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Title: The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4)

Author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Translator: Francis Plumptre Beresford Osmaston

Release date: October 11, 2017 [eBook #55731]
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART, VOLUME 4 (OF 4) ***

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FINE ART
BY

G. W. F. HEGEL
TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY

F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS

VOL IV

LONDON

G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.

1920

CONTENTS OF VOL. IV

SUBSECTION III

THE ROMANTIC ARTS—continued

CHAPTER III

POETRY

Introduction 3

[Summary and contrast between poetry and the other particular arts. Its
relation to the other two romantic arts. Absence of all external
sensuous presence. Poetry appeals to imaginative vision. Not so direct
as sense-perception. Advantage over painting through its ability to
display facts in their historical succession or natural process. Far
profounder and more extended embrace of world of idea than in music;
due to its greater power of definition in speech and its use of tone
merely as a subordinate instrument. The content of poetry is the ideal
envisagement of imaginative content itself. Everything made
intelligible by language may form part of content, subject to the
condition that it is poetical. Analysis of what this condition implies.
The imagination of artist must be Contributive; distinction from mere
prose consciousness and thinking. In its entire independence of the
material of sense it may be defined as the universal art. The material is
the imagination, and as such conjoint with all the arts. It is, however,
not the only art open to philosophical review on this ground. It marks,
however, the commencement of the disintegration of Art, its bridge of
passage to the notion of religion and philosophical thought] 3
Subdivision of subject-matter 17

I. Poetical composition as distinguished from that of Prose 19
1. The poetical and prosaic composition 20
(a) The world of natural or prosaic fact relatively excluded. Primarily
what it deals with is the infinite domain of Spirit and the energies of its
life 21
(b) Distinction between poetical and prosaic conception 21
[(α) Poetical anterior to the prosaic form of artistic speech. It is the
original imaginative grasp of truth. Dates from first effort of man at
self-expression. Endeavours to make that expression of a higher virtue
than mere prose 22
(β) The kind of prose life from which poetry is separate postulates a
different kind of conception and speech. The finite categories of the
understanding applicable to the former. The ideal rationale of fact is

aimed at by poetry. Its affinity with and distinction from pure thought
23

(γ) Difference between the relation of poetic conception to prosaic in
early times and more modern, where the prosaic form of life has
become stereotyped in a definite system] 26
(c) The nature of the differentiation of poetical activity in different
ages and nations 26
[(α) It has no particular epoch of unique celebration. It embraces the
collective Spirit of man. It is conditioned by the outlook of various
nations and epochs 27
(β) Some of these have closer affinity with its essential spirit, e.g., the
Oriental in comparison with the Western nations, if we exclude Greece
27

(γ) Modern interest in Hellenic and certain portions of Oriental poetry]
28

2. The Art-product of poetry and prose 29
(a) The artistic composition of poetry generally 29
[(α) It must possess intrinsic unity. The action must be conceived as
that of particular men or women. There must be vital coalescence of
characters, events, and actions. Unity in the nature of a process and a
differentiation of parts which coalesce therein 29
(β) Nature of this organic differentiation and synthesis. Tendency of
Art to particularization. Delight in detail. Nature of its treatment of
such detail. Result, a secure self-subsistency 31
(γ) Substantive unity preserved. Display of particular features, despite
all opposition, must combine in a union of mysterious accord. The
unity is essential and organic. It is the soul of the entirety. Parallel in
musical trichord. Varied type of artistic form in the Epic, the Drama,
and the Lyric] 34
(b) History and oratory compared with the poetical product 38
[(α) The arts of history and oratory come into closest affinity with
poetical composition. History implies great ends, cannot rest content

with mere chronicles. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Tacitus.
Products of the art of language, but not entirely free art. The nature of
the historical content prohibits this. The prosaic element in the
historical age and the historical treatment defined 38
(β) Oratory appears to be closer to the freedom of Art. The orator
appeals to the whole man. It is directed to the enunciation of
principles. It is none the less almost wholly relative to the rule of
practical utility. Religious oratory. It is in the service of a collateral
purpose] 42
(c) The free poetical work of Art 47
[(α) The attitude of the poet in his work, to contingent and
insignificant fact and local conditions, actions, events, etc. 47
(β) The end of Art not practical as in oratory. Nor is it to edification.
Poems d'occasion 49
(γ) It is an essentially infinite (self-rounded) organism. Permeated with
a principle of unity. Independent of any one particular condition of
Life or Nature] 51
3. The creative impulse of the Poet 51
[(a) Less under restriction in respect to his medium. The problem
proposed in one respect more easy, and in another more difficult than
that of the other arts. Technical control of the medium which is easier
makes the demand for imaginative penetration the greater 52
(b) Being operative in the realm of imaginative idea itself poetry has to
guard against encroaching upon the spheres of religion, philosophy,
and the ordinary consciousness as such 53
(c) To a greater extent than in the other arts the poet has transfused the
external mode of envisagement, which he creates, with the vitality of
soul-life. Mohammedan poetry. The creative energy must be absolutely
free from all restrictions imposed by the material handled] 53

II. The Expression of Poetry 56
1. The poetical Conception 57

(a) Poetical conception in its origins 58
[In its origin not consciously distinct from the prosaic or scientific
consciousness. In general terms the poetic imagination is plastic.
Illustration of difference between the concrete poetical image and the
abstract concept] 58
(b) Distinction between poetic mode of conception and that of prose.
Language of poetical metaphor and imagery less accurate than the
definition of prosaic fact 61
(c) Exceptional difficulties which confront the poet of a world where
the distinction between ordinary prose life and imagination is
emphasised. Artificial appearance of his creations. Difficulty of
retaining spontaneous simplicity and freshness
2. Verbal Expression 63
(a) Poetical speech generally 64
[Another mode of speech necessitated by the fact that the world of
poetry and art in general should not be identical with that of ordinary
life, or that of science and religion] 65
(b) The means by which this is realized 65
[(α) Particular words and expressions only proper to poetry. Entitled to
borrow from language forms obsolete in ordinary speech. The
invention exercised in creating novel modes of utterance 66
(β) The relative order of words admits of change; how the licence in
this respect may be abused and degenerate into rhetoric and
declamation 66
(γ) The periods of poetical construction composed in accordance with
the ideality of the soul-experience embodied] 66
(c) Distinctions in the use of these means 66
[(α) Poetry in the age where poetry is the one revealer of spiritual
truth. Force of creative power and simplicity of diction most obvious
features. Creation of a poetic diction by Dante 66

(β) Distinction from above in an age where prose diction already
elaborated. Expression of poetry becomes more elaborate and
eventually more self-conscious and rhetorical. The poetry of Rome.
The satire. Spanish poetry 67
(γ) The nature of genuine poetical expression. Spontaneity above all
essential] 69
3. Versification.
[Only a superficial view would banish it. It is implied in the demand
that the medium should be elaborated by Art and that the realm entered
should be other than every-day life] 70
(a) Rhythmical Versification (that is, without rhyme)
[(α) Made by time-duration and the movement. Starting point in the
natural length and shortness of syllables. The distinctions of the sound
of words in consonants and vowels contribute the basis of this.
Description and illustration. Poetry regulates the accidental
interchange of various syllables and words. Time-duration. Nature of
dactyl, anapaest, etc. It further regulates the particular time-relations in
a series of verse-lines. The iambic metre, etc. Problem of time-beats in
the metre of the ancients. No necessity as in music for abstract time-
beat 74
(β) The accent and caesura. Every time-relation has its particular
accent. Particular feet ought not with abstract precision to be identical
with beginning and conclusion of single words. The caesura checks the
monotony of measure. Further independent verbal accent.
Fundamental influence on the measure of the poetical idea. Also a
definite type of content corresponds with the entire character of a
particular verse-measure. The use of hexameter, elegiacs, and iambics
in this respect 78
(γ) Rhythmical versification embraces the actual musical sound of
syllables and words. The stem-syllable in the Greek and Latin
languages. Aspects of the German language in this respect. In modern
languages the element of rhythm less room for display. This in itself
necessitates the alternative of rhyme as a resistant against the too
exclusive assertion of ideal content] 81

(b) Rhyme 84
[(α) Rhyme a necessary feature of romantic poetry. Closer
approximation to music. Reaction against the stringent character of
Roman poetry. Source of rhyme in Germanic languages 86
(β) Difference between two systems. Rhythmical versification supreme
in Hellenic poetry. Most important change effected that of the validity
of the national quantity in the older system. This replaced by the
intrinsic meaning of syllables and words. French and Italian poetry an
extreme example of the collapse of the former system. The necessity of
rhyme and its character analysed 86
(γ) The types of modern romantic poetry. Its alliteration, assonance,
and ordinary rhyme. Scandinavian poetry. Not necessary for assonant
words to come only at conclusion of line. Rhyme is the fulfilment of
alliteration and assonance. Pre-eminently the form of lyric poetry.
Examples] 92
(c) The union of rhythm and rhyme
[(α) Attempt made in modern times to return to the natural quantity of
syllables. Not generally successful. Overwhelming importance in
modern verse of intelligible significance and the accent thus asserted
95

(β) Not possible to retain the plastic consistency of the metrical
medium as secured by classical poetry. Modern languages do not
possess the stable quantitative basis 96
(γ) The combination equivalent to the absorption by modern
versification of the older system. The significance of the identical
repetition of the same time-measure. Modern imitation of sapphics and
alcaics based on a contradiction] 97

III. The Several Generic Types of Poetry 99
Introduction and Division of Subject 100
A. Epic Poetry 106
1. General character of Epic poetry 106

(a) Epigrams and Gnomes 106
(b) Philosophical didactic poems, Cosmogonies and Theogonies 108
(c) The genuine Epopaea 110
[(α) The saga, the bible of a folk. Not every national bible can rank as
Epos. Greeks possess no ancient religious books resembling Hindoo
literature 111
(β) Not necessarily composed in the heroic time itself. Homer. Views
expressed which belong to earlier times 112
(γ) Position of the epic poet. His work a free creation. He must feel at
home in the world he depicts. Objective independence of composition.
The work of one artist] 115
2. Particular Characteristics of true Epos 118
(a) The general World-condition of the Epos 119
[(α) A positive social state conjoined to primitive simplicity. Intuitive
sense of right the support of moral order. Vital human association with
nature and particular objects possessed. Heroic condition, e.g., that of
free individuality. Examples. Expresses entire horizon of national
condition 120
(β) The mirror must be of one particular people. The Hellenic spirit in
Homer. A foreign locale not necessarily prejudicial to artistic effect.
The remoteness to present ideas of the "Niebelungen Lied" 125
(γ) Main event of poem must be a deliberately conceived purpose. It
must imply collisions. The belligerent condition most pertinent. The
Odyssey not only an exception. Courage the fundamental interest.
Justification of such attitude] 128
(b) The individual Epic action 135
[(α) Must be one of individual vitality. Must appropriate form of an
event, and the happening of such. Analysis. Problem of an absolute
Epos. Mere biography not most complete subject-matter. "The Divine
Comedy" only partially an exception 134

(β) Question of human personality implied. Epic character must be a
totality. Achilles, the Cid, and other heroes, discussed. Circumstances
as active as persons. Illustrations 139
(γ) The form under which the intrinsic significance of the occurrence
proclaims itself, whether as ideal Necessity or disclosed spiritual
forces. Destiny. What it defines. General tone of sadness in the Epic.
Different modes of appearance. Poems of Ossian, and others. Loss of
original freshness in Latin poetry. Virgil] 143
(c) The Epos as unified totality 152
[(α) The unity of the assumed general background and the individuals
therein. Humanity displayed in its entire collective relation of all
interests and occupations. The individual event. The commencement of
the Iliad and Odyssey 153
(β) The difference between the epic mode of disclosure and that of the
Lyric or drama. Greater extension of range. In the epic work character
may give way to external condition. Objective nature of its exposition.
Motivisation of drama and the Epic entirely different. Examples from
Homer and modern poetry 157
(γ) Nature of unity of Epos. Though not of most importance essential
to artistic result. Insistence upon fundamental unity of the Homeric
poems. Epic unity within a national whole. Distinction from dramatic
action. The Idyll. The novel as the Epopaea of modern society] 164
3. The historical development of epic Poetry 172
(a) The Oriental Epos 174
[(α) Epos of Hindoos and Persians. The sense of the unity of the One
Substance 174
(β) Contrast between Hindoo and Persian Epos. The Ramajana and
Maha-Bharata 176
(γ) Hebrew Epic poetry] 176
(b) Epic poetry of Greece and Rome 178
[(α) Essential unity of Iliad and Odyssey. The ne plus ultra of
attainment. The cyclic poets 178

(β) Roman Epos cannot compare in quality with the Greek prototype]
179

(c) The Romantic Epos.
[The poems of Ossian. The Edda. National character of epic poems of
Middle Ages. "The Cid." The peculiar nature of Dante's "Divine
Comedy." The poems relating to Charlemagne, King Arthur, etc. The
revolt against Chivalry in Ariosto and Cervantes. The "Lysiad" of
Camoens. Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Klopstock's "Messias"] 180
B. Lyric Poetry 193
1. General character of lyric poetry 195
[(a) The content of lyric poetry 196
(α) Not merely translation of content from immediacy of experience.
Creation of object purified from the incidental mood. Deliverance thus
effected. Self-expression not the development of objective action. We
have the universal as such. The entire sphere of human belief, religion,
art, and to some extent scientific thought comprised as they fall into a
personal view of the world 190
(β) Aspect of particularity. The Eumenides chorus in the "Cranes" of
Ibicus. The Elegy and Epistle 197
(γ) Emphasis throughout on personal feeling. Parallel with genre
painting. Contingency of content. Growth of whole in temperament]
197

(b) The form of the same
[(α) Unity different from that of Epos. Mysterious intimacy of personal
mood. Approximates to Epos in heroic songs, ballads, and romances.
The Greek Anthology 199
(β) Poems d'occasion. Personal aspect. Pindaric Odes. Goethe.
Individual soul supplied focus of unity rather than positive reality 201
(γ) Point of departure an external occurrence either in personal
experience or that of others. Element of narrative as in songs of
Anacreon] 203

(c) The external culture condition of the Lyric. 200
[(α) Different from that of Epic. Not limited to one particular epoch,
but exceptionally displayed in modern times. Folk-songs and the lyric
poem 207
(β) Possesses a power of free expansion into all kinds of subject-
matter, a free recognition of imaginative conception no less than
artistic activity 210
(γ) The philosophical lyric poem. A false and a genuine style
compared. Schiller's poetry] 212
2. Particular aspects of the Lyric 213
(a) The lyric poet 214
[(α) The poet himself supplies the principle of combination. He is the
focus of unity 214
(β) Spontaneity of result. Sings because he cannot help it. His object
himself. Self-respect. Pindar and Klopstock 215
(γ) Creative in dealing with personal experience. Goethe a fine
example] 217
(b) The lyric work of art 217
[(α) The unity of the Lyric. Springs from memory or vivid association
of poet. The formal unity of self-conscious life. Mood must be defined
in its concreteness, not tend too much to generalization 218
(β) Nature of the progressive disclosure of content. The principle of the
Lyric is assimilation. Poems limited to local description. Mainly a
definition of emotional forces made vital in objects as seen by the
"inward eye." Episodes permissible. Passionate intensity in its freedom
219

(γ) External form of the Lyric. Variety of metres. Varied use of caesura.
Strophes which admit of much alternation, both as to length of line,
and their rhythmic structure. Musical sound of words and syllables.
Free use of assonance, alliteration and rhyme, especially the
diversified use of last-mentioned. Association with musical
accompaniment] 221

(c) Types of the genuine Lyric 225
[(α) Hymns, dithyrambs, paeans and psalms. Personal religious
emotion. Greek treatment of chorus. Psalms of Old Testament 225
(β) Personal life of poet the subject-matter. Not so much the subject as
the enthusiasm or personal note. Pindaric Odes. Horace. Klopstock 228
(γ) The song as such. A field of blossom ever starting anew. The
Oriental and Western type. Anacreon. Protestant hymns. Sonnet, elegy,
epistle, etc. Dithyrambic emotion of Schiller] 230
3. Historical evolution of the Lyric 235
(a) Oriental lyrical poetry
[Vital absorption in the object. Objective character as compared with
pure romantic. Hymns of exaltation. Metaphor, image, and simile
particularly favoured. Present in Chinese, Hindoo, Hebrew, Arab and
Persian poetry] 236
(b) The Lyric of the Greeks and Romans
[General character that of classic individuality. Image and metaphor
not so largely used. Emphasizes mainly on the sensuous verbal
quantity in the rhythm of its movement. The dance not unfrequently
attached. Point of departure hymns. Elegiac measure. The lyric of the
chorus. Pindar. Roman lyric less original] 238
(c) Romantic Lyric.
[In certain nations epic material treated as lyrical narrative. Lyric
composition of modern nations still pagan. In the Christian Middle
Ages. That based on the principle of Protestantism. Klopstock and his
influence] 242
C. Dramatic Poetry 248
1. The Drama as a poetic work of art 249
(a) The principle of dramatic poetry 249
[(α) Depends on conditions of collision, human passion, and
characters. Leads to action and resolution of conflict. Product of a
condition of cultured life 250

(β) Mediation between epic and lyric poetry. Has to bring before vision
action or event, but it is self-conscious personality which is the vital
force. Dramatic action must submit to a process of development. Has
to exhibit not so much lyrical emotion as situation. Action the executed
will recognized as such in its ultimate purpose. The external world
only borrowed in so far as it is bound to this purpose. More
concentrated than the Epic. Action so treated that it inevitably meets
with opposition. Nature of the divine forces operative. The Drama
propounds the vital energy of a principle of Necessity 250
(γ) The nature of the demand on the dramatic poet in respect to the
divine energy. The drama is the resolution of the one-sided aspect of
these powers, the self-stability whereof is disclosed in dramatic
character] 254
(b) Dramatic Composition 255
[(α) The unity as contrasted with the Epos and the Lyric. Unity of
place, time, and action. First no support to from Aristotle. Nature of
demand upon the imagination relative to fact of direct vision. Unity of
action alone invariable. Romantic drama less consistent than classical.
Examples from Shakespeare 256
(β) Mode of dénouement. Embrace of material in Epos more extensive.
Mean between that and lyrical poetry. True dramatic progression, a
continuous movement onwards to catastrophe. Possesses a beginning,
middle and end. Aristotle. Significance of acts and their number. In
English, French, and German drama generally five 261
(γ) Nature of means, e.g., dramatic diction, etc. Realistic mode of
expression as contrasted with one conventional to the theatre. Must
neither be too formal nor too unpolished or colloquial. Choral
interlude, monologue, and dialogue. Verse-measure mainly iambic] 264
(c) The relation of the dramatic composition to the Public 270
[(α) Distinct Public to cater for and under obligation to it. Fashion of
German writers to scorn the Public. Mistaken view. How far possible
to reproduce foreign or ancient drama 272
(β) Dramatis personae must be vital not merely personified interests.
Real emphasis on the collision involved. Goethe's "Iphigeneia" 273

(γ) Attitude of poet himself. The impression of the whole as the
product of one original creative force most important. Necessity that
the dramatic poet master the eternal and essential foundation of human
character and action. Worst case where he seeks to flatter a popular
prejudice. Reference to contemporary event. Aristophanes. Didactic
matter only admissible in so far as it is no bar to the freedom of the
entire artistic product] 275
2. The external Technique of a dramatic Composition 278 (a) The
reading or recitation of a dramatic work 280
[(α) True sensuous medium of drama the human voice. Modern plays
often impracticable in the theatre. Contrast of Greek drama in this
respect 280
(β) Plays written for perusal only. Theatrical reproduction a real test of
dramatic vitality. Question whether dramatic works should be printed
281

(γ) Perusal no sufficient test of the acting possibilities of a drama.
Recitation subject to the serious restriction that it is the expression of
one voice only] 283
(b) The art of the Actor 284
[(α) Among the Greeks acting affiliated to sculpture. Ancients added
music to declamation. Means of interpretation in motion of the body.
The dance. Plastic character of Greek performance 285
(β) Speech used solely as spiritual expression in modern acting.
Coalescence of actor's personality with his rôle. Facial expression.
Increase particularisation in modern character. Illustrations. Increase of
difficulties. Modern actor an artist] 286
(c) The theatrical art which is more independent of Poetry 289
[(α) Plays written for the display of the particular talent of actors. The
Italian commedia dell' arte. French attitude to audience 289
(β) Modern opera. Luxurious display of scenic accessories. Schiller's
"Maid of Orleans." Mozart's "Magic Flute" 291
(γ) The Ballet. The proper subordination of the dance] 292

3. Types of dramatic poetry and the chief phases of their historical
development 292
(a) The principle of Tragedy, Comedy, and the Play 293
[(α) The principle as associated with tragedy in its essential and
primitive form. The content of tragic action supplied by spiritual forces
which carry with them their own justification, e.g., love of husband,
wife, parents, or children, patriotism, social life, etc. The substance in
which the greatness and stability of the tragic hero consists. Theme of
primitive tragedy generally the godlike in its mundane character.
Forces realized as the determinate aim of human pathos. A collision in
which both aspects are justified from one point of view. Tragic
resolution of division. Meaning of Aristotle's dictum that tragedy
excites and purifies fear and pity. Sense of reconciliation 295
(β) In Tragedy what is eternally substantive is vindicated under a mode
of reconciliation. In Comedy the purely personal experience retains the
mastery throughout. Nature of social basis of comedy. The comic. The
conception of it in Molière and Aristophanes. Requires a resolution
even more strongly than tragedy 301
(γ) The Satyric drama. Plautus. The modern dramatic play. Illustrations
from classical drama. Boundary lines fluctuate more than in the case of
genuine tragedy and comedy. Tendency to pass from poetic form
altogether. Theatrical pieces exhibited for mere display of histrionic
talent or psychological analysis, or as a mere social relaxation] 305
(b) The difference between ancient and modern Drama 308
[(α) No genuine Oriental dramatic art. Principle of individual freedom.
Origins among Hindoos and Chinese 308
(β) True beginning among the Hellenes. The universal and substantive
content of the end, which individuals seek to achieve. Exceptional plot
and intrigue and varied display of individual character not emphasized
309

(γ) In modern drama it is rather the destiny of some particular
character under exceptional circumstances which forms the subject-
matter. Interest directed not so much to ethical vindication and destiny
as to the isolation of the individual and his conditions. Crime as a

motive not excluded. Formal greatness of character demanded. Variety
of characterization, and maze of plot and intrigue. In tragedy further
the paramount presence of a more exalted order of the world,—
whether conceived as Providence or Fatality,—accepted] 310
(c) The concrete development of dramatic poetry and its types 312
[(α) Greek drama. Roman drama an attenuated reflection. Survey
limited to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes. Background of
ancient tragedy the heroic condition. Analysis of modes under which
ethical content of human action asserted. The unsevered consciousness
of the godlike and the combating human action, presented under the
form of chorus and heroic figures. Significance of chorus. Opposition
between social obligation and private sense of duty. Antigone. Modern
conception of guilt and innocence no place in Greek tragedy in strict
sense. Final end reconciliation of forces of human action. Such a
dénouement not merely an ethical issue. Contrast between such and the
Justice of the Greek Epos. Illustrations. Antigone. Œdipus. Orestes.
Conception of old classical Comedy. The laughter of the Olympian
gods made present in man. Aristophanes] 312
(β) Modern dramatic art
[(i) The ends which ought to come into the process of the action as the
content of the characters. Borrowed from the concrete world of
religious and social life. Not however, the particular ethical forces as
of individuals which assert them, e.g., Christ, the saints, kings, vassals,
and members of ruling families. Features of the private life accepted
not within scope of ancient drama. Personal love, honour, etc. make an
exclusive appeal. Faust. Wallenstein. Generally it is the inner
experience of soul-life which demands satisfaction. Comparison of
problem of Hamlet with that of the Choephorae.
(ii) Nature of characters and collisions. Conflict abides essentially in
the character itself. Abstract characterization of French and Italian
poetry, also Spanish. In contrast to this that of the English, and above
all Shakespeare. Goethe and Schiller. Vacillation of character. "King
Lear." **(iii) Nature of tragic issue. Justice of more abstract nature
than in ancient tragedy. The issue as the effect of misfortune. "Romeo
and Juliet," a kind of unhappy blessedness in misfortune. Social plays

the link between tragedy and comedy. As a rule the triumph of
ordinary morality celebrated. Modern comedy. Question whether folly
is ridiculous only to others, or to the comic character also. The second
type mainly that of Aristophanes, the first that of Molière. Invention of
the intrigue or intricate plot. Comparison of Shakespeare's comedy
with that of Aristophanes] 330

Final Summary and Conclusion 348

THIRD PART

THE SYSTEM OF THE PARTICULAR ARTS
SUBSECTION III

THE ROMANTIC ARTS

(CONTINUED)

CHAPTER III

POETRY

INTRODUCTION

I

The temple of classical architecture demands a god, who resides therein.
Sculpture exhibits the same in plastic beauty, and confers forms on the
material it employs for this purpose, which do not in their nature remain
external to what is spiritual, but are the form itself immanent in the defined

content. The corporeality, however, and sensuousness, no less than the ideal
universality of the sculptured figure, are opposed on the one hand to
subjective ideality, and in part to the particularity of the individual, in
whose element the content of the religious, no less than also the worldly
life, must secure reality by virtue of a novel form of art. This mode of
expression, which is of subjective import, and at the same time
particularized in its characterization, the art of painting itself contributes
under the principle of the plastic arts. In other words it subordinates the
realistic expression of form to the more ideal presentment of colour, and
makes the expression of the ideality of soul the central point[1] of the
presentment. The universal sphere, however, in which these arts are
motived, the one in the ideal of symbolism, the other in the plastic ideal, the
third in the romantic type, is the sensuous or external form of spirit and
natural objects.
The spiritual content possesses, however, as essentially appertinent to the
ideality of consciousness, a determinate existence which is for this ideality
at the same time foreign to the medium itself of the external appearance and
envisagement presented to it by material form. From this foreign element it
is further necessary that it removes its conceptions in order to place them in
a realm which, in respect to material no less than the mode of expression, is
independently of an ideal or subjective character. This was the forward step
which we saw music make, in so far as it embodied pure ideality and
subjective emotion in the configurations of essentially resonant sound rather
than in visible forms. It, however, passed by this very means into a further
extreme, that is, an ideal mode of concentration not fully explicit, whose
content in musical tones itself only found symbolic expression. For tone
taken by itself is without content, and has its definition in the numerical
relations, so that what is qualitative in the spiritual content no doubt
generally corresponds to these quantitative relations which are expressed in
essential differences, oppositions, and mediation, but in its qualitative
determinacy is not entirely able to receive its impression in musical tone. If
this aspect is not wholly to fail the art of music must, by reason of its
onesidedness, summon to its assistance the more definite articulation of
language, and requires for its more secure attachment to particularity and
the characteristic expression of the content a text, without which it is unable
to complete fully the ideality which is poured forth by means of musical
tones.

By virtue of this expression of ideas and emotions, the abstract ideality of
music receives a clearer and more secure exposition. At the same time what
we have here unfolded by its means is, to a certain extent, not the point of
view of idea and the artistic mode adapted to its expression, but merely the
emotional life as it accompanies the same; also in part we find that here,
too, music entirely divests itself of fusion with the verbal text in order to
develop its own movement without restraint in the world of tone simply.
For this reason the realm of idea, which is unable to remain under I such a
more purely abstract mode of ideal intensity, and seeks a configuration in a
world which embraces its one homogeneous and concrete reality, breaks
away on its part likewise from the bond of music, and in the exclusive art of
poetry discovers the adequate realization it demands.
Poetry, in other words the art of human speech, is the third or final step, the
totality, which unites and embraces in a yet higher sphere, in the sphere of
the very life of Spirit itself,[2] the two extremes of the plastic arts and music.
For on the one hand poetry contains just as music does the principle which
apprehends an ideal content in its ideality, the principle which in
architecture, sculpture, and painting is lost, or at most incompletely
asserted. And on the other hand it expatiates itself, under the modes of ideal
conception, intuition, and feeling simply, in an objective world, which does
not entirely destroy the defined forms of sculpture and painting, and is
capable of unfolding all the conditions of an event, a succession or
interchange of emotional states, passions, conceptions, and the exclusive
course of human action with more completeness than any other art.
2. But in a still more intimate way the art of poetry constitutes a third or
final term in its relation to painting and music regarded as the romantic arts.
(a) One reason of this is that its principle is that generally of an intelligence
which has nothing further to do with gross matter as such, seeking, as is the
case with architecture, to transform it through symbolism to an environment
related analogically to spiritual life, or as in the case of sculpture in order to
implant upon material substance the natural form congenial to such life
under the spatial condition of its expression. What the end is now is to
express immediately for mind the manifestations of Spirit with all its ideas
of imagination and art, without setting forth their external and visible bodily
presence. And a further reason consists in this, that poetry is able to grasp in
the form of ideality itself and with a far greater wealth than is possible for

music or painting, not merely the innermost actuality of conscious life, but
also what is particular and individual in external existence, and equally able
to contrast such facts in the complete diversity of their specific traits and
accidental peculiarities.
(b) The art of poetry is, however, as totality, also again, from another point
of view, essentially to be distinguished from the above-mentioned arts
whose fundamental qualities it thus in a measure combines.
(α) In this respect, if we compare it with painting, the latter art is throughout
at an advantage, where it is of importance to bring before our senses a
content under the condition of its external appearance. It is true no doubt
that poetry is able by various means to envisualize objects precisely in the
way that for the imagination generally the principle of objectification is
made real to our intuitive sense. But in so far as conceptive power, in the
element of which poetry pre-eminently moves, is of a spiritual nature and
implies the presence of the universality of thought, it is incapable of
attaining the definition of sensuous perception. On the other hand, the
varied traits which poetry brings together, in order to make the concrete
form of a content visible, do not fall as with painting into one and the same
totality, which is set before us wholly as a simultaneous appearance of all
its details, but they break apart, inasmuch as the imagination can only give
us the complexity it contains under the form of succession. This is,
however, only a defect from the sensuous point of view, a defect which
reason is able in its own way to rectify. That is to say, inasmuch as human
speech, even in the case where it endeavours to summon before our sight a
concrete object, is not concerned with the sensuous apprehension of an
immediate external object, but always with the ideal relation, the mental
intuition, for this reason the particular characteristics, albeit they are set
before us in a series, are nevertheless fused together in the element of one
essentially homogeneous spirit, which is able to qualify the effect of
succession, to bring the varied array into one picture, and to secure and
enjoy this picture in imaginative contemplation. Moreover, this deficiency
of sensuous realization and objective definition, when we contrast poetry
with painting, brings as a contrary result the possibility of an incalculable
superfluity of material. For inasmuch as the poetic art in painting restricts
itself to a determinate space, and even more to a distinct moment in a
situation or action, for this reason it is prevented from portraying an object

in its entire ideal profundity no less than in the extension of its temporal
development. But what is true is throughout concrete in the sense that it
comprises within its embrace a unity of essential determinations. In its
phenomenal appearance, however, these are not merely unfolded as a co-
existent spatial phenomenon but in a temporal series as a history, whose
course painting is only able to present in a relatively inadequate manner.
Even in the case of every stalk, every tree, each has in this sense its history,
a change, sequence, and exclusive whole of varied conditions. And this is
even more true of the sphere of spirit, which can only be exhaustively
portrayed as veritable spirit in phenomenal guise when it is set before our
imagination as such a process.
(β) We have already seen that poetry possesses for its external medium that
of tone in common with music. The wholly external, or, as we might say in
the false sense of the expression, the objective material in the progressive
series of the particular arts finally vanishes in the subjective medium of
sound, which is divested of all visibility, and which suffers an ideal content
only to be apprehended by a conscious state independent of sight.[3] For
music, however, the configuration of musical tone as such is the essential
end. For although the soul in the course and movement of melody and its
harmonic relations presents what is ideal in objects, or its own ideal
content, to the emotional life; yet the ideality thus presented is not pure
ideality, but the human soul interwoven in the closest way with the musical
tone as its expression, and the configuration of such musical expression
which confers on music its true character. So much is this the case that
music receives its independent position as an art just in proportion as the
animation given by it to the emotional life is more emphasized in the world
of pure music than in that of man's ordinary spiritual activity.[4] But for this
very reason it is only to a relative degree capable of reproducing the variety
of spiritual ideas and intuitions, the entire extension of the ideal wealth of
conscious life: it remains restricted to the more abstract universality of all
that it grasps as content, and the more indefinite manifestations of our
emotion.
In the like degree, then, that mind (Geist) elaborates the more abstract
universality in a concrete whole of idea, ends, actions, and events, and no
less contributes to its conformation the particularizing perception, it not
only forsakes the subjective life of mere emotion and builds up that life into

an unfolded realm of objective reality in this case, too, within the ideal
world of the imagination itself, it is compelled, by virtue of the nature of
such transformation, to forsake the attempt to express the new realm thus
secured solely and exclusively by means of tone relations. Precisely as the
medium of sculpture is too poor to express the more ample content that it is
the function of the art of painting to call into life, so too the conditions of
musical tone and melodic expression are unable to realize fully the
imaginative pictures of the poet. For these in part possess the ideas more
accurately defined to consciousness and, in part, the form of external
appearance impressed on the inner sense of perceptive reason. Spirit
consequently withdraws its content from musical tone as such, and declares
itself through words, which it is true do not entirely forsake the element of
sound, but sink to the purely external sign of the communication. In other
words, by means of this repletion with spiritual ideas, musical tone becomes
the voice of articulate words; language, in its turn, is diverted from an end
in itself to a means of ideal expression which has lost its independent self-
subsistancy. This constitutes in fact what we have already established as the
essential difference between music and poetry. The content of the art of
speech is the collective art of the world of ideas elaborated by the
imagination, the spiritual which remains at home in its vision, which
remains in this ideal realm, and, even in its movement toward an objective
world, is only conscious of the same as a symbol that differs from its own
conscious content. In music art reproduces the penetration of Spirit in a
sensuously apparent and present form. In poetry it even forsakes the
element of musical tone and articulation opposed to it, at least to the extent
that this musical tone is no longer reclothed in fully adequate externality
and the exclusive expression of that content. The ideal no doubt is
expressed, but it fails to discover its real existence in the sensuous medium
of tone, despite the fact that it is of a more ideal character; this it discovers
exclusively in its own essential content, by virtue of which it expresses the
content of mind as it is realized in the ideality of the imagination simply as
such.
(c) In the third place, and finally, if we consider the specific character of
poetry relatively to this distinction between music and painting, and we
may include with it the other plastic arts, we shall find the same simply to
consist in the subordination of the mode under which all poetical content is
envisaged and configured by the medium of sense. In other words, when

