want that pronounces on works of art; and their
judgment, by that very fact, could not be taken into consideration here.
The reader who judges with his mind, and whose heart is sensuous, without
being blind to the merit of these poems, will confess that he is rarely
affected by them, and that they tire him most quickly. But they act with
so much the more effect in the exact moment of need. But must the truly
beautiful be reduced to await our hours of need? and is it not rather its
office to awaken in our soul the want that it is going to satisfy?

The reproaches I here level against the bucolic idyl cannot be understood
of the sentimental. The simple pastoral, in fact, cannot be deprived of
aesthetic value, since this value is already found in the mere form. To
explain myself: every kind of poetry is bound to possess an infinite
ideal value, which alone constitutes it a true poetry; but it can satisfy
this condition in two different ways. It can give us the feeling of the
infinite as to form, by representing the object altogether limited and
individualizing it; it can awaken in us the feeling of the infinite as to
matter, in freeing its object from all limits in which it is enclosed, by
idealizing this object; therefore it can have an ideal value either by an
absolute representation or by the representation of an absolute. Simple
poetry takes the former road, the other is that of sentimental poetry.
Accordingly the simple poet is not exposed to failure in value so long as
he keeps faithfully to nature, which is always completely circumscribed,
that is, is infinite as regards form. The sentimental poet, on the
contrary, by that very fact, that nature only offers him completely
circumscribed objects, finds in it an obstruction when he wishes to give
an absolute value to a particular object. Thus the sentimental poet
understands his interests badly when he goes along the trail of the
simple poet, and borrows his objects from him--objects which by
themselves are perfectly indifferent, and which only become poetical by
the way in which they are treated. By this he imposes on himself without
any necessity the same limits that confine the field of the simple poet,
without, however, being able to carry out the limitation properly, or to
vie with his rival in absolute definiteness of representation. He ought
rather, therefore, to depart from the simple poet, just in the choice of
object; because, the latter having the advantage of him on the score of
form, it is only by the nature of the objects that he can resume the
upper hand.

Applying this to the pastoral idyls of the sentimental poet, we see why
these poems, whatever amount of art and genius be displayed in them, do
not fully satisfy the heart or the mind. An ideal is proposed in it,
and, at the same time, the writer keeps to this narrow and poor medium of
pastoral life. Would it not have been better, on the contrary, to choose
for the ideal another frame, or for the pastoral world another kind of
picture? These pictures are just ideal enough for painting to lose its
individual truth in them, and, again, just individual enough for the
ideal in them to suffer therefrom. For example, a shepherd of Gessner
can neither charm by the illusion of nature nor by the beauty of
imitation; he is too ideal a being for that, but he does not satisfy us
any more as an ideal by the infinity of the thought: he is a far too
limited creature to give us this satisfaction. He will, therefore,
please up to a certain point all classes of readers, without exception,
because he seeks to unite the simple with the sentimental, and he thus
gives a commencement of satisfaction to the two opposite exigencies that
may be brought to bear on any particular part of a poem; but the author,
in trying to unite the two points, does not fully satisfy either one or
the other exigency, as you do not find in him either pure nature or the
pure ideal; he cannot rank himself as entirely up to the mark of a
stringent critical taste, for taste does not accept anything equivocal or
incomplete in aesthetical matters. It is a strange thing that, in the
poet whom I have named, this equivocal character extends to the language,
which floats undecided between poetry and prose, as if he feared either
to depart too far from nature, by speaking rhythmical language, or if he
completely freed himself from rhythm, to lose all poetic flight. Milton
gives a higher satisfaction to the mind, in the magnificent picture of
the first human pair, and of the state of innocence in paradise;--the
most beautiful idyl I know of the sentimental kind. Here nature is
noble, inspired, simple, full of breadth, and, at the same time, of
depth; it is humanity in its highest moral value, clothed in the most
graceful form.

Thus, even in respect to the idyl, as well as to all kinds of poetry, we
must once for all declare either for individuality or ideality; for to
aspire to give satisfaction to both exigencies is the surest means,
unless you have reached the terminus of perfection, to miss both ends.
If the modern poet thinks he feels enough of the Greeks' mind to vie with
them, notwithstanding all the indocility of his matter, on their own
ground, namely that of simple poetry, let him do it exclusively, and
place himself apart from all the requirements of the sentimental taste of
his age. No doubt it is very doubtful if he come up to his models;
between the original and the happiest imitation there will always remain
a notable distance; but, by taking this road, he is at all events secure
of producing a really poetic work. If, on the other hand, he feels
himself carried to the ideal by the instinct of sentimental poetry, let
him decide to pursue this end fully; let him seek the ideal in its
purity, and let him not pause till he has reached the highest regions
without looking behind him to know if the real follows him, and does not
leave him by the way. Let him not lower himself to this wretched
expedient of spoiling the ideal to accommodate himself to the wants of
human weakness, and to turn out mind in order to play more easily with
the heart. Let him not take us back to our infancy, to make us buy, at
the cost of the most precious acquisitions of the understanding, a repose
that can only last as long as the slumber of our spiritual faculties; but
let him lead us on to emancipation, and give us this feeling of higher
harmony which compensates for all his troubles and secures the happiness
of the victor! Let him prepare as his task an idyl that realizes the
pastoral innocence, even in the children of civilization, and in all the
conditions of the most militant and excited life; of thought enlarged by
culture; of the most refined art; of the most delicate social
conventionalities--an idyl, in short, that is made, not to bring back man
to Arcadia, but to lead him to Elysium.