tone, as it does in the art of music, or for that matter, colour as in that of
painting, no longer essentially recovers and expresses the entire content, in
that case the musical treatment of the composition under its aspects of time,
no less than those of harmony and melody, drops away; we have left us
merely the generalized configuration of the time-measure of syllables and
words, to which we may add rhythm, euphony, and the like. And further, it
is to be noted that we have this, not in the sense of a genuine medium for
the content, but rather as a mode of externality which is accidental, and
which only receives an artistic form, because art cannot permit any mode of
its external manifestation whatever to be entirely a question of accidental
caprice.
(α) In connection with this withdrawal of the spiritual content from the
sensuous medium we are at once met with the question what it is then
which, under such a view, constitutes the actual externality or objectivity in
poetry, that of tone being thus excluded. The answer to this is simple. It is
the ideal envisagement and imaginative content itself. We have here
spiritual forms substituted for sensuous, and supply a configurative
material, such as we met with before in marble, bronze, colour, or musical
tones. In other words, we must guard ourselves from such an inadequate
statement of the facts as that ideas and imagery are nothing more or less
than the content of poetry. This is unquestionably true in a sense, as we
shall demonstrate more closely later on. Despite this, however, we are
equally justified in asserting that idea, imagery, emotion, and the like are
specific modes, under which every content in poetry is subsumed and
manifested; and consequently, that is, owing to the fact that the sensuous
aspect of the communication remains throughout a purely accidental one[5]
—it is these forms which supply the real material which the poet has to
elaborate artistically. No doubt the fact, the content, must in poetry, as in
other arts, receive its due objectification for spirit; objectivity in this sense,
however, is the exchange of what was previously an external reality for one
that is ideal; one which receives an existence exclusively in conscious life
itself, as something conceived or imagined exclusively by mind. Mind is
here on its own ground objective to itself, and it suffers the medium of
speech merely as a means, that is to say, partly as one of communication,
and partly as one of immediate externality, from which, as from the pure
symbol merely, it is withdrawn throughout from itself into itself. For this
reason, in the case of genuine poetry, it is of no consequence whether a

poetical work be read in private or listened to; and for the same reason it
can also, without essential depreciation of its value, be translated into other
tongues, be transferred from versification into prose, and thereby
transmitted in tonal relations of an entirely different character.[6]
(β) In the second place the question presents itself as to the nature of the
object for which the ideal concept is employed in poetry. We answer that it
is thus used relatively to essential truth in everything of interest to Spirit;
not merely, that is, relatively to what is substantive in the same in the
universality of its symbolic significance or classical differentiation, but
equally to all that is at the same time specific and particular, in short, to
practically everything in and with which mind is in any way interested and
concerned. The art of language, consequently, both in respect to its content
and the mode under which that content is made explicit, possesses a field of
immeasurable compass, wholly incomparable with that of the other arts.
Every content, every sort of spiritual or natural fact, event, history, deed,
action, all conditions, whether ideal or external, fall within the domain and
configurative powers of poetry.
(γ) Material of this most varied character is not, however, made poetical
merely by reason of the fact that it is in a general way the content of idea.
Ordinary consciousness is able to elaborate precisely the same content in
the field of ideas, and to particularize concepts without creating any
poetical result. We recognized this fact when we called the concept of mind
merely the material or medium, which only receives a form adapted for
poetry, in so far as it partakes of a novel configuration by virtue of art. In
precisely the same way mere colour and tone in their immediacy are not as
such the colour or tone of a painter or a musician. We may in a general way
describe the distinction by stating that it is not the idea as such, but the
imagination of the artist which creates a poetical content, under conditions,
that is, in which the imagination grasps the same content in such a way that
it is itself therewith associated in language, words and their more beautiful
conjunction as human speech, just as in the other arts we find it present in
the architectonic form; the plastic of sculpture, that adapted to painting, or
musical tones and harmony.
A further necessary limitation of the art's appearance is this that the content
must, on the one hand, not be embraced in relations applicable to mere
thinking, whether that of science or speculative philosophy, nor further in

the form of inarticulate emotion, or with a clarity and self-sufficiency which
appeals exclusively to the organs of sense;[6] neither, in another direction,
must it suffer the idea to pass entirely into what we may in general terms
describe as the contingency, divisions, and relativity of finite reality. The
imagination of the poet in this respect must maintain a middle course
between the abstract universality of pure thinking and the concrete
corporeality of material objects, in so far as we are acquainted with the
latter in the productions of the plastic arts. Furthermore such an art must
generally conform to the requirements we have, in an early section of this
work, insisted as essential to every art-product. In other words, the art itself
must find in its content the adequate object of its appearance, must
elaborate everything, which it embraces, so far as the interest appeals to the
intelligence simply,[7] as an essentially independent and self-exclusive
world. Only in so far as it does this is the demand of art satisfied, and the
content thereof becomes, by virtue of the specific mode of its manifestation,
an organic whole, which in its parts presents the appearance of a limited
association and ideal synthesis, while at the same time, as contrasted with
the world of accidental subordinations, its consistency is one of essential
freedom, a whole made explicit through itself.
3. The last point to which we must in conclusion draw attention in respect
to this distinction between poetry and the other arts is connected with the
different mode under which the imagination of the poet substantiates its
ideas in the objective medium of its exposition. The arts hitherto considered
were entirely serious in their attachment to the material of sense, a medium
in which they themselves were operative, in so far as they merely bestowed
on their content a form, which could be throughout accepted and elaborated
by means of conglomerations of material substance, whether bronze,
marble, or wood, or the media of colour and tones.[8] In a certain sense, no
doubt, poetry also has to meet a condition somewhat similar. That is to say,
in poetical composition we must not overlook the fact that its results have to
be intelligible to mind by means of the communication of human speech.
But we shall find none the less that the situation in the two cases is
essentially altered.
(a) Otherwise expressed, by reason of the importance pertaining to the
material aspect in the plastic arts and music, we find that, as a result of the
defined restrictions of this material, only a limited number of conceptions

can be fully reproduced in a particularized form of reality such as stone,
colour, and tone: the content therefore and the possibilities of artistic
composition are narrowed within very definable limits. It was on account of
this fact that we were able to associate closely and exclusively every one of
these specific arts with one particular form of artistic creation pre-eminently
adapted to it. In this way the form of symbolism was appropriate to
architecture, the classical to sculpture, and the romantic to painting and
music. It is no doubt true that the particular arts in both directions from and
toward their proper domain tended to pass over into the other forms. We
took account of this fact when we found it possible to refer to a classic and
romantic style of architecture, a symbolical and Christian type of sculpture,
and even used the term classic in connection with painting and music.
Departures such as these from the prevailing type were, however, merely
experimental essays which prepared the way in subordination to a new type
rather than its culminating effort; or they showed us how one art tended to
pass beyond its true limits in seeking to grasp a content or a relation to its
material of a type that only a further art development could adequately
elaborate. Generally speaking, we have seen that architecture has least
resource in the expression of its content; in sculpture there is already an
increase of possibility, which is further extended to its widest range[9] by
painting and music. And the reason of this is that in proportion as the
ideality and particularization under all its aspects by the external medium is
made more explicit the variety of the content and of the forms it receives
also increases.
Poetry, on the other hand, casts itself free of all subordination to the
material of sense, at least to this extent, that in the definition of external or
objective expression no reason whatever remains why it should restrict
itself to specific content or any limitation to its power of composition and
reproduction. It is therefore exclusively united to no specific art type; rather
we may define it as the universal art, which is capable of reclothing and
expressing under every conceivable mode every content that can possibly
enter into or proceed from the imagination of man. And it can do this
because its material is nothing more or less than the imagination itself,
which is the universal root and ground of all the particular arts and their
specific types.

We have already, in another connection, when concluding our discussion of
the particular artistic types, come across what was practically the same
thing. What we sought for, then, in our conclusion was that art in one of its
types should make itself independent of that mode of representation
properly called specific, remaining thereby predominant above the entire
sphere in which such a totality of particularization is reproduced. An
elaboration so comprehensive is among all the particular arts by the very
nature of the case only possible to poetry. Its realization is effected through
the development of poetical creation in part by means of the actual
reconstitution of every particular type, and partly by the liberation of the
mode of conception and its content from the boundaries fixed for it in the
essentially exclusive types of conception, whose character we have
severally defined as symbolical, classical, and romantic.
(b) The above considerations will further serve to justify the position,
which, in the course of our inquiry, regarded as the development of a
philosophy, we previously assigned to the art of poetry. In other words by
reason of the fact that poetry is, to a degree quite impossible to any other
mode of artistic production, concerned with the universal simply as such in
Art, we might appear to have some reason for insisting that it marks the
commencement of an investigation in the full sense of the word
philosophical, and only from such a starting point can we enter into the
sphere of particularization, in which we find the series of the other arts as
limited and determined by their specific sensuous medium. Looking back,
however, at the result arrived at in our investigation of the particular art
types we shall find that the course of philosophical evolution consisted,
first, in an increased penetration of the ideal content, and, from another
point of view, in the demonstration that originally Art sets forth in the
search, then in the discovery of and finally with an advance beyond that
content compatible with its powers. This notion of the beautiful and Art
must enforce itself in the arts themselves. The starting-point of our inquiry,
therefore, was architecture, in which we found merely an impulse toward
the complete representation of what pertains to Spirit in a material medium.
This is so much the case that it is only through sculpture that art first attains
to a genuine interfusion of ideality with the medium; and further that only
in the arts of painting and music do we reach the stage where, by virtue of
the ideal and subjective character of their content, we find the perfected
fusion effected no less under the aspect of conception than that of practical

execution in the medium accepted. This process culminates most decisively
in poetry, by virtue of the fact that the very nature of its objective
realization can only be apprehended as an effort to draw apart from and
cancel the material of sense rather than one of reproduction which does not
as yet venture to clothe itself and move in the objective medium of sense-
perception. In order, however, to make this liberation intelligible in
philosophical terms it is of importance that we have already disposed of the
question what it is from which art undertakes to liberate itself. This question
stands in close relation to the fact that poetry is essentially capable of
embracing the entirety of intelligible content and artistic modes of
expression. We may add further that we have viewed this as the acceptance
of a totality, which can only be interpreted philosophically as the abrogation
of limitation in particularity. Our previous consideration of what we mean
by things that are one-sided would be involved in such an exposition, the
self-exclusive character of such one-sidedness being cancelled by such a
totality.
It is only through the course of such an exposition that we can effectively
demonstrate that poetry is the specific art in which a point is reached which
marks the beginning of the disintegration of art itself, a point at which the
philosophical consciousness discovers its bridge of passage to the notion of
religion as such, as also to the prose of scientific thought. The boundary
lines of the realm of beauty are, as we have already seen, on the one hand
the prose of finite condition and our ordinary conscious life, starting from
which Art makes its effort in the direction of truth, and, on the other, of the
loftier spheres of religion and science, from which it passes over into a
comprehension of the Absolute till more emancipate from all material
association.
(c) Despite therefore the completeness with which the art of poetry
reproduces, under a mode of objectification that is most ideal, the entire
totality of Beauty, nevertheless intelligence is able to discover even here too
in this final domain of art a residue of defect. We may for this purpose
within our art-system directly contrast the poetic art with that of
architecture. In other words architecture was still unable to subordinate the
external material to the ideal content sufficiently to clothe the same in a
form adequate to mind; poetry on the other hand carries the process of
negating its sensuous medium so far that instead of transforming that which

stands in opposition to gross spatial matter, namely tone, as architecture
does with its material into a significant symbol, it rather reduces it to a mere
sign of no significance. But by doing so it destroys the fusion of spiritual
ideality with external existence, so thoroughly that to this extent it ceases to
be compatible with the original notion of Art. In other words it comes
dangerously near to bidding goodbye to the region of sense altogether,
remaining wholly absorbed in that of ideality. The fair mean between these
extremes of architecture and poetry is secured by sculpture, painting, and
music. Every one of these arts not merely still reproduces the spiritual
content completely in a medium borrowed from the objective world, but
also leaves us with that which lies open to our senses, no less than our
intelligence. For although painting and music, regarded as romantic arts,
attach themselves to a medium already more ideal, they do none the less
supply the immediacy of objective existence, which, however, in this
increase of ideality, shows indications of disappearance, while again from
the opposite point of view they prove themselves, through their media of
colour and tone, more profuse in fulness of particularization and manifold
configuration than is required from the material of sculpture.
No doubt the art of poetry in its turn also endeavours, as a set-off to this
defect, to place the objective world before us with a breadth and variety
which even painting, at least in a single composition, fails to secure: none
the less this comprehensiveness remains throughout merely a realization
confined to consciousness itself; and, if it so happens that poetry, in
response to a demand for more material artistic realization, attempts to
increase the impression on our senses, it is only able to do this by either
borrowing these effects from music and painting, in order to secure artistic
means otherwise foreign to it; or it is forced, if it seeks retain its genuine
character, to employ these sister arts only under a subordinate relation of
service, while the main stress is laid on the ideas of conscious life, the
imagination which appeals to the imagination, with which it is above all
concerned.
This will suffice for discussion of the general relation under which poetry is
placed to the other arts. We shall now proceed to a closer examination of the
art of poetry itself, and with a view to this propose to co-ordinate the same
as follows.

We have already seen that in poetry it is the ideal concept itself from which
we derive content no less than medium. By reason, however, of the fact that
we already find outside Art's domain the world of idea to be the most
obvious mode of conscious life, it is above everything else important to
distinguish the conception of poetry from that of prose. The art of poetry,
however, is not complete in this ideal world of the imagination alone. It is
necessary that it should clothe the same in expressive language. It has
therefore a twofold task confronting it. On the one hand it is called upon so
to arrange this world of constructed idea that it may admit of complete
translation into speech: on the other it must take care not to leave this
medium of language in the form appropriated by ordinary conscious life. In
other words such must be treated poetically in order that the expression of
art may be distinguishable in the selection of words no less than their
position, and even their sound from that of ordinary prose.
Furthermore, on account of the fact that, though poetry avails itself of
language as a means of expression, it secures by far the most unqualified
freedom from those conditions and restrictions imposed on the other arts by
virtue of the particularization of their material, it is possible for a poetical
composition in a pre-eminent degree to elaborate every one of the various
modes of expression, otherwise adopted unaffected by the onesidedness
incidental to their application to a particular art. The subdivision of such
modes of expression in all their variety is consequently by far the most
complete in the works of poetry.
The further course of our investigation may now be epitomized as follows:
First, we have to elucidate what is in general terms poetical, and the
poetical composition in particular.
Secondly, poetry will be examined as a means of expression.
Thirdly, we shall deal with the subdivision of the art into Epic, Lyric, and
Dramatic poetry.

[1] Mittelpunkt. We should rather say the unifying significance of the creation.
[2] It would be perhaps better to translate geistigen Innerlichkeit with the words
"the self-conscious life of the human reason." This is developed and explained,
however, in the next paragraph.

[3] Hegel expresses this as "making the inner or ideal content perceptible to the
ideal faculty," that is, prima facie, consciousness, or at least that sense which is
nearest related to it, viz., hearing.
[4] By statt des Geistigen Hegel clearly contrasts pure music with music related
as accompaniment to human speech in song.
[5] Lit., "one that merely plays by the way."
[6] Such a statement is obviously one which would be strongly resisted. The
stress laid here on the purely ideal content as contrasted with the beauty of
rhythm and modal arrangement would certainly suggest that Hegel was deficient
in a sense for the musical possibilities of language I presume he does use
gebunden in the sense of verse.
[7] Hegel's expression is in rein theoretischen Interesse.
[8] The medium of music is not of course strictly on all fours with the others.
[9] That is under the limits of these four arts.

I

POETICAL COMPOSITION AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THAT OF
PROSE

We find it difficult to recall a single writer among all who have written on
the subject of poetry who has not evaded the attempt to describe what is
poetical as such, let alone a clear definition. And in fact if any one begins a
discussion upon poetry, regarded as an art, without previously having
investigated the nature of the content and mode of conception appropriate to
Art in its most general terms, he will find it an extremely difficult matter to
determine where we must look for that in which the essential character of
poetry consists. To an exceptional degree is this failure to tackle this
problem visible in those cases where a writer takes as his point of departure
the actual execution in particular works of art, and seeks to establish, by
means of this connoisseurship, some general principle which he may apply
as relevant to every sort and kind of composition. In this way works of the
most heterogeneous character come to rank as genuine poetry. If we once
start from such assumptions, and then proceed to the inquiry by virtue of
what productions of this nature can be reasonably classed together as poems
we are at once confronted with the difficulty I have above adverted to.

Happily our own position here is not that of these inquirers. In the first
place we have by no manner of means arrived at the general notion of our
subject-matter through an examination of any particular examples of its
display; we have on the contrary sought to evolve the actual constitution of
the same by a reference to the fundamental notion.[1] Agreeably with this it
is not part of our demand that everything in ordinary parlance regarded as
poetry should in our present inquiry fall into the general notion we have
accepted. At least this is certainly not so in so far as the decision whether
any particular work is or is not poetical is only deducible from the notion
itself. Furthermore it is unnecessary now to expound more fully what we
understand by the notion of poetry. To do this we should simply have to
repeat again the course of our inquiry into the nature of Beauty and the
Ideal as developed in general terms in the first part of this work. The
intrinsic character of what is poetical stands in general agreement with the
generic notion of artistic beauty and the art-product. That is to say, the
imagination of the poet is not, as is the case with the plastic arts and music
by reason of the nature of the materia, through which they are reproductive,
constrained in its creative activity in many directions, and forced to accept
many others of a onesided or very partial completeness; it is on the contrary
merely subservient to the essential requirements and general principle of an
ideal and artistic presentation.
From the many different points of view applicable to our present purpose, I
will attempt to emphasize merely those of most importance, as for example,
firsts that which relates to the distinction between the mode of composition
employed respectively by poetry and prose; secondly, that which contrasts a
poetical work as completed with one of prose; and, finally, I propose to add
a few observations relative to the subjective faculty which creates, or, shall
we say, the poet himself.

I. THE COMPOSITION OF POETRY AND PROSE

(a) In so far as the content appropriate to poetical composition is concerned
we may, relatively speaking at any rate, exclude the external world of
natural fact. It is spiritual interests rather than the sun, mountains,
landscape, or the bodily human form, and the like, which are its proper
subject-matter. For, although it naturally embraces the element of sensuous
impression and perception, it remains none the less, even in this respect, an

activity of mind. Its main object is an intuition of ideality, to which it stands
as spiritual activity in closer relation and affinity than is possible for
external objects, as presented in their concrete substance to the senses. The
world of Nature therefore only enters into the content of poetry in so far as
mind discovers therein a stimulus or a material upon which to exercise its
own energy; as, for example, where it is regarded as the environment of
man, merely possessing essential worth in its relation to the ideality of
conscious life, which moreover can put forward no claim to be itself the
independent object of poetry. The object, in short, which fully corresponds
to its appeal is the infinite realm of Spirit. For the medium of language, the
most plastic medium possessed immediately by conscious life, and the one
most competent to grasp its interests and movements in their ideal vitality,
precisely as is the case with the material of the other arts, such as stone,
colour, and tone, must necessarily and above all be employed to express
that which it is most qualified to express. It is consequently the pre-eminent
task of poetry to bring before our vision the energies of the life of Spirit, all
that surges to and fro in human passion and emotion, or passes in
tranquillity across the mind, that is the all-embracing realm of human idea,
action, exploit, fatality, the affairs of this world and the divine Providence.
It has been the most universal and cosmopolitan instructor of the human
race and is so still. Instruction and learning are together the knowledge and
experience of what is. Stars, animals and plants are ignorant of their law—it
does not come into their experience; but man only then exists conformably
to the principle of his being when he knows what he is and by what he is
surrounded. He must recognize the powers by which he is driven or
influenced; and it is just such a knowledge which poetry, in its original and
vital[2] form, supplies.
(b) It is, however, also a content of the same character which belongs to
man's ordinary conscious life. This too instructs him in general laws, as
such at least are interpreted by the motley crowd of human life, in their
distinction, coordination, and significance. The question therefore arises, as
previously observed, as to the nature of the distinction between the mode of
conception severally adopted by prose and poetry, a similarity in the content
of each being assumed as possible.
(α) Poetry is of greater antiquity than speech modelled in the artistic form
of elaborate prose. It is the original imaginative grasp of truths a form of

knowledge, which fails as yet to separate the universal from its living
existence in the particular object, which does not as yet contrast law land
phenomena, object and means, or relate the one to the other in
subordination to the process of human reason, but comprehends the one
exclusively in the other and by virtue of the other. For this reason it does
not merely, under the mode of imagery, express a content already
essentially apprehended in its universality; on the contrary it lingers,
conformably to its unmediated notion, in the unity of concrete life itself,
which has not as yet effected such a separation or such an association of
mere relationship.
(αα) Under the above forms of envisualization, poetry posits all that it
comprehends as an exclusive and consequently independent totality, which,
despite its capacity for a rich content and an extensive range of condition,
individuals, actions, events, emotions and ideas of every kind, nevertheless
is forced to exhibit the same in all their wide complexity as an essentially
self-determined whole, as displayed and motived by the unity, whose
individual expression this or that fact in its singularity actually is. And
consequently the universal or rational principle is not expressed in poetry in
its abstract universality, or in the complexus which lies open to
philosophical exposition or under the relation of its varied aspects
apprehended by science, but on the contrary as a vital union, in its
phenomenal presence, possessed with soul and self-determined throughout;
and it is further expressed in such a way that the all-embracing unity, the
real soul of its vitality, is only suffered to be operative in mysterious guise
from within outwards.
(ββ) The character of this mode of apprehending, reclothing and expressing
fact is throughout one of construction. It is not the fact itself and its
contemplative[3] existence, but reconstruction and speech which are the
object of poetry. Its entrance on the scene dates from the first efforts of man
at self-expression. What is expressed is simply made use of to satisfy this
desire. The instant man, in the midst of his practical activities and
imperative duties, seeks to summarize this effect for mind and to
communicate himself to others, then we have some kind of artistic
expression, some accord with what is poetical. To mention one from a host
of examples, there is that distich which we read in Herodotus referring to
the slain heroes of Thermopylae. As for its content it is simply the fact, the

bare announcement that four thousand Peloponesians on a certain spot
fought the battle with three hundred myriads. The main interest is, however,
the composition of an inscription which communicates to contemporary life
and posterity the historical fact, and is there exclusively to do so. In other
words, the expression of this fact is poetical; it testifies to itself as a deed
(εἱν ποιείν) which leaves the content in its simplicity, but expresses the
same with a definite purpose. The language, in which the idea is embodied,
is to that extent of such increased value that an attempt is made to
distinguish it from ordinary speech; we have a distich in lieu of a sentence.
(γγ) For this reason, even from the point of view of language, poetry makes
an effort to keep its domain singular and distinct from ordinary parlance,
and to accomplish this elevates its expression to a higher virtue than that of
merely articulate expression. We must, however, not only in this particular
respect, but for the purposes of our present inquiry generally, make an
essential distinction between a primitive poetry, which arises previous to the
creation of ordinary artificial prose, and that mode of poetical composition
and speech the development of which is effected where already the
conditions of our everyday life and prosaic expression exist. The first is
poetical without intention, in idea no less than speech; the latter, on the
contrary, is fully conscious of the sphere, from which its task is to detach
itself, in order that it may establish itself on the free basis of art. It is
consequently quite aware of the distinction and contrast implied in its self-
creation to the world of prose.
(β) Secondly, the kind of prose life, from which poetry has to separate itself,
postulates an entirely different nature of conception and speech.
(αα) In other words, looked at from one point of view, such a consciousness
regards the wide expanse of reality according to that association of cause
and effect, object and means, and all other categories of the mode of
reflection which deals with finite conditions and the objective world
generally, that is, the limited categories of science or the understanding. It is
a feature of such thought that every particular trait should at one moment
appear with a false subsistency, at another should be placed in the position
of bare relation to something else, that as such it should be so apprehended
in its relativity and dependence that no unity of a free nature whatever is
possible, no unity, that is, which remains essentially throughout, and in all
its branches and separate filaments, a complete and free totality, no unity, in

short, where we find that the individual aspects are simply the appropriate
explication and phenomenal presence of one content which constitutes the
point of focus, the soul that unites all together, and which also finds its vital
principle in this all-pervading centre of animation. Rather the type of
conception we above refer to as that of science goes no further than the
discovery of particular laws in phenomena, and persists for this reason in
the separation, or bare relation, of the particular existence with its general
law, the laws themselves under this view tending to harden from each other
in their isolate singularity; that their relation is, in fact, conceived
exclusively under external and finite conditions.
(ββ) And, furthermore, man's ordinary consciousness has nothing to do with
what we call the ideal principle of association, the essential core of facts,
their bases, causes, ends, and so forth. It rests satisfied with the acceptance
of the mere fact that something exists or happens as distinct from something
else; or, in other words, with its insignificant contingency. It is no doubt
true that the unity of life is not, in such a case, deliberately cancelled by any
express separation; that unity, I mean, in which the intuition of the poet
arrests the ideal rationale of the fact, its expression and determinate
existence. What, however, is absent here, is just that flash of insight into
this core of reason and significance, which becomes consequently for our
intelligence a thing essentially vacant, possessing no further claim on our
minds to a rational interest. The comprehension of a rational cosmos; and
its relations is exchanged then and there for a mere flux and contiguity of
indifference, which it is true may possess a large expanse of external
animation, but which none the less suffers the profounder impulse of
reason[4] to remain unsatisfied. True vision, no less than soul-life in its full
vigour, can only obtain satisfaction, where such are made aware in
phenomena, through feeling no less than contemplation, of the reality in its
essence and truth which is compatible with such a world. The life which is a
mere external show is defunct to our deeper sense, if all that is ideal and
intrinsically rich in significance fails to shine through as the very soul
thereof.
(γγ) These defects, thirdly, in the conceptions of science and our ordinary
conscious life speculative thought effaces. It stands, therefore, in one
respect in affinity with the imagination of the poet. The cognizance of
reason[5] is not solely, or even mainly, concerned with contingent

singularity, nor does it overlook in the phenomenal world the essence of the
same. It does not rest satisfied with the differentiations and external
relations proper to the conceptions and deductions of the understanding; it
unites them in a free totality, which in the apprehension of our finite faculty
in part fails to preserve its self-consistency, and in part is posited in a
relation that possesses no synthetic unity. Pure thought, however, can have
but one result, namely thoughts. It evaporates the mode of reality in that of
the pure notion. And although it grasps and comprehends actual things in
their essential separation and their actual existence, it does also nevertheless
translate this particularity into the ideal element of the universal, in which
alone thought is at home with itself. Consequently there arises, in contrast
to the world of phenomena, a world that is new in this sense, that though the
truth of the Real is present, it is not displayed in reality itself as the power
itself which gives it form and the veritable soul thereof. Thinking is simply
a reconciliation of truth with reality in Thought. The creations and
reconstruction, however, of the poet is a reconciliation under the mode of
phenomenal reality itself, albeit such a real appearance is merely ideally
conceived.
(γ) We have, therefore, two distinct spheres of consciousness, that of poetry
and prose. In former times, in which there is neither present a deliberate
outlook on the world elaborated, in respect to its religious belief and its
general knowledge, under the co-ordinated form of scientific ideas and
cognition, nor an actual world of human condition regulated conformably to
such a standard, poetry is confronted with a lighter task. Prose is not in such
a case opposed to it as an essentially independent field of ideal and external
existence, which it has first to overcome. Its problem is for the most part
simply limited to deepening all that is significant or transparent in the forms
of ordinary consciousness. If, on the contrary, the prose of life has already
appropriated within its mode of vision the entire content of conscious life,
setting its seal on all and every part of it, the art of poetry is forced to
undertake the task of melting all down again and re-coining the same anew.
In every direction it finds itself involved in difficulties by the unresponsive
nature of prosaic existence. It has, in short, not only to wrest itself from the
adherence of ordinary consciousness to all that is indifferent and contingent,
and to raise the scientific apprehension of the cosmos of fact to the level of
reason's profounder penetration, or to translate speculative thought into
terms of the imagination, giving a body to the same in the sphere of

intelligence itself; it has further to convert in many ways the mode of
expression common to the ordinary consciousness into that appropriate to
poetry; and, despite of all deliberate intention enforced by such a contrast
and such a process, to make it appear as though all such purpose was
absent, preserving the original freedom essential to all art.
(c) We have now summarized in its most general terms that in which the
content of poetry consists. We have further distinguished the form of poetry
from that of prose. In conclusion, it is of importance to draw attention to the
particularization which the art of poetry, to a degree unattained by the other
arts, whose development is not nearly so rich in results, admits of. We find,
no doubt, architecture illustrated in the arts of very varied peoples, and
continuous through many centuries. But of sculpture, at least, it is true that
it reaches its culminating point in the ancient world of Greece and Rome,
just as painting and music have done more recently in Christendom. The art
of poetry celebrates its epochs of brilliancy and bloom among all nations
and in all ages almost that present any real artistic activity at all. It
embraces the collective Spirit of mankind, and it is differentiated through
every kind of variation.
(α) Furthermore, inasmuch as poetry does not accept the universal in
scientific abstraction from its object, but seeks to represent what is rational
under the mode of individuality,[6] the specific traits of national character
are essential to its growth; the content and the particular mode of its
presentation are in fact conditioned by the nature of these and the general
outlook in each case. We find it consequently adapting itself to every
variety of form and peculiarity. It matters not what the poetry may be,
whether Oriental, Italian, Spanish, English, Roman, Hellenic, or German,
each and all differ totally in their spirit, emotional impulse, general outlook
and expression.
A similar distinctive variety asserts itself in particular epochs as they are
favourable to the art of poetry or the reverse. The results secured, for
example, by our German poetry were impossible in the Middle Ages, or the
times of the thirty years' war. The particular motives, which in our own day
excite the greatest interest, are inseparable from the entire evolution of
contemporary life. And in the same way every age has its own wider or
more restricted, more exalted and liberal, or more depressed phase of
emotional life, in short its specific outlook on the world, which it is the

express aim of poetry to bring home to the artistic consciousness in the
most intelligible and complete manner, inasmuch as language is the one
medium capable of expressing the human spirit wherever and in whatever
form it may be manifested.
(β) Among these national characteristics, or views and opinions peculiar to
particular epochs, some have closer affinity with the poetic impulse than
others. The Oriental consciousness is, for example, in general more poetic
than the Western mind, if we exclude Greece. In the East the principle
predominant is always that of coherence, solidity, unity, substance. An
outlook of this nature is intrinsically most penetrative, even though it may
fail to reach the freedom of the Ideal. Our Western point of view, especially
that of modern life, is based on the endless breaking up and division of its
boundless material into fragments, in virtue of which process, the extreme
emphasis laid here on particular facts, what is merely finite becomes
substantive for the imagination, and despite of this must be once more
subsumed under the converse action of relativity. For the Oriental nothing
persists as really substantive, but everything appears as contingent,
discovering its supreme focus, stability and final justification in the One,
the Absolute, to which it is referred.
(γ) By means of this diversity of national traits and the evolutionary process
of the centuries we find that what is shared by all mankind alike, no less
than all that claims to be artistic, is drawn as a common element within the
reach of other nations and epochs, intelligible and enjoyable to the same. It
is in this twofold connection that of late years to an exceptional degree
Hellenic poetry has roused the admiration and imitation of most diverse
nationalities. And this is so because in the content of it no less than in the
artistic form it receives the simply human is disclosed with most beauty.
The literature of India itself, however, despite all the difficulties attendant
on an outlook and artistic expression so alien to our own, is not wholly
outside our sympathy; and the boast is no empty one that in our modern era
pre-eminently a keen sense for all that art and the human spirit embraces in
every direction has begun to unfold itself.
Were we in our present investigation of this impulse toward
individualization, pursued so persistently by poetry, under the aspects we
have already described, to restrict the same to a general treatment of the art
of poetry, such a generalization, however established, could not fail to be

abstract and devoid of content. It is therefore of first importance, if our
object be to consider poetry of a really genuine type, that we include in our
survey the forms of the creative spirit as presented in their national form,
the unique product of one age; and further we must not overlook the
individuality which creates, the soul of the poet. Such, then, are the main
points of view to which I would draw attention by way of a general
introduction to poetical creation and conception.

2. THE ART-PRODUCT OF POETRY AND PROSE

Poetry is not, however, exhausted by the imaginative idea alone: it must
necessarily proceed to make itself articulate and complete in the poetical
work of art.
Such an object of study opens a large field of investigation. We may
conveniently arrange and classify the course of our discussion as follows:
First, we shall endeavour to point out what is of most importance relatively
to the poetical composition generally.
Secondly, we shall distinguish it from the principal types of prose
composition, in so far as the same are compatible with artistic treatment.
We shall then, finally be in a position to deduce with some completeness the
notion of the free art-product.
(a) In respect to the poetical work of art under its generic aspect all that is
necessary is once more to enforce our previous contention that it must, no
less than any other production of an unfettered imagination, receive the
form and independence of an organic whole. This demand can only receive
satisfaction as follows:
(α) In the first place that which constitutes a homogeneous content, whether
it be a definite object of action and event, or a specific emotion and passion,
must before everything else possess intrinsic unity.
(αα) All else must be posited under relation to this bond of unity, and
thereby combine to form a freehand concrete coherence of all parts. This is
only possible under the condition, that the content selected is not conceived
as abstract universal, but as the action and emotion of men, as the object
and passion which are actually present in the mind, soul, and volition of

definite individuals, arising as such from the distinctive basis of an
individual nature in each case.
(ββ) The universal, which is to receive representation, and the individuals,
in whose character events and actions the manifestation of poetry is asserted
must not consequently fall into fragments, or be so related that the
individuals are merely of service as an abstract universal; both aspects must
combine in vital coalescence. In the Iliad, for example, the contest of
Greeks and Trojans, and the victory of the former is inseparably bound up
with the wrath of Achilles, which for this reason becomes the common
focus welding all together. No doubt we also find poetical works in which
the fundamental content is partly more abstract in its generalization, and
also partly is executed in a way that expresses a universal of more
significance. Dante's great epic poem is an illustration, which not only
embraces the world divine throughout, but displays individuals of the most
varied character in their relation to the punishments of hell, purgatory and
the blessedness of Paradise. But even here we find no entirely abstract
separation, of the two points of view, no mere relation of service between
the particular objects. For in the Christian world the focus of conscious life
is not conceived as nothing more than an accident of Godhead, but as
essential and infinite cause or end itself, so that here the universal purpose,
that is the divine justice in condemnation and salvation can verily appear as
immanent fact, the eternal interest and being of the individual himself. In
this divine world the individual is throughout of pre-eminent importance. In
that of the State he can of course be sacrificed in order to save the universal,
that is the State. In his relation to God, however, and in the kingdom of God
he is essentially and exclusively the end.
(γγ) We must, however, thirdly, conceive the universal, which supplies the
content of human emotion and action as self-subsistent, intrinsically
complete where it is, and constituting as such in itself a definitive and
exclusive world. When, for instance, in our contemporary life mention is
made of any officer, official, general, professor, and so forth, and we try to
imagine what kind of action such a man or personality is likely to attempt
or carry out under his own particular conditions of environment, we place
before ourselves simply a content of interest and activity, which in part is
not itself a rounded and self-substantive whole, but one which stands in
infinitely manifold external connections, relations and conditions, in part

also, if we regard it as abstract totality, one which can receive the form of a
universal concept in its separation from the individuality of the, in other
respects, entire personality, as for instance that of personal obligation.
Conversely we may have no doubt a content of sterling character, making,
that is to say, an essentially independent whole, which, despite of this, and
without further development and advance, is complete in one sentence. It is
really impossible to say whether a content of this nature belongs more
properly to poetry or prose. The grand affirmation of the old Testament,
"God said Let their be Light and there was Light," is at once in its
penetration, no less than the precision of its embrace,[7] as much essentially
sublime poetry as it is ordinary prose. Of a similar nature is the command,
"I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods but me"; or that,
"Honour thy father and thy mother." The golden epigrams of a Pythagoras
and the wise sayings of Solomon are of the same type. Phrases, so rich in
content as the above, have their origin in a world where the distinction
between poetry and prose is as yet absent. We can, however, hardly affirm
of such that they are a poetical work of art, even though many such phrases
may be combined together. The independence and rounding off of a genuine
poetical work must be assumed at the same time to be of the nature of a
process, and a differentiation of parts: we assume it therefore to be a unity,
the true character of which is only made explicit by emphatic insistence
upon its diversity. This process, absolutely essential in the plastic arts,
regarded at least according to the requirements of their form, is also more
generally of the greatest moment in a poetical composition.
(β) This introduces us, then, to a second feature of the work of art, namely,
the organic differentiation of its several parts, essential to it not merely that
it may be presented as an organic unity, but that the elaboration of all it
implies may be rendered complete.
(αα) The most obvious reason of this necessity is referable to the fact that
Art in general tends instinctively to particularization. The effect of the
scientific faculty is that what is particular and singular fails to receive its
complete vindication. And this is so not merely because the understanding
apprehends the manifold, as such theoretic faculty, starting from its
principles of generalization, causing the particular fact thereby to evaporate
in its abstract deductions and categories; but also because it makes this
manifold subserve ends of purely practical import. Severe adherence to that

purely relative value, which strictly belongs to the nature of the process,
appears to the understanding as useless and tedious. To the conception and
composition of poetry on the contrary every part, every phase in the result
must remain of essential interest and vital. It dallies therefore with delight
in detail, depicts the same with enthusiasm, and treats every part as an
independent whole. However great, therefore, in addition the content may
be of a poetical work in its central interest, the organic completeness is
equally asserted in subordinate detail, precisely as in the human organism
every member, every finger is rounded with exquisite delicacy in its unified
completeness, and as a rule, we find in Nature that every particular
existence is enclosed within a perfect world of its own. The advance of
poetry is therefore more slow than that compatible with the judgments and
conclusions of the understanding, where we find that, whether regarded
theoretically as science or with reference to practical conduct and action,
the main stress is on the final result, this rather than on the path by which it
is reached. As for the degree in which poetry approaches realization in its
tenderness for such detail we have already pointed out that it is not its
vocation to describe with excessive diffuseness what is exterior in the form
of its sensuous appearance. If it therefore undertakes extensive descriptions
without making them reflect at the same time the claims and interests of
soul-life it becomes heavy and tedious. Above all it must take care not to
enter into deliberate rivalry with the actual detail, in its exact completeness,
presented by natural fact itself. Even painting in this respect should aim at
circumspection and restriction. We have therefore here and in the case of
poetry a twofold point of view to consider. On the one hand we must
remember that the impression is on our mental vision; and on the other the
art can only place before the mind the object, which in Nature we can
survey and comprehend in a single glance in a series of separate traits. For
this reason it is important that poetry does not carry its elaboration of detail
so far, that the vision of the whole in its entirety becomes inevitably
disturbed, confused, or lost. It is obvious therefore that difficulties of an
exceptional nature have to be overcome when the attempt is made to place
an action or event of varied nature before our vision, and where in actual
life such happen in a single moment of time, and in close connection with
such immediacy, for all it can do is to present the same in a continuous
series. As respects this difficulty, no less than the general way in which
poetry, as already described, approaches the detail of Nature, we find the

demand of the several generic types of the art differs very considerably.
Epic poetry, for instance, attaches itself to the particularity of the external
world with an emphasis totally different from that of dramatic poetry, with
its rapidity of forward movement, or from that of lyrical poetry with its
exclusive insistence on the ideally significant.
(ββ) It is through an elaboration of this kind that the several parts of a
composition secure subsistency. No doubt this appears to stand in direct
contradiction to the unity which we established as a primary condition: as a
matter of fact the opposition is merely apparent. This independence should
not, that is to say, assert itself in such a way that the several parts are placed
in absolute separation from each other: it must on the contrary only be
carried so far that the several aspects and members of the whole are clearly
seen on their own account to be asserted in the vital form peculiar to each,
and to stand on their own free basis of independence. If, on the contrary,
this individualized life is absent from the several parts, the composition
becomes, precisely as Art generally can only invest the universal with
determinate existence under the form of actual particularity, cold and
defunct.
(γγ) Despite of this self-subsistency, however, these several parts must
remain likewise in conjunction to the extent that the one fundamental
motive or purpose, made explicit and manifest in and through them, must
declare itself as the unity which pervades the whole, and in which the parts
coalesce and to which they return. This is the condition of art, and pre-
eminently so of poetry, where it falls short of its noblest reach, upon which
it most readily is wrecked, and the work of art declines from the realm of a
free imagination into that of mere prose. To put it in another way, the
connexion into which the parts fall must not merely be one of final cause
and effect. For in the relation of teleology the end is the universal as
essentially presupposed and willed, which it is true succeeds in making the
several aspects tally with the process, yet employs them none the less as
means and to this extent robs them of all really free stability and thereby of
every sort of vitality. In such a case the parts merely fall under a relation of
purpose to one end, which is asserted imperiously to the disadvantage of all
else, and which accepts the same in abstraction as subservient and
subordinate to itself. The freedom and beauty of art contradict flatly this
servile relation of the abstract faculty of science.

(γ) On these grounds the unity, asserted in the several parts of the
composition, must be of another character. The definition of this may be
stated under two aspects of conception, as follows.
(αα) In the first place, the vital presence we have already referred to as
peculiar to every part separately must be maintained. If we direct our
attention, however, to that which in fact justifies the introduction of any
detail whatever into the composition, we find the point of departure to be
one fundamental idea which the same as a whole is undertaken to manifest
or interpret. Consequently everything defined and particular must announce
that as the source of its own specific appearance. In other words, the content
of a poetical work must not be itself intrinsically abstract, but concrete, one
that by reason of its own wealth conducts us to a rich unravelment of its
varied aspects. And when this variety, even assuming that in its realization
it falls to every appearance into plain contradictions, yet is as a matter of
fact rooted in the essentially unified content we have adverted to, in that
case we may affirm that by necessity the content itself, in a form agreeable
to its notion and being, comprises what is fundamentally an exclusive and
harmonious totality of particular characteristics, which it possesses as its
own, and in the continuous expatiation of which what it is in its real
significance is in truth rendered explicit. It is only these several parts, which
originally belong to the content, and which consequently should be carried
into the composition under the mode of actual and essentially sound and
vital existence. In this respect, therefore, despite all appearance the display
of particular characteristics present of opposition to others, they are
throughout combined in a union of mysterious accord, rooted in its own
nature.
(ββ) Secondly, since the composition is presented under the form of natural
phenomena, the unity must, in order to preserve the vital appearance of
such reality, only be the ideal bond, which to all appearance without
intention holds together the parts and includes them in an organic whole. It
is just this animating union of organic life which alone is able to bring into
being true poetry as contrasted with the expressed intention of plain prose.
That is to say whenever particularity exclusively appears as means to a
definite end, it does not possess and cannot conceivably possess an
independent and unique vitality of its own; what it does testify to, on the
contrary, is that it exists for the sake of something else, that is the end

proposed. Purpose of this type declares its sovereignty over the objective
facts through which it is fulfilled. An artistic composition should, however,
confer upon all that is particular within it, all in the expatiation of which it
displays continuously the central and fundamental content selected, the
appearance of an unfettered stability. This is absolutely necessary, because
what we here comprise under the term particularity is just that content itself
under the mode of the reality which corresponds with it. We may therefore
recall to our minds the analogous task of speculative thought, which in the
same way has on the one side to develop the particular to the point of self-
subsistency or freedom from that which is at first an indefinite universality;
and likewise, too, it is called on to demonstrate how within this totality of
what is particular, in which that and that only is divulged which essentially
reposes in the universal, the unity is on this very account once more
asserted, and indeed then and only then is truly concrete unity, established
through its own differences and their mediation. Speculative philosophy is
thus, in the same way, through the method of dialectic above adverted to,
responsible for works which resemble in this respect those of poetry,
containing, that is, by virtue of the content, an essential identity of self-
seclusiveness and a revelation of differentiated material in accord with it.
We must, however, despite this similarity between these two activities, and
apart from the obvious difference between the evolution of pure thinking
and creative art, draw attention to a further essential distinction. The
deduction of philosophy no doubt vindicates the necessity and actuality of
particularity, but none the less, in virtue of the dialectic process in which
this aspect of reality is asserted, it is expressly demonstrated of this
particularity and all of it, that it for the first time discovers its truth and its
stability in the concrete unity.[8] Poetry, on the contrary, does not proceed to
any such express demonstration. The concordant unity must no doubt be
completely vindicated in every one of its creations, and be operative there
in all their manifold detail as the soul and vital core of the whole; but this
presence remains for Art an ideal bond which is implied rather than
expressly posited, precisely as the soul is immediately made vital in all the
bodily members, without robbing the same of the appearance of an
independent existence. We have the same truth illustrated by colour and
tone. Yellow, blue, green and red are different colours which admit of the
most absolute contrast; but none the less, on account of the fact that as
colour they all essentially belong to one totality, they maintain a harmony

throughout; and it is not, moreover, necessary that this union as such should
be expressly declared in them. In a similar way the dominant, the third and
the fifth remain independent as tones, and yet for all that give us the
harmony of the trichord; or, rather, we should put it that they only produce
this harmony so long as each tone is permitted to assert its own essentially
free and characteristic sound.
(γγ) In connection with this organic unity and articulate synthesis of a
poetical composition we have further to consider essential features of
distinction which are due to the particular artistic form appropriate to the
composition under review, no less than the particular type of poetry in
which we discover the specific character of its working out. Poetry, for
example, of symbolic art is unable, owing to the more abstract and
indefinite traits which constitute its essential and significant content, to
attain to a fully organic fusion in the degree of transparency possible to the
works of the classical art-form. In symbolism generally, as we have already
established in the first part of this enquiry, the conjunction of general
significance and the actual phenomenon, in association with which Art
embodies its content, is of a less coherent character: as a result of this we
find that what is particular in one direction preserves a greater consistency;
in another, as in the case of the Sublime, only so far asserts this quality in
order, through the negation thus implied, to render more intelligible the one
supreme power and substance, or merely to advance the process to a
condition of mysterious association of particular, but at the same time
heterogeneous no less than related traits and aspects of natural and spiritual
facts. Conversely, in the romantic type, wherein the ideality of truth reveals
itself in essential privacy to soul-life only, we find a wider field for the
display of the detail of rational reality in its self-subsistency; in this latter
case the conjunction of all parts and their union must necessarily be present,
but the nature of their elaboration can neither be so clear or secure as in the
products of classical art.
In a similar way the Epic gives us a more extensive picture of the external
world; it even lingers by the way in episodical events and deeds, whereby
the unity of the whole, owing to this increased isolation of the parts, appears
to suffer diminution. The drama, in contrast to this, requires a more
strenuous conjunction, albeit, even in the drama, we find that romantic
poetry permits the introduction of a type of variety in the nature of episode

and an elaborate analysis of characteristic traits in its presentation of soul-
life no less than that of external fact. Lyric poetry, as it changes
conformably to the fluctuation of its types, adapts itself to a mode of
presentment of the greatest variety: at one time it is bare narration; at
another the exclusive expression of emotion or contemplation; at another it
restricts its vision, in more tranquil advance, to the central unity which
combines; at another it shifts hither and thither in unrestrained passion
through a range of ideas and emotions apparently destitute of any unity at
all.
This, then, must suffice us on the general question of a poetical
composition.
(b) In order now,—this is our second main head in the present discussion,—
to examine more closely the distinction which obtains between the organic
poem as above considered and the prose composition, we propose to direct
attention to those specific types of prose which, despite their obvious
limitations, do none the less come into closest affinity with art. Such are,
without question, the arts of history and oratory.
(α) As regards history, there can be no doubt that we find ample opportunity
here for one aspect of genuine artistic activity.
(αα) The evolution of human life in religion and civil society, the events and
destinies of the most famous individuals and peoples, who have given
emphasis to life in either field by their activity, all this presupposes great
ends in the compilation of such a work, or the complete failure of what it
implies. The historical relation of subjects and a content such as these
admits of real distinction, thoroughness and interest: and however much our
historian must endeavour to reproduce actual historical fact, it is none the
less incumbent upon him to bring before our imaginative vision this motley
content of events and characters, to create anew and make vivid the same to
our intelligence with his own genius.[9] In the creation of such a memorial
he must, moreover, not rest satisfied with the bare letter of particular fact;
he must bring this material into a co-ordinated and constructive whole; he
must collectively conceive and embrace single traits, occurrences and
actions under the unifying concept; with the result that on the one hand we
have flashed before us a clear picture of nationality, epoch of time, external
condition and the spiritual greatness or weakness of the individuals

concerned in the very life and characterization which belonged to them; and
on the other that the bond of association, in which the various parts of our
picture stand to the ideal historical significance of a people or an event, is
asserted from such without exception. It is in this sense that we, even in our
own day, speak of the art of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Tacitus,
and a few others, and cannot cease to admire their narratives as classical
products of the art of human language.
(ββ) It is nevertheless true that even these fine examples of historical
composition do not belong to free Art. We may add that we should have no
poetry even though we were to assume with such works the external form
of poetry, the measure or rhyme of verse and so forth. It is not exclusively
the manner in which history is written, but the nature of its content, which
makes it prose. Let us look at this rather more closely.
Genuine history, both in respect to aim and performance, only begins at the
point where the heroic age, which in its origination it is the part of poetry
and art to vindicate, ceases, for the reason that we have here the moment
when the distinct outlines and prose of life, in its actual conditions, no less
than the way they are conceived and represented, come into being.
Herodotus does not for instance describe the Greek expedition to Troy, but
the Persian wars, and takes pains, in a variety of ways, with tedious
research and careful reflection, to base the narrative proposed on genuine
knowledge. The Hindoos, indeed we may say the Orientals generally, with
almost the single exception of the Chinese, do not possess this instinct of
prose sufficiently to produce a genuine history. They invariably digress
either into an interpretation and reconstruction of facts of a purely religious
character, or such as are fantastic inventions. The element of prose then
native to the historical age of any folk may be briefly described as follows.
In the first place, in order that we may have history we must presuppose a
common life, whether we consider the same on its religious side, or that of
a polity, with its law, institutions, and the like, established on their own
account, and possessing originally or in their subsequent modification a
validity as laws or conditions of general application.
It is out of such a common life, secondly, that we mark the birth of definite
activities for the preservation or change of the same, which may be of
universal import, and in fact constitute the end or motive of their

continuance, and to complete and carry into effect which we have to
presuppose individuals fitted for such a task. These individuals are great
and eminent in so far as they show themselves, through their effective
personality, in co-operation with the common end, which underlies the ideal
notion of the conditions which confront them: they are little when they fail
to rise in stature to the demand thus made on their energy: they are
depraved when, instead of facing as combatants of the practical needs of the
times,[10] they are content merely to give free rein to an individual force
which is, with its implied caprice, foreign to all such common ends. Where,
however, any of such conditions obtain we do not have either a genuine
content or a condition of the world such as we established in the first part of
our inquiry as essential to the art of poetry. Even in the case of personal
greatness the substantive aim of its devotion is to a large or less extent
something given, presupposed, and enforced upon it, and to that extent the
unity of individuality is excluded, wherein the universal, that is the entire
personality should be selfidentical, an end exclusively for itself, an
independent whole in short. For however much these individuals discover
their aims in their own resources, it is for all that not the freedom or lack of
it in their souls and intelligence, in other words the vital manifestation of
their personality, but the accomplished end, and its result as operative upon
the actual world already there, and essentially independent of such
individuality, which constitutes the object of history. And, moreover, from a
further point of view we find manifested in the historical condition the play
of contingency, that breach between what is implicitly substantive and the
relativity of particular events and occurrences, no less than of the specific
subjectivity of characters displayed in their personal passions, opinions and
fortunes, which in this prosaic mode of life present far more eccentricity
and variation than do the wonders of poetry, which through all diversity
must remain constant to what is valid in all times and places.
And finally, in respect to the actual execution of affairs within the
cognisance of history we find here again the introduction of a prosaic
element, if we contrast it with the impulse of genuine poetry, partly in the
division asserted by personal idiosyncracy from a consciousness of laws,
principles, maxims and so forth, which is thereby necessarily absorbed in
the universal condition or fact; and in part also the realization of the ends
proposed involve much preparation and arrangement, the means to effect
which extend far, and embrace many necessary or subservient relations,

which have to be readjusted and adapted, in order to carry out the course
proposed, with intelligence, prudence and prosaic circumspection. The
work in short cannot be undertaken offhand, but only to a large extent after
extensive introduction. The result of this is that the particular acts of
execution, which, it is here assumed, come into effect for the one main
purpose, are often either wholly contingent in respect to their content, and
remain without ideal union, or are asserted under the form of a practical
utility regulated by a mind dominated by the aims proposed; in other words,
they do not proceed unmediated from the core of free and independent life
itself.[11]
(γγ) The historian then has no right to expunge these prosaic characteristics
of his content, or to convert them into others more poetical; his narrative
must embrace what lies actually before him and in the shape he finds it
without amplification,[12] or at least poetical transformation. However
much, therefore, it may become a part of his labours to make the ideal
significance and spirit of an epoch, a people, or the particular event
depicted, the ideal focus and bond which holds all together in one coherent
whole, he is not entitled to make either the conditions presented him, the
characters or events, wholly subordinate to such a purpose, though he may
doubtless remove from his survey what is wholly contingent and without
serious significance; he must, in short, permit them to appear in all their
objective contingency, dependence and mysterious caprice. No doubt in
biography the full animation of personality and an independent unity is
conceivably possible, because in such a work the individual, no less than all
which proceeds from him and is operative in moulding such a figure, is
throughout the focus of the composition. A historical character is, however,
exclusively one of two opposed extremes. For although we deduce a unity
of subject from the same, none the less from another point of view various
events and transactions obtrude, which in part are without any essential
ideal connection, and in part come into contact with such individuality
without any free co-operation on the part of the same, and to this extent
involve the same within the contingency of such an external condition. So,
for example, Alexander is without question a personality, pre-eminent
above all others of his epoch, and one which, in virtue of its unique forces,
falling as they do in accord with contemporary world conditions, becomes
engaged in the Persian invasion. The continent of Asia none the less, which

Alexander vanquishes, is in the capricious variety of its nationalities a
whole united by no necessary bond.[13] Historical events pass before him as
the bare panorama of purely objective phenomena. And, finally, if the
historian adds to his survey his private reflections as a philosopher,
attempting thereby to grasp the absolute grounds for such events, rising to
the sphere of that divine being, before which all that is contingent vanishes
and a loftier mode of necessity is unveiled, he is none the less debarred, in
reference to the actual conformation of events, from that exclusive right of
poetry, namely, to accept this substantive resolution as the fact of most
importance. To poetry alone is the liberty permitted to dispose without
restriction of the material submitted in such a way that it becomes, even
regarded on the side of external condition, conformable with ideal truth.
(β) Secondly, oratory appears to have a closer affinity with the freedom of
art.
(αα) For although the orator avails himself of the opportunity for and
content of his effort out of actual life and definite circumstances and
opinions, all that he utters remains none the less, in the first place, subject to
his free choice. His personal aims and views are immanent therein, in virtue
of which he can make the same a complete and living expression of his
personality. And, secondly, the development of the subject of his oration
and the mode of delivery depends entirely on himself, so that the
impression he makes is as though we received in his speech a wholly
independent expression of mind. And, finally, it is his vocation not merely
to address himself to the trained or ordinary intelligence of his hearers, but
to work upon their entire humanity, their emotions, no less than their
judgment. The substance of what he has to say and in which he strives to
awake interest, is not merely the abstract aspect of it, nor is it this aspect of
his main purpose, in the fulfilment of which he invites co-operation, but
rather for the most part also a definite and very real thing. For this reason
the substance of the orator's address, while embracing what is essentially
substantive in its character, ought equally to grasp his general principle
under the form of its specific manifestation, and render the same intelligible
to conscious life in the full concrete sense of the term. The orator then must
not merely satisfy our understanding with the cogency of his deductions and
conclusions, but has it in his power to address the soul itself, to rouse
human passion and carry it captive, to absorb the whole attention, and by

such means, through all the avenues of spirit, to ravish and convince his
audience.
(ββ) Despite, however, such considerations, looked at rightly we find that it
is just in the arts of oratory that this apparent freedom is almost wholly
subordinate to the rule of practical utility. In other words what confers upon
public speaking its unique motive force is not implied in the particular
purpose, to promote which the speech is made; we must refer it to the
general principle, the laws, rules, axioms which the particular case suggests,
and which are already essentially present in this form of universality, partly,
as actual laws of the State, partly too as ethical, juristic or religious maxims,
emotions, dogmas, and so forth. The particular circumstance and end, which
we find here as the point of departure, and this universal are in every
respect separate from each other, and this separation is the relation
maintained throughout. No doubt the orator intends to make these two
aspects unite: what, however, in poetry, in so far as poetry is really present,
attests as already from the first accomplished, is present in oratory merely
as the personal aim of the orator, the fulfilment of which lies outside the
speech itself altogether.
The only alternative we have left us is a process of subsumation, whereby
the phenomenon, the actual and defined thing, here the concrete case or
end, is not unravelled in immediate unity with the universal as such, and
freely from its own substance, but only receives validity by virtue of its
dependence upon general principles and in its relation to legislative acts,
morality, customs, and the like, which on their own account possess
independent stability. It is not the spontaneous life of the fact in its concrete
manifestation, but the prosaic division between notion and reality, a mere
relation of both to each other and a mere demand for their union, which
constitutes the fundamental type under consideration.
Such a process of thought is frequently adopted by the religious teacher. For
him religious doctrines, in their widest connotation, and the principles of
morality or of philosophy, political or otherwise, which follow in their train,
are in fact precisely the object whereto he can refer cases of every
conceivable variety; and they are this for the reason that these doctrines
have to be accepted, believed and recognized by the religious consciousness
as essentially and in their own worth the substance of all particular
appearance. No doubt the preacher may at the same time appeal to our

heart, may suffer the divine laws to unveil from the depth of soul-life as
their source, and face to face with his audience may refer them to such a
source. But it is not in their absolutely individual guise that he must
necessarily present and assert them; on the contrary, he must bring effective
universality to consciousness under precisely this form of commands,
promises and maxims of faith. The oratory of courts of law is even a better
illustration. Here we find in addition the twofold point of view, that while
on the one hand all turns most obviously on the particular case, yet
conversely the subsumation of this case to general considerations and laws
is equally a necessity. As regards the first aspect, we may remark that the
element of prose is already implied in the enforced investigation of the
actual facts and the collocation and able reconstruction of all singular
circumstances and accidents; a process such as this at once opens our eyes
to the poverty involved in this investigation of the truth of such a legal case,
no less than the tedious ingenuity engaged in its display, if we contrast it at
least with the free creations of poetry. We have in fact to carry our analysis
of the concrete facts to a yet further point. Such must not merely be traced
in a series that does justice to all features, but every one of such features, no
less than the whole case, have to be referred back to the statute accepted
from the first as of independent validity. At the same time, even in this
prosaic affair, we still have considerable scope for an impression on the
heart and emotions. For it is possible so to present the rightness or
wrongness of the case under discussion to the imagination that we are no
longer bound to acquiesce in the bare knowledge of the facts and a general
conviction; on the contrary, the case in its entirety is capable of becoming,
by virtue of the style adopted in its exposition, so marked with the
characteristics of personality to everyone who hears it, that no one can fail
to discover there a personal interest as of something which concerns
himself.
Secondly, in the oratorical art, artistic delivery and elaboration is not that
which constitutes the ultimate and highest interest of the speaker; he
possesses in addition and beyond his art an ulterior aim, that the entire form
and working out of his discourse should rather be used exclusively as the
most effective means to promote an interest which is outside. From this
point of view the audience too have to be influenced not on their own
independent account, but the effort is rather to excite emotion and
conviction exclusively as a means toward the attainment of the purpose, the

fulfilment whereof the orator has proposed from the first. The mode of
presentation, therefore, ceases to be an end for itself even to the listener; its
claim becomes exclusively that of a means to some particular conviction, or
an incentive to definite conclusions or activities.
For these reasons from this point of view also the art loses its freedom of
form; it becomes a means to a purpose, to a further demand,[14] which, this
is a third point, in relation to the consequence, is not satisfied in the actual
speech itself and its artistic handling. The composition of poetry on the
contrary has no other object than the manifestation and enjoyment of
beauty. End and accomplishment reposes here immediately and essentially
in the independent work, which for that reason is complete; artistic activity
is no means to an essentially ulterior result, but an end which at once is
rounded in itself by virtue of its own execution. In oratory art receives
merely a position of service to something collateral; the genuine end is
therefore not as such consonant with art, but of a practical character, that is
to say, instruction, edification, judgment of legal matters or political affairs,
and therewith a reference to some matter which has first to happen, or to a
decision not yet carried out, but which, however, are in neither case
terminated or completed through the resultant effect of the art in question,
but can only be so in various ways after a contact with quite other activities.
A speech in fact may often conclude with a dissonance, which the hearer
has first to resolve as judge, and only then is able to act agreeably with such
a verdict. Just as, for example, the oratory of the pulpit starts from the point
of the unconverted soul, and in the result makes the hearer pass judgment
over his own self and his soul's condition. In such a case religious
conversion is the object of the preacher; but whether such a conversion
follows as a result of all the edification and excellence of his eloquent
exhortations, and thus the end proposed is carried out, is a point of view
which the sermon itself cannot deal with; it must be perforce relegated to
subsequent conditions.
(γγ) In all these directions the notion of eloquence will fall rather under the
main principle of utility than maintain itself within the free and organized
whole of the poetical art-product. In short the orator must necessarily and
above all make it his mark to subordinate the whole, no less than the parts,
to that purpose in his mind, from which his effort proceeds, a process in
which the self-consistent independence of his exposition disappears, and in

lieu of which we must assume a relation of service to a definite end that
ceases to be of artistic significance. And above all, inasmuch as the object
in view is one of practical influence upon human life, he must keep
throughout before his mind the nature of the place in which he speaks, the
degree of education, the receptive powers, and, in short, the general
atmosphere of his audience, that he may not fall short of the practical
success desired through an inability to meet the local conditions of the
moment, and the idiosyncrasies of his audience. By reason of this very
attachment to external conditions it is impossible that either the entirety of
his address or its parts can any longer originate in a free artistic activity;[15]
it will constantly tend in its detailed elaboration to appropriate utilitarian
points of association, and be dominated by conceptions of cause and effect,
and other categories more proper to science.
(c) And, thirdly, we may, as flowing from the above distinction between
what is really poetical and the creations of the historian and the orator,
establish the following points pertinent to the poetical composition itself.
(α) We found that in history the element of prose consisted above all in this
that however much the content thereof could be ideally substantive and
possessed of a downright penetrative power, the actual form of the same
was, however, invariably accompanied with many conditions of relative
validity, massed together with much that was contingent, and finally often
referable to caprice simply as its ground, aspects of immediate objective
fact which the historian was not entitled to translate into the terms of a
reality of profounder grasp.
(αα) The effort of such a transfiguration is in fact a fundamental
desideratum of the poetical art when it, so far as its material is concerned,
steps into the arena of history. It is its business in short in such a case to
discover the mere ideal core and significance of an event, action, or a
national type, a famous historical personality, and as decisively to brush
aside aspects of contingency, everything in fact purely incidental or
indifferent, which plays round such types or individuals, and stands to them
in a purely relative connection. It has then to establish, in the place of the
circumstances and traits it rejects, others which reveal the ideal essence of
the facts in their clarity, to the intent that in this transfigured presence such
shall so discover concrete truth in its fulness that the reason, which has
hitherto lain concealed, though implied in them, shall now for the first time

assert itself as evolved and declared in complete realization. By this means
alone poetry is able in the proposed work to make its content coalesce in the
secure unity of a centre, able as such to round and unfold itself in a whole.
And this is possible because it not only is operative as a more effective
bond between the parts, but also because, without compromising the unity
of the whole, all its varied particularity is suffered to assert its claim to an
independent impression.
(ββ) Poetry may in this respect make a yet further advance, when, it accepts
as its main content, in lieu of the material and significance of the historical
fact, some fundamental idea, some human collision in general associated
with it in a close or more remote affinity, and employs the historical factum
and personages, everything local in short, merely in the guise or garment of
individualization. The difficulty to be encountered here is twofold: either
the historically ascertained data, when appropriated by the composition,
may fall out of line with the fundamental idea; or, conversely, it may be that
the poet in some measure retains these data, but also too in essential
features moulds them conformably to his purposes, and by doing this work
fails to harmonize the element of stability with that of original design which
were both essential to our conception of the poetical product. To dispel such
an opposition and to reassert the accordant note able to do this is a difficult
matter; it is none the less necessary, for objective reality has itself too an
unquestionable title to what is essential in the character of its appearance.
(γγ) We may extend the reach of poetry yet further and we shall still find
that the demand to be met is the same. In other words, all that the art of
poetry represents in external local condition, characterization, actions,
passions, situations, conflicts, events, and human destiny, all this material is
borrowed, far more so in fact than is generally credited, from the facts of
life itself. This being so, poetry here too is on the historical arena; and,
consequently, its deviations or variations of such data must, in this field
also, find their point of departure in the rational core of the facts in question
and the demand of the art to discover for this ideal essence a form that
exhibits it with greatest adequacy and life. And this must not be sought for
in the poverty of a superficial knowledge, an inability to penetrate what is
really vital in fact, or in the moods of caprice and with the craving after the
quaint or perverse ingenuities of a spurious originality.

(β) And further, as already stated, oratory is allied to prose on account of
the practical end which is thereby proposed, and, to carry out which, it is
forced to admit to the full the claims of utility.
(αα) In this respect poetry must take care to detach itself from any end of
this kind outside Art's domain, and the claim of artistic enjoyment simply;
that it may not fall into the sphere of prose. For if any purpose of this sort is
made to appear of essential importance, as part of the entire conception and
presentation, the composition at once descends from that loftier region, in
whose free atmosphere it floats on its own account and on no other, and is
drawn into that of relation merely. As a result of this we have either a
breach made between the fundamental aim of art and the ends of ulterior
intendments; or art is used as a means simply, contradicts its substantive
notion, and becomes the menial of utility. The edifying effusions of many
church hymns are of this character. Particular ideas are simply admitted on
religious grounds, and receive a style of composition which is alien to the
beauty of poetry. And, speaking generally, poetry, simply as poetry, has no
right to edify in a religious sense, or at least exclusively in this sense. If it
does so we are carried into a region, which no doubt possesses relationship
with both poetry and art, but is for all that distinct from it. We may say the
same of teaching generally, ethical instruction, political treatises, or
writings of all kinds written for our momentary recreation and enjoyment.
All these are objects, to whose attainment the art of poetry is, or can be
more than any other, contributory. But such contributions must not enter
into the purpose, if the spirit of the work is to assert itself freely in its own
character. In the poetical effort it is only what is really poetic, eliminated
from all that is foreign to this quality, which must remain paramount as the
end proposed and accomplished. And in fact such ulterior aims as the above
can be carried out far more appropriately by quite other means.
(ββ) The art of poetry, however, from the converse point of view, should
strive to assert no absolute and isolated position; it ought, as a part of life
itself, to enter freely into life. Already in the first part of this inquiry we
found how many points of contact there were between art and ordinary
existence, whose content and phenomenal appearance are repeated in its
content and form. In poetry this vital relation to actual existence and its
specific circumstances, private or public events, appears with most obvious
variety in the so-called poems d'occasion. With a broader interpretation of

the expression we may define as such most poetic compositions; in the
more narrow and correct meaning of the term, however, we should restrict it
to those productions whose origin is traceable to a single event of present
time, which it is the express aim of the poet to emphasize, adorn, and
celebrate. In this weaving together of the actual threads of life, however,
poetry tends once more to decline to a position of dependence; it is
therefore by no means unusual for writers on aesthetic to attach a purely
subordinate value to poetry of this class in general, although as to a part of
it, notably in the case of the lyric, we find here the most famous
compositions.
(γγ) The question consequently arises by virtue of what poetry may be
enabled to still maintain its independence even in the conflict above
described. The answer is simple. It must regard and assert the occasional
facts it borrows from life not as its essential aim, while it is itself merely
accepted as a means. Rather the reverse process is the right one, which
absorbs the material of such reality within its own substance, and informs
and elaborates the same conformably to the claims of an unfettered
imagination. In other words poetry has nothing to do with the accidental or
incidental fact as such. This material supplies the external opportunity, that
is the stimulus which prompts the poet to draw upon his own profounder
penetration and more transparent mode of presentment: by this means he
creates from his own resources, as something newborn, that which, without
such mediation, would have, in the plain and blunt particular case, wholly
failed to impress us with the free spirit he communicates.
(γ) In conclusion then we may affirm that every genuine work of poetry is
an essentially infinite organism.[16] In content rich, it unfolds this content
under a mode of appearance which is adapted to it. It is permeated with a
principle of unity, but not one referable to the form of utility, which
subordinates the particular to itself in an abstract relation, but rather one
that absorbs the same in the singularity relevant to one identical and entirely
vital self-consistency, in which the whole, without any visible intention, is
sphered within one rounded and essentially self-enclosed completeness. It is
indeed replete with the materia of the visible world, but is not on that
account placed, either in relation to its content or determinate existence,
under a condition of dependence to any one circle of life. Rather it freely
creates out of its own plenitude, striving to clothe the ideal notion of its

material in its genuine manifestation as truth, and to bring the world of
external fact into reconciled accord with its own most ideal substance.