This idyl, as I conceive it, is the idea of humanity definitely
reconciled with itself, in the individual as well as in the whole of
society; it is union freely re-established between inclination and duty;
it is nature purified, raised to its highest moral dignity; in short, it
is no less than the ideal of beauty applied to real life. Thus, the
character of this idyl is to reconcile perfectly all the contradictions
between the real and the ideal, which formed the matter of satirical and
elegiac poetry, and, setting aside their contradictions, to put an end to
all conflict between the feelings of the soul. Thus, the dominant
expression of this kind of poetry would be calm; but the calm that
follows the accomplishment, and not that of indolence--the calm that
comes from the equilibrium re-established between the faculties, and not
from the suspending of their exercise; from the fulness of our strength,
and not from our infirmity; the calm, in short, which is accompanied in
the soul by the feeling of an infinite power. But precisely because idyl
thus conceived removes all idea of struggle, it will be infinitely more
difficult than it was in two previously-named kinds of poetry to express
movement; yet this is an indispensable condition, without which poetry
can never act on men's souls. The most perfect unity is required, but
unity ought not to wrong variety; the heart must be satisfied, but
without the inspiration ceasing on that account. The solution of this
problem is properly what ought to be given us by the theory of the idyl.

Now, what are the relations of the two poetries to one another, and their
relations to the poetic ideal? Here are the principles we have
established.

Nature has granted this favor to the simple poet, to act always as an
indivisible unity, to be at all times identical and perfect, and to
represent, in the real world, humanity at its highest value. In
opposition, it has given a powerful faculty to the sentimental poet, or,
rather, it has imprinted an ardent feeling on him; this is to replace out
of himself this first unity that abstraction has destroyed in him, to
complete humanity in his person, and to pass from a limited state to an
infinite state. They both propose to represent human nature fully, or
they would not be poets; but the simple poet has always the advantage of
sensuous reality over the sentimental poet, by setting forth as a real
fact what the other aspires only to reach. Every one experiences this in
the pleasure he takes in simple poetry.

We there feel that the human faculties are brought into play; no vacuum
is felt; we have the feeling of unity, without distinguishing anything of
what we experience; we enjoy both our spiritual activity and also the
fulness of physical life. Very different is the disposition of mind
elicited by the sentimental poet. Here we feel only a vivid aspiration
to produce in us this harmony of which we had in the other case the
consciousness and reality; to make of ourselves a single and same
totality; to realize in ourselves the idea of humanity as a complete
expression. Hence it comes that the mind is here all in movement,
stretched, hesitating between contrary feelings; whereas it was before
calm and at rest, in harmony with itself, and fully satisfied.

But if the simple poet has the advantage over the sentimental poet on the
score of reality; if he causes really to live that of which the other can
only elicit a vivid instinct, the sentimental poet, in compensation, has
this great advantage over the simple poet: to be in a position to offer
to this instinct a greater object than that given by his rival, and the
only one he could give. All reality, we know, is below the ideal; all
that exists has limits, but thought is infinite. This limitation, to
which everything is subject in sensuous reality, is, therefore, a
disadvantage for the simple poet, while the absolute, unconditional
freedom of the ideal profits the sentimental poet. No doubt the former
accomplishes his object, but this object is limited; the second, I admit,
does not entirely accomplish his, but his object is infinite. Here I
appeal to experience. We pass pleasantly to real life and things from
the frame of mind in which the simple poet has placed us. On the other
hand, the sentimental poet will always disgust us, for a time, with real
life. This is because the infinite character has, in a manner, enlarged
our mind beyond its natural measure, so that nothing it finds in the
world of sense can fill its capacity. We prefer to fall back in
contemplation on ourselves, where we find food for this awakened impulse
towards the ideal world; while, in the simple poet, we only strive to
issue out of ourselves, in search of sensuous objects. Sentimental
poetry is the offspring of retirement and science, and invites to it;
simple poetry is inspired by the spectacle of life, and brings back life.