3. THE CREATIVE IMPULSE OF THE POET[17]

I have already discussed at considerable length, in the first part of this work,
the talent and genius, the enthusiasm and originality of the artist. I will
consequently merely touch upon one or two points in the present reference
to the art of poetry which appear of importance, if we contrast this activity
as effective here with that operative in the plastic arts and music.
(a) The architect, sculptor, painter and musician have to deal with an
entirely concrete and sensuous material, in and through which each has to
elaborate his creations. The limitations of this material condition the
specific form that the type of the conception no less than the mode of
artistic execution assume. The more fixed and predetermined the general
lines of his definition are upon which the artist has to concentrate himself,
the more specialized becomes the talent required for the assertion of the
same in any one and no other mode of presentment; and we may add in the
powers of technical execution which accompany it. The talents adapted to
the poetic art, regarding the same from the point of view of an ideal
envisagement in a specific materia, is subordinated in a less degree to such
conditions; it is consequently more open to universal practice, and in this
respect more independent. The need here at least is merely that of a gift for
imaginative creation. Its limitation is confined merely to this, namely, that
for the reason that this art is expressed in language, it has to guard itself on
the one hand from deliberate rivalry with external objects in their sensuous
completeness, in the form, that is, where we find the plastic artist
apprehends his subject-matter in its external configuration: and, from a
further point of view, it is unable to rest in the unspoken ideality, the
emotional tones of which constitute the realm of music. In these respects
the problem proposed to the poet, if we contrast him with artists in other
arts, is at once more facile and more difficult It is more easy, because,
although the poet, in the poetical elaboration of speech, must possess a
trained talent, he is spared the relatively more manifold task of triumph over
technical difficulties necessary in the other arts. It is more difficult because,
just in proportion as poetry is less able to complete the objective
envisagement, it is compelled to seek some compensation for this loss on

the side of sense in the genuine core of Art's own ideality, in the depth of
imagination and a really artistic mode of conception.
(b) For this reason the poet is, in the second place, constrained to penetrate
into all the wealth of the spiritual content, and to lay bare to the vision of
mind what is concealed in its depths. For however much in the other arts,
too, the ideal must shine forth through its corporeal manifestation, and does
so in life itself shine forth, yet the medium of speech remains that most
open to intelligence, and the means most adequate to its revelation. It is the
one medium able to grasp and declare everything whatever that flows
through or is present in consciousness, whether regarded in its ascent or
profundity. In consequence of this the poet finds himself confronted with
difficulties which the other arts are not called upon to overcome or satisfy
to the like degree. In other words, for the very reason that poetry is actually
operative in the world of idea or imagination itself, and is not concerned
with fashioning for its images an objective existence independent of such
ideality, it is placed in an element or sphere in which the religious, scientific
and everyday consciousness are active; it must therefore take care to make
no excursion into the domain or mode of conception proper to any of these,
or to get mixed up with them. No doubt in the case of every art we find
points of contact with other arts. Artistic creation of every kind proceeds
from one mind or spirit, which comprehends in itself all spheres of self-
conscious life. But with the other arts the distinction of conception in each
case is in its mode complete, for the reason that this, in its ideal creation,
persists throughout in permanent relation to the execution of its images in a
definite sensuous material, and consequently is absolutely distinct, no less
from the forms of the religious consciousness, than it is from the thinking of
science and the intelligence of ordinary life. Poetry, on the contrary, avails
itself, in its manner of objective communication, of the very means adopted
in these spheres of mental activity, that is to say, human speech; it finds
itself, consequently, otherwise placed than are the plastic arts and music,
which occupy a different field of conception and expression.
(c) Thirdly, we have the final demand made upon the poet for the most
profound and manifold transfusion of the subject-matter of his creations
with the animating soul of life, because it is his art which is capable of
absorbing most profoundly the entire fulness of the spiritual content. The
plastic artist, in a similar way, must apply himself to a transfusion of ideal

expression in the external form of architectonic, plastic and the forms
peculiar to painting. The musician must likewise rivet his attention on the
inner soul concentrated in emotion and passion and their outpouring in
melodic expression. In both cases the artist must be steeped in the most
ideal intention and substance of his content. But the sphere of the poet's
creative activity extends yet further, for the reason that he has not merely to
elaborate an ideal world of soul-life and the self-conscious mind. He has, in
addition, to discover for this ideal realm an external mode of envisagement
fitted thereto, a mode by virtue of which that ideal totality shines through in
more irresistible perfection than is possible in the case of other arts. It is
incumbent upon him to know human existence, both as soul-life and
objective life, to receive into his inmost being the full breadth of the world
and its shows, and to have felt through it there, penetrated, enlarged,
deepened and revealed to himself all it implies. Only after that, and in order
that he may find it in his power to create, as from his own spiritual
experience outwards, a free whole,—ay, even in the case where he restricts
his effort to a comparatively narrow and particular range,—he must have
liberated himself from all embarrassment with his subject-matter, whether
of a technical[18] character or otherwise, able in short to survey the ideal
and external aspects thereof with the same free glance. From the point of
view of instinctive creative vigour[19] we may in this respect pre-eminently
praise the Mahomedan poets of the East. The starting-point in such
compositions is a freedom which, even in the moment of passion, remains
aloof from such passion, and in all the variety of its interests retains
exclusively throughout the one substance as its veritable core, in contrast to
which everything else appears small and transitory, and nothing of finality
is left either to passion or lust. This is a philosophical outlook, a relation of
spirit to the facts of the world, which comes more readily to age than youth.
For in old age no doubt the interests of life are still present; but they are not
there with the urgency of youthful passion, but rather in the guise of
shadows, and to this extent are more readily conformable to ideal relations
such as Art demands. In opposition to the ordinary view that youth with its
warmth and vigour is the fairest season for poetic creation, we may rather,
at least from this point of view, maintain just the opposite, that the ripest
season belongs to the autumn of old age, provided that it is able to preserve
its energies of outlook and emotion. It is only to a blind old man, Homer,
that we ascribe those miraculous poems which have come down to us under

that name. And we may also affirm of our Goethe that only in old age, after
he had fully succeeded in liberating his genius from all restricting
limitations of sense, that he gave us his most exalted creations.[20]

[1] That is, the essential notion (Begriff) of Art generally.
[2] Substantiellen, i.e., the form that most corresponds to its essence.
[3] Theoretisch. Hegel doubtless has the Greek word in his mind. It is a Bildung
for the mind rather than with a view to action. It assumes contemplation rather
than volition.
[4] It is not quite clear whether Hegel means by Bedürfniss the need of spiritual
life, or the profounder demand of reality. It might stand for either.
[5] That is, the Vernünft.
[6] Das individualisirte Vernünftige, i.e., reason as realized in concrete
personality.
[7] In seiner Gediegenheit und schlagenden Fassung. Gediegenheit here
thorough grasp. Schlagenden may possibly mean arresting character of the
conception rather than definite, precise.
[8] That is, the notion.
[9] By aus dem Geiste it is quite possible that there is no reference to individual
genius. In that case the translation would be "in terms of human intelligence,"
i.e., from the resources of human reason.
[10] This seems to be the meaning of die Sache der Zeit.
[11] Lit., "They do not come forth from self-substantive and immediately free
vitality (Lebendigkeit)." Lebendigkeit is here the ideal and creative force or bond
of soul-life as above described.
[12] The German word would imply here an interpretation of symbolic or at least
ideal significance.
[13] This I presume is the general meaning of the sentence: Asien aber, das er
besiegt, ist in der vielfachen Willkühr seiner Einzelnen Völkerschaften nur ein
zufälliges Ganzes.
[14] Ein Sollen.
[15] It is possible that too much stress is laid on this line of difference. The
fundamental difference between oratory and poetry is that of form. At least it can
hardly be denied that the power of the orator to meet the demands of local
conditions is a vital feature of his art, that in this respect a Demosthenes is
greater than Burke. It is surely a mistake to assume that such limitations in
themselves or necessarily are an obstacle to creative genius. It is rather the sign
of supreme oratorical power that it can mould them and command them in
conjunction with its more majestic spirit. In this lies an essential part of the art
itself, just as a sculptor or a painter, such as Tintoret in the S. Rocco Scuola,
dominates the defects of local condition.
[16] Infinite, that is, not in the temporal sense, but as a complete and self-
realized whole.
[17] Hegel calls it "the poetising subjectivity"; that is, the personal activity
essential to poetic composition.
[18] Practischen.

[19] This appears to be the meaning of des Naturells.
[20] This is perhaps less true of Goethe than it is of either Milton or
Shakespeare. It is possible that Hegel thought more highly of the second part of
"Faust" as art than do the majority of modern critics. But the truth is there, if
subject to a good deal of qualification in respect to certain aspects of poetry. As
Meredith says:
"Verily now is our season of seed,
Now in our Autumn."
And Meredith was not one to do less than justice to the superb Dream of
imaginative youth.

II

THE EXPRESSION OF POETRY

The field of vision which first will occupy our attention, but the boundless
expanse of which we can only traverse with a few general observations, is
that which concerns the poetic generally, the content no less than the mode
of conception and organic association adapted to the poetic work of art.
This background will help to emphasize the second aspect of our subject,
which is poetic expression more strictly, the idea in the ideal objectivity of
the word appropriated by it as symbol of the image, and the melodious
vehicle of its speech.
We may infer the nature of the relation between poetic expression generally
and the mode of presentment proper to the other arts from our previous
examination of the characteristics of the poetic art. Language and the
sounds of words are neither a symbol of spiritual conceptions, nor an
adequate mode of projecting ideality under the condition of spatial
objectivity in the sense applicable to the corporeal forms of sculpture and
painting, nor yet an intonation in musical sound of the entire soul. They are
an abstract sign simply. As the vehicle of the poetic image or conception,
however, it is necessary that this side also, in theory no less than deliberate
elaboration, appear as distinct from the kind of expression appropriate to
prose.

We may for this purpose emphasize with more detail three main points of
distinction.
Our first point is this, that although poetic expression is throughout
exclusively embodied in articulate words, and apparently as such is simply
related to human speech, yet in so far as the words themselves are merely
abstract signs representative of ideas, the true source of poetic speech is not
to be discovered in the selection of particular words, and in the manner they
are associated in sentences and elaborated phrases, nor in harmonious
rhythm, rhyme and so forth, but in the type of conception employed. We
have, in short, to look for our point of departure for the constructive use of
expression in the choice of the idea or image, find our first and foremost
question will be what kind of conception will give us an expression suitable
to poetry. Secondly, however, it remains the fact that the imaginative idea
essentially pertinent to poetry is exclusively made objective in language.
We have consequently to investigate the expression of speech according to
its purely verbal aspect, in the light of which poetic words are
distinguishable from those of prose, poetic phrases from those of our
ordinary life and prosaic thought, abstracting in the first instance the mere
sound of them to our sense of hearing.
Finally, we have to recognize the fact that poetry is a mode of articulate
speech, the sounding word, which in its temporal duration no less than its
actual sound, must receive a definite configuration, one that implies the
presence of time-measure, rhythm, melodious sound and rhyme.

I. THE POETIC CONCEPT OR IDEA

What in the plastic arts the sensuous visible form expressed by means of
stone and colour is, or what in the realm of music animating strains of
harmony and melody are, this—we must repeatedly insist on the fact—can
only be, in respect to poetic expression—the idea or image itself. The force
of the poet's creation centres consequently, in the fact that the art moulds a
content in an ideal medium, and without bringing before us the actual forms
of external Nature and the progressions of musical sound; by doing so,
therefore, it translates the objective presence accepted by the other arts into
an ideal form, which Spirit or intelligence expresses for the imagination
under the mode which is and must remain that of our conscious life.

A distinction of this very character was already insisted on when we had
occasion previously to establish a distinction between the earliest type, of
poetry and its later modes of reconstruction from the data of prose.
(a) Imaginative poetry in its origin is not as yet a consciously distinct form
from those extremes of ordinary conscious life, one of which brings
everything to vision under the mode of immediate and therewith contingent
singularity, without grasping the ideal essence implied therein, and the
manifestation of the same; while the other, in one direction, differentiates
concrete existence into its various characteristics, making use of abstract
generalization, and in another avails itself of the scientific faculty as the
correlating and connecting focus of such abstractions. The idea is only
poetical in so far as it holds these extremes in unviolable mediation, and
thereby is able to maintain a position of genuine stability midway between
the vision of ordinary consciousness and that of abstract thought.
In general terms we may define the poetic imagination as plastic[1] in so far
as it brings before our vision concrete reality rather than the abstract
generalization, and in the place of contingent existence an appearance of
such a kind that we recognize what is substantive immediately in it by
virtue of its embodiment itself and its individuality, and as inseparable from
it, and by virtue of this are able to grasp the concrete conception-of the fact
in question no less than its determinate existence as one and the same vital
whole reposing in the ideal medium of the imagination. In this respect we
find a fundamental distinction between that whereof the plastic or
constructive idea is the source and all that is otherwise made vivid to us
through other means of expression. The same truth will appear to us, if we
analyse what we mean, by mere reading. We understand what the letters
mean, which are indicative points for articulate utterance, by the mere act of
sight, and without being further obliged to listen to their sound. Only the
illiterate reader will find it necessary to speak aloud the separate words that
he may understand their sense. But in the case of poetry just what seems to
be here the mark of stupidity is an indication of beauty and excellence.
Poetry is not satisfied with an abstract effort of apprehension, nor does it
bring objects before us as we find them in the form of reflection and in the
unimaginative generalization of our memory. It helps us to approach the
essential notion in its positive existence, the generic as clothed in its
specific individuality. In the view of ordinary common sense I understand

by language, both in its impression on my hearing or sight, the meaning in
its immediacy, in other words, without receiving its image before the mind.
The phrases, for instance, "the sun," or "in the morning," possess each of
them no doubt a distinct sense; but neither the Dawn or the Sun are
themselves made present to our vision. When, however, the poet says:
"When now the dawning Eos soared heavenwards with rosy fingers," here
without question we have the concrete fact brought home to us. The
poetical expression adds, however, yet more, for it associates with the
object recognized a vision of the same, or we should rather say the purely
abstract relation of knowledge vanishes, and the real definition takes its
place. In the same way take the phrase, "Alexander conquered the Persian
empire." Here, no doubt, so far as content is concerned, we have a concrete
conception; the many-sided definition of it, however, expressed here in the
word "victory," is concentrated in a featureless and pure abstraction, which
fails to image before us anything of the appearance and reality of the exploit
accomplished by Alexander. This truth applies to every kind of similar
expression. We recognize the bare fact; but it remains pale and dun, and
from the point of view of individual existence undetermined and abstract.
The poetic conception consequently embraces the fulness of the objective
phenomenon as it essentially exists, and is able to elaborate the same united
with the essential ideality of the fact in a creative totality.
What follows as a primary result of this is that it is of interest to the
imagination to linger near the external characteristics of the fact, to the
extent at least that it seeks to express the same in its positive reality, deems
this as essentially worthy of contemplation and insists on this very attitude.
Poetry is consequently in its manner of expression descriptive Description
is, however, not the right word for it. We are, in fact, accustomed to accept
as descriptive, and in contrast to the abstract definition, in which a content
is otherwise brought home to our intelligence, much that the poet passes by,
so that from the point of view of ordinary speech poetic composition can
only appear as a roundabout way and a useless superfluity. The poet must,
however, manage to bring his imagination to bear upon the explication of
the actual phenomenon he is attempting to depict with a vital interest.[2] In
this way, for instance, Homer adds a descriptive epithet to every hero. So
Achilles is the swift-footed, the Achaeans bright-greaved, Hector as of the
glancing helm, Agamemnon the lord of peoples, and so forth. The name is

no doubt descriptive of a personality, but the name alone brings nothing
further to our vision. To have some distinct idea of this we require further
attributes. We have in fact similar epithets attached by Homer to other
objects, which are essential to our vision of the epic, such as sea, ships,
sword and others, epithets which seize and place before us an essential
quality of the particular object, depicting it more precisely, and which
enable us to apprehend the fact in its concrete appearance.
Secondly, we must distinguish such reconstruction of actual facts from
definition wholly imagined. This offers a further point of view for
discussion. The real image merely places before us the fact in the reality it
possesses. The expression of the poet's imagination, on the contrary, does
not restrict itself to the object in its immediate appearance; it proceeds to
depict something over and above this, by means of which the significance
of the former picture is made clear to our mind. Metaphors, illustrations,
similes become in this way an essential feature of poetic creation. We have
thereby a kind of veil attached to the content, which concerns us, and
which, by its difference from it, serves in part as an embellishment, and in
part as a further unfolding of it, though it necessarily fails to be complete,
for the reason that it only applies to a specific aspect of this content. The
passage in which Homer compares Ajax, on his refusing to fly, to an
obstinate ass is an illustration. To a pre-eminent degree oriental poetry
possesses this splendour and wealth in pictorial comparisons. There are two
main reasons of this. First, its symbolic point of view makes such a search
for aspects of affinity inevitable, and in the universality of its centres of
significance it offers a large field of concrete phenomena capable of
comparison; secondly, on account of the sublimity of its predominant
outlook there is a tendency to apply the entire variety of all that is most
brilliant and glorious in its motley show to the embellishment of the One
Supreme, which is held before the mind as the sole One to be exalted. This
object of the imagination, moreover, is not to be apprehended as merely the
work of fanciful caprice or comparison, possessing as such nothing in it
essentially actual and present. On the contrary the transmutation of all
particular existence into further existence in this central idea grasped and
clothed by the imagination is rather to be understood as equivalent to the
assertion that there is nothing else essentially present, nothing that
otherwise can put forward a claim to substantive reality. The belief in the
world as we apprehend it with the vision of ordinary common sense is

converted into a belief in the imagination, for which the only world that
verily exists is that which the poetic consciousness has created. Conversely
we have the romantic imagination, which is ready enough to express itself
in metaphor, because in its vision what is external is for the essentially
secluded life of the soul only accepted as something incidental, something
that is unable adequately to express its own reality. To reclothe this
consequently unreal externality with profound emotion, with all the fulness
of detail envisioned, or with the play of humour upon the conjunction of
such opposites is an impulse, which constrains and charms romantic poetry
to ever novel discoveries. The object of importance here is not so much to
make the fact clear and distinct to the vision; on the contrary the
metaphorical employment of these outlying phenomena is itself the aim
proposed. The emotion of the poet concentrates itself as the centre, which
the environment enriches with its wealth; it absorbs this as part of itself,
adapts it with genius and wit to its adornment, steeps it in its own life, and
finds in this movement to and fro, this elaboration and self-reflection of its
creation its own source of delight.
(b) Secondly, we have the contrast present between the poetic mode of
conception and that of prose. The thing of importance in the latter case is
not that which is imaged, but the significance as such which constitutes the
content. It is on account of the latter that the idea or image becomes a mere
means to bring the content before the mind. The composition of prose is
therefore neither compelled to place the more detailed reality of its objects
before our vision, nor to summon before us, as is the case with the
metaphorical mode of expression previously described, another idea which
carries us beyond the immediate object to be expressed. No doubt it is also
necessary in prose to indicate in firm and distinct outlines the positive
appearance of objects; but this is so not on account of their figurative
character,[3] but to meet a specific and practical purpose. Generally
speaking we may therefore affirm accuracy to be from one point of view
the ruling principle of prose composition, and from another a clear
definition and intelligibility of statement. In contrast to this the language of
metaphor and imagery is in general and relatively less clear and more
inaccurate. For in that mode of direct expression, such as we have presented
by our first form of the poetic conception, the fact in its simplicity is carried
away from our immediate apprehension of it as a mere object into the actual
world of concrete fact, and we have to recognize it as a part of this, while in

that second and more oblique form some phenomenon of affinity merely
and one even aloof from the essential significance of our subject is made
present to us. We do not, therefore, wonder that prosaic commentators of
our poets have no easy task when they seek to separate, by means of their
scientific analyses, the image from the significance, to extract their abstract
content from the vital form, and thereby expound poetic modes of
composition to the prosaic mind.
In poetry this accuracy, this rigour in unfolding the content as we find it in
its simplicity, is not alone the essential principle. On the contrary, though
prose is forced to confine its ideas on parallel lines of almost mathematical
precision with the nature of its content, poetry introduces us to a different
sphere altogether, that is, the visible appearance of the content itself, or
other natural phenomena related to it. For it is just this objective reality
which in poetry ought to appear, and while unquestionably from one point
of view revealing that content, yet at the same time from another it has to
liberate itself from the purely abstract content, it being essentially an object
of the art to direct attention to its actual existence in the visible world, and
to arouse the interest of mind in the forms of life itself.
(c) If these three essential requirements of poetry are conditioned by an age,
in which the accuracy of the prosaic mind is become the ordinary type of
conscious life, the art, so far as its figurative characteristics are concerned,
is placed in a more difficult position. That is to say, in such an epoch the
type of penetration exercised by conscious life is generally a separation of
emotion and the ordinary outlook from scientific thought, which either
converts the ideal and external material of feeling and perception into a
stimulus of knowledge and volition simply, or into a plastic medium
subservient to observation and action. In such a sphere poetry calls for
energies of more definite purpose in order that it may free itself from the
abstraction of the prevailing mental attitude and enter into the world of
concrete life. Where, however, such a goal is realized, not only do we find
that this breach between thinking, which makes for generalization, and
perception and feeling, which grasp the particular, vanishes, but these last-
mentioned modes of conscious life are, together with their subject-matter
and content, at the same time freed from their exclusive relation of service;
and the process culminates in a victorious reconciliation of such modes with
what is essential universality. Inasmuch, however, as both the modes of

poetic and prosaic thought and general outlook are united in one and the
same conscious life, we find in it indications of trouble and derangement,
even possibly an actual conflict between the two, one which, as the poetry
of our times testifies, only genius of the highest order is able successfully to
deal with. Added to this there are other collateral hindrances, which I only
propose to define now, and that briefly, in their relation to the figurative
aspect already discussed. In other words, if the prosaic intelligence takes the
place of that creative imagination which previously obtained, then and in
that case the rejuvenescence of the poetic faculty, both in all that is
associated with the positive expression of facts and what is metaphorical,
readily offers the semblance of artificiality, which even where it falls short
of actual purpose, is only with great difficulty reconciled with that
directness of immediate truth which is demanded. Much in fact which was
still fresh in former times, through repeated usage, and the habits thus
originated, has itself become gradually a custom and a part of prosaic life.
Moreover, where poetry strives after novelties in its composition, we often
find that, despite of itself, in its figurative expressions and descriptions,
even where it escapes the charge of exaggeration and an excess of such
material, it none the less leaves an impression of artificiality, over nicety, a
straining after what is piquant and select, work incompatible with a simple
and healthy outlook and state of feeling. Such work tends to regard objects
in an artificial light and reckons on mere effect. Consequently it will not
permit their natural lighting and colour. Defects of this nature are still more
obvious in cases where, as a rule, the metaphorical type of imaginative
composition is exchanged[4] for the more direct, and our poet is driven to
outbid the forces of prose; and, in order to assert an originality, plunges into
the subtleties of or the fishing for effects which have still some appearance
of freshness.

2. VERBAL EXPRESSION

Inasmuch as the poetic imagination is distinct in its operation from that of
all other artists in virtue of the fact that it necessarily clothes its images in
words, and communicates the same through human speech, it becomes
imperative that throughout this process it should endeavour to co-ordinate
all its ideas, in the form which with most completeness will disclose them,
through the means articulate speech thus places at its disposal. And, in

short, we may affirm that the poetic content only assumes the form of
poetry in its restricted sense after it has been actually embodied and
rounded off in the vehicle of words.
This literary aspect of the art of poetry would readily supply us with a
boundless field of discursive observation and logical argument, which I
must, however, pass over in order that I may reserve space for more
weighty problems which lie before us. I merely propose, therefore, to touch
very briefly on a few fundamental points.
(a) Human art should in all its associations place us on a ground quite other
than that we confront in ordinary life, or indeed in our religious
consciousness, active life, or the speculations of philosophy. This is
possible on the side of literary or verbal expression only in so far as another
mode of speech is adopted than that obtaining in those other spheres. Art
has therefore not only, from one point of view, to avoid that in its
instrument of expression which will fail to rise above the trivialities of
ordinary speech and ordinary prose, but it must, furthermore, avoid falling
into the tone and manner of religious edification and philosophical research.
Above all it must keep aloof from the precise analyses and methods of the
scientific faculty, the categories of pure thinking as we find these illustrated
in the logical forms of judgment and deduction. These at once remove art
from the imaginative realm to another region altogether. But in all these
respects it still remains a difficult matter to determine the lines of boundary
on which we may actually affirm that poetry ends and prose begins. And in
fact we may admit absolute precision and confidence of statement to be
impossible from the nature of the case.
(b) If we pass now to a discussion of the particular means which poetic-
speech can appropriate as instrumental to its task the following points
appear to me pregnant and suggestive.
(α) First, we find particular words and exclamations[5] that are obviously
peculiar to poetry, whether they be used to ennoble it, or to introduce the
vulgarity and excess of comedy. We find a similar novelty in the specific
collocation of various words or turns of expression. In such a field poetry is
no doubt entitled on the one hand to borrow from an obsolete nomenclature,
obsolete at least in everyday speech, and on the other to declare itself as
pre-eminently an innovator, moulding novel modes of speech. Such a field,

provided only the vital genius of the language is preserved, supplies
material for astonishing boldness of invention.
(β) Secondly, we have the problem of verbal order. It is here that we meet
with those so-called figures of speech, in so far as, we should add, the same
have reference to verbal embodiment as such. The use of these, however,
easily degenerates into rhetoric and declamation in the bad sense of these
terms; the vitality of individual character is destroyed where we find that
such forms substitute a fixed and artificial mode of expression for the
genuine impulse of feeling or passion, and thereby offer the very opposite
to the personal, laconic and broken utterance required, the utterance whose
emotional depth is incapable of saying much, and for this reason, in
romantic poetry especially, is of great effect as a presentment of
suppressed[6] states of soul. But generally speaking we may admit that the
relative order of words is an instrument of the external form of poetry of
quite extraordinary resource.
(γ) Thirdly, we have still to draw attention to the construction of periods,[7]
which essentially embrace all the other aspects of composition and which,
by means of either their simple or more involved course, their restless
dislocations and distortions, or their quick onward motion, their
acceleration and their flood contribute so materially to the reflection of such
soul experience. And, in short, it is essential that the external presentment in
speech should mirror and assume a character similar to the ideality of such
experience in all its variety.
(c) In the application of the means of speech above considered it will be
useful to distinguish once more the several stages of poetic thought to
which they correspond and to which we drew attention when we considered
the nature of poetic conception or composition.
(α) Poetic diction can, in the first instance, appear with real vitality among a
people and at an epoch when the general speech is not as yet perfected, but
in fact only by virtue of its poetry receives its real development. At such a
time the utterance of the poet, as generally expressive of soul-life, is from
the first a real novelty, which stirs admiration on its own account by
revealing in its speech what remained previously unveiled. This new
creation appears as the marvel of a gift and personal power. The weight of
custom has not as yet fallen upon it. It enables that which is buried in the

depths of the human heart for the first time to freely unfold itself before the
amazement of men. Under such conditions it is the native force of the
expression, the creation of the fact of speech, not so much the varied and
craftful elaboration of the same, which is the main point. Diction here
remains exceedingly simple. In such early times it is indeed impossible that
we should have either much fluency of idea or any varied versatility of
expression. The subject-matter of such poetry is depicted with an artless
directness, which has not yet attained the delicate nuances, transitions,
mediatory matter and other advantages of a later artistic culture. In such an
age the poet is in fact the first person to give an utterance to the national
voice, to express ideas in speech, and thereby to encourage the imagination
itself. Speech is, if we may so express it, not yet inseparable from ordinary
life, and poetry can still freely, with an effect of freshness, avail itself of all
that in later times, as the speech of common life, gradually is severed from
art. In this respect, for example, Homer's type of expression is to the
modern man barely distinguishable from ordinary speech. For every idea
we have the direct word[8]; metaphorical expressions are comparatively
rare; and although the poem is composed with a close attention to detail, the
speech itself remains very simple indeed. In a similar way Dante was able
to create for his own nation a vital form of poetic expression, and asserted
in this, as in other respects, the dauntless energy of his creative genius.
(β) When, however—this is a further point—the circle of ideas enlarges
with the appearance of methodical modes of thought the ways in which idea
is associated with idea increase, and in this very process the ability to use it
increases also, and the expression of speech is elaborated in all the fluency
of which it is capable. When this is so the position of poetry on the side of
verbal expression is wholly changed. In other words, we have now a nation
possessing the fully developed prose speech of everyday life, and poetic
expression must now, in order to retain its interest, swerve aside from
ordinary parlance, and receive a resurrection under the re-moulding energy
of genius.[9] In our daily life the contingency of the moment is the motive of
speech. In the creation of a work of art, however, we must have deliberate
circumspection[10] in the place of instantaneous feeling; even the spirit of
enthusiasm must be judiciously restrained. The creation of genius should be
permitted to unfold itself from the artistic repose,[11] and become informed
under the prevailing temper of an intelligence[12] that surveys the whole

with clarity. In former times this spirit of concentration and tranquillity is to
be inferred from the fact and utterance of poetry itself. In a more recent age,
on the contrary, the nature of the composition and execution has itself to
enforce the distinction which obtains between the expression of poetry and
prose. In this respect poems which belong to epochs in which we find
already an elaborated prose diction differ essentially from those of times
and peoples in which the art originates.
The executive talent of a poet can be carried so far in this direction that the
elaboration of formal expression becomes the main thing, and the aim is
less directed to ideal truth than to formal construction, a polished elegance
and mere effect of the composition under its literary aspect. We have then a
situation, in which, as already observed, rhetoric and declamation are
elaborated in a manner destructive to the ideal vitality of the poetic spirit.
The formative intelligence asserts itself under the principle of
purposiveness, and a selfconsciously regulated art disturbs that more
genuine effect, which ought to present the appearance of ingenuous
openness and simplicity. Entire nations have, with the rarest exceptions,
failed to produce any type of poetic creation other than this rhetorical one.
The Latin language, even in Cicero, still preserves a genuine ring of naïveté
and naturalness. With the Latin poets, however, such as Virgil, Horace and
the rest, we already feel that Art is to a real extent nothing but artifice,
elaboration of effect on its own account. We recognize a prosaic content,
which is merely set off with an external embellishment. We find a poet who,
in the absence of original genius, endeavours to discover, in the sphere of
literary versatility and rhetoric effects, some compensation for that which in
genuine power and effect of creation and composition he fails to possess.
France too, in the so-called classical period of its literature, has produced
poetry very similar, a poetical style to which didactic poems and satires are
singularly appropriate. Rhetorical figures of speech in all their variety are
here in their rightful place. The exposition remains for all that, as a whole,
prosaic; and the literary expression is at its best rich in image and
embellishment, much in the style of Herder's or Schiller's diction. These
last-mentioned writers, however, availed themselves of this style of literary
expression mainly in the interests of prose composition; and by the
weightiness of their reflections and the happy use of such a style knew how
to win both a critical assent and a hearty approval. The Spanish poets also
are not wholly free from the ostentation inseparable from the too self-

conscious diction of art. And, as a general rule, Southern nations, such as
the Spaniards and the Italians, and previously to them the Mohammedan
Arabs and Persians, are conspicuous for a wealth and tedious prolixity of
image and simile. With the ancients, more especially in the case of Homer,
the flow of expression is characterized by smoothness and tranquillity. With
the nations above mentioned, on the contrary, we have a vision of life
gushing forth[13] in a flood which, even where the emotions are in other
respects at rest, is ever intent upon expatiation, and owing to this expressly
volitional effort of the will is dominated by an intelligence which at one
time is visible in abrupt parentheses, at another in subtle generalization, at
another in the playful conjunction of its sallies of wit and humour.
(γ) Genuine poetic expression in short is as far removed from all rhetorical
declamation as above described as it is from all ostentation and witty
conceits of diction, in so far at least as such defects do injury to the ideal
truth of Nature, and the claims of the content are forgotten in the verbal
form and expression of the composition. It is, however, possible, despite of
this, that the author's free enjoyment in his work declare itself with real
beauty. In a word that aspect of the composition we define as formal diction
ought not to be treated on its own and independent account alone, or as an
aspect of first and even exclusive importance. And, generally speaking, in
this analysis of the composition of poetry under its formative aspect, we
repeat that what is the product of careful thought must not lose the
appearance of genuine spontaneity: everything should impress us as though
it had of itself blossomed from the ideal germ or heart of the subject-matter.

3. VERSIFICATION

Our third and final aspect of poetic expression is necessitated by the fact
that the imagination of the poet does not merely invest ideas in words, but
does so in the form of the uttered speech; and by doing so he consequently
enters the domain wherein our senses are made aware of the actual sounds
and music of speech. We are thus introduced to versification. Versified
prose may give us verses, but that is not necessarily poetry. We have a
parallel case in the merely poetic expression of a composition in other
respects prosaic with its result of poetic prose simply. Yet for all that metre
or rhyme is an essential demand of poetry, bringing, as it were, a perfume of

its own to the senses; nay, it is even more essential than a richly imaginative
and so-called beautiful diction.
And in truth the artistic elaboration of this sensuous medium[14] unfolds to
us—it is the very demand of the art itself—another realm, another field,
which we only really enter after having left behind us the prose of ordinary
life, whether viewed as action or as literary composition. The poet is
thereby compelled to move in a literary atmosphere outside the boundary of
everyday speech, and to shape his compositions with an exclusive regard to
the rules and requirements of Art. It is therefore only a superficial theory
which would banish all versification on the ground that it contradicts
natural expression. It is true that Lessing, in his hostility to the false pathos
of the French Alexandrine metre, attempted, more particularly in tragedy, to
introduce a form of prose speech as most appropriate. Both Schiller and
Goethe have, in the more stormy works of their youth, and under the natural
impulse of compositions carrying a greater surfeit of content, adopted the
same principle. But Lessing himself, in his Nathan, finally returns once
more to the iambic. And in the same way with his Don Carlos Schiller
deserted the old path. Goethe too was so little satisfied with the earlier
prosaic treatment of his Iphigeneia and Tasso, that he transferred them to
art's more proper domain, remoulding them both from the point of view of
expression and prosody in that purer form, wherein these compositions
continue and will continue to excite our admiration.
No doubt the artificiality of the verse measure or the recurrent echoes of
rhyme has the appearance of an unyielding[15] bond between spiritual ideas
and the sensuous medium, more rigorous indeed than colour in painting.
External objects and the human form are coloured in Nature, and the
colourless is an arbitrary abstraction. The idea, on the contrary, in
association with the sounds of human speech, which are employed in the
wholly capricious symbols of their utterance, possess only a distant or no
ideal thread of connection at all. This being so, the exacting demand of the
prosodical rules will very readily appear as a fetter to the imagination, in
virtue of which it is no longer possible for the poet to communicate his
ideas in the precise form in which they float upon his phantasy. The
inference is natural that although the stream of rhythm and the music of
rhyme exercises upon us as an unquestionable fascination, it is nevertheless
not unfrequently and too much so the demand of this very charm to our

senses that the finest poetic feeling and idea should be sacrificed. But the
objection for all that will not hold water. In other words it is not true that
versification is simply an obstruction to spontaneous movement. A genuine
artistic talent throughout moves in its sensuous material as in its native
element, which so far from being oppressive or a hindrance acts as a
stimulus and a support. And in fact we find that all really great poets move
with freedom and confidence in the measure, rhythm or rhyme they have
created; and it is only when they are translated that our artistic sense is
frequently pained or shocked at the attempt to retrace their rhythm and
melody. Moreover it is part of the liberality of the art that the very
circumstances of the restraint, involving much change, concentration or
expansion of the ideas expressed, should suggest to our poet new thoughts,
incidents and creations, which, apart from such difficulties, had never
crossed his mind. But in truth quite apart from this relative advantage this
sensuous and determinate form of being—in the case of poetry the
melodious chain of words—is once for all essential to art. It is absolutely
necessary that the result should not remain in the formless and undefined
stream that we have in the immediate contingency of ordinary conversation.
It must appear in the vital design and elaboration of art. And although this
form no doubt in the music of poetry may sound too as a purely external
instrument, it has nevertheless to be treated as an end on its own account,
and as such as an essentially harmonious self-defined whole. This attention,
which is due to the medium of sense, contributes, as in Art universally, and
in the interest of seriousness,[16] yet another point of view where we find
this very austerity vanishes; both poet and listener feel it no more. They are
lifted into a region of exhilarating charm and grace.
In painting and sculpture the artist is given the form in its material and
spatial limitations for the portrayal and colouring of human limbs, rocks,
trees, clouds and flowers. In architecture also the requirements and objects
of the buildings proposed dictate more or less the defined shape given to
walls, towers and roofs. In the same-way music already possesses stable
definition in the fundamental laws of harmony. In the art of poetry,
however, the sound of language to our aural sense is, in the first instance,
unbridled;[17] the poet has consequently to regulate such absence of rule
within objective limits, and to outline a more stable conture, a more definite

framework of sound for his conceptions, their structure and their objective
beauty.
Just as in musical declamation the rhythm and melody should accept and
adapt itself to the nature of the content, versification is also a kind of music,
which, at its own distance, is capable of essentially re-echoing the
mysterious, but none the less definite, course and character of the ideas.
Agreeably with this the verse-measure ought to reflect the general tone and,
as it were, the spiritual perfume of an entire poem, and it is by no means a
question of no consequence whether the external form is one of iambics,
trochaics, stanzas, alcaics or any other metre.
In the heads of discussion we propose to follow of most importance are two
systems, whose distinction from each other we shall endeavour to explain.
The first is rhythmical versification, which depends upon the actual length
or shortness of the verbal syllables, whether we regard such in the
association of varied figures of speech, or under the relation of their time-
movement.
The second is that which is responsible for tonal quality as such, not merely
in the case of isolated letters, consonants or vowels, but also in that of entire
syllables and words, the configuration of which is in part regulated by the
laws of the uniform repetition of identical or similar sounds, and in part by
those of symmetrical change. It is to this system that we refer the
alliteration, assonance and rhyme.
Both systems stand in intimate connection with the prosody of speech. This
is so whether such systems are rather based throughout on the actual length
or shortness of syllables, or on the accent which the mind requires,[18] as
attached to the obvious importance of such syllables.
And, finally, we have also to unite together this general rhythmical
movement with the music of the independent formal structure as rhyme.[19]
And in this effort, inasmuch as the repeated echo of the rhyme strikes the
ear with a marked emphasis, which asserts itself predominantly over the
purely temporal condition of duration and advance, the rhythmical aspect
will, in such a conjunction, tend to fall back, and arrest our attention with
less force.
(a) Rhythmical Versification.