I have styled simple poetry a gift of nature to show that thought has no
share in it. It is a first jet, a happy inspiration, that needs no
correction, when it turns out well, and which cannot be rectified if ill
turned out. The entire work of the simple genius is accomplished by
feeling; in that is its strength, and in it are its limits. If, then, he
has not felt at once in a poetic manner--that is, in a perfectly human
manner--no art in the world can remedy this defect. Criticism may help
him to see the defect, but can place no beauty in its stead. Simple
genius must draw all from nature; it can do nothing, or almost nothing,
by its will; and it will fulfil the idea of this kind of poetry provided
nature acts in it by an inner necessity. Now, it is true that all which
happens by nature is necessary, and all the productions, happy or not, of
the simple genius, which is disassociated from nothing so much as from
arbitrary will, are also imprinted with this character of necessity;
momentary constraint is one thing, and the internal necessity dependent
on the totality of things another. Considered as a whole, nature is
independent and infinite; in isolated operations it is poor and limited.
The same distinction holds good in respect to the nature of the poet.
The very moment when he is most happily inspired depends on a preceding
instant, and consequently only a conditional necessity can be attributed
to him. But now the problem that the poet ought to solve is to make an
individual state similar to the human whole, and consequently to base it
in an absolute and necessary manner on itself. It is therefore necessary
that at the moment of inspiration every trace of a temporal need should
be banished, and that the object itself, however limited, should not
limit the flight of the poet. But it may be conceived that this is only
possible in so far as the poet brings to the object an absolute freedom,
an absolute fulness of faculties, and in so far as he is prepared by an
anterior exercise to embrace all things with all his humanity. Now he
cannot acquire this exercise except by the world in which he lives, and
of which he receives the impressions immediately. Thus simple genius is
in a state of dependence with regard to experience, while the sentimental
genius is forced from it. We know that the sentimental genius begins its
operation at the place where the other finishes its own: its virtue is to
complete by the elements which it derives from itself a defective object,
and to transport itself by its own strength from a limited state to one
of absolute freedom. Thus the simple poet needs a help from without,
while the sentimental poet feeds his genius from his own fund, and
purifies himself by himself. The former requires a picturesque nature, a
poetical world, a simple humanity which casts its eyes around; for he
ought to do his work without issuing from the sensuous sphere. If
external aid fails him, if he be surrounded by matter not speaking to
mind, one of two things will happen: either, if the general character of
the poet-race is what prevails in him, he issues from the particular
class to which he belongs as a poet, and becomes sentimental to be at any
rate poetic; or, if his particular character as simple poet has the upper
hand, he leaves his species and becomes a common nature, in order to
remain at any rate natural. The former of these two alternatives might
represent the case of the principal poets of the sentimental kind in
Roman antiquity and in modern times. Born at another period of the
world, transplanted under another sky, these poets who stir us now by
ideas, would have charmed us by individual truth and simple beauty. The
other alternative is the almost unavoidable quicksand for a poet who,
thrown into a vulgar world, cannot resolve to lose sight of nature.
I mean, to lose sight of actual nature; but the greatest care must be
given to distinguish actual nature from true nature, which is the subject
of simple poetry. Actual nature exists everywhere; but true nature is so
much the more rare because it requires an internal necessity that
determines its existence. Every eruption of passion, however vulgar, is
real--it may be even true nature; but it is not true human nature, for
true human nature requires that the self-directing faculty in us should
have a share in the manifestation, and the expression of this faculty is
always dignified. All moral baseness is an actual human phenomenon, but
I hope not real human nature, which is always noble. All the faults of
taste cannot be surveyed that have been occasioned in criticism or the
practice of art by this--confusion between actual human nature and true
human nature. The greatest trivialities are tolerated and applauded
under the pretext that they are real nature. Caricatures not to be
tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world
and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a
lower nature; and it enters into the very definition of a satirical poet:
but then a beauty by its own nature must sustain and raise the object,
and the vulgarity of the subject must not lower the imitator too much.
If at the moment he paints he is true human nature himself, the object of
his paintings is indifferent; but it is only on this condition we can
tolerate a faithful reproduction of reality. Unhappy for us readers when
the rod of satire falls into hands that nature meant to handle another
instrument, and when, devoid of all poetic talent, with nothing but the
ape's mimicry, they exercise it brutally at the expense of our taste!

But vulgar nature has even its dangers for the simple poet; for the
simple poet is formed by this fine harmony of the feeling and thinking
faculty, which yet is only an idea, never actually realized. Even in the
happiest geniuses of this class, receptivity will always more or less
carry the day over spontaneous activity. But receptivity is always more
or less subordinate to external impressions, and nothing but a perpetual
activity of the creative faculty could prevent matter from exercising a
blind violence over this quality. Now, every time this happens the
feeling becomes vulgar instead of poetical.