In discussing the rhythmical system which is without rhyme the following
points are of the most importance:
First, we have the firm and fast time-measure of syllables in their plain
distinction of long and shorty as well as their manifold association with
definite conditions and metres of poetry.
Secondly, we have the animation of rhythm in accent, caesura and
opposition between the verse accent and that of separate words.
Thirdly, there is the aspect of euphonious sounds which, within this
movement, is forthcoming from the sound of the words, without any further
concentration in rhyme.
(a) For that rhythmical movement which the time duration and the
movement itself makes of first importance rather than the melodic sound as
such and singled in its isolated effect, (αα) we find our starting point in the
natural length and shortness of syllables to the obvious distinctions of
which the sound of the actual words, the expression of their letters, in
consonants and vowels, contribute the essential basis.
Pre-eminently long by nature are the diphthongs ai, oi, ae, and the rest, for
the reason that essentially—whatever our modern schoolmaster may say to
the contrary—they are themselves a twofold, concrete tone, which
combines, much as green does among the colours. The long-sounding
vowels are equally so. As a third principle, which obtains already in
Sanscrit, no less than the Greek and Latin languages, we have associated
with them peculiar conditions of position. In other words, if two or more
consonants are placed between two vowels the relation constitutes what is
unquestionably a difficult transition in speech. The organ of articulate
utterance requires a longer period to pass over the consonants; this
necessitates a pause which, despite of the presence of the short vowel,
makes the syllable sound in its rhythm long, though it is not actually
lengthened. If I speak the words for example—mentem nec secus—the
movement from the one vowel to the other in mentem and nec is neither as
simple or easy as in secus. More modern languages do not retain this last
distinction with such stringency, but rather give effect, in the matter of long
and short accent, to other criteria. But for all that syllables which are treated
as short, despite of the position referred to, at least will not unfrequently

create a harsh impression, because they obstruct the quicker movement our
ear demands.
In contradistinction to the long quantity we have in diphthongs, long vowels
and length created by position, we have the vowels which are by nature
short, that is, those which are short, or which are not placed in words,
where one of them and another immediately following are separated by two
or more consonants.
(ββ) For the reason, then, that words, partly on their own account, as of
several syllables, include a number of long and short beats, and in part,
although of one syllable, are nevertheless associated with other words, we
have thereby to start with a definite, but accidental interchange of various
syllables and words without any stable measure. To regulate this accidental
relation is just the function of poetry, precisely as it was that of music to
define with accuracy the unregulated duration of particular tones by means
of the unity of time-measure. Poetry therefore establishes specific
combinations of long and short syllables as the law, by virtue of which,
under the aspect of time-duration, it has to arrange the series of syllables.
What we therefore get in the first instance are the different successions of
time. The simplest is the mutual relation of pure equality, as, for example,
we find it in the dactyl and anapaest, in which the two short syllables may
coalesce according to definite rule in two long syllables (the spondee).
Secondly, a long syllable may be placed next one short; in that case we have
a profounder distinction of derivation, though under its simplest form. Such
are the iambus and the trochee. We find a more complicated combination,
when a short syllable is interposed between two long ones, or one short
precedes two long, as in the cretic and bacchius.
(γγ) Such isolated time-relations would, however, open the door to
unregulated contingency if they were permitted to follow one another
anyhow in their motley differences. In fact the entire aim of such regulation
would vanish under such conditions, in other words the regulated series of
long and short syllables. From another point of view we should wholly fail
to secure a definite beginning, conclusion, and central position, so that the
caprice which here once again asserted itself would entirely contradict that
which we previously established, when considering musical time-measure
and beat, as to the relation in which the percipient ego stood to the duration
of tones. In other words, the ego requires a combination on its own account,

[20]
a return out of the continuous forward movement in time; and only
seizes on the same in virtue of definite unities of time and their, as such,
emphasized commencement,[21] regulated in their entire series and
terminations. This is the reason why, in the third place, poetry also sets out
the particular time-relations in a series of verse-lines,[22] which in respect to
the type and number of their feet, no less than in that of their
commencement, progress, and conclusion, are subject to rule. The iambic
trimeter, for instance, consists of six iambic feet, of which any two
constitute an iambic dipody. The hexameter consists of six dactyls, which
again, in certain positions, may coalesce in spondees.
Moreover, as it is no objection to such lines of verse-writing that they are
repeated over and over again in the same or practically under the same
mode, we find in respect to the entire series, on the one hand, a lack of
definition so far as the one final conclusion is concerned, and on the other a
monotony, which creates perceptibly a sense of deficiency in the ideal
aspect of their manifold composition. In order to mitigate such defects
poetry makes a final advance in its creation of the strophe and its varied
organization, more particularly with a view to lyric expression. As an
illustration we have the elegiac measure of the Greeks; there is also the
alcaic and sapphic strophe, not to mention the modes of lyric art elaborated
by Pindar and the famous Greek dramatists in their choric effusions or
interludes.
However much, in their relation to time-measure, music and poetry partake
of similar conditions, we ought not, therefore, to fail to draw attention to
their dissimilarity. The most important feature of this is that of the beat. The
question whether there is any real repetition measurable in time-beats of
identical length in the metre of the ancients has been the subject of
strenuous controversy. Generally speaking I think it may be affirmed that
poetry, which uses language in its words as a mere means of
communication, is unable, in respect to the time-length of its utterances, to
subordinate the same to an absolutely fixed measure of its movement in the
abstract form that is present in the time-beat of music. In music tone is
simply sound, without pause as such, and it essentially requires a stability
such as we find in the time-beat. Human speech does not require such
security, for one reason because it already possesses something fixed and
substantive in the idea, and for another because it is not thus wholly

committed to the objective medium of sound or resonance; rather this very
ideality of conscious life is the medium in which it consists as art. For this
reason poetry in fact discovers the more substantive means of defining its
arrest, continuance, pause or delay immediately in the ideas and emotions
which it clearly enunciates in language. Music, too, in its recitatives, marks
the beginning of a similar process of separation from the immutable
equality of the time-beat. It follows from this that, if poetical metre were
wholly subjugate to the regularity of the time-beat, the distinction between
music and poetry, in this sphere at least, would vanish altogether, and the
element of time would receive a more predominant significance than is
compatible with the essential characteristics of poetry. Supported by such a
conclusion we may therefore insist that, though a time-measure is of
imperative value in poetry, there is no such necessity for the abstract time-
beat; meaning and signification[23] of the actual words must here remain the
relatively speaking more controlling force. If we examine in this respect
more closely the particular verse-measures of the ancients the hexameter
will no doubt appear most nearly attached to a forward movement
compatible with the stringency of the time-beat. The elder Voss in fact
assumed this, though, as a matter of fact, such an assumption is already
excluded by the catalexis of the last foot. When in addition to this Voss
proceeded to place the time-measure of the alcaic and sapphic strophes on a
similar basis of abstract equality, we can only regard such a theory as a
wilful caprice which does violence to the poetry. The contention throughout
is apparently due to the habit of treating our German iambic in identical
lengths of syllable measure and time-measure. As a matter of fact the
beauty of the iambic trimeter of the ancients consisted above all in this, that
it was not composed of six iambic feet of identical lengths of time; but quite
the contrary in order that, in the first position of every dipody, spondees, or,
in their resolution, also dactyls and anapaests were permissible; and, by
reason of this, the monotonous repetition of the same time-measure, and
thereby all that is consistent with the time-beat, vanishes. We may add that
the possibility of change is yet more obvious in lyric strophes, so that if we
wish to establish such a thesis at all it must be on the à priori principle, that
the time-beat is essentially necessary. As a deduction from the plain facts
we see nothing of the kind.
(β). With the introduction of the accent and the caesura we have for the first
time the animation of the time-measure; we may parallel with this that

rhythm in music, which we have discussed as the time-beat.
(αα) In short in poetry also every definite time relation has, in the first
instance, its particular accent; in other words, regularly defined intervals are
asserted, which attract others and only in this way are rounded off in a
whole. Owing to this fact much play is given to the manifold possibilities of
the value of syllables. On the one hand generally long syllables appear
emphasized in their contrast to short, so that now, if the ictus falls upon
them, their significance is doubled as against the shorter, and in fact stand
out themselves as distinct from long syllables not thus accented. On the
other hand, however, it may also happen that shorter syllables receive the
ictus or accent, so that a similar emphasis is created to the one described in
the converse case.
Above all, as already observed, the beginning and termination of the
particular feet ought not with abstract precision to be identical with the
beginning and conclusion of single words. For, in the first place, the reach
forward[24] of the essentially exclusive word over the termination of the
foot of the line affects the connection of the otherwise disparate rhythms.
Secondly, when the verse accent falls on the final sound of a word carried
forward as above described, we get on account of this in addition a distinct
interval of time, the conclusion of a word having already come to a pause in
something else, so that it is in fact this pause, which, in virtue of the accent
united with it, is expressly made perceptible as a segment of time in the
otherwise unbroken current. Caesuras of this sort are inevitable with every
kind of verse. For although the distinct accent already confers on particular
feet a more intimate and essential distinction, and thereby a certain variety,
this sort of animation, especially in the case of verses, in which the same
feet repeat each other without a break, as, for example, in our iambic,
remain for all that in a measure entirely abstract and monotonous, and
furthermore allow the particular feet to fall apart without a common bond. It
is this gray monotony which the caesura checks, introducing a connection
and more genuine animation within what was otherwise, with its
undifferentiated regularity, the halting flow of verse, a life which, by virtue
of the various positions in which the caesura may assert itself, is itself as
manifold as is possible agreeably with the condition that its regulated
definition is held free from any approach to lawless caprice.

A third accent is furthermore attached to the verse accent and caesura,
which the words in other respects and independently possess, apart from
their metrical employment. By this means the mode and degree in which the
particular syllables are emphasized or the reverse increases in its variety.
This verbal accent may, on the one hand, no doubt appear in conjunction
with the accent of the verse and the caesura; and, if this is the case, the
strength of the accents respectively is increased. But from another point of
view it may stand independently of them on syllables which do not receive
any further emphasis, and which we may say, in so far as they moreover
require an accentuation to bring out their particular significance as verbal
syllables, assert an effect counter to the verse rhythm, an effect which
confers on the whole a novel and unique vitality.
To appreciate the beauty of rhythm in all the above aspects is for our
modern ears a very difficult matter, because in modern languages the
elements which combine to produce. this kind of metrical effect are no
longer in some measure present in the sharp and secure insistence they
possessed for the ancient world; rather we have other means substituted for
them, in order to satisfy other demands of artistic taste.
(ββ) But over and above all this, paramount over all valid claims of
syllables and words within their metrical position, there is, secondly, the
worth of that significance we gather from the line or verse as poetical idea.
It is in relation to this, which the language implies, that its other metrical
effects are either emphasized or, comparatively speaking, are restrained as
void of significance; and it is by this means alone that the finest perfume of
spiritual vitality is instilled through the poetry. But notwithstanding this
fact, such poetical effect is not to be carried so far that it directly contradicts
in this respect the rules of metrical rhythm.
(γγ) Moreover, a definite type of content corresponds with the entire
character of a particular verse measure, particularly from the point of view
of rhythmical movement, and above all that particular kind implied in the
movement of our feelings. Thus, for example, the hexameter, in the tranquil
wave of its forward stream, is particularly adapted to the even flow of epic
narration. Where, however, it is more in the nature of the strophe in its
association with the pentameter and its symmetrically consistent caesura, it
is, in its none the less generally simple regularity, fitted to express elegiac
emotion. The iambic again moves forward with rapidity, and as such is

peculiarly suitable to dramatic dialogue. The anapaest indicates the clear-
slipping march of joyful exultation. Other characteristics may readily be
associated with other modes of verse-measure.
(γ) Thirdly, this province of rhythmical versification is not confined to the
mere configuration and vivication of time-intervals; it embraces the actual
musical sound of syllables and words. In respect to such sound, however,
the classic languages, in which rhythm is retained, as above described, as an
essential feature, offer a real contrast to other more recent ones more
conspicuously adapted to rhyme.
(αα) In the Greek and Latin languages, for example, the stem syllable is
modified, by virtue of its modes of inflexion, through an abundance of
variously toned syllables, which of course possess an independent meaning,
but only as a modification of such syllable; this consequently, it is true,
asserts its force as the substantive significance of that variously expanded
sound, but it does not, so far as its sound is concerned, stand forth as such in
pre-eminent and unique ascendancy. When we hear, for example, the word
amaverunt, three syllables are attached to the word, and the accent is
already substantially differentiated throughout the number and extension of
these syllables in direct relation to the stem syllable, even assuming no
naturally long ones had been included, by which means the fundamental
significance and the emphasis of accent are separated from each other. In
such a case consequently, and in so far as the accentuation is not identical
with the main syllable, but falls on another, which merely expresses an
incidental significance, the ear can from this basis at once listen to the
sound of the different syllables and follow their movement, retaining, as it
does, perfect liberty to attend to that prosody peculiar to the word or phrase,
and finding itself then invited to incorporate within its rhythm these
naturally long and short syllables.
(ββ) The case of our modern German language is wholly different. That
which in the Greek and Latin languages is expressed, as above described,
by means of the prefix and suffix, and other modifications, is in more
modern languages for the most part resolved in verbs of the stem syllable;
the result of this is that the inflexion syllables that have been in the former
case unfolded in one and the same word, with collateral meanings of a
varied character, are now split up and isolated in separate words. As
illustrations of this we have the constant employment of many subsidiary

words denoting time, the independent indication of the optative by means of
distinct verbs, the separation of pronouns, and other examples. By such
means, on the one hand, the word—which in the previous case adduced was
expanded in all the variety of tone which attached to its many syllables,
under which every accent of the root, that is the root idea, was cancelled—
persists as a simple totality concentrated in itself, without appearing as a
series of tones, which being, as they are, mere modifications, do not, by
virtue of their specific sense, assert an influence with such a strength that
the ear is unable to attend to their independent tonal quality and its temporal
movement. And, on the other hand, on account of this concentration the
main significance is moreover of such a force that it attracts the fall of the
accent upon itself exclusively; and just because the emphasis is thus
fastened upon the fundamental sense this very coalescence does not suffer
the quantity of the other syllables, whether long or short ones, to appear;
they are simply overwhelmed. The roots of the majority of words are
unquestionably as a general rule short, compact,[25] of one or two syllables.
If thus, as is for instance pre-eminently the case with our mother tongue,
these root-stems appropriate almost invariably the accent to themselves,
such an accent is to an overwhelming degree one of the sense, significance',
not a definition, however, in which the medium—that is, the utterance as
sound—would be free, or could assert the relation of the length, shortness,
or accentuation of syllables independently of the intelligible content of the
words. Consequently a rhythmical configuration of time-movement and
emphasis liberated from the stem syllable and its meaning can here no
longer be maintained. We have merely left us, in contradistinction to the
former hearing of the ample sound and duration of such long and short
beats in their varied juxtaposition, a general impression of sound,[26] which
is apprehended. entirely aloof from the accented fundamental syllable with
its weight of significance. And, indeed, apart from this, as we have seen, the
ramification of the stem into syllables as modified into particular words is
also an independent process. Such words receive thereby an independent
worth, and, while preserving their own significance, they make us at the
same time hear the identical coalescence of meaning and accent, which we
have observed in the case of the stem or root word around which they are
ranged. We are therefore forced to restrict our attention to the sense of every
word; and, instead of being occupied with the natural length and shortness

of syllables and their sensuous[27] accentuation, are only able to hear the
accent asserted by the main and substantive meaning.
(γγ) In such modern languages the element of rhythm has little room for its
display, or at least the soul has little freedom left to expatiate within it,
because, as observed, time and the equable stream of syllabic sound as
emitted from its movement is superseded[28] by a more ideal relation—that
is to say, by the sense and meaning of the words, and thereby the force of
the more independent configuration of rhythm is suppressed. We may in
this connection compare the principle of rhythmical versification with the
plastic arts. We find in both that the ideal significance is not as yet asserted
in its independence, nor does the former expressly define the length and
accent of syllables, but rather the meaning of the words is wholly blended
with the sensuous medium of the inherent time duration and sound, with a
result that does complete justice to the claim of such externality, wholly
absorbed in the ideal form and movement of the same. If, however, such a
principle is renounced, and yet despite of this, but in accordance with the
necessary demand of art, the sensuous medium is permitted to retain a
certain force of resistance as against the exclusive assertion of ideal content,
[29]
in order to this end to divert the ear's attention,—in the case that is,
where what we may call the plastic moment of that more ancient mode of
syllabic quantity, as it is on its own account, and the tonal quality
inseparable from the general rhythm rather than independently asserted—
when this, as I say, has been destroyed, then we have no other means[30] at
hand save the express and artistically configurated sound of articulate
speech simply, and retained as such in its isolation. And this leads us to our
second main type of versification—in other words, rhyme.
(b) Rhyme
From an objective standpoint it is possible to seek to explain the need of a
novel treatment of language from the deterioration into which the classical
languages fell through their contact with foreign relations. Such a
development, however, lies in the nature of the facts themselves. The
earliest example of conformity with the ideality of its content attempted by
poetry is to be traced in the length and shortness of syllables in
independence from their significance, for the mutual relations of which,
caesurae and so forth, art elaborates its rules, rules which it is true generally

coincide with the character of the content in its broad outlines, but which
none the less, in matters of individual detail, do not suffer either the length
or shortness of a syllable, nor its accent, to depend exclusively on the
intelligible significance making such a formal aspect subordinate, to the
point of entire detachment, to the same.[31] The more ideal, however, and
spiritual the represented idea becomes, the more it tends to detach itself
from this objective aspect, which increasingly fails to present such ideality
in plastic guise, and finally reaches a point of self-concentration in which
the, so to speak, corporeal element of speech is in a measure wholly wiped
away, and for the rest merely asserts that wherein the intelligible
significance is reposed as necessary to its communication; all else is only
admitted, by way of by-play, as insignificant. Now romantic art, in respect
to the entire type of its conception and presentation, effects a similar
passage over to this concentrated synthesis of ideality, when it sets out in
search for the material which corresponds to this subjective content in
audible sound.[32] Following these lines romantic poetry also, inasmuch as
it generally lays most stress on the ideal tones[33] of feeling, becomes
absorbed in its preoccupation[34] with the distinct and independent ring and
tones of letters, syllables, and words; perfecting such a process to its final
satisfaction, as it learns, either in their association with ideality, or in their
connection with the architectonically intelligible penetration[35] of such
music, to separate such syllabic and other verbal sounds or to relate or
interlace them one with another. From this point of view we may affirm that
it is not simply by way of accident that rhyme is elaborated in romantic
poetry. It is a necessary feature of it. The requirement of soul-life, to
discover itself again, is thereby more fully asserted, and finds a real source
of satisfaction in the identity of the rhyme, which declares an
indifference[36] to the unyielding laws of the time-measure, and, by virtue of
its recurrence of similar sounds, gives exclusive effect to an effort which
conducts the conscious self back to itself. It is by this means that
versification is made to approach more closely the musical art as such, that
is, the vivid tones of soul-life itself, and is, from this point of view, liberated
from the, relatively speaking, gross material of human speech, in other
words from what we have referred to as the natural measure of quantity.
With regard to points of special interest in this subject, I will confine myself
to the following general observations:

First, upon the origin of rhyme.
Secondly, upon a few more definite features by which we may distinguish
the sphere of rhyme from that of rhythm in verse.
Thirdly, upon the types under which we may classify rhyme generally.
(α) We have already seen that rhyme belongs in its form to the art of
romantic poetry, which requires such a more pronounced emphasis of its
configurated syllabic sound posited thus on its own account. And it is thus
effected to the extent that the ideal activity of volition[37] discovers its own
presence by this means in the objective medium of tone. Where such a need
is asserted we have a mode of speech in part meeting absolutely the
conditions of form I outlined above when discussing the necessity of
rhyme; and in addition it makes use of the old forms of language at hand,
the Latin for example, which, though of other constitution and mainly
applicable to rhythmical versification, it employs agreeably to the character
of the new principle, or reconstructs the same so far into a new language
that the element of rhythm disappears, and rhyme becomes, as in the Italian
and French languages, the matter of all importance.
(αα) In this respect we find throughout Christendom that rhyme is
introduced into Latin versification at a very early date with much insistence,
although, as observed, it rested on other principles. These principles,
however, are rather adapted from the Greek language; and, so far from
testifying to the fact that they originated from the Latin speech itself, rather
prove, under the modified character they possess, a tendency which itself
approaches the romantic type. In other words, the poetry of Rome, on the
one hand and in its earliest days, discovered its source not in the natural
length and shortness of syllables, but rather measured the value of syllables
relatively to their accent; and in consequence of this it was only through a
more accurate knowledge and imitation of Greek poetry that the prosodical
principle of this was received and followed. And, moreover, the Romans
rendered more obdurate the flexible, joyous sensuousness of Greek metres,
more particularly by their use of more insistent pauses at the caesura, as we
find such not only in the hexameter, but also in the alcaic and sapphic
metres, hardening the effect thus to a structure of more stringent outline and
more severe regularity. And indeed, apart from this, even in the full bloom
of Latin literature, and from their poets of finest culture, we have already

plenty of rhymes. Thus from Horace, in his Ars poetica (verses 99-100), we
get the following:
Non satis est, pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto,
Et quocunque volent, animum auditoris agunto.
Though the poet was probably quite unconscious of the fact, it is none the
less a strange coincidence that, in the very passage in which Horace
enforces the obligation that poems should be dulcia, we discover a rhyme.
Similar rhymes occur in Ovid with still more frequency. Even assuming
such to be accidental, the fact remains that they appear to have been not
offensive to Roman ears, and might consequently be permitted, although as
isolated exceptions, to slip into the composition. Yet the profounder
significance of romantic rhyme is absent from such playful exceptions. The
former does not assert the recurrent sound merely as sound, but the ideal
content or meaning implied in it. And it is precisely this which constitutes
the fundamental difference between modern rhyme and the very ancient
rhyme of the Hindoos.
As for the classical languages, it was after the invasion of barbarism, and on
account of the destruction of accentuation and the assertion of that uniquely
personal note of emotion referable to Christianity, that the rhythmical
system of verse passed into that of rhyme. Thus, in his hymn to the Holy
Spirit, Ambrosius entirely regulates the versification according to the accent
of the meaning expressed, and breaks into rhyme. The first work of St.
Augustine against the Donatists is in the same way a rhymed song; and also
the so-called Leonine versicles, as expressly rhymed hexameters and
pentameters, are easily distinguishable from the accidental exceptions of
rhyme previously noticed. These and other examples like them mark the
point of departure of rhyme from the more ancient rhythmical system.
(ββ) Certain writers have no doubt attempted to trace the origin of the new
principle of versification in Arabian literature. The artistic education,
however, of the famous poets of the East is of later date than the appearance
of rhyme in western Christendom; and any Mohammedan art of a more
early time exercised no real influence on the West. We should, however, add
that we find from the first in Arabian poetry essential affinities with the
romantic principle, in which the knights of Europe, at the time of the
crusades, very readily made themselves at home; and consequently it is not

difficult to understand how, in the affinity of spiritual tendencies[38] which
they shared, and in which the poetry of Eastern Mohammedanism no less
than Western Christianity finds its source, though removed in the world
from each other, we meet for the first time and on its own independent
footing a novel type of verse writing.
(γγ) A third source, to which again, independently of either the influence of
the classic languages or the Arabic, we may trace the origins of rhyme and
all that it implies, are the Germanic languages, as we find them in their
earliest Scandinavian development. As illustration of this we have the songs
of the ancient Edda, which, though only in more recent times, collected and
edited, unquestionably date from a former age. In these, as we shall see
later on, it is not, it is true, the genuine rhyme-sound which is elaborated in
its perfection, but rather an effective emphasis upon particular sounds of
language, and a regularity defined by rule, with a definite repetition of both
aspects.
(β) Yet more important than the question of origin is the characteristic
difference between the new system and the old. I have already adverted to
the fundamental feature of importance here; it only remains to establish it
more narrowly.
Rhythmical versification attained its most beautiful and richest
development in the field of Hellenic poetry, in which we may discover the
most eminent features of the type wherever it obtains. Briefly they are as
follows:
First, the sound, as such, of letters, syllables, or words does not here
constitute its material, but rather the syllabic sound in its temporal duration,
so that attention must neither exclusively be directed to particular syllables
or words, nor to the purely qualitative similarity or identity of their sound.
On the contrary, the sound still remains in inseparable union with the static
time-measure of its specific duration; and in the forward movement of both
the ear has to follow the value of every separate syllable no less than the
principle which obtains in the rhythmical progression of all equally
together. Secondly, the measure of long and short syllables, no less than that
of rhythmical rise and fall, and varied animation derived from more
deliberate caesurae and moments of pause, depends upon the natural
element of the language, without permitting any introduction of that type of

accentuation, by virtue of which the actual meaning of the word leaves its
impress on a syllable or a word. The versification asserts itself in its
collocation of feet, its verse accent, its caesurae, and so forth in this respect
as fully independent as the language itself, which also, outside the domain
of poetry, already accepts accentuation from the natural quantity of
syllables and their relations of juxtaposition, and not from the significance
of the root-syllable. On this account, thirdly, we have as the vital emphasis
of certain syllables, first, the verse accent and rhythm, and, secondly, all
other accentuation, both of which aspects, in their twofold contribution to
the varied character of the whole, pass in and out of one another without
any mutual derangement or suppression; and in like manner respectively
they satisfy the claim of the poetical imagination in fully admitting the
expressiveness due, by virtue of the nature of their position and movement,
to words which, in respect to their intelligible meaning, are of a greater
importance than others.
(αα) The first alteration, then, effected by rhymed verse in the previous
system is this indisputable validity of natural quantity,[39] If, therefore, any
time-measure at all is permitted to remain, it is compelled to seek for a basis
for such quantitative pause or acceleration, which it refuses any longer to
find in the natural quantity, of syllables, in some other province. And this,
as we have seen, can be no other than the intrinsic meaning of syllables and
words. It is this significance which in the final instance determines the
quantitative measure of syllables, so long as such is still regarded as
essential at all, and by doing so transfers the criterium from the purely
objective medium[40] and its natural structure to the ideal subject-matter.
(ββ) A further result follows from this of yet more importance. As I have
already pointed out, this collocation of the emphasis on the significant
stem-syllable dissipates that other independent diffusion of it in manifold
forms of inflexion, which our rhythmical system is not yet forced to treat as
negligible, in contrast to the stem, because it deduces neither the natural
quantity of syllables nor the accent which it asserts from the intelligible
significance. In the case, however, where such an explication,[41] with its
co-ordination in verse-feet according to the quantity of syllables in their
natural stability, falls away the entire system therewith necessarily
collapses, which reposes on the time-measure and its laws. Of this type, for
example, is French and Italian poetry, the metre and rhythm of which are

absolutely non-existent as understood by the ancients. The entire question is
here merely one of a definite number of syllables.
(γγ) For such a loss there is only one possible compensation—that of rhyme.
In other words, if—this is one aspect—it is no longer time-duration which
receives objective expression, by means of which the sound of syllables
flows on freely in the even movement that intrinsically belongs to them; if,
furthermore, the intelligible significance dominates over the stem-syllables,
and coalesces with the same without further organic expatiation into a
determinate unity, we have no sensuous medium, such as is able to maintain
itself independently of the time-measure, no less than this accentuation of
the stem-syllables, finally left to us other than just this syllabic sound.
Such a sound, however, if it is to secure an independent attention, must, in
the first place, be of a far more insistent kind than the interchange of
different tones, such as we met with in the older verse metres; and its
assertion must be of a far more overwhelming character than the stress of
syllables can lay claim to in ordinary speech. What we now require has not
only to compensate us for the loss of the articulate time-measure, but it
further undertakes to reassert the sensuous medium in its opposition to that
unqualified predominance of the accentuated significance. For when once
the conceptive content has essentially attained the ideality and penetration
of mind,[42] for which the sensuous aspect of speech is of no importance,
the verbal sound must enforce itself still more positively and coarsely as
distinct from this ideality in order to arrest our attention at all. In contrast,
therefore, to the gentle movements of rhythmical euphony, rhyme is a crude
expedient,[43] which requires an ear by no means either so trained or
sensitive as that presupposed by Greek verse. Secondly, though it is true that
rhyme does not here assert itself so much as distinct from the meaning of
the stem-syllables simply as it does from the entire ideal content, yet it does
at the same time so far assist the natural verbal sound as to win for it a
relatively secure stability. But this object can only be attained if the
sound[44] of particular words affirms itself in exclusive distinction from the
resonance of other words, and thus secures an independent existence, by
virtue of which isolation it satisfies the claims of the formative aspect of the
verbal medium in forceful beats of sound. Rhyme is therefore, at least in its
contrast to the evenly transfused movement of rhythmic euphony, a
detached exhibition of exclusive tonal expression. Thirdly, we found that it

was the ideality of the conscious self which, by virtue of its effort of ideal
synthesis, came into its own, and discovered its personal satisfaction in such
recurrences of sound. If, then, the means used in the older type of
versification, with its copious variety of structure, disappear, there only
remains, if we look at poetry, under the aspect of its medium, to support this
principle of self-recovery, the more formal repetition of wholly identical or
similar sounds, whereby again we are able to unite under an intelligible
scheme[45] the assertion and relation of closely associated meanings in the
rhyme-sounds of expressive words. The metre of rhythmical verse we may
regard as a variously articulate interrelation of manifold syllabic quantities.
Rhyme, on the contrary, is from one point of view more material;[46] yet, on
the other hand, is itself more abstractly placed within this medium. In other
words, it is the mere recollection of mind and the ear of the recurrence of
identical or related sounds and significations—a recurrence in which the
poet is conscious of his own activity, recognizes, and is pleased to
recognize, himself therein as both agent and participant.
(γ) Finally, on the question of the particular types under which we may
classify this more modern system of romantic poetry, I only propose to
advert briefly to what appears to me of most importance in respect to
alliteration, assonance, and ordinary rhyme.
(αα) The first, or at least the most thorough, example of alliteration is that
we find elaborated in the earliest Scandinavian poetry, where it supplies the
fundamental basis, whereas assonance and the terminal rhyme, albeit these
two aspects play a by no means unimportant part, are, however, only
present in certain particular kinds of such poetry. The principle of
alliterative rhyme, letter rhyme, is rhyme in its most incomplete form,
because it does not require the recurrence of the entire syllable, but only
that of one identical letter, and primarily the initial letter only. Owing to the
weakness of this type of recurrent sound it is, in the first place, therefore
necessary that only such words should be used in its service, which already
independently possess an express accent on their first syllable; and,
secondly, these words must not be remote from one another, if the identity
of their commencement is to make a real impression on the ear. For the rest,
alliterative letters may be a vowel, no less than a double or single
consonant; but it is primarily consonants which are of most importance in
the scheme. Based on such conditions, we find in Icelandic poetry[47] the

fundamental rule that all alliterative rhymes require accentuated[48]
syllables, whose initial letters must not in the same lines occur in other
substantives which have the accent on the first syllable; and, along with
this, of the three words, the initial letters of which constitute the rhyme, two
must be found in the first line, and the third, which supplies the dominant
alliteration, must be placed at the commencement of the second line. We
may add further that, in virtue of the abstract character of this identical
sound of initial letters, words are generally made alliterative proportionally
to the importance of their signification. We find, therefore, that here, too,
the relation of accented sound to the meaning of words is not entirely
absent. I cannot, however, pursue this subject into more detail.
(ββ) Secondly, assonance has nothing to do with initial letters, but makes a
nearer approach to rhyme in so far as it is a recurrence in identical sound of
the same letters in the middle or at the termination of different words. It is
not necessary, of course, that these assonant words should in all cases come
at the conclusion of a line; they may fall into other places. Mainly, however,
it is the concluding syllables of lines which come into this mutual relation
of assonance, as contrasted with alliteration which is effective rather at the
line's commencement. In its richest elaboration we may associate this
assonance of language with the Romance nations, more especially the
Spanish, whose full-toned language is peculiarly adapted to this recurrence
of the same vowels. As a rule, no doubt assonance is here restricted to
vowels. But the language further permits of other variety of assonance, not
only that of vowels, but also that of identical consonants and consonants in
association with one vowel.
(γγ) That which, as above described, alliteration and assonance are only able
to establish with incompleteness is abundantly fulfilled by rhyme. In it, and
expressly to the exclusion of initial letters, we have asserted the wholly
equable sound of entire verb stems,[49] which are, by virtue of this
equability, brought into an express relation with their tonal utterance. We
have no mere question now of the number of the syllables. Words of one
syllable, no less than others of two or more, may be rhymed. By this means
we not only get the masculine rhyme, which is restricted to words of one
syllable, but also the feminine rhyme, which embraces words of two
syllables, as also the so-called gliding rhyme, which reaches to three or
even more syllables. It is in particular the languages of Northern Europe

which incline to the first type, Southern languages to the second, such as the
Italian and Spanish. The German and French languages would appear to lie
between these two extremes. Rhymes of more than three syllables are rarely
to be met with in any language.
The position of the rhyme is at the conclusion of the lines, in which the
rhyming word, although there is certainly no reason that it should ever
concentrate in itself the ideal expressiveness of the significance,
nevertheless does attract attention to itself so far as the verbal sound is
concerned; and, furthermore, it makes the different verses or stanzas follow
one another either in accordance with the principle of a wholly abstract
recurrence of the same rhyme, or by uniting, separating, and mutually
relating them in a more elaborate mode of regulated change, and variously
symmetrical interweaving of different rhymes with correspondent relations,
sometimes more near, at others more remote, of every degree of complexity.
In such a process the particular rhymes will at one point stare us in the face
at once, or they will appear to have a game of hide-and seek; so that in this
way our ear, as it listens, will at one time receive instant satisfaction, at
another it will only find it after considerable delay, wherein the expectation
will, as it were, be coquetted with, deceived, and kept on the stretch, until
the assured end from point to point of artistically arranged recurrence is
reached, and with it the hearer's approval.
Among the various types of the poetic art it is pre-eminently lyric poetry,
which, by virtue of its ideality and personal quality of expression, most
readily avails itself of rhyme, and thereby converts language itself into a
music of emotion and melodic symmetry, a symmetry not merely of time-
measure and rhythmical movement, but of the kind of resonance which
finds a responsive echo in the inner life itself. To promote this, therefore,
the art elaborates in its use of rhyme a more simple or complex system of
strophes, every one of which is part of one organic whole. Examples of
such an interplay of melodic sound, whether steeped in emotion or rich in
ingenuity, are the sonnet, canzonet, triolet, and madrigal. Epic poetry, on the
contrary, so long as it does not mingle lyrical subject-matter with its more
native character, preserves a more equable advance in its construction,
which does not easily adapt itself to the strophe. We have an obvious
illustration of this in the triplet stanzas of Dante's "Divine Comedy," as

contrasted with the lyrical canzonets and sonnets of the same poet.
However, I must not permit myself to go further into detail.
(c) Now that we have in the above investigation separated rhythmical
versification from rhyme, and contrasted the same, we may now proceed,
thirdly, to ask ourselves whether a combination of the two is not also
intelligible, and, indeed, actually employed. The existence of certain more
recent languages will render exceptional and important aid to the solution;
in other words, we cannot deny to these either a partial reassertion of our
former rhythmical system, or, in certain respects, an association of the same
with rhyme. We will, for example, confine our attention to our mother
tongue, and, in reference to the first-mentioned aspect, it will be sufficient
to recall Klopstock, who would have as little of rhyme as possible; who not
merely in epic, but also in lyrical poetry, set himself to imitate the ancients
with the greatest enthusiasm and persistency. Voss and others have followed
in his steps, ever striving to enforce with increased strictness principles
upon which to base this rhythmical treatment of our language. Goethe, on
the contrary, never felt quite himself in his classical syllabic measures. He
asks himself, not without reason:
Stehn uns diese weiten Falten
Zu Gesichte, wie den Alten?[50]
(α) I will in this connection merely reiterate what I already have observed
upon the distinction which exists between ancient and more modern
languages. Rhythmical versification is based upon the natural quantity of
syllables, possessing therein an essentially stable criterion, which the ideal
expression can neither limit, alter, or weaken. Such a natural measure is,
however, abhorrent to more recent languages; in these it is only the verbal
accent of the ideal significance, which makes one syllable long in its
contrast to others, which are defective in such significance. Such a principle
of accentuation, however, does not supply any audible compensation for the
absence of the natural quantity, or rather it adds to the actual uncertainty of
such a measure. For the more strongly emphasized significance of a word
can at the same time make another short, despite the fact that, taken by
itself, it possesses a verbal accent, so that the criterion accepted is wholly
one of mutual relation. Du liebst, can, for instance, according to the stress
of the emphasis which is thrown, according to the sense intended, either on
both words, or one or the other, be a spondee, iambus or trochee. No doubt

the attempt has been made, even in our own tongue, to return to the natural
quantity of syllables, and to create rules with this intent; but in the presence
of the overwhelming importance that the intelligible significance and the
accent it asserts has secured such a reference to theory is quite
impracticable. And in truth this agrees with the state of the facts. If the
natural measure is really to constitute the essential basis, the language ought
not as yet to have become such an instrument of soul expression as it is of
necessity in our own times. Once allow, however, that it has already in its
course of development thus secured such a mastery of the intelligible
purport over the sensuous or native material, and it follows that the
fundamental test for the value of syllables is not to be deduced from the
objective quantity itself, but rather from that whereof words are themselves
indicative as means. The emotional impulse of a free intelligence refuses to
allow the temporal activity of language, as such, to establish itself in the
independent form of its native and objective reality.
(β) Such a conclusion, however, does not necessarily imply that we are
forced to oust altogether from our German language the rhymeless
rhythmical treatment of the syllabic measure; it merely in essential respects
points to this, that it is not possible, conformably with the character of the
structure of our modern speech, to retain the plastic consistency of the
metrical medium as it was secured by the ancient world. We must
consequently seek for and elaborate some further element in poetical
composition by way of compensation, which on its own independent
account is of a more ideal[51] character than the stable natural quantity of
syllables. Such an element is the accent of the verse, no less than the
caesura, which as now constituted, instead of moving independently of the
verbal accent, coalesce with the same, and thereby receive a more
significant, albeit a more abstract assertion, in virtue of the fact that the
variety of that previous threefold accentuation, which we discovered in the
rhythmical type of classical poetry, on account of this very coalescence
necessarily disappears. It, however, equally follows as a result that we only
retain the power with conspicuous success to imitate the rhythmic
movement of such poetry where its impression on our ear is most emphatic.
We no longer possess, that is to say, the stable quantitative basis for its more
subtle distinctions and manifold connections, and the more crude mode of
accentuation, which we do possess in its place, to emphasize our measure,
is intrinsically no sufficient substitute.

(γ) To state, then, finally, what this actual association of the rhythmical
mode of verse with rhyme is, we may go so far as to affirm that it is the
absorption, although to a limited extent, by the more modern form of
versification of the more ancient one.
(αα) The predominant distinction of the natural syllabic quantity by means
of the verbal accent is in fact not an entirely satisfactory principle of the
mere medium. It does not arrest the ear's attention, even on the side of sense
simply, so far as to make it appear, absolutely and everywhere unnecessary,
where the ideal aspect of the poetical content is paramount, to summon the
complementary assistance of the sound and response of syllables and
words.
(ββ) It is, however, at the same time necessary in the interest of metre that
an equally strong contrasting force should be set up to that of the rhyme
sound. In so far, however, as it is not the distinction of syllables in their
natural quantity and its variety, which has to be co-ordinated and made
predominant, we have, in respect, to this temporal relation, no other
expedient left but the identical repetition of the same time-measure; in this
the element of accented beat will tend to assert itself in a far more emphatic
degree, than is compatible with the rhythmical system. As an illustration we
have our German rhymed iambics and trochaics, in the recitation of which
far more beat stress is admitted than is proper to the scansion of the
unrhymed iambics of the ancients, although the caesura pause is capable of
bringing into emphatic relief isolated words whose accent is mainly
referable to their meaning, and is capable of further making all that remains
dependent upon them a resisting effect to the abstract equality of the verse,
and by so doing introduces a varied animation. And as in such a particular
case, so we may assert generally, the time-beat cannot be of actual service
in poetry with the force that is required of it in most musical compositions.
(γγ) Although, however, we may affirm it as a general rule that rhyme
should be associated merely with such verse metres, which, by virtue of
their simple changes of the syllabic quantity and their continuous
recurrence of similar verse feet, do not on their own independent account
give sufficiently effective modality to the element of sensuous medium in
modern languages which admit at all of rhythmical treatment, yet the
application of rhyme to the more profuse syllabic metres imitated from
classical models, as, for instance, to borrow one example only, the alcaic

and sapphic strophe, will not merely appear superfluous, but even an
unresolved contradiction. Both systems repose on opposed principles, and
the attempt to unite them in the way suggested, can only involve us in a like
opposition, which can produce nothing but a contradiction we are unable to
mediate, and which is therefore untenable. It follows, therefore, that we
ought only to make use of rhyme in cases where the principle of the older
versification merely makes itself effective in more remote implication, and
through a transitional process essentially deducible from the system of
rhyme.
The above, then, are the points which we have sought to establish as, in a
broad sense, of most vital concern to poetical expression in its
contradistinction from prose.

[1] Bildlich, here not so much creative as simply plastic or constructive.
[2] Vorliebe. His interest must be already centred in it.
[3] Bildlichkeit, i.e. their claims as images of something else.
[4] Vertauscht. I have translated "exchanged," but Hegel may mean "mistaken
for."
[5] It is not very clear what Hegel means by the word Bezeichnungen. "Turns of
expression," which first occurred to me, appears to be covered by
Flexionsformen lower down.
[6] Gedrungenen. The idea is suppression into a compact mass—a cloud unable
to burst save in occasional flashes.
[7] I presume Hegel refers here to the synthetic arrangement of genuine
paragraphs rather than phrases, composition generally.
[8] Das eigentliche Wort. The word, that is, which expresses the fact in its
immediacy.
[9] More literally, "being remoulded with the life and wealth of Spirit."
[10] Besonnenheit, i.e., real thought-fullness.
[11] Der künstlerischen Ruhe. The personal predilection of Hegel for classic art
here once more asserts itself.
[12] The German word is Sinnen, but I think, though the emotional sense is
partly implied, the main emphasis is on a presiding mind—or rather a wide-
visioned genius.
[13] Eine sprudelnde Anschauung. A view of things that bubbles forth like a
fountain.
[14] That is, the medium of literary form.

[15] Ein hartes Band. The idea is not so much difficult as unyielding,
unmalleable.
[16] Zum Ernste des Inhalts. That is, the earnestness of a product of mind as
such. Hegel seems to contrast with this the spontaneity of an art which, as
inspired by genius, comes to us with the freshness of Nature herself, take
Shakespeare's songs for example.
[17] Ungebunden. That is, it is contingent.
[18] Hegel calls this the Verstandesaccent, and speaks of this importance
(Bedeutsamkeit) as a product of the syllables.
[19] I presume the words das für sich gestaltete Klingen refer to rhyme.
[20] Eine Sammlung in sich, that is, an independent collection or aggregate.
[21] Anheben may possibly mean appearance in the defined series generally.
[22] By Versen Hegel means rather lines than a number of them.
[23] The dative appears to be a misprint. The passage should be read der and die,
instead of dem and der.
[24] I am not quite sure what Hegel refers to in what he describes as das
Hinübergreifen des Wortes. I presume he means what are known as weak
endings to a line.
[25] Gedrungen. I suppose this is the meaning. The entire passage is a difficult
one to follow.
[26] Ein allgemeines Hören.
[27] That is, the accent of the syllables as a mere medium of uttered speech.
[28] Lit., has its flank turned, überflügelt.
[29] Die blosse Vergeistigung.
[30] No other means to divert the ears attention. The sentence is rather involved,
and I have not seen my way to simplify it.
[31] Abstract unterworfen. Hegel apparently means abstract as detached from the
natural medium of language—becoming thereby the abstract symbol of idea
exclusively.
[32] As in musical art.
[33] Seelen-tonen, i.e., the wave and flow of the emotional life itself.
[34] In das Spielen. Hegel repeats his use of the expression above, beiher
Spielen, lit., the playing with not as a toy but as something serious.
[35] I suppose this is the meaning here of Sharfsinn, but "subtlety" may be
included.
[36] Indifferent, that is, as asserting the creative freedom of the poet, he can
select his own rhymes as he wills. Hegel, however, seems rather to miss the
essential spontaneity of really good blank verse.
[37] So I translate die innere Subjectivität, but it may refer perhaps to the entire
creative personality.

[38] That is, I presume, their relation to romantic art.
[39] That is, the primary feature changed is that of the validity of natural
quantity.
[40] Dem Äusseren Daseyn. That is, of language.
[41] Entfaltung. Such an explication of rhythmical euphony as the previous
system discloses.
[42] Geistes. All that pertains to conscious life.
[43] Lit., a blunt or coarse sound, ein plumpes Klingen.
[44] Tonen implies sound no less than accent. I have rendered it in various ways.
[45] Von Seiten des Geistes. Perhaps rather "as aspects of the poet's
intelligence"—that is, with reference to the self-assertion above explained.
[46] More nearly related to the natural medium of language.
[47] Die Verslehre der Isländer v. Rask, verd. von Mohnike, Berlin, 1830, pp. 14-
17.
[48]Betonte, see above note on Tonen.
[49] Stämme, the stem of verbs, rather than the root of substantives, which would
be more correctly stammwort.
[50] "Do we moderns face broad reaches such as these, as did the ancients?"
Falten, folds, expatiation of subject-matter. I presume, though I do not recall the
context, that the allusion is mainly to elegiacs.
[51] I.e., more related to active intelligence.

III

THE SEVERAL GENERIC TYPES OF POETRY

The two fundamental aspects, according to which we have hitherto
examined the poetical art were, in the first instance, that of poetical
significance or content in the broadest sense, the nature of the outlook of a
poetical composition and the creative activity of the poet; secondly, poetical
expression, not merely respectively to the ideas which have to be embodied
in words, but also to the modes under which they are expressed and the
character of versification.
I. What we, above all, in these respects endeavoured to enforce consisted in
this, that poetry has to embrace the ideality of conscious life as its content;

yet, in its artistic elaboration of the same, it cannot rest satisfied with the
objective form of direct perception as other plastic arts; nor can it accept as
its form the emotional ideality which alone reverberates through our soul-
life, nor yet that of thinking and the relations of reflective thought. It has to
maintain a mediate position between the extremes of immediate objectivity
and the inner life of feeling and thought. This intermediate sphere of
conception overlaps both sides. From thought it borrows the aspect of ideal
universality, which binds together the immediate particularity of the senses
in more definitive simplicity; while, on the other hand, its mode of
envisagement shares with plastic art the haphazard[1] juxtaposition of
objects in space. The poetic imagination, moreover, is essentially distinct
from thinking in that it permits, under the mode of sensuous apprehension
from which it starts, particular ideas to remain in an unrelated series or
contiguity; pure thinking, on the other hand, demands and promotes the
reciprocal dependence of determinate concepts on each other, an
interstructure of relations, consequential or conclusive judgments, and so
forth. When, therefore, the poetical imagination in its art-products renders
necessary an ideal unity of all particularity, such integration may easily
meet with obstruction by virtue of the above-mentioned diffuseness[2]
which the nature of its content forbids it wholly to eschew; and it is just this
which puts it in the power of poetry to embody and present a content in
organic and vital inter-connection of successive aspects and divisions, yet
impressed at the same time with the apparent independence of these. And
by this means it is possible for poetry to extend the selected content at one
time rather in the direction of abstract thought, at another rather under the
condition of the phenomenal world, and consequently to include within its
survey the most sublime thoughts of speculative philosophy, no less than
the external objects of Nature, always provided that the former are not put
forward in the logical forms of ratiocination and scientific deduction, or the
latter as void of all vital or other significance. The function, in short, of
poetry is to present a complete world, whose ideal or essential content must
be spread before us under the external guise of human actions, events, and
other manifestations of soul;life, with all the wealth and directness
compatible with such art.
2. This explication, however, does not receive its sensuous embodiment in
stone, wood, or colour, but exclusively in language, whose versification,

accentuation, and the rest are in fact the trappings[3] of speech, by means of
which the ideal content secures an external form. If we ask ourselves now,
to put the thing somewhat crudely, where we are to look for the material
consistency of this mode of expression, we must reply that language is not
essentially on all fours with a work[4] of plastic art, independent, that is, of
the artistic creator, but it is the life of our humanity itself the individual
speaker alone who is the vehicle of the sensuous presence and actuality of a
poetical work. The compositions of poetry must be recited, sung, acted,
reproduced, in short, by living people, just as the compositions of music are
so reproduced. We are no doubt accustomed to read epic and lyric poetry,
and only to hear drama recited and to see the same accompanied by gesture.
Poetry, however, is essentially and according to its notion, sonorous
expression, and we may, in particular, not dispense with this, if a complete
exposition of the art is our aim, for the reason that it is the aspect and the
only aspect, under which it comes into genuine contact with objective
existence. The printed or written letter is, no doubt, also in a sense
objectively present, but it is merely as the indifferent symbol of sounds and
words. We no doubt have in a previous passage regarded words as the
purely external means which give us the signification of ideas. We must not,
however, overlook the fact that poetry, at any rate, so informs the temporal
element and sound of these signs, as to ennoble them in a medium suffused
with the ideal vitality of that, whereof, in their abstractness, they are the
symbols. The printing press merely makes visible to our eyes this form of
animation under a mode which, taken by itself, is essentially indifferent and
no longer coalescent with the ideal content; it consigns it, in its altered form
of visibility, to the element of time-duration and the sound of ordinary
speech,[5] instead of giving us in fact the accented word and its determinate
time-duration. When we, therefore, content ourselves with mere reading we
do so partly owing to the ease with which we can thus picture to ourselves
what is real as actually uttered in speech, partly because of the undeniable
fact that poetry alone among the arts, in aspects of fundamental importance,
is already completely at home in the life of spirit, and neither the
impression of it on our sense of sight or hearing give us the root of the
matter. Yet for all that, precisely by virtue of this ideality, poetry, as art,
ought not wholly to divest itself of this aspect of objective expression, if at
least it is anxious to avoid an incompleteness similar to that in which, for

instance, the mere outlined drawing attempts to reproduce the picture of
famous colourists.
3. As an artistically organic whole referred no longer to a specific type of
exclusive execution on account of the onesided character of its medium, the
art of poetry accepts in a general way for its determinate form various types
of art-production, and it is consequently necessary to borrow the criteria of
our classification of such poetical types or species from the general notion
of artistic production.[6]
(A) In this respect it is, first, and from one point of view, the form of
objective reality, wherein poetry reproduces the evolved content of
conscious life in the ideal image, and therewithal essentially repeats the
principle of plastic art, which makes the immediate object of fact visible.
These plastic figures of the imagination poetry furthermore unveils as
determined in the activities of human and divine beings, so that every thing,
which takes place, issues in part from ethically self-subsistent human or
divine forces, and in part also, by virtue of obstructive agencies, meets with
a reaction, and thus, in its external form of manifestation, becomes an event,
in which the facts in question disclose themselves in free independence, and
the poet retires into the background. To grasp such events in a consequential
whole is the task of Epic poetry, inasmuch as its aim is just to declare
poetically, and in the form of the actual facts, either an essentially complete
action, or the personalities, from which the same proceeds in its substantive
worth or its eventful complexity amid the medley of external accidence.
And by so doing it represents the objective fact itself in its objectivity.
And, moreover, the minstrel does not recite this positive world before
conscious sense and feeling in a way that would seem to announce it as his
personal phantasy, and his own heart's passion; rather this reciter or
rhapsodist recites it by heart, in a mechanical sort of way, and in a metre
which, while it repeats something of this monotony with its uniformity of
structure, rolls onward in a tranquil and steady stream. What, in short, the
minstrel narrates must appear as a part of real life, which, in respect to
content no less than presentation, stands in absolute independence aloof
from himself, the narrator; he is throughout, in relation that is to the facts of
his tale no less than the manner in which he unfolds them, not permitted
wholly to identify his own personality with their substance.

(B) In direct contrast to epic poetry we have our second type, that namely of
lyrical poetry. Its content is that within ourselves, the ideal world, the
contemplative or emotional life of soul, which instead of following up
actions, remains at home with itself in its own ideal realm, and,
consequently, is able to accept self-expression as its unique and indeed final
end. Here we have, therefore, no substantive totality, self-evolved as
external fact or event, but the express outlook, emotion and observation of
the individual's self-introspective life shares in what is substantive and
actual therein as its own, as its passion, mood or reflection; we have here
the birth of its own loins. Such a fulfilment and ideal process is not
adequately realized in a mechanical delivery such as we saw was conceded
as appropriate to epic poetry. On the contrary the singer must give utterance
to the ideas and views of lyrical art as though they were the expression of
his own soul, his own emotions. And inasmuch as it is this innermost world,
which the delivery has to animate, the expression of it will above all lean to
the musical features of poetical reproduction; whether permitted as an
embellishment or a necessity we shall here meet with the varied modulation
of the voice, either in recitation or song, and the accompaniment of musical
instruments.
(C) Our third and final mode of poetical composition unites the two
previous ones in a new totality. In this we not only discover an objective
exposition, but also can trace its source in the ideal life of particular people;
what is objective here is therefore portrayed as appertinent to the conscious
life of individuals.[7] To put the case conversely, the conscious life of
individuals is on the one hand unfolded as it passes over into actual life
experience, and on the other as involved in the fatality of events, which
brings about passion in causal and necessary connection with the
individual's own action. We have here, therefore, as in Epic poetry, an
action expanded to our view in its conflicts and issues; spiritual forces come
to expression and battle; the element of contingency is everywhere
involved, and human activity is either brought into contact with the energy
of an omnipotent destiny, or a directive and world-ruling Providence.
Human action, however, does not here only pass before our vision in the
objective form of its actual occurrence, as an event of the Past resuscitated
by the narrative alone; on the contrary, it is made to appear as actually
realized in the particular volition, morality or immorality of the specific
characters depicted, which thereby become central in the principle of lyric

poetry. Add to this, however, that such individuals are not merely disclosed
in their inner experience as such; they also declare themselves in the
execution of passion directed to ends; whereby they offer a criterion—in the
way that epic poetry asserts what is substantive in its positive reality[8] for
the evaluation of those passions and the aims which are directed to the
objective conditions and rational laws of the concrete world; and it is,
moreover, by this very test of the worth and conditions, under which such
individuals continue in their resolve to abide, that their destiny is
discovered by implication. This objective presence, which proceeds from
the personality itself, no less than this personal experience,[9] which is
reproduced in its active realization and all that declares its worth in the
world, is Spirit in its own living totality; it is this which, as action, supplies
both form and content to dramatic poetry.
Moreover, inasmuch as this concrete whole is itself no less essentially
conscious life than it is, under the aspect of its external realization, also a
self-manifestation, quite apart from all question of local or other artistic
means of realization, we are bound, in respect to this representation of
actual facts, to meet the claim of genuine poetry that we should have the
entire personality of the individual envisaged; only as such the living man
himself is actually that which is expressed. For though, on the one hand, in
the drama, as in lyric poetry, a character ought to express the content of its
own soul-life as a veritable possession, yet, from another point of view, it
asserts itself, when, in its entire personality it is confronted with other
personalities, as effective in its practical existence, and comes thereby into
active contact with the world around it, by means of which it attaches itself
immediately to an active disposition,[10] which, quite as truly as articulate
speech, is an expression of the soul-life, and requires its artistic treatment.
Already we find in lyrical poetry some close approach to the apportionment
of various emotions among different individual speakers, and the
distribution of its subject-matter in acts or scenes.
In the drama, then, subjective emotion passes on likewise to the expression
of action; and, by so doing, renders necessary the manifestation to our
senses of the play of gesture which concentrates the universality of
language in a closer relation with the expression of personality,[11] and by
means of position, demeanour, gesticulation and other ways is
individualized and completed. If, however, this aspect of deportment is

carried forward by artistic means to a degree of expression, that it can
dispense with speech, we have the art of pantomime, which resolves the
rhythmical movement of poetry in a harmonious and picturesque motion of
limbs, and in this, so to speak, plastic music of bodily position and
movement gives animated life in the dance to the tranquil and cold figures
of sculpture, that it may essentially unite by such means music and the
plastic art.

[1] Gleichgültige, that is, the impressions of sense are received from without,
from a manifold indifferent to ourselves.
[2] Losheit. A word coined by Hegel to denote this relation of poetry to external
objects in their independence.
[3] Die Gebehrden, lit., gestures, in which sense it is used in a subsequent
passage.
[4] We should rather have expected "the material of plastic art." The contrast is
rather between the nature of the medium in each case than the finished product.
So far as the latter is concerned the musical composition is as dependent, even
more dependent for its presentment on human activity as poetical composition.
[5] Des Klingens unseres Gewohnheit. It is not quite clear what the meaning is
here. The meaning may be as in the interpretation above. But it is rather difficult
to see how, so far as mere print goes, we can be conscious of actual sound at all,
unless it is intended here to include at least the act of reading; an alternative
interpretation would be the "habitual verbal accent," but we should in that case
have rather expected the substantive Nachdrucks for Klingens.
[6] Hegel means of course that as that notion stands midway between the
objectivity of sense-perception and the concept of thought, so too this
classification will be based on the attitude of the art either to the personal life, or
the objects of sense, as the one aspect is more strongly represented or the other.
[7] Dem Subject. That is, I understand, the individual subject generally, not
merely the conscious life of the poet or the singer.
[8] In seiner Gediegenheit, i.e., as concrete.
[9] Dies Subjektive. The realization of self in the world is part of that world
regarded as a rational and self-conscious process, Spirit.
[10] Sich die Gebehrde anschliesst, i.e. a practical attitude to the world,
involving gesture and other actions.
[11] Hegel's expression is "the personality of expression," i.e., the personal
aspect of expression.

A. EPIC POETRY

The Epos, word, saga, states simply what the fact is which is translated into
the word. It acquires an essentially self-consistent content in order to
express the fact that it is and how it is. What we have here brought before
consciousness is the object regarded as object in its relations and
circumstances, in their full compass and development, the object, in short,
in its determinate existence.

We propose to treat our subject-matter as follows:
First, we shall attempt to describe the general character of what is Epical:
Secondly, we shall proceed to some particular features, which in respect to
the real Epos are of exceptional importance:
Thirdly, we shall enumerate by name certain specific methods of treatment,
which have been actually in use in particular epic compositions within the
historical elaboration of the type.

1. THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPIC TYPE

(a) The most simple, but nevertheless in its abstract concentration, still one-
sided and incomplete mode of epic exposition consists in the assertion of
that which is essentially fundamental and necessary among the facts of the
concrete world and the wealth of mutable phenomena, and in the expression
of such on their own account, as focussed in epic phraseology.
(α) We may begin our consideration of the type with the epigram i, in so far
as it really remains an epigram, that is an inscription on columns, effects,
monuments, gifts and so forth, and at the same time points with an ideal
finger to something else, and by doing so explains through words, inscribed
on an object, somewhat otherwise plastic, local, something present outside
the words expressed. In such an example the epigram states simply what a
definite fact is. The individual does not as yet express his concrete self; he
attaches a concise interpretation to the object, the locality, which he has
immediate perception of and which claims his interested attention, an
interpretation which goes to the heart of the fact in question.
(β) A yet further advance may be discovered in the case where the twofold
aspect of the object in its external reality and the fact of inscription
disappears, in so far, that is, as poetry, without any actual representation on
the object, expresses its idea of the fact. To this class belong the gnomes of
the ancients, ethical sayings, which concentrate in concise language that
which is more forceable than material objects, more permanent and
universal than the monument of some definite action, more perdurable than
votive offerings, columns, and temples. Such are duties in human existence,
the wisdom of life, the vision of that which constitutes in action and
knowledge the firm foundations and stable bonds for human kind. The epic

character of such modes of conception consists in this, that such maxims do
not declare themselves as exclusively personal emotion and reflection, and
also, in the matter of their impression, are quite as little directed with the
object even of affecting our emotions, but rather with the purpose to
emphasize what is of sterling validity, whether as the object of human
obligation or the sense of honour and propriety. The ancient Greek elegiacs
have in some measure this epic tone. We have still extant a few verses of
Solon of this kind, though the transition here into a hortatory tone and style
is easily made. Such include exhortations or warnings with reference to the
common social life, its laws and morality. We may also mention the gold
sayings, which tradition ascribes to Pythagoras. Yet all such are of a hybrid
nature, and referable to this, that though in general we may associate with
them the tone of our distinct type, yet, owing to the incompleteness of the
object, it is not fully realized, but rather there is a distinct tendency to
involve with it that of another poetical type, in the present case the lyrical.
(γ) Such dicta may, however, thirdly, as already suggested, by being
divested of this fragmentary and self-exclusive isolation, go to form a larger
whole, be rounded off, that is, in a totality, which is altogether of the Epic
type; we have here neither a purely lyrical frame of mind nor a dramatic
action, but a specific and veritable sphere of the living world whose
essential nature, as emphasized in its general characteristics, no less than as
situated to particular aspects, points of view, occurrences or obligations,
supplies us with an integrating unity and a genuine focal centre. In complete
agreement with this type of epical content, which displays what is of
permanent and universal import along with, as a rule, a distinct ethical
purpose of admonishment, instruction or exhortation to an, in all essentials,
ethically stable life, compositions of this kind receive a didactic flavour.
Nevertheless, by reason of the novelty of their wise sayings, the freshness
of their general outlook and the ingenuousness of their observation we must
keep them quite distinct from more recent didactic poetry. They wholly
justify, inasmuch as they give the necessary play to matter entirely
descriptive, the conclusion that these two aspects taken together, instruction
and description, are directly deduced as the substantive summary of facts
which have been throughout experienced. As an obvious illustration I will
merely mention the "Works and Days" of Hesiod, the teaching and
descriptive power of which, in its primitive style and as a poetical
composition, exercises a fascination upon us wholly different from the

pleasure we experience in the colder elegance, the scientific or systematic
conclusions of Virgil's poems on agriculture.
(b) The above described modes of epigram, gnome, and didactive poem
accept their specific provinces of Nature or human life as their subject-
matter, while endeavouring to fix attention in concise language, with more
or less limitation of survey, on that which is of permanent worth and
essential truth in this or that object, condition, or activity; and even under
the still more restricted condition which the art of poetry imposes on such a
task the practical result upon human effort is still maintained. There is,
however, a further or second type of such compositions, which is, on the
one hand, profounder in its penetration, and, on the other, lays less stress on
instruction and reform. Such are the cosmogonies and theogonies, no less
than those most ancient works of philosophy, which are still unable entirely
to liberate themselves from the poetical form.
(α) In this way the exposition of the Eleatic philosophy in the poems of
Xenophanes and Parmenides still remains poetic in form; and this is
exceptionally so in the introduction prefaced by the latter to his work. The
content is here the One, which, in its contrast to the Becoming or the
already Become, all particular phenomena in short, is eternal and
imperishable. No particularity is permitted to bring content to the human
spirit, which strives after truth, and, in the first instance, is cognizant of the
same in its most abstract unity and concreteness. Expatiating in the
greatness of this object, and wrestling with the might of the same, the
impulse of soul inclines instinctively to the lyrical expression, although the
entire explication of the truths into which the writer's thought here
penetrates carries on its face a wholly practical and thereby epic character.
(β) It is, secondly, the becoming of objective things, in particular natural
objects, the press and conflict of activities operative in Nature, which
supplies the matter of the cosmogonies, and impels the poetic imagination
to disclose in the still more concrete and opulent mode of actions and events
real eventuality. And the way this faculty does this is by clothing the forces
of Nature in relatively more or less personified or figurative images placed
in distinct stages, and through the symbolical form of human events and
actions. Such a type of epic content and exposition pre-eminently belongs
to Oriental Nature-religions; and above all among them the poetry of India
is to an excessive degree prolific in the invention and portrayal of such

modes of conception, frequently of an unbridled and extravagant type,
concerning the origin of the world and the powers that are active therein.
(γ) We find, thirdly, similar characteristics in theogonies. Such occupy their
true position mainly in so far as, on the one hand, the many particular gods
are not suffered exclusively to possess the life of Nature as the more
essential content of their power and creation, nor, conversely, is it one god
that creates the world out of thought and spirit, and who, in the jealous
mood of monotheism, will tolerate no other gods beside himself. This fair
mean is alone exemplified in the religious outlook of the Greeks. It
discovers an imperishable subject-matter for theogony-building in the
forceful emancipation of the family of Zeus from the lawlessness of
primitive natural forces, no less than in the conflict waged against them. It
is a process and a strife which we may indeed affirm gives us the historical
origins of the immortal gods of poetry itself. The famous example of such
an epic mode of conception we possess in the theogony known to us under
the name of Hesiod. In this composition the entire course of event is
throughout wedded to the form of human occurrences; it becomes less and
less symbolical just to the extent that the gods, who are summoned to a
spiritual dominion, are themselves liberated through an intelligent and
ethical individuality adequate to their essential nature, and consequently are
rightfully claimed and depicted as acting like human beings. What is,
however, still absent from this type of Epic composition is, in the first
place, a genuinely complete result[1] as poetry. The acts and events, which
are within the scope of the survey of such poems, are no doubt an
essentially necessary succession of occurrence, but they are not an
individual action which issues as from a centre, wherein it discovers its
unity and independence. From a further point of view the content of such
poetry does not, and in virtue of its character cannot, present to us an
essentially complete whole. It does, and for the above reason must, exclude
the real activities of mankind, which are indispensable as the truly concrete
material for the active display of the Divine forces. Epic poetry, therefore, is
bound to free itself from such defects, if it is to receive its most perfect
expression.
(c) This actually does take place in that sphere which we may designate the
true Epopœa.