No genius of the simple class, from Homer down to Bodmer, has entirely
steered clear of this quicksand. It is evident that it is most perilous
to those who have to struggle against external vulgarity, or who have
parted with their refinement owing to a want of proper restraint. The
first-named difficulty is the reason why even authors of high cultivation
are not always emancipated from platitudes--a fact which has prevented
many splendid talents from occupying the place to which they were
summoned by nature. For this reason, a comic poet whose genius has
chiefly to deal with scenes of real life, is more liable to the danger
of acquiring vulgar habits of style and expression--a fact evidenced in
the case of Aristophanes, Plautus, and all the poets who have followed
in their track. Even Shakspeare, with all his sublimity, suffers us to
fall very low now and then. Again, Lope De Vega, Moliere, Regnard,
Goldoni worry us with frequent trifling. Holberg drags us down into
the mire. Schlegel, a German poet, among the most remarkable for
intellectual talent, with genius to raise him to a place among poets of
the first order; Gellert, a truly simple poet, Rabener, and Lessing
himself, if I am warranted to introduce his name in this category--this
highly-cultivated scholar of criticism and vigilant examiner of his own
genius--all these suffer in different degrees from the platitudes and
uninspired movements of the natures they chose as the theme of their
satire. With regard to more recent authors of this class, I avoid naming
any of them, as I can make no exceptions in their case.

But not only is simple genius exposed to the danger of coming too near to
vulgar reality; the ease of expression, even this too close approximation
to reality, encourages vulgar imitators to try their hand in poetry.
Sentimental poetry, though offering danger enough, has this advantage, to
keep this crowd at a distance, for it is not for the first comer to rise
to the ideal; but simple poetry makes them believe that, with feeling and
humor, you need only imitate real nature to claim the title of poet. Now
nothing is more revolting than platitude when it tries to be simple and
amiable, instead of hiding its repulsive nature under the veil of art.
This occasions the incredible trivialities loved by the Germans under the
name of simple and facetious songs, and which give them endless amusement
round a well-garnished table. Under the pretext of good humor and of
sentiment people tolerate these poverties: but this good humor and this
sentiment ought to be carefully proscribed. The Muses of the Pleisse, in
particular, are singularly pitiful; and other Muses respond to them, from
the banks of the Seine, and the Elbe. If these pleasantries are flat,
the passion heard on our tragic stage is equally pitiful, for, instead of
imitating true nature, it is only an insipid and ignoble expression of
the actual. Thus, after shedding torrents of tears, you feel as you
would after visiting a hospital or reading the "Human Misery" of
Saltzmann. But the evil is worse in satirical poetry and comic romance,
kinds which touch closely on every-day life, and which consequently, as
all frontier posts, ought to be in safer hands. In truth, he less than
any other is called on to become the painter of his century, who is
himself the child and caricature of his century. But as, after all,
nothing is easier than to take in hand, among our acquaintances, a comic
character--a big, fat man--and draw a coarse likeness of him on paper,
the sworn enemies of poetic inspiration are often led to blot some paper
in this way to amuse a circle of friends. It is true that a pure heart,
a well-made mind, will never confound these vulgar productions with the
inspirations of simple genius. But purity of feeling is the very thing
that is wanting, and in most cases nothing is thought of but satisfying a
want of sense, without spiritual nature having any share. A
fundamentally just idea, ill understood, that works of bel esprit serve
to recreate the mind, contributes to keep up this indulgence, if
indulgence it may be called when nothing higher occupies the mind, and
reader as well as writer find their chief interest therein. This is
because vulgar natures, if overstrained, can only be refreshed by
vacuity; and even a higher intelligence, when not sustained by a
proportional culture, can only rest from its work amidst sensuous
enjoyments, from which spiritual nature is absent.

Poetic genius ought to have strength enough to rise with a free and
innate activity above all the accidental hinderances which are
inseparable from every confined condition, to arrive at a representation
of humanity in the absolute plenitude of its powers; it is not, however,
permitted, on the other hand, to emancipate itself from the necessary
limits implied by the very idea of human nature; for the absolute only in
the circle of humanity is its true problem. Simple genius is not exposed
to overstep this sphere, but rather not to fill it entirely, giving too
much scope to external necessity, to accidental wants, at the expense of
the inner necessity. The danger for the sentimental genius is, on the
other hand, by trying to remove all limits, of nullifying human nature
absolutely, and not only rising, as is its right and duty, beyond finite
and determinate reality, as far as absolute possibility, or in other
terms to idealize; but of passing even beyond possibility, or, in other
words, dreaming. This fault--overstraining--is precisely dependent on
the specific property of the sentimental process, as the opposite defect,
inertia, depends on the peculiar operation of the simple genius. The
simple genius lets nature dominate, without restricting it; and as nature
in her particular phenomena is always subject to some want, it follows
that the simple sentiment will not be always exalted enough to resist the
accidental limitations of the present hour. The sentimental genius, on
the contrary, leaves aside the real world, to rise to the ideal and to
command its matter with free spontaneity. But while reason, according to
law, aspires always to the unconditional, so the sentimental genius will
not always remain calm enough to restrain itself uniformly and without
interruption within the conditions implied by the idea of human nature,
and to which reason must always, even in its freest acts, remain
attached. He could only confine himself in these conditions by help of a
receptivity proportioned to his free activity; but most commonly the
activity predominates over receptivity in the sentimental poet, as much
as receptivity over activity in the simple poet. Hence, in the
productions of simple genius, if sometimes inspiration is wanting, so
also in works of sentimental poetry the object is often missed. Thus,
though they proceed in opposite ways, they will both fall into a vacuum,
for before the aesthetic judgment an object without inspiration, and
inspiration without an object, are both negations.