In the types hitherto discussed, which as a rule are wholly passed over, what
we call the epic tone is unmistakably present, but the content is not as yet
poetical in the concrete sense. Particular ethical maxims and
philosophemata still persist as part of the material. What is, however,
poetical in the full sense is concrete ideality in individual guise; and the
epos, inasmuch as it makes what actually exists its object, accepts as such
the happening of a definite action, which, in the full compass of its
circumstances and relations must be brought with clarity to our vision as an
event enriched by its further association with the organically complete
world of a nation and an age. It follows from this that the collective world-
outlook and objective presence of a national spirit, displayed as an actual
event in the form of its self-manifestation, constitutes, and nothing short of
this does so, the content and form of the true epic poem. As one aspect of
such a totality we have the religious consciousness in every degree of
profundity attained by the human spirit; it furthermore embraces the
particular concrete life, whether political or domestic, not excluding all the
detail of external existence, and the means by which human necessities are
satisfied. All such material the epos makes of vital account as a growth in
close contact with individuals; and for this reason, that for poetry the
universal and substantive is only realized in the living presence of spirit life.
Such a comprehensive world, together with the human characterization it
embraces, must then pass before us as real in a tranquil stream, without any
undue haste, either as positive history or dramatic action, towards its aim
and conclusion. We must thereby be permitted to linger round isolated facts,
to penetrate into the different pictures of its movement and to enjoy them in
all their detail. And by this means the entire panorama receives in its
objective mode of realization the form of an external series of events, the
basis and limitations of which must be implied in the essential ideality of
the particular epic content, and of which the positive assertion is alone
absent. If, consequently, the epic poem is, in its links of connection, more
diffuse, and, by virtue of the relatively greater independence of portions of
it, inclined to suffer from lack of coherency, we must not allow ourselves
the impression that it could ever have been actually sung throughout in this
manner. Rather it is an imperative in its case, as in that of any other artistic
production, that it should be finished off in an essentially organic whole,
which, however, moves forward in apparent tranquillity, in order that the

particular fact and the images of actual life it contains may engage our
interest.
(α) Such a primitive whole is the epic composition, whether known as the
saga, the book, or the bible of a people. We may add every great and
important nation can claim to have such primitive books, in which we find a
mirror of the original spirit of a folk. To this extent these memorials are
nothing less than the real foundations of the national consciousness; and it
would be of profound interest to make a collection of such epic bibles. Such
a series of Epopees, however much they fell short of artistic compositions
in the modern sense, would at least present to us a gallery of the genius of
nations. At the same time it is doubtless the fact that it is not every national
bible which can claim the poetic form of the epopœa; nor do all nations
which have embodied their most sacred memorials, whether in relation to
religion or secular life, in the form of comprehensive compositions of the
epic type, possess religious books. The Old Testament, for example,
contains no doubt much epic narrative and genuine history, no less than
incidental poetic compositions; but despite of this the whole is not a work
of art. In a similar way the New Testament, as also the Koran, are mainly
limited to a religious subject-matter, starting from which the life of the
world at large is to some extent and in later times a consequence.
Conversely, though the Hellenes have a poetic bible in the poems of Homer,
they are without ancient religious books in the sense the Hindoos and the
Parsees possess such. Where, however, we meet with the primitive epopoea,
we must essentially distinguish between primitive poetic books and the
more recent classic compositions of a nation, which do not any longer offer
us a mirror of the national spirit in all its compass but do no more than
reflect it partially and in particular directions. The dramatic poetry of the
Hindoos, for example, or the tragedies of Sophocles present no such
exhaustive picture as we find in the Ramajana and the Maha-Bharata, or the
Iliad and the Odyssey.
(β) And insomuch as in the genuine Epos the naïve national consciousness
is expressed for the first time in poetic guise, the real epic poem will appear
for the most part in that midway stage in which, though no doubt a people is
aroused from its stupidity, and its life is to that extent essentially
strengthened to the point of reproducing its own world and of feeling itself
at home therein, yet, for all that, everything which at a later stage becomes

fixed religious dogma or civic law and ethical rule, still remains in the
fluency of life as mere opinion, inseparable from the individual as such.
And along with this volition and feeling are not as yet held distinct from
one another.
(αα) It is only after the separation of the individual's personal self from the
concrete national whole, with its conditions, modes of opinion, exploits and
destiny; it is only, further, after the division in man himself between his
emotion and volition, that the lyric and dramatic types of poetry in turn
replace the epic type and attain their richest development. This
consummation is only reached in the later life-experience of a people, in
which the general lines laid down by men for the due regulation of their
affairs are no longer inseparable from the sentiments and opinions of the
nation as a whole, but already have secured an independent structure as a
co-ordinated system of jurisprudence and law, as a prosaic disposition of
positive facts, as a political constitution, as a body of ethical or other
precepts; and being so, individuals are now confronted with material
obligations rather as a necessary force external to themselves than one
which their own inner life asserts, and which it compels them to
substantiate as its fulfilment. As opposed to such an already actual and
independent system, the individual life will seek in part to find expression
in an equally independent world and growth of personal vision, reflection
and emotion, which are not carried further into the sphere of action, and
will further give lyrical utterance to its selfabsorption, its pre-occupation
with the content of such a soul-experience. And, in part also, it will make its
active passion of main importance, and will seek to assert itself
independently in action, in so far as it is able to divest external conditions,
the event and its concomitants of any claim to truly epic self-subsistency. It
is just this increase to the strength and stability of individual character and
aims in their relation to action which opens the way to dramatic poetry. To
return, however, to the epic, we repeat that it is the above-mentioned unity
of feeling and action which it demands, that unity between the self-fulfilled
object of the personal life and the external accident and event; a unity
which, as observed, is only present without blemish as it first appears in the
earliest periods of the national life or the national poetry.
(ββ) At the same time, we must not yield ourselves, therefore, to the
impression that a people in its heroical time simply as such, and as the

home of its epos, there and then was in possession of art, or could
necessarily depict its life in the mirror of poetry. As a matter of fact, an
essentially poetical nationality in its actual world-presence is one thing; the
art of poetry regarded as the imaginative consciousness of poetical material,
and the artistic presentment of such a world is quite another. The felt want
to express oneself as idea in terms of the latter, the trained knowledge of
art, are later acquisitions than the life and spirit itself, which discovers itself
in all simplicity at home in its unreservedly poetical existence. Homer and
the poems under his name are centuries later than the Trojan war, which is
to myself quite as much an historical fact as the personality of Homer. In
the same way we may affirm of Ossian, always assuming that the poems
ascribed to him are really his, that he celebrates an heroic past, the sunset
splendour of which inspires him to recall and reclothe the same in poetical
form.
(γγ) Despite, however, such a separation, some intimate bond of association
must exist between the poet and his subject-matter. The poet must still stand
on even terms with the conditions, the general point of vision, the beliefs
which he depicts. All he should find it necessary to do is to attach to these
the poetic consciousness and the art capable of portraying them; in other
respects they are still essential factors in his own life. If such an affinity as
that above described is absent in our poet's epic creation, his poem must
infallibly contain disparate and irreconcilable features. For both these
aspects—namely, the content, the epic world, which it is the intention to
portray, and the world of the poet's conscious life and imagination, which is
in other respects independent of the above—are of spiritual derivation; they
each of them possess intrinsically a definite principle, in which particular
traits of characterization are involved. If, then, the personal life of the artist
is essentially of a different order to that by virtue of which the historical and
national life depicted came into actual being, we must necessarily become
conscious of a cleft in the artistic result which will disturb and injure its
effect. We shall have, in short, scenes placed before us of a previous
condition of history, combined with modes of thought, opinions, and views
more pertinent to other periods; and, in consequence of this, the
configuration of primitive beliefs will, in its contact with the more
developed reflection of a later time, lose the warmth of conviction, become,
in short, a mere superstition, an empty embellishment of the mere poetical
instrumentation, from which all the vitality of its actual life has vanished.

(γ) And this brings us to the general question what position the poet himself
of genuine epic poetry really ought to take up.
(αα) Now, however much the Epos ought also to be positive in the sense
that it is the objective presentment of a world based upon its own
foundations, and realized in virtue of its own necessary laws, a world,
moreover, with which the personal outlook of the poet must remain in a
connection that enables him to identify himself wholly with it; yet it is
equally true that his artistic product, which reproduces this world, is
throughout the free creation of himself. In this connection we shall do well
to recall that fine expression of Herodotus: "Homer and Hesiod have
created the gods of the Hellenic race." And, in truth, this free and audacious
spirit of creation, which Herodotus attaches to the abovementioned poets,
already is some testimony to the fact that although the Epopœa belongs to
the early age of a nation, it is not its function to depict the most primitive
condition of all. In other words, every nation possesses in its earliest origins
more or less an alien culture of some kind, is confronted with a religious
cult of foreign importation to which it submits, or which it regards as
sacrosanct. And, indeed, we find that the minstrelsy, the superstition, the
barbarous elements in human life, no less than the most exalted have their
source just in this, that instead of being entirely at home with themselves,
they are experienced as something aloof from themselves, that is not the
natural product of their own national and individual consciousness. In this
way, for example, the Hindoos must certainly, long before the date of their
great Epopees, have experienced many an important revolution of religious
beliefs and secular condition. The Greeks no less, as previously remarked,
had to transform much material of an Egyptian, Phrygian, and Asiatic
descent. The Romans, in their turn, were confronted with much of a Greek
origin; and the barbarians, in the period of national invasion, with Christian
or Roman antecedents, and so on. Not until the poet is able with a free hand
to cast from him such a yoke, is able to take stock of what he really
possesses, is conscious of his own worth, and we are thereby released from
all perturbed state of mental vision, will the dawn break of a genuine epic
creation. In contrast to such an outlook we have the age and the society
modified by a cult abstract in its origin, with its elaborate dogmas,
established political and moral maxims, all of which take us away from the
concrete life at home with itself. The world of the truly epic poet maintains
its opposition to such conditions. Not merely in respect to universal forces,

passions, and aims which are operative in the soul-life of individuals, but
also in such a poet's attitude to all external facts, be his creation never so
independent, he is entirely as one in his own province. In just this way
Homer is at home in all that he sings to us of his world, and where we are
conscious of such intimacy in another we are infected with a like feeling,
for we are here face to face with truth, with that spirit which lives in its
world, and discovers therein its true being; and it does us good to feel this,
inasmuch as the poet is himself present therein heart and soul. Such a world
may, indeed, belong to a less advanced stage of evolution and culture than
our own; but at least it does remain faithful to that of a poetry and beauty
which is open to all, so that we essentially recognize and understand here
everything which our higher life, our humanity in its fundamental demands,
whether it be the honour, the opinions, the emotions, the exhortation, or the
exploits of each and every hero; and we are able to enjoy such characters, in
all the detail of their portraiture, as themselves united to such a life and the
richness of its actual presence.
(ββ) But on account of the emphasis upon the objective independence of
this whole, it is a further necessary contrast that the poet fall into the
background and become lost in his subject. What is to appear is the
creation, not the poet; and yet withal, that which the poem expresses
belongs to him. He has imagined all in his mind's eye; he has implanted
there his soul, his genius. All this, however, is not expressly asserted. So we
find, for instance, that at one time a Calchas will give the outline of events;
at another, a Nestor. Yet, for all that, such interpretative matter is the gift of
the poet himself. Nay, actual changes in the soul-life of his heroes he
explains in objective fashion as an entrance of gods upon the scene, as in
the case where Athene appears before Achilles in his rage, counselling self-
restraint. And inasmuch as the Epos does not disclose the soul-life of the
creator, save indirectly, but the positive facts of external life, the subjective
aspect of his creations must completely fall into the background, no less
than the creator himself vanish behind the world he unfolds to our vision.
From this point of view a great epic style makes the work appear to be itself
its own minstrel. It seems to pass before us self-begotten, a work of
independent birth.
(γγ) Moreover, the epic poem, if a true work of art, is the exclusive creation
of one artist. However much an epic may express the affairs of the entire

nation, it remains the fact that it is the individual who is the poet, not the
nation as a whole. The spirit of an age, of a people, is no doubt the essential
operative cause; but realization is only secured in the work of art as
conceived by the constructive genius of a particular poet, who brings
before our vision and reproduces this universal spirit and its content as his
own experience and his own product. Poetical composition is a real spiritual
birth, and spirit or intelligence only exist as this or that actual and
individual conscious and self-conscious life. When we have already an
artistic creation in a particular style,[2] we have no doubt something to start
from; and others are then able to copy with more or less success something
like it, just as we have to listen nowadays to some scores of poems written
in the Goethesque manner. To continue to sing many compositions in the
same kind of key, however, will never create the unified creation, which is
throughout the work of one inspiring genius. This is a point of real
importance not only in our attitude to the Homeric poems, but also the
Niebelungen Lied. For the last-mentioned work we are unable to determine
an author with any historical certainty; and as for the Iliad and Odyssey, the
opinion of some critics is notorious that the Homer of tradition—that is, the
sole author of these books—never existed at all. They are the production in
different parts of various authors, parts which have finally been patched
together in the two larger works we possess. With regard to such a theory
the question of most importance is whether either or both of these extant
works constitute an independent organic whole in the epic sense, or, as is
the view fashionable nowadays, they possess no inevitable beginning or
conclusion, but rather might be continued on present lines for ever. We may,
of course, admit that the unity of the Homeric poems is, as part of their
essential form, less compact than that we associate with the terse
concentration of a dramatic work. Inasmuch as every separate portion may
be and may appear as relatively independent, they give free play to many
interpolations and abrupt transitions; but, despite of this, they do
unquestionably constitute throughout a true, ideally organic, and epic
totality. Such a whole can only be the composition of one author. This
notion of a conglomerate without essential unity, of a mere patching
together of various rhapsodies composed in a similar strain, is a wild sort of
idea opposed to all artistic canons. Of course, if such a view merely
amounts to this, that the poet, in his bare individuality, vanishes in his
creation, it is the highest form of praise. This is merely a statement that we

are unable to recognize any positive traces of wholly personal opinions and
feeling. So much is certainly true of the Homeric poems. What we have
before us, and we have only this, is the positive fact, the objective outlook
of a people. But the song of a people requires a voice, a voice which can
sing forth the contents of heart and soul, as harvested from the national
granary; and an essentially self-integrated work of art calls for yet more
than this from the unique genius of its creator.

2. PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENUINE EPOS

We have previously in our consideration of the general character of epic
poetry briefly drawn attention to certain incomplete types, which, although
of an epical strain, are not epopees in their completeness. They, in short,
neither represent a national condition, nor a concrete event, within the
boundaries of such a sphere. It is these latter features, which were then
excluded, which offer us for the first time a content wholly equal to the
perfected Epos, whose fundamental traits and conditions are thus stated.
Having recalled these points it becomes necessary now to investigate more
closely what it is we require by way of completing our notion of the epic
work of art. We are, however, on the threshold of this enquiry confronted
with the difficulty that we have little or nothing to say on features of
specific interest, if we confine our attention to generalities; Ave must rivet
our attention on historical evidence, and those varied epic and national
compositions, works which on account of the extraordinary diversity of the
times and peoples to which they refer do not make us very hopeful of
securing either a definite or a congruous result. We find, however, some
compensation in the fact, that from among all the many epic bibles of the
past we can place our finger on one at least, in which we have the clearest
evidence of all which it is possible to establish as the true and fundamental
character of the genuine epos. Such are the Homeric poems. These, then,
above all, will be the source from which I shall borrow the characteristics,
which, in my view, essentially determine the nature of such poetry, whether
from the point of view of fact or theory. We propose to summarize our
enquiry under the following heads:
First, we have to deal with the question, of what structure the general world
condition ought to be, on the basis of which the epic event is permitted to

receive an adequate reproduction.
Secondly, we shall investigate the quality of this specific type of historical
event itself.
Lastly, we shall direct attention to the form in which these two aspects of
our subject-matter coalesce and are completed in the unity of a single work
of art, that is, in the epic poem.
(a) The General World-condition of the Epic Poem
We have already, when Ave started on this subject, seen that it is not a
single isolated action which is accomplished in the true epic event; the
subject of the narrative is not, in short, a wholly accidental occurrence, but
an action which is dove-tailed into the entire complexus of a particular age
and national circumstances, which in consequence can only be placed
before us with success as a constituent part of an extensive world,
demanding as it does the reflection of such a world in its entirety. In respect
to the actual poetical content of this background I shall be brief, inasmuch
as I have already indicated the fundamental points of interest when, in the
first part of this work, I discussed the general world-condition which the
ideal action presupposed. In the present context therefore I shall restrict
myself to the question what is of most importance to the Epos simply.
(α) That which is most adapted, as the all-embracing condition of human
society, to form the background of the Epos consists in this, that it already
possesses for particular individuals the form of a positive condition actually
present, and yet continues with them in closest association with the
simplicity of primitive life. For if the heroes who are placed as the
crowning fact of all, are first to found a collective condition the
determination of what is or ought to come into existence falls into the more
personal sphere of character to a greater extent than is compatible with the
nature of the Epos, and therewith all appearance of the same as objective
reality is impossible.
(αα) The relations of ethical life, the aggregate of the family, of the people
regarded as a complete nation, not merely with a view to war, but also in
their peaceful security, must have become a positive fact in their evolution;
yet along with this their organization cannot as yet have assumed the settled
form of co-ordinate regulations, obligations, and laws independent in their

validity of the direct personal and private activities of individuals, and
possessive of the power to maintain themselves against such particular
wills. Rather it is the intuitive sense of right and fairness, the moral habit,
the temperament, the personality, which supply the support, as they are the
source, of such a social order; we have, in short, no theoretic intelligence in
its precipitated form of prosaic reality able to establish and secure such a
resistance to the heart, the opinions and passions of individuals. We may
dismiss the thought that a community with a fully organized constitution
and an elaborate system of law, judicial courts, government officials and
police, would supply the environment of a really epic action.[3] The
conditions of positive morality must, no doubt, be present in the general
will and conduct, but the instruments of its realization can only be the
action and personality of individuals, and a determinate mode of its
existence, of universal application and independent stability, is necessarily
absent. We find, in short, in the Epos no doubt the substantive reciprocity of
objective life and action, but we find no less a freedom in this world of life
and action, which has all the appearance of originating exclusively from the
isolated volition of individuals.
(ββ) The same considerations apply to the relation of the individual to the
natural environment, from which he borrows the means to satisfy his wants,
no less than discovers the best way to do so. In this respect, too, I would
refer the reader back to what I have observed at greater length, when
discussing the external definition of the Ideal.
What mankind requires in its external life, house and farm, tent, settle, bed,
sword, lance, the ship, in which he crosses the sea, the chariot, which bears
him into battle, his soup, his roast of meat, and drink—not one of these
things need perforce become to him a lifeless instrument; he ought still to
communicate to the same something of his entire life and substance, his
essential self, and thereby leave the stamp of his own human individuality,
by his active association on that which is otherwise wholly external. Our
present life with its machinery and factory-made products, no less than the
kind of way we seek to satisfy generally the needs of our external life, is in
this respect quite as much as that of our political organization, wholly unfit
to form the background which the Epos in its primitive guise demands. For
just as the scientific faculty with its generalizations, its imperious
conclusions, delivered independently of all personal views, can never have

asserted its claim under the world-condition of the poetic type we are
considering, so, too, we may assume that man did not yet appear divested of
his vital connection with Nature, and the fresh and vigorous comradeship,
whether as friends or opponents, which is therein implied.
(γγ) Such is the world-condition which, in a previous passage, and in
contrast to the idyllic, I have called the heroic. We find it depicted in Homer
with the noblest poetry, and with all the wealth of entirely human
characterization. We have no more here, whether in domestic or public life,
a barbarous state of things, than we have the wholly conventional prose of a
regulated family and political organization; what we do find is that
primitive mean of poetry much as I have already described it. A
fundamental feature in such a condition is unquestionably the free
individuality of all the principal personages. In the Iliad, for example,
Agamemnon is, no doubt, a king of kings—all other chieftains are subject
to his sceptre—but his superiority is no merely formal mutual relation of
command and submission of the lord, that is, to his vassals. On the contrary,
much circumspection is required of him; he must be shrewd enough to
know where he ought to give way, for each particular chieftain is
independent even as himself; they are not merely governors or generals
summoned by him. They have assembled around him of their own free will,
or are induced to follow his lead in a variety of ways. He must take counsel
with them; and if they disagree with his judgment they are at liberty, as
Achilles did, to remain aloof from the battle. It is this freedom of
acceptance, no less than this free right to assert disapproval, which secures
the absolute independence of such individuality, and attaches its poetical
atmosphere to every situation. We find much the same thing in the poetry of
Ossian, as also in the relation of the Cid to the princes, whom this poetical
hero of romantic and national chivalry serves as vassal. In Ariosto and
Tasso this free relation is still unimpaired; and indeed in Ariosto the
individual heroes set forth in practically unqualified independence on their
own path of adventure. And the mass of the folk stand in much the same
relation to their leaders as that of the separate chieftains to Agamemnon.
These too follow voluntarily. There is still no paramount legal obligation by
which they are constrained. Honour, reverence, humility in the presence of
men more mighty than themselves, ever able to enforce that might, the
imposing presence of the heroic character in short and all it implies, such
are the essential grounds of their obedience. The order of domestic life is

maintained in a similar way. It is not enforced as an accepted rule of
service, but as dependent on personal inclination or ethical habit. All is
made to appear as though it had grown up spontaneously. Homer, for
example, tells us of the Greeks, when narrating one of their battles with the
Trojans, that they had lost many valiant fighters, but not so many as the
Trojans; and the reason given is that they were always mindful to ward off
from one another the extreme of necessity. In other words, they assisted
each other. And if we, in our own days, had occasion to define the
difference between a well-disciplined and an uncivilized army we could not
express it more directly than by laying stress on this very coherence and
spirit of cameraderie, this unity enforced by all in a felt association, which
distinguished the former. Barbarians are simply human mobs, in which no
individual can rely on his neighbour. What, however, in our modern
example, being as it is the final result of a stringent and tedious military
discipline, rather appears as the exercise and command of an established
regime, in Homer's case is still an ethical habit asserted of its own accord,
springing from the vital strength of the individual in his private capacity.
We may explain in a similar way Homer's great variety in his descriptions
of Nature and external condition. In the prose romances of our own day we
do not find much stress laid on the natural aspects of things. Homer, on the
contrary, gives us every detail in his portrayal of a staff, sceptre, bedstead,
armour, clothing, doorpost; he does not even omit to mention the hinges on
which the door turns. Such things appear to us wholly outside our attention
and insignificant; or rather we may say that it is the tendency of our
education to affect an extremely severe superiority to a whole number of
objects, matters, and expressions, and we deliberately classify in their claim
to our notice such things as various kinds of dress, furniture, implements,
and so on. Add to this the fact that in our day all the means supplied or
prepared for the satisfaction of our wants are so split up into every kind of
machinery product from work-shop and factory, we come to regard the
medley of supply as something beneath us, neither deserving enumeration
or respectful attention. The heroic existence is, on the contrary, confronted
with a primitive simplicity of objects and inventions; it readily lingers on
their description. All these possessions are, in short, regarded as of one
standard of value, as chattels or instruments in which man still discovers
evidence of his craftsmanship, his positive wealth and interest whereof he
may be justly proud. His entire life is not abstracted from such material

things, nor exclusively occupied with a purely intellectual sphere. To
slaughter oxen and prepare their flesh for the table, to pour out wine and
things of that sort are part of the heroic life, carried out with purpose and
delight; with us a meal, if it is not to be a very commonplace affair, must
not merely carry with it something of the culinary art, but is incomplete
without really good conversation. Homer's detailed descriptions in these
matters must not therefore be looked upon as a purely poetical
embellishment of things of little moment; such a copious attention is
nothing more or less than the actual spirit of the men and circumstances
depicted. We find just the same prolixity of speech on external things in the
case of our own peasants; and for that matter do not the dandies of our own
day dilate without limit upon their stables, horses, top-boots, spurs, pants,
and the like. In contrast to a life of profounder intellectual interest such
things will doubtless appear somewhat jejune.
Such a world ought not merely to embrace the limited universality of the
particular event, which occurs on the definite background presupposed; it
must coalesce in its expansion with the entire horizon of the national vision.
We have a supremely fine example of this in the Odyssey, which not only
brings us into contact with the domestic life of the Greek chieftains, their
servants and subordinates, but also unfolds the richest variety with its tales
of the many opinions of foreign peoples, the hazards of sea-life, the
dwellings of distant lands, and so forth. But in the Iliad also, though the
nature of its subject restricts to some extent the horizon of our vision, and
not unnaturally on its battle-fields has comparatively little to tell us of more
tranquil scenes, Homer, at least, has on the shield of Achilles managed in a
wonderful way to give us a view of the entire compass of terrestrial
existence, no less than human life, in marriages, judicial affairs, agriculture,
the might of armies, the private wars of cities, and much else. And these
descriptions we 'shall do well not to regard as a wholly incidental feature of
the poem. In contrast to such a treatment the poems we identify with the
name of Ossian introduce us to a world that is too limited and indefinite. It
has for this very reason rather a lyrical character; and as for Dante we may
say that his angels and devils inhabit no truly positive world open to our
detailed approach; it exists solely as instrumental to the final fruition or due
punishment of mankind. And above all in the Nibelungenlied the absence is
complete of any definite realization of a visible world or environment, so
that the narrative tends in this respect to assume the strain or tone of the

mere balladsinger. The narrative is, no doubt, diffusive enough; but it is all
much as if some journeyman had picked it up first as gossip, and then
retailed it as such afterwards. We are not brought to close quarters with the
facts, but are merely made aware of the impotence and tedious effort of the
poet. This wearisome expanse of poetical debility becomes of course even
more pronounced in the Book of Heroes, until finally the whole business is
handed over to the true poetical journeyman, in other words, the Master
singers.
(β) Furthermore, for the reason that the Epos has to embody in art a specific
world, in all its separate characteristics carefully defined, one, in short, for
this reason itself essentially individual, the mirror of such a world must be
that of a one particular people.
(αα) In this respect all truly primitive Epopees present to our view a
national spirit in the ethical structure of its family life, its public
dispositions in times of peace or war, its wants, arts, usages, and interests—
in a word, a picture of the relative type and stage of the national
consciousness. What the epic poem reveres more than anything else,
observes most narrowly, that which, as previously noted, it expatiates upon,
is the power to let our inward eye see as in a mirror the individual genius of
nations. We have presented us, as the result of such a gallery, the world-
history itself, and what is more, we have it in its beautiful, free, and
emphasized vitality, manifestation, and deed. From no source, either so
impregnate with life or simplicity, can we, for example, better understand
the Hellenic spirit and Greek history, or at least grasp the principle of that
content, which this people embodied, and which it brought with it when it
first set forth to engage in the conflict of its wholly authentic history, than
from this of the poet Homer.
(ββ) Now the national substance in its realization is of a twofold nature.
First, we have an entirely positive world of specialized usage or custom
peculiar to the nation in question, a definite period of history, a definite
environment, whether geographical in its streams, hills and forests, or in its
climatic situation. Secondly, we have that ideal substance of its spiritual
life, whether in the religious sphere, the family or the community generally.
If thus an Epos of the primitive type is, under the conditions already
indicated, to be and remain a permanently effective bible, the nation's Book,
in that case that which is positive in the reality of the Past can only claim

such a continuously vital interest in so far as the characteristic features
accepted are placed in an ideal connection with the actually substantive
aspects and tendencies of the national life. Otherwise what claims to be of
positive value will be entirely contingent and a matter of indifference.
Native geographical conditions, for instance, enter into the conception of
nationality. But if they do not confer on a folk its specific character, the
addition of other natural environment, provided that does not contradict
national character, is not in certain cases prejudicial to the effect, but may
even prove attractive to the imagination. No doubt the sensitive experience
of youth is interwoven with the immediate presence of its native hills and
streams; but where the deeper bonds of the entire spiritual outlook are
absent, such an association assumes a more or less external character. And,
apart from this, where we have, as in the Iliad, a warlike expedition, it is
impossible to preserve the locale of the fatherland. In such a case the
scenery of a foreign land in itself fascinates and attracts. The enduring
vitality of an Epos is, however, more seriously impaired, where, in the
course of centuries, the spiritual consciousness and life has so entirely
changed that the links between the more recent Past and the original point
of departure already adverted to are completely severed. This is actually the
case with the poet Klopstock in another province of poetry, where he
attempts to establish a national religion, and, in order to do so, gives us his
Hermann and Thusnelda. We may affirm the same kind of defect of the
Nibelungenlied. The Burgundians, the revenge of Chriemhilda, the exploits
of Siegfried, the entire social condition, the fated downfall of an entire race
and many like facts—all this is no longer vitally held together with the
domestic, civil, and judicial life, the institutions and constitutions of the
present day. The biography of Jesus Christ, with its Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
and Roman jurisdiction, even the Trojan war itself, come home to ourselves
far more nearly than the events of the Niebelungen; the latter are for present
consciousness a state of things wholly gone for ever, swept away once and
for all with a besom. To attempt to compose of such something of national
significance, to say nothing of a national bible, betokens the extreme limit
of folly and superficiality. In times when it was rashly[4] assumed that the
flame of youthful enthusiasm had flashed up anew, such a conceit was taken
as a proof of the sere leaf of an age once more become childlike in the
approach of death; and it refreshed itself with a past that was dead, and

deemed it possible to associate others with a similar refreshment and
renewed presence.
(γγ) If, however, a national Epos is to secure in addition the permanent
interest of foreign nations the world which it depicts must not merely be of
a particular nationality, but of a type that is, in this specific folk, its heroism
and exploits, equally impressed with the stamp of our common humanity. In
the poems of Homer, for example, the superb directness with which he
deals with matters of divine or ethical import, the nobility of the characters
and of everything living therein embraced, the pictorial quality of their
presentment to the reader, all this insures an undying truth for succeeding
ages. In this respect we find a remarkable contrast in the creation of
different peoples. We cannot deny, for instance, that the Ramajana reflects
with the essential directness of life the national spirit of the Hindoos, more
particularly from the religious point of view; but the character of the entire
Hindoo race is so overpoweringly of a unique type, that the essential
features of our common humanity are unable to assert themselves through
the veil of this national idiosyncracy. A remarkable contrast to this is the
way in which the entire Christian world, from the earliest times, has found
itself at home in those epic passages of Old Testament narrative, above all
in the pictures of the patriarchal state, and able to repicture for itself to the
life the events portrayed over and over again with the greatest enjoyment.
The testimony of Goethe is unequivocal. Here was the one focal centre, he
assures us, on which, in his young days, amid much that he learned of a
miscellaneous and unconnected character, his intellect no less than feeling
concentrated itself. Even in later life he still remarks upon them that "after
all our wanderings through the East we always returned in the end to these
writings as the most invigorating spring of waters: here and there they
might be troubled; not unfrequently they hid themselves in the earth; but it
was only to rise up again pure and fresh as ever."
(γ) Finally, the general condition of a particular people must not in this
tranquil universality of its individual character wholly oust what is more
directly the object of the Epos, in other words, be described with no
reference to that. It ought only to appear as the foundation, upon which an
event throughout its entire process is transacted, one which is in contact
with all aspects of the national life, and one which illustrates the same as it
proceeds. Such an eventuality must not be a purely external incident; it

must imply a deliberately conceived purpose executed by equally deliberate
effort. If, however, these two aspects, namely, the general condition and the
particular action, do not coalesce, then the event in question must seek its
justification in the particular circumstances, the causal conditions which
dominate its movement. That is practically to say the world of Epos which
is reproduced must be conceived under a specific situation which is so
concrete that the definite objects which it is the function of the epic
narrative to realize, are necessarily made explicit by it. We have already,
when discussing the ideal action,[5] pointed out on general lines that this
realization presupposes situations and circumstances which bring about
collisions, actions that do injury and consequently necessary reactions. The
particular situation, therefore, in which the epic world-condition of a nation
is made actual to us, must of itself be essentially one implying such
collisions. In this respect, therefore, epic poetry enters the field already
occupied by dramatic poetry; and we may find it convenient at once to
determine in what respects the collisions of these two types of poetry differ.
(αα) Under the broadest review of this question we may say that the conflict
of the belligerent condition is that which supplies the Epos with its most
pertinent situation. In war it is obviously the entire nation which is set in
activity, and which, as a whole placed under similar conditions, is moved
and stimulated in a novel way, in so far at least as it possesses any claim, as
such a whole, to participate in it. We may admit that the above conclusion
stands in apparent contradiction not merely with Homer's Odyssey, but also
the subject-matter of many poems that are epic in an otherwise intelligible
sense. It finds, however, ample corroboration in the majority of the most
famous Epopees. Moreover, the collision of operations in the events of
which the Odyssey informs us, derives part of its source from the Trojan
war; and even under the aspect of domestic life in Ithaca, no less than that
of the home-returning Odysseus, although the narrative is no actual account
of conflicts between Greeks and Trojans, yet it deals with facts which are
the immediate consequence of that war. Nay, it is itself war under a new
aspect, for many chieftains are forced to reconquer their homes, which after
their ten years' absence they find under wholly altered conditions. We have
practically but one example of the religious Epos, Dante's "Divine
Comedy." Even here, too, the fundamental collision is deducible from that
original Fall of the evil angels from heaven, which brings in its train and
within the sphere of human experience the ever active external and ideal

conflict between the Divine Father and the conduct of men, whether hostile
or well-pleasing to Him, a conflict eternally perpetuated in condemnation,
purification, and blessedness, or in other words, hell, purgatory, and
paradise. Also, too, in the Messias it is the former war against the Son of
God which supplies the focal centre. At the same time the most vital and
truly pertinent examples are those which actually describe the belligerent
state. We have already drawn attention to such in the Ramajana, and, most
instructive of all, in the Iliad; further examples are the famous poems of
Ossian, Tasso, Ariosto, and Camoens. In war courage is and remains the
fundamental interest; and warlike courage is a state of the soul and an
activity, which is neither so suitable for lyrical expression nor for dramatic
action, but is pre-eminently adapted to the descriptive power of the Epos. In
dramatic poetry it is rather the ideal strength or weakness of spiritual life,
the ethically justified or reprehensible pathos which is the main thing: in the
Epos, on the contrary, it is rather the native characteristics of a personality.
For this reason, where it is national exploits which are undertaken, bravery
is in its right place; it is in fact not an ethical state,[6] in which the will is
determined through its own initiative as an intelligent consciousness and
volition. It rather depends on natural temperament, unites in direct
equilibrium, as by fusion, with the sphere of self-conscious life, and, in
order to bring into effect practical ends, which can be more fitly expressed
in epic description than under the conceptions of lyrical emotion and
reflection. And these conclusions with regard to bravery in war apply with
equal force to the exploits of war and their consequences. The activities of
personal volition and the accidents of the external event supply the two
scales of the balance. The bare event, with its wholly material obstructions,
is excluded from the drama, inasmuch as here what is exclusively external
is not permitted to retain an independent right, but is causally related to the
aim and ideal purposes of individuals, so that as to all contingent matter, if
by any chance it appears to arise and to determine the result, we are none
the less compelled to look for the real operative cause and justification
thereof in the spiritual nature of human character and its objects, no less
than in that of its collisions and their necessary resolution.
(ββ) A basis of the epic action such as this of active hostilities is obviously
the source of a very varied subject-matter. We may have placed before the
imagination a host of interesting actions and events, in which bravery in
action supplies the leading rôle, and the claim of external forces, whether

asserted in circumstance or incident, is maintained unimpaired. At the same
time we must not overlook a respect in which the possibilities of epic
narration is essentially restricted. It is only wars waged between one foreign
nation and another which partake of a truly epic character. In contrast to this
conflicts between dynasties, civil wars and social revolution, are more
suited to dramatic exposition. And in fact Aristotle long ago[7] advises the
tragic poet to select subject-matter which is concerned with the conflicts of
brother against brother. Of this type is the war of the Seven against Thebes.
It is Thebes' own son who storms the city; and its defender is the actual
brother of the aggressor. Hostility of this type is something more than that
of a mere foe; its significance is bound up with the individuality of the
opposed brothers. We have similar examples with every kind of variety in
Shakespeare's historical tragedies. In these, almost without exception,
agreement between particular individuals is what might be legitimately
looked for, and it is only the private motives of individual passion and a
personality absorbed in its own aims and satisfaction which bring about
collisions and wars. As an example of an action of this kind treated in the
epic manner, and therefore defectively, I will mention the "Pharsalia" of
Lucan. However indisputably important the conflicting aims in this poem
may appear to be, yet for all that the opposing parties are here too closely
related on the common ground of one fatherland: their conflict,
consequently, instead of being a war between two national entities, is
nothing more than a strife of parties, either of which, by the very fact that it
splits asunder the substantive national unity, points in one direction, namely,
that of tragic guilt and demoralization. Held to this the objective facts are
not placed before us in their clearness and simplicity, but are inweaved with
one another in a confused manner. The same objections are equally
pertinent to Voltaire's Henriad. In contrast to this the hostility of foreign
nations is something substantive. Every nation constitutes a totality
essentially distinct from and in opposition to that of another. When these
come into conflict we do not feel that any positive ethical connection is
shattered, nothing at least of essential value to either is violated,[8] no
necessary whole broken into fragments. Rather it is a conflict waged in
order to maintain such a totality unimpaired and to justify its claim to be so.
Hostility therefore of this type is suited in every way to the essential
character of epic poetry.