The poets who borrow their matter too much from thought, and rather
conceive poetic pictures by the internal abundance of ideas than by the
suggestions of feeling, are more or less likely to be addicted to go thus
astray. In their creations reason makes too little of the limits of the
sensuous world, and thought is always carried too far for experience to
follow it. Now, when the idea is carried so far that not only no
experience corresponds to it--as is the case in the beau ideal--but also
that it is repugnant to the conditions of all possible experience, so
that, in order to realize it, one must leave human nature altogether, it
is no longer a poetic but an exaggerated thought; that is, supposing it
claims to be representable and poetical, for otherwise it is enough if it
is not self-contradictory. If thought is contradictory it is not
exaggeration, but nonsense; for what does not exist cannot exceed. But
when the thought is not an object proposed to the fancy, we are just as
little justified in calling it exaggerated. For simple thought is
infinite, and what is limitless also cannot exceed. Exaggeration,
therefore, is only that which wounds, not logical truth, but sensuous
truth, and what pretends to be sensuous truth. Consequently, if a poet
has the unhappy chance to choose for his picture certain natures that are
merely superhuman and cannot possibly be represented, he can only avoid
exaggeration by ceasing to be a poet, and not trusting the theme to his
imagination. Otherwise one of two things would happen: either
imagination, applying its limits to the object, would make a limited and
merely human object of an absolute object--which happened with the gods
of Greece--or the object would take away limits from fancy, that is,
would render it null and void, and this is precisely exaggeration.

Extravagance of feeling should be distinguished from extravagance of
portraiture; we are speaking of the former. The object of the feeling
may be unnatural, but the feeling itself is natural, and ought
accordingly to be shadowed forth in the language of nature. While
extravagant feelings may issue from a warm heart and a really poetic
nature, extravagance of portraiture always displays a cold heart, and
very often a want of poetic capacity. Therefore this is not a danger for
the sentimental poet, but only for the imitator, who has no vocation; it
is therefore often found with platitude, insipidity, and even baseness.
Exaggeration of sentiment is not without truth, and must have a real
object; as nature inspires it, it admits of simplicity of expression and
coming from the heart it goes to the heart. As its object, however, is
not in nature, but artificially produced by the understanding, it has
only a logical reality, and the feeling is not purely human. It was not
an illusion that Heloise had for Abelard, Petrarch for Laura, Saint Preux
for his Julia, Werther for his Charlotte; Agathon, Phanias, and
Peregrinus--in Wieland--for the object of their dreams: the feeling is
true, only the object is factitious and outside nature. If their thought
had kept to simple sensuous truth, it could not have taken this flight;
but on the other hand a mere play of fancy, without inner value, could
not have stirred the heart: this is only stirred by reason. Thus this
sort of exaggeration must be called to order, but it is not contemptible:
and those who ridicule it would do well to find out if the wisdom on
which they pride themselves is not want of heart, and if it is not
through want of reason that they are so acute. The exaggerated delicacy
in gallantry and honor which characterizes the chivalrous romances,
especially of Spain, is of this kind; also the refined and even
ridiculous tenderness of French and English sentimental romances of the
best kind. These sentiments are not only subjectively true, but also
objectively they are not without value; they are sound sentiments issuing
from a moral source, only reprehensible as overstepping the limits of
human truth. Without this moral reality how could they stir and touch so
powerfully? The same remark applies to moral and religious fanaticism,
patriotism, and the love of freedom when carried up to exaltation. As
the object of these sentiments is always a pure idea, and not an external
experience, imagination with its proper activity has here a dangerous
liberty, and cannot, as elsewhere, be called back to bounds by the
presence of a visible object. But neither the man nor the poet can
withdraw from the law of nature, except to submit to that of reason. He
can only abandon reality for the ideal; for liberty must hold to one or
the other of these anchors. But it is far from the real to the ideal;
and between the two is found fancy, with its arbitrary conceits and its
unbridled freedom. It must needs be, therefore, that man in general, and
the poet in particular, when he withdraws by liberty of his understanding
from the dominion of feeling, without being moved to it by the laws of
reason--that is, when he abandons nature through pure liberty--he finds
himself freed from all law, and therefore a prey to the illusions of
phantasy.

It is testified by experience that entire nations, as well as individual
men, who have parted with the safe direction of nature, are actually in
this condition; and poets have gone astray in the same manner. The true
genius of sentimental poetry, if its aim is to raise itself to the rank
of the ideal, must overstep the limits of the existing nature; but false
genius oversteps all boundaries without any discrimination, flattering
itself with the belief that the wild sport of the imagination is poetic
inspiration. A true poetical genius can never fall into this error,
because it only abandons the real for the sake of the ideal, or, at all
events, it can only do so at certain moments when the poet forgets
himself; but his main tendencies may dispose him to extravagance within
the sphere of the senses. His example may also drive others into a chase
of wild conceptions, because readers of lively fancy and weak
understanding only remark the freedom which he takes with existing
nature, and are unable to follow him in copying the elevated necessities
of his inner being. The same difficulties beset the path of the
sentimental genius in this respect, as those which afflict the career of
a genius of the simple order. If a genius of this class carries out
every work, obedient to the free and spontaneous impulses of his nature,
the man devoid of genius who seeks to imitate him is not willing to
consider his own nature a worse guide than that of the great poet. This
accounts for the fact that masterpieces of simple poetry are commonly
followed by a host of stale and unprofitable works in print, and
masterpieces of the sentimental class by wild and fanciful effusions,--a
fact that may be easily verified on questioning the history of
literature.

Two maxims are prevalent in relation to poetry, both of them quite
correct in themselves, but mutually destructive in the way in which they
are generally conceived. The first is, that "poetry serves as a means of
amusement and recreation," and we have previously observed that this
maxim is highly favorable to aridity and platitudes in poetical actions.
The other maxim, that "poetry is conducive to the moral progress of
humanity," takes under its shelter theories and views of the most wild
and extravagant character. It may be profitable to examine more
attentively these two maxims, of which so much is heard, and which are so
often imperfectly understood and falsely applied.

We say that a thing amuses us when it makes us pass from a forced state
to the state that is natural to us. The whole question here is to know
in what our natural state ought to consist, and what a forced state
means. If our natural state is made to consist merely in the free
development of all our physical powers, in emancipation from all
constraint, it follows that every act of reason by resisting what is
sensuous, is a violence we undergo, and rest of mind combined with
physical movement will be a recreation par excellence. But if we make
our natural state consist in a limitless power of human expression and of
freely disposing of all our strength, all that divides these forces will
be a forced state, and recreation will be what brings all our nature to
harmony. Thus, the first of these ideal recreations is simply determined
by the wants of our sensuous nature; the second, by the autonomous
activity of human nature. Which of these two kinds of recreation can be
demanded of the poet? Theoretically, the question is inadmissible, as no
one would put the human ideal beneath the brutal. But in practice the
requirements of a poet have been especially directed to the sensuous
ideal, and for the most part favor, though not the esteem, for these
sorts of works is regulated thereby. Men's minds are mostly engaged in a
labor that exhausts them, or an enjoyment that sets them asleep. Now
labor makes rest a sensible want, much more imperious than that of the
moral nature; for physical nature must be satisfied before the mind can
show its requirements. On the other hand, enjoyment paralyzes the moral
instinct. Hence these two dispositions common in men are very injurious
to the feeling for true beauty, and thus very few even of the best judge
soundly in aesthetics. Beauty results from the harmony between spirit
and sense; it addresses all the faculties of man, and can only be
appreciated if a man employs fully all his strength. He must bring to it
an open sense, a broad heart, a spirit full of freshness. All a man's
nature must be on the alert, and this is not the case with those divided
by abstraction, narrowed by formulas, enervated by application. They
demand, no doubt, a material for the senses; but not to quicken, only to
suspend, thought. They ask to be freed from what? From a load that
oppressed their indolence, and not a rein that curbed their activity.

After this can one wonder at the success of mediocre talents in
aesthetics? or at the bitter anger of small minds against true energetic
beauty? They reckon on finding therein a congenial recreation, and
regret to discover that a display of strength is required to which they
are unequal. With mediocrity they are always welcome; however little
mind they bring, they want still less to exhaust the author's
inspiration. They are relieved of the load of thought; and their nature
can lull itself in beatific nothings on the soft pillow of platitude. In
the temple of Thalia and Melpomene--at least, so it is with us--the
stupid savant and the exhausted man of business are received on the broad
bosom of the goddess, where their intelligence is wrapped in a magnetic
sleep, while their sluggish senses are warmed, and their imagination with
gentle motions rocked.