(γγ) Not every war, however, waged under ordinary conditions between two
hostile nations is necessarily on that account of an epic character. We must
have a further condition satisfied, namely, the justification on broad
historical grounds for the bellicose attitude thus adopted. Only when we
have this do we obtain a picture of an enterprise at once novel and more
exalted, which does not present the appearance of something apart from
universal history, the purely capricious subjugation of one state by another,
but is absolutely and essentially rooted in a profounder principle of
necessity, however much at the same time the more superficial and obvious
motive of the undertaking may assume from one point of view the aspect of
deliberate wrong,[9] and from the other that of a private revenge. We have
something analogous to such a situation in the Ramajana. But the supreme
example is that of the Iliad, where the Greeks invade an Asiatic people, and
in doing so fight out as it were the preludic conflict of a tremendous
opposition, the wars of which practically constitute the turning point of
Greek history as we see it on the stage of universal history. Of the same
type is the struggle of the Cid against the Moors, or in Tasso and Ariosto the
battles of the Christians against the Saracens, or in Camoens the strife of the
Portuguese against the Indians. And indeed we may assert that in all the
greatest Epopees we find nations which differ from each other in moral
customs, religion, and language, in a word, in all that concerns their
spiritual and external life, brought into collision; and we are ready to
contemplate such without any revulsion on account of the triumph we find
asserted there of a nobler principle of world-evolution over a less exalted, a
victory assured by a bravery that is simply annihilating. If any one should,
in this sense, and in emulation of past Epopees, which have sought to depict
the triumph of the West over the East, of the European principle of
moderation, of the individually articulate and truly organic type of beauty
over Asiatic splendour, over the magnificence of a patriarchal unity, which
does not attempt to secure such organic completeness, or is at least merely
held together by abstract and superficial conjunctions, if such, I say, should
aspire to write the Epopee of the future, he will be necessarily restricted to
the portrayal of the victory of some future and intensely vital rationality of
the American nation over the prison-house of the spirit which for ever
pursues its monotonous task of self-adjustment and particularization.[10] In
the Europe of our day every nation finds itself conditioned[11] by its
neighbour, and cannot venture on its own account to wage any war with

another European nation. If we lift our eyes beyond Europe, there can be
only one direction, America.
(b) The Individual Epic Action
It is on such an essentially limited foundation then of conflict between
entire nationalities that the epic event is realized, the leading characteristics
of which we have now to determine. We may summarize the form we
propose our investigation should take as follows:
Firsts what actually takes place consists essentially in this that the object of
the epic action ought necessarily to be of individual vitality and definition,
however much it may rest on a basis of the most general extension.
Secondly, for the reason that it is only of individuals that we can predicate
actions we have the problem to solve of the general nature of the epic
character or personality.
Thirdly, in the epic eventuality the form of objectivity is not exclusively
that of external appearance: it consists quite as much in the significance of
all that is itself intrinsically necessary to and substantive in the exposition.
We have consequently to determine the form in which this intrinsic
significance of the occurrence proclaims itself as effective, either in part as
the ideal necessity which is therein concealed, or as the disclosed
direction[12] of eternal and providential forces.
(α) We have postulated as a necessary background of this epic world an
enterprise of national significance, in which the entire compass of a national
spirit can express itself in the bloom and freshness of its heroic condition.
From this fundamental substratum in its simplicity we now further assume
the apparition of a particular end, in the realization of which all other
aspects of the national character, whether in belief or action, can be
represented to our vision. The original postulate is in fact bound up in the
closest way with such an all-embracing actuality.
(αα) This purposed object, which is infused with the vital principle of
individuality on the lines of which, regarded in its particularized content,
the entire process moves forward, must further, as already ascertained,
appropriate to itself in the Epos the form of an event. It will be therefore
above all important to recall at once the specific character of the mode,
under which human volition and action generally combine in what we

designate as the event. Now, in the first place, action and adventure are the
outcome of conscious life, the content of which is not only ideally
expressed in emotions, reflections, and thoughts, but also quite as much in a
practical way. We may regard such realization from two distinct points of
view. First, we have the ideal substance of the end presupposed and
purposed, the general character of which the individual must recognize,
will, calculate and accept. Secondly, there is the external reality of the
spiritual or human and the natural environment, within which he is only
able to act, and the accidental features of which at one time obstruct and at
another assist his path; so that either in the one case he is carried forward by
virtue of this favour to a successful issue, or, if in the other he is not
prepared wholly to give way to such opposition, he finds it necessary to
overcome them with his individual energy. If now the world covered by this
volitional power is conceived as the indivisible unity of these two aspects,
with the result that the right of assertion by both is equally asserted, in that
case what is most pertinent to conscious life likewise enters into the formal
structure of the event, the form, that is, which confers on all human action
the configuration of events, in so far as the conscious or subjective will,
with its purposes, motives of passion, principles and aims, can no longer
appear the fact of most importance. Or, in other words, in human action
everything is referred back to human personality, personal obligation,
opinion and intention. In the case of the event, on the contrary, the external
constitution of things is permitted to assert its inviolable claim. Here it is
objective reality itself, which constitutes either the form assumed by the
whole, or from another point of view a fundamental part of the content. In
agreement with such a view I have already stated that it is the function of
epic poetry to demonstrate the happening of an action, and thereby not only
to establish the external disposition of the execution of ends, but also to
meet as readily the claims of external condition, natural occurrences, and all
else of a contingent character, which, in action taken simply as such, the
ideal element of conscious life claims exclusively as its province.
(ββ) With regard to the particular end, the carrying out of which the Epos
unfolds under the mode of the event, it follows from our previous
conclusions that it must be no mere mental abstraction, but on the contrary
of wholly concrete definition. At the same time, inasmuch as it is realized
within the substantive actuality of the national unity, such a process must
exclude the notion of merely capricious activity. The political state as such

—the fatherland, let us say—or the history of a State and country, are
essentially something universal, which, regarded in the light of such
universality, does not appear under the mode of a subjectively individual
existence, or, in other words, in inseparable and exclusive coalition with
one definite living individual. For this reason the history of a country, the
development of its political life, its constitution and destiny may also no
doubt be narrated as event; if, however, the facts thus described are not
placed before us as the concrete deed, the conscious aim, the passion, the
suffering and accomplishment of particular heroes, whose individuality
supplies the form and content of the realization in all its parts, the event
merely assumes the rigid form of its independent forward movement in the
prosaic history of a people or an empire. In this respect no doubt the most
exalted action of Spirit would be the history of the world itself. We can
conceive it possible that our poet might in this sense undertake to elaborate
in what we may call the absolute Epos this universal achievement on the
battlefield of the universal spirit, whose hero would be the spirit of man, the
humanus, who is drawn up and exalted from the clouded levels[13] of
conscious existence into the clearer region of universal history. But in virtue
of the very fact of its universality a subject-matter of this kind would so be
quite unfitted for artistic treatment. It would not adapt itself sufficiently to
individualization. For on the one hand we fail altogether to find in such a
subject a clearly fixed background and world-condition, not merely in
relation to external locale, but also in that of morality and custom. In other
words, the only basis for all we could possibly presuppose would be the
universal World-Spirit or intelligence, whom we are unable to bring visibly
before us as a particular condition, and who is possessed of the entire Earth
as his local environment. And in like manner too the one end fulfilled in
such an Epos could only be the end proposed by the World-Spirit himself,
[14]
who can only be apprehended and explicitly disclosed in his true
significance through the processes of thought. If he is, however, to be
represented in the form of poetry, or, at least, if the whole is to receive its
proper meaning and coalescence from such a source, it is necessary that his
presence should be expressed as that which acts independently from its own
resources. This could only be possible for poetry, in so far as the ideal
Taskmaster of history, the eternal and absolute Idea, which is realized in
humanity, either was envisioned as a directive, active, perfecting individual
person, or was merely made effective under the concealing veil of an ever-

operative Necessity. In the first case, however, the infinity of such a content
must shatter the necessarily limited artistic vessel of determinate
individuality, or, as the only way of avoiding such a defect, must assume the
inadequate form of a dispassionate allegory of general reflections over the
destination of the human race and its education, over the final purpose of
mankind, its moral consummation, or over whatever result the end of this
World-history might establish. In the alternative case it is the genius of the
various peoples which has in each example to be presented (in the heroic
figure) in the conflicting existence of whom history expands and moves
forward in progressive evolution. If, however, the genius of nations is really
to appear in poetical form this can be carried out in only one way, namely,
by placing before us the actual world-historical figures as operative through
their deeds. We should, however, then merely have a series of particular
characters, which emerged and again disappeared in a wholly external
succession, the objects of which lacked individual unity and connection;
and this would be so for the reason that the controlling World-Spirit, under
our conception of it, as the ideal essence and destiny, could not, in the case
supposed, be set forth as itself an active individual and the culminating
agent in the process. And if, further, anyone was desirous of appropriating
the spirits of different nationalities in their universality, and of displaying
them as agents in such a substantive form, we should still only have a
similar series, the individuals whereof, apart from the fact that they would
merely possess an appearance of positive existence similar to Hindoo
incarnations, would, in the fictitious form of the imagination they received
pale into nothingness when contrasted with the truth of the World-Spirit as
realized in actual history.
(γγ) We may consequently lay it down as a general principle that the
particular epic event is only able to secure a vital form in poetry when it is
united in the closest state of fusion with one individual. Precisely as it is
one poet who thinks out and executes the whole, so too one individual must
crown the edifice, with whom the event is associated and in connection with
whose single identity it is continued and completed.
We must point out, however, that here too we are limited by essential
conditions. For just as in our previous discussion it was the world-history,
so too now, from the converse point of view, it is possible that the
biographical treatment in a poetic composition of a definite life-history may

appear to supply the most complete and adequate subject-matter of the
Epos. This, however, is not the case. No doubt in biography the individual
is one and the same throughout; but the events, through which the life-
development proceeds, may entirely fall apart, and only retain the subject of
the same in a wholly formal and accidental bond of relation. If, on the other
hand, the Epos is essentially homogeneous, the event also, in the form of
which the content of the poem is disclosed, must itself possess intrinsic
unity. Both aspects, in short, the unity of the individual and that of the
objective event, as it is evolved, must coalesce and be united. In the life and
exploits of the Cid it is unquestionably true that on the field of the
Fatherland it is only one great personality which without intermission
remains true to himself, and in his development, chivalry and end
constitutes the interest. His deeds pass before him, much as if he were the
sculptured god; and finally all is gone and vanished for us, no less than for
himself.[15] But the poems of the Cid are also as rhymed chronicles no
genuine example of the Epos; and, in their later form of romances, they are,
as their specific type necessitates, merely isolated situations split off from
this national hero's life, which do not necessarily coalesce in the unity of a
particular event.
The finest examples, however, of the observance of the above rule are to be
met with in the Iliad and Odyssey, where Achilles and Odysseus are
respectively the prominent figures. The Ramajana, too, resembles these
poems in this respect. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is an illustration, but in
quite a unique way. In other words, it is the Epic poet himself with whose
single personality, in his wanderings through hell, purgatory, and paradise,
all and everything is so associated that he is able to recount the picture of
his imagination as a personal experience, and is consequently entitled to
interweave with the general substance of his composition his private
emotions and reflections to a larger extent than is possible for other epic
poets.
(β) However much then, speaking generally, epic poetry informs us of
actual fact and its occurrence, and thereby makes the objective world its
content and form, yet on the other hand, inasmuch as what happens is an
action, which passes in successive views before us, it is rather, and for this
reason, to individuals, and their deed and suffering that the main emphasis
is attached. For it is only individuals, be they gods or men, who can

veritably act; and just in proportion as they are interwoven in the vividness
of life with such a panorama, to that extent they are entitled to attract the
main interest to the fulness of their exposition. From this point of view epic
poetry stands on level terms with lyric no less than dramatic poetry. It is
therefore of some importance that we attempt to define more closely what
the specific features are which distinguish the portrayal of personality in the
epic composition.
(αα) Now, first, what is essential to the objective aspect of an epic character
—I am speaking mainly of the leading personages—is that they should be
themselves essentially a totality of such traits, in other words complete men,
and thereby display in themselves all aspects of emotional life, or to put it
better, should represent in a typical way, national opinion and its active
pursuits. In this respect I have already in the first part drawn attention to the
heroic characters of Homer; and, in particular, to the variety of genuinely
human and truly national qualities which Achilles unites in himself so
vitally, the hero of the Odyssey supplying an admirable companion picture.
The Cid is similarly presented us with much variety of characterization and
situation, as son, hero, lover, husband, father, householder, and in his
relations to king, friends, and foes. Other Epopees of the Middle Ages are a
great contrast, far more abstract in their type of personification, particularly
so where their heroes merely champion the cause of chivalry as such, and
are removed from the sphere of the true and actual life of the nation.
It is then the fundamental characteristic of the exposition of epic personality
that it should unfold itself as such a totality in the most diverse scenes and
situations. The characters of tragedy and comedy may no doubt also possess
a similar wealth of ideality; for the reason, however, that in their case the
sharp contrast between a pathos that is never other than one-sided and a
passion opposed to it is within very definable limits and ends the thing of
most importance, such a varied character is in part, where it is not entirely
superfluous, at least more in the nature of a prodigality which is incidental,
and in part is also, as a rule, overpowered by the one passion, its motives
and ethical considerations, and thus forced by the type of presentation into
the background. In the whole of the epic composition, on the contrary, all
aspects assert an equal right to assert themselves, and expand with freedom
and breadth. That they should do so is indeed fundamental to the principle
of epic composition; and from a further point of view the personality here,

in virtue of the entire world-condition he presupposes, possesses a right to
be, and to make all that valid wherein his existence is realized, and for the
good reason that he lives in an age to which precisely this objective being,
this immediate individuality is appropriate. It is, of course, for instance,
quite possible for us, with regard to the wrath of Achilles, to point out, as
moral reflection may suggest, the injury and loss which that wrath entailed,
and therefrom to conclude that the superiority and greatness of Achilles is
very appreciably removed from any approach to ideal perfection, whether
as hero or man, having no power apparently on a single occasion to
moderate his anger or exercise self-restraint. But for all that we do wrong in
blaming Achilles. And this is not because we may overlook the wrath in
virtue of his other great qualities. Achilles is, in other words, simply nothing
more or less than this portrait. So far as Epic poetry is concerned, that is the
end of the matter. The same observations apply to his ambition and his love
of glory. The main justification of these great characters is the energy of
their achievement; they carry, in fact, a universal principle in their
particularity. Conversely, ordinary morality tends to depreciate its native
personality, and hold in reserve the resources of its life-force, and discovers
its essential being in this attitude. What an astonishing self-esteem, for
instance, an Alexander asserted over his friends and the life of I know not
how many thousands. Self-revenge, even traits of brutality, testify to an
energy of the same type in heroic times; and even in this respect Achilles, in
his rôle of epic hero, has little to learn.
(ββ) And it is just on account of this fact that such preeminent figures are
complete individuals, who have in resplendent degree all that concentrated
in them which otherwise is diffused and separate in the national character,
and thereby are throughout great, free, and humanly beautiful characters
that they are rightly set in the chief place; and we find that the event of most
significance is inviolably linked with such individuality. The nation is, as it
were, focussed as a single living soul in them, and as such they fight out its
main enterprise, and suffer the hazards of its resulting experience. In this
respect Gottfried von Bouillon, in Tasso's "Jerusalem Liberated," is no such
overpowering figure as Achilles, this typical youthful bloom and perfection
of the entire Grecian host; nor is he even an Odysseus, although he is
selected as the wisest, bravest, and most just of leaders to command the
entire army. The Achæans are unable to win a victory if Achilles stands
aloof from the contest; it is he alone who, by means of his triumph over

Hector, carries victory into Troy itself; and in the return home of Odysseus
we find a mirror of the return of all the Greeks from Troy, only with the
difference that it is just in that which it is his destiny to endure we have
placed exhaustively before our vision the entire compass of the sufferings,
life experience, and conditions which are implied in the whole subject-
matter. The characters of the drama, on the other hand, are not so
represented as in themselves the absolute crowning point of all the rest,
which becomes objective in and through them. They rather are set forth
independently and for themselves in their purpose, which they accept as the
outcome of their character, or as the result of definite principles which have
grown up in conjunction with their more isolate personality.
(γγ) There is a third distinguishing feature in epic characterization due to the
fact that the Epos does not portray an action simply as action, but an event.
In drama the matter of importance is that the individual manifests himself
as operative for his specific purpose, and is expressly represented in such
activity and its consequences. This undeviating consideration for the
realization of a distinct purpose is absent in the Epic. No doubt in this case,
too, heroes have desires and aims, but the main thing here is all that they
may happen to experience while fulfilling it, not the nature of their conduct
in the carrying it out. The circumstances are just as active as themselves,
frequently more active. The return to Ithaca, for example, is the actual
project of Odysseus. The Odyssey, however, does not merely display this
character in the active execution of his predetermined end, but expands its
account into all the variety of occurrence which he happens to experience in
his wanderings, what he suffers, what obstructions meet him in the way,
what dangers he has to overcome, and all, in fact, that moves him. And this
varied experience is not, as would be necessary in the drama, a direct result
of his action, but is in great measure rather incidental to his journey, in the
main even independent of the concurrent action of the hero. After his
adventures with the Lotophagi, Polyphemus, and the Laestrygones, the
godlike Circe detains him for a full year. Further, after he has visited the
lower world and suffered shipwreck, he dallies with Calypso, until he falls
into home-sickness, wearies of the damsel, and stares with tearful eyes over
the solitary sea. Thereupon it is Calypso herself who finally provides him
with the means wherewith he builds his boat, who provides him with food,
wine and raiment, and takes her right anxious and kindly farewell of him.
Finally, after his sojourn among the Phæacians, he is carried in sleep—he

knows not how—to the shores of his island. To carry out a purposed end in
this sort of way would not be possible for dramatic poetry. Again, in the
Iliad, the wrath of Achilles, which, along with all else that results from this
compelling force, constitutes the specific object of the narrative, is
throughout not an end, but rather an emotional state. When Achilles is
insulted he rages. In this condition, so far from doing anything truly
dramatic, he withdraws apart, does nothing with Patroclus by the ships on
the seashore, sullenly angry that he is not honoured by the lord of the folk.
Then follow the consequences of his retirement, and only at last, when his
friend has been slain by Hector, do we find Achilles once more plunge into
the conflict. In another way, again, is the end prescribed to Æneas, which he
has to carry out, where Virgil recounts all the events as the result of which
its realization is in such varied ways postponed.
(γ) We have just one further important feature to mention in respect to the
form of the event in the Epos. I have already observed that in the drama the
conscious will, and that which the same demands and wills, is essentially
the determining factor, and constitutes the permanent foundation of the
entire presentation. All that is carried out appears throughout as posited
already by the personal character and its aims; and the main interest above
all turns upon the justification or its absence of what is done within the
situations presupposed and the conflicts they bring about. If consequently it
so happens also that in the drama the external conditions are themselves
active, they nevertheless only retain their validity by virtue of that which
conscious feeling and volition makes of them, and the ways and means
under which character reacts upon them. In the Epos, however, the
circumstances and external accidents are effective on level terms with the
personal will itself. All that man accomplishes passes before us precisely as
any other event of the world outside him, so that the human exploit is in this
case likewise and equally conditioned, and must be shown to be carried
forward by the development of such an environment. The individual, in
short, in epic poetry does not merely act freely of himself and
independently. He is placed in the midst of an assemblage of facts, whose
end and actuality in its wide correlation with an essentially unified world of
conscious life or objective existence supplies the irremovable foundation of
the life of each separate individual. This typical system is, in fact,
predominant in the Epos through all its content, whether in that of passion,
determined result, or general achievement. It is true that at first sight we

might expect that, on account of an equal cogency being accorded to
external condition in its independent eventualities, we should find
indisputable opportunity given for every shade of contingency. And yet we
have seen that it is the function of the Epos to present what is truly
objective—what is, in short, essentially substantive existence. The solution
of this contradiction is to be found in this, that the principle of necessity is
involved in the events, whether taken in detail or generally.
(αα) In this connection we may affirm of the Epos—not, however, as is
generally assumed of the drama—that Destiny is a predominant force. No
doubt the dramatic character by the kind of end accepted, which he
endeavours to carry out despite all obstruction under the circumstances
given and recognized, makes of himself his Destiny; but in the Epos, on the
contrary, it is made for him, and this force of circumstances, which stamp
their particular form on the deed, apportions to each individual his lot,
determines the result of his actions—is, in short, the genuine control of
Destiny. What happens is appertinent to itself. It is so, and only thus; it is
the fiat of necessity. In lyric poetry we are conscious of emotion, reflection,
the personal interest, and yearning. The drama converts the ideal claim of
human action into an objective presence. The presentation of epic poetry, on
the other hand, moves, as it were, within the element itself of essentially
necessary existence. Therefore, the individual has no choice but to follow
this particular substantive condition; and, in its process of being, to adapt
himself to it or not, and then to suffer as he is able and is forced to suffer.
Destiny, in short, defines what is and inevitably must be, and in the result
success, misadventure, life, and death are plastic precisely in the sense that
individuals are plastic. What does actually unfold before us is a condition of
universal expanse, in which the actions and destinies of mankind appear as
something isolated and evanescent. This fatality is the great justice, and is
not tragic in the dramatic sense of the term, in which the individual appears
judged as a personality, but in the epic sense in which judgment is passed
on man in all that concerns him.[16] The tragic Nemesis consists in this, that
the greatness of his concerns is too great for the individual concerned.
Consequently a certain tone of sadness[17] prevails over the whole. What is
most glorious is seen very early to pass away. In the fulness of his life
Achilles mourns over his death; and at the conclusion of the Odyssey we
view him and Agamemnon as spirits that have passed away as shades, with

the consciousness that they are shades. Troy, too, falls; old Priam is slain
hard by the altar of the home; women and maidens become slaves. Æneas,
in obedience to the divine command, departs to found a new kingdom in
Latium, and the victorious heroes only return after manifold suffering to the
happiness or bitterness that awaits them at home.
(ββ) This necessity of events may, however, be represented in very different
ways.
The most obvious and least elaborate is the bare exhibition of such events
without any further explanation of the poet of a necessary element existing
in the particular occurrences and their general consequence by his addition
of a controlling world of gods disclosed in the decision, interference, and
co-operation of eternal powers. In such a case we must, however, have the
feeling brought home from the entire atmosphere of the exposition, that in
the recounted events and great life-destinies of single individuals and entire
families or races, we are not merely confronted with what is mutable and
contingent in human existence, but with destinies which have an essential
foundation, whose necessity remains, however, the obscure operation of a
power which is not placed before us poetically as such a power in its divine
controlling energy to the point of defined individualization and in its
explicit activity. The Niebelungenlied retains this general tone strongly,
albeit it does not ascribe the direction of the blood-stained final result of all
committed deed either to Christian Providence or the pagan world of gods.
For in regard to Christendom, we merely hear of churchgoing and mass. We
have, indeed, the remark of the bishop of Spejevs to the beautiful Ute, when
the heroes withdraw into king Etzel's country: "Please God, He will keep
them there!" We have also no doubt dreams of warning, the prophecy of the
Danube maidens to Hagen, and other examples of a similar kind, but no
really conclusive witness to the control and interference of gods. This
leaves an impression on this poetry as of a something unriddled, unyielding,
a mournfulness that is at the same time objective, and consequently wholly
epic in its tone. It is a great contrast to the poems of Ossian, in which in the
same way no gods appear, yet in which, on the other hand, we find
lamentation over the death and downfall of the entire heroic stock presented
under the form of the private sorrow of the dismayed minstrel, and as the
yearning of a woe-begone recollection.

Essentially distinct from the above type of conception is the complete
interlacement of all human destiny and natural event with the resolution,
volition and action of a many-sided world of gods such as we find in the
great Hindoo Epopees, and in Homer, Virgil, and others. I have already
expressly drawn attention to the varied poetic interpretation which the poet
himself supplies of events, which are apparently accidental, through his
assumption of the co-operation and apparition of gods, and attempted to
enforce the same by particular examples from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Here we may observe that the condition of most importance to the poetry in
question is that in this reciprocal action of gods and men the relative
independence of both aspects is maintained, so that neither the gods fall into
lifeless abstractions, nor the human individuals become purely subservient
vassals. How such a danger is to be avoided I have already discussed at
length in a previous passage. The Hindoo Epos is in this respect unable to
force its way fully to the truly ideal relation between gods and mankind; on
such a stage of imaginative symbolism the human aspect still remains aloof
in its free and beautiful actuality, and the activity of individuals in part
appears as the incarnation of gods, and in part, as something of more
incidental merit, vanishes, or is depicted under the guise of ascetic
exaltation to the condition and power of gods. Conversely the variously
personified powers, passions, genii, angels, and so forth, that we meet with
in Christendom possess for the most part too little individual independence,
and consequently tend only to affect us in a cold and abstract sort of way.
The case is much the same in Mohammedanism. Through the deification of
Nature and the world of mankind, through the conception of a prosaic co-
ordination of reality, it is hardly possible to avoid the danger, more
particularly where we enter a region of fairyland, wherein a miraculous
interpretation is given to that which is essentially contingent and indifferent
in external circumstances, which are themselves only present as a simple
occasion for human action and as the ordeal of individual character, without
possessing therewith an ideal consistency and foundation. By reason of this
no doubt the infinitely extensible connection of cause and effect is broken,
and the many sections in this prosaic concatenation of circumstances, which
cannot be throughout made clearly distinct, are brought all of a sudden into
one union. If, however, such a result is secured without the principle of
necessity and ideal reasonableness, such a mode of elucidation, as, for
example, frequently in "The Thousand and one Nights," appears as little

more than the sport of an imagination, which endeavours to unfold as
causality possible and actual, by means of such inventions, what is
otherwise incredible.
The fairest mean, on the other hand, in this respect is that retained by Greek
poetry, inasmuch as it is able to bestow both on gods and men a reciprocally
indestructible power and freedom of independent individuality. And such is
harmonious with its fundamental standpoint.
(ββ) There is, however, particularly in the epic conception of it, a point of
view relative to the collective world of gods, which I have already referred
to above in another connection. This is the contrast which the primitive
Epopee presents to the artificial composition of later times. This difference
is very pronounced if we compare Homer and Virgil. The level of
education, from which the Homeric poems originated, still continues in a
fair harmony with the poetic subject-matter. With Virgil, on the contrary, we
are reminded by every single hexameter that the general outlook of the poet
is totally different from the world, which it is his endeavour to depict; and
the gods more particularly have lost the freshness of their original vitality.
Instead of being living persons in their own selves, actual witnesses to us of
their existence, they have rather the appearance of being mere creations of
the poet and external instruments, which it is neither possible for the poet or
his audience to take quite seriously, although there is an open pretence
made that they have been taken thus seriously. Throughout the whole of the
Virgilian Epic we feel ourselves in the atmosphere of ordinary life; the old
tradition, the saga, the fairyland of poetry enters with prosaic distinctness
into the frame of our common-sense faculties. What we have in the Æneid
is very much what we find in the Roman history of Livy, where ancient
kings and consuls make speeches, precisely as an orator made his speech in
the Agora of Rome, or the school of the rhetoricians in the days of Livy
himself. And, on the other hand, in what is really retained from tradition, as
an example of primitive speech, such as the fable of Menenius Agrippa[18]
about the functions of the belly, we find a contrast which is almost
repulsive. In Homer, however, the gods are wafted in a magical light
between poetry and reality: they are not permitted to approach the
imagination so nearly, that the apparition of them confronts us with all the
detail of ordinary life; nor are they left so undefined, that they lose all
appearance of vital reality as we look at them. All that they do is readily

explained by the soul-life and activities of men; and that which supports our
faith in them is the substance and content upon which they essentially
repose. From this point of view the poet, too, is thoroughly in earnest with
his creations, though he treats with irony their form and external reality. In
agreement with this it appears that the ancients themselves believed in this
external form merely as works of art, which receive their confirmation and
significance as a gift of the poet. This light-hearted and human freshness of
presentment, in virtue of which the gods appear human and natural, is one
of the pre-eminent qualities of the Homeric poems. The divine figures of
Virgil float before our vision as so many invented wonders, as members of
an artificial system. Virgil has not wholly escaped the charge of mere
travesty, despite his earnestness; nay, this earnest mien of his is rather the
cause of it, and Blumauer's Mercury with his boots and spurs and riding-
whip is not without its justification. There is no necessity for any one else to
make the Homeric gods ridiculous. His own picture of them makes them
quite ridiculous enough. Nay, in his own story the gods themselves have
their laugh over the lame Hephestus, and over the cunning net in which
Mars lies in company with Venus, to say nothing of the box on the ear that
Venus gets, and the howl of Mars as he collapses. By means of these
touches of natural lustiness and gaiety the poet at once liberates us from the
external form which he set up, and enforces all the more emphatically our
common human nature, which he values, and which suffers, however, the
necessary and substantive power involved therein, and the faith in the same,
to remain. But one or two more examples of similar detail. The tragic
episode of Dido is so entirely to the modern colour, that it was able to
inspire a Tasso with emulation, nay, even in part to a literal translation.
Even nowadays the French are moved to something like ecstasy over it.
And yet how totally different in their human naïveté, simplicity and truth
are the Homeric narratives of Circe and Calypso. The contrast is the same in
Homer's account of the descent of Odysseus into Hades. This obscure and
twilight like retreat of the shades is shown us through a dusky cloud, in an
intermingling of imagination and reality, which takes hold of us with
astonishing force. Homer does not suffer his hero to descend into any
Underworld ready to hand. Odysseus himself digs a pit, and pours therein
the blood of a ram he has killed; he summons the shades, which are then
under constraint to circle round him, and bids some of them drink fresh
blood that they may address him, and give him news, and drives away

others with the sword as they throng round him in their thirst for life.
Everything that happens here is bound up with the life of the hero, whose
general demeanour is the reverse of the humble attitude of Æneas and
Dante. In Virgil's account Æneas descends in the ordinary way; and the
flight of steps, Cerberus, Tantalus, and all the rest leaves us with the
impression of a definitely organized family establishment, quite to the
pattern of an orthodox compendium of mythology.
With yet more force will this artificial compôte of the poet appear as such
rather than a work that springs naturally from the subject where we are
already cognisant of the substance of the tale that is told us in its fresh and
primitive form, or as actual history. Examples of this are Milton's "Paradise
Lost," the "Noachid" of Bodmer, Klopstock's "Messias," Voltaire's
"Henriade," and others. In all these poems we cannot fail to detect a real
cleft between the content and the reflection of the poet which modifies his
description of the events, characters and circumstances. In Milton's case, for
example, we find emotions and observations obviously the growth of an
imagination and ethical ideas inseparable from his own age. In the same
way with Klopstock we have God the Father, the history of Jesus Christ,
patriarchs and angels combined with our German education of the
eighteenth century, and the ideas of Wölffian metaphysic. This twofold
aspect asserts itself in every line. No doubt in these cases the content itself
offers many difficulties. For God the Father, the heaven of the angels, and
the angelic host are far less adapted to the individualization of a free
imagination than are the Homeric gods, which, in a manner similar to the in
part fantastic creations in Ariosto, in their external mode of appearance, and
so far as they do not epitomize[19] human action, but rather independently
confront each other as individuals, do of themselves suggest the gibe over
such a presentment.[20] Moreover Klopstock, so far as a religious outlook is
concerned, introduces us to a world devoid of foundation, which he crowds
with the brilliant effects of a rather exhausting imagination, and compels us
to take everything as seriously as he means it himself. This is particularly
unfortunate in the case of his angels and devils. Such creations only really
have substance and can be brought home to us in their individuality in so
far as the material of their actions, as with the Homeric gods, is rooted in
the spiritual experience of humanity, or in a reality already known to us, as
in cases where they claim importance as being the guardian spirits or angels

of men or cities, but who, apart from such a concrete significance, assert
what is just so much the more merely the vacancy of imagination in
proportion as a serious actuality is ascribed to them. Abbadona, for
instance, the repentant devil,[21] possesses neither a truly allegorical
meaning—for in the abstract notion of devil there can be no inconsistency
of guilt which can be converted into virtue—nor is such a figure one that is
essentially and truly concrete. If Abbadona were a man, a conversion to
God would no doubt be reasonable; but where we have evil regarded as
something independently substantive, which is not an individual human
evil, such a conversion is merely a triviality of sentimental emotion. It is in
fact a distinguishing characteristic of Klopstock's invention that it creates
such unreal personages, conditions and events, which have nothing in
common with the actual world and its poetical content. And he fares no
better in the machinery of his judicial condemnation of riotous living in
high places, least of all in the contrast he presents to Dante, who condemns
the famous personalities of his time to hell with a power of detailed
realization of another type altogether. Equally destitute of real content as
poetry is the joy of the resurrection among the assembled spirits of Adam,
Noah, Shem, Japhet, and the rest, as depicted by Klopstock, who, in the
11th canto of the Messias, at the command of Gabriel, once more revisit
their graves. Reason and rational ground are alike absent here. The souls
have lived in the Divine Presence; they now behold the Earth, but they enter
into no renewed relation with it. We may presume that they could not do
better than appear to men; but of this there is not a single example. No
doubt we find here beautiful emotions, endearing situations; and above all
the moment in which the soul is once more united to a body is depicted in a
way that arrests us; but the content remains none the less an invention that
possesses no real claim to credibility. In contrast to such abstract ideas the
blood-drinking of the phantoms in Homer, their reanimation in memory and
speech, possess for us infinitely more the truth and realization of ideal
poetry. And though from the point of view of imaginative resource these
pictures of Klopstock are decorative enough, what is most essential in them
is throughout the lyrical rhetoric of angels, who appear merely as
instruments of service, or of patriarchs and other Biblical figures whose
speeches and harangues have little in harmony with their historical
characters as we have received the same from tradition. Mars, Apollo, War,
Knowledge, and so forth—powers of this kind are neither in respect to their

content wholly inventions, as the angels are, nor are they simply historical
persons borrowed from historical sources, as are the patriarchs; they are on
the contrary permanent forces, whose form and mode of appearance is alone
the poet's creation. In the "Messias," however, admitting its excellence in
certain directions—its purity of feeling, the brilliancy of its phantasy—yet it
cannot be denied that by reason of the very type of such a phantasy