Vulgar people may be excused what happens to the best capacities. Those
moments of repose demanded by nature after lengthy labor are not
favorable to aesthetic judgment, and hence in the busy classes few can
pronounce safely on matters of taste. Nothing is more common than for
scholars to make a ridiculous figure, in regard to a question of beauty,
besides cultured men of the world; and technical critics are especially
the laughing-stock of connoisseurs. Their opinion, from exaggeration,
crudeness, or carelessness guides them generally quite awry, and they can
only devise a technical judgment, and not an aesthetical one, embracing
the whole work, in which feeling should decide. If they would kindly
keep to technicalities they might still be useful, for the poet in
moments of inspiration and readers under his spell are little inclined to
consider details. But the spectacle which they afford us is only the
more ridiculous inasmuch as we see these crude natures--with whom all
labor and trouble only develop at the most a particular aptitude,--when
we see them set up their paltry individualities as the representation of
universal and complete feeling, and in the sweat of their brow pronounce
judgment on beauty.

We have just seen that the kind of recreation poetry ought to afford is
generally conceived in too restricted a manner, and only referred to a
simple sensuous want. Too much scope, however, is also given to the
other idea, the moral ennobling the poet should have in view, inasmuch as
too purely an ideal aim is assigned.

In fact, according to the pure ideal, the ennobling goes on to infinity,
because reason is not restricted to any sensuous limits, and only finds
rest in absolute perfection. Nothing can satisfy whilst a superior thing
can be conceived; it judges strictly and admits no excuses of infirmity
and finite nature. It only admits for limits those of thought, which
transcends time and space. Hence the poet could no more propose to
himself such an ideal of ennobling (traced for him by pure (didactic)
reason) any more than the coarse ideal of recreation of sensuous nature.
The aim is to free human nature from accidental hinderances, without
destroying the essential ideal of our humanity, or displacing its limits.
All beyond this is exaggeration, and a quicksand in which the poet too
easily suffers shipwreck if he mistakes the idea of nobleness. But,
unfortunately, he cannot rise to the true ideal of ennobled human nature
without going some steps beyond it. To rise so high he must abandon the
world of reality, for, like every ideal, it is only to be drawn from its
inner moral source. He does not find it in the turmoil of worldly life,
but only in his heart, and that only in calm meditation. But in this
separation from real life he is likely to lose sight of all the limits of
human nature, and seeking pure form he may easily lose himself in
arbitrary and baseless conceptions. Reason will abstract itself too much
from experience, and the practical man will not be able to carry out, in
the crush of real life, what the contemplative mind has discovered on the
peaceful path of thought. Thus, what makes a dreamy man is the very
thing that alone could have made him a sage; and the advantage for the
latter is not that he has never been a dreamer, but rather that he has
not remained one.

We must not, then, allow the workers to determine recreation according to
their wants, nor thinkers that of nobleness according to their
speculations, for fear of either a too low physical poetry, or a poetry
too given to hyperphysical exaggeration. And as these two ideas direct
most men's judgments on poetry, we must seek a class of mind at once
active, but not slavishly so, and idealizing, but not dreamy; uniting the
reality of life within as few limits as possible, obeying the current of
human affairs, but not enslaved by them. Such a class of men can alone
preserve the beautiful unity of human nature, that harmony which all work
for a moment disturbs, and a life of work destroys; such alone can, in
all that is purely human, give by its feelings universal rules of
judgment. Whether such a class exists, or whether the class now existing
in like conditions answers to this ideal conception, I am not concerned
to inquire. If it does not respond to the ideal it has only itself to
blame. In such a class--here regarded as a mere ideal--the simple and
sentimental would keep each other from extremes of extravagance and
relaxation. For the idea of a beautiful humanity is not exhausted by
either, but can only be presented in the union of both.




THE STAGE AS A MORAL INSTITUTION.


Sulzer has remarked that the stage has arisen from an irresistible
longing for the new and extraordinary. Man, oppressed by divided cares,
and satiated with sensual pleasure, felt an emptiness or want. Man,
neither altogether satisfied with the senses, nor forever capable of
thought, wanted a middle state, a bridge between the two states, bringing
them into harmony. Beauty and aesthetics supplied that for him. But a
good lawgiver is not satisfied with discovering the bent of his people--
he turns it to account as an instrument for higher use; and hence he
chose the stage, as giving nourishment to the soul, without straining it,
and uniting the noblest education of the head and heart.

The man who first pronounced religion to be the strongest pillar of the
state, unconsciously defended the stage, when he said so, in its noblest
aspect. The uncertain nature of political events, rendering religion a
necessity, also demands the stage as a moral force. Laws only prevent
disturbances of social life; religion prescribes positive orders
sustaining social order. Law only governs actions; religion controls the
heart and follows thought to the source.

Laws are flexible and capricious; religion binds forever. If religion
has this great sway over man's heart, can it also complete his culture?
Separating the political from the divine element in it, religion acts
mostly on the senses; she loses her sway if the senses are gone. By what
channel does the stage operate? To most men religion vanishes with the
loss of her symbols, images, and problems; and yet they are only pictures
of the imagination, and insolvable problems. Both laws and religion are
strengthened by a union with the stage, where virtue and vice, joy and
sorrow, are thoroughly displayed in a truthful and popular way; where a
variety of providential problems are solved; where all secrets are
unmasked, all artifice ends, and truth alone is the judge, as
incorruptible as Rhadamanthus.

Where the influence of civil laws ends that of the stage begins. Where
venality and corruption blind and bias justice and judgment, and
intimidation perverts its ends, the stage seizes the sword and scales and
pronounces a terrible verdict on vice. The fields of fancy and of
history are open to the stage; great criminals of the past live over
again in the drama, and thus benefit an indignant posterity. They pass
before us as empty shadows of their age, and we heap curses on their
memory while we enjoy on the stage the very horror of their crimes. When
morality is no more taught, religion no longer received, or laws exist,
Medea would still terrify us with her infanticide. The sight of Lady
Macbeth, while it makes us shudder, will also make us rejoice in a good
conscience, when we see her, the sleep-walker, washing her hands and
seeking to destroy the awful smell of murder. Sight is always more
powerful to man than description; hence the stage acts more powerfully
than morality or law.

But in this the stage only aids justice. A far wider field is really
open to it. There are a thousand vices unnoticed by human justice, but
condemned by the stage; so, also, a thousand virtues overlooked by man's
laws are honored on the stage. It is thus the handmaid of religion and
philosophy. From these pure sources it draws its high principles and the
exalted teachings, and presents them in a lovely form. The soul swells
with noblest emotions when a divine ideal is placed before it. When
Augustus offers his forgiving hand to Cinna, the conspirator, and says to
him: "Let us be friends, Cinna! " what man at the moment does not feel
that he could do the same. Again, when Francis von Sickingen, proceeding
to punish a prince and redress a stranger, on turning sees the house,
where his wife and children are, in flames, and yet goes on for the sake
of his word--how great humanity appears, how small the stern power of
fate!

Vice is portrayed on the stage in an equally telling manner. Thus, when
old Lear, blind, helpless, childless, is seen knocking in vain at his
daughters' doors, and in tempest and night he recounts by telling his
woes to the elements, and ends by saying: "I have given you all,"--how
strongly impressed we feel at the value of filial piety, and how hateful
ingratitude seems to us!

The stage does even more than this. It cultivates the ground where
religion and law do not think it dignified to stop. Folly often troubles
the world as much as crime; and it has been justly said that the heaviest
loads often hang suspended by the slightest threads. Tracing actions to
their sources, the list of criminals diminish, and we laugh at the long
catalogue of fools. In our sex all forms of evil emanate almost entirely
from one source, and all our excesses are only varied and higher forms of
one quality, and that a quality which in the end we smile at and love;
and why should not nature have followed this course in the opposite sex
too? In man there is only one secret to guard against depravity; that
is, to protect his heart against wickedness.

Much of all this is shown up on the stage. It is a mirror to reflect
fools and their thousand forms of folly, which are there turned to
ridicule. It curbs vice by terror, and folly still more effectually by
satire and jest. If a comparison be made between tragedy and comedy,
guided by experience, we should probably give the palm to the latter as
to effects produced. Hatred does not wound the conscience so much as
mockery does the pride of man. We are exposed specially to the sting of
satire by the very cowardice that shuns terrors. From sins we are
guarded by law and conscience, but the ludicrous is specially punished on
the stage. Where we allow a friend to correct our morals, we rarely
forgive a laugh. We may bear heavy judgment on our transgressions, but
our weaknesses and vulgarities must not be criticised by a witness.

The stage alone can do this with impunity, chastising us as the anonymous
fool. We can bear this rebuke without a blush, and even gratefully.

But the stage does even more than this. It is a great school of
practical wisdom, a guide for civil life, and a key to the mind in all
its sinuosities. It does not, of course, remove egoism and stubbornness
in evil ways; for a thousand vices hold up their heads in spite of the
stage, and a thousand virtues make no impression on cold-hearted
spectators. Thus, probably, Moliere's Harpagon never altered a
usurer's heart, nor did the suicide in Beverley save any one from the
gaming-table. Nor, again, is it likely that the high roads will be safer
through Karl Moor's untimely end. But, admitting this, and more than
this, still how great is the influence of the stage! It has shown us the
vices and virtues of men with whom we have to live. We are not surprised
at their weaknesses, we are prepared for them. The stage points them out
to us, and their remedy. It drags off the mask from the hypocrite, and
betrays the meshes of intrigue. Duplicity and cunning have been forced
by it to show their hideous features in the light of day. Perhaps the
dying Sarah may not deter a single debauchee, nor all the pictures of
avenged seduction stop the evil; yet unguarded innocence has been shown
the snares of the corrupter, and taught to distrust his oaths.

The stage also teaches men to bear the strokes of fortune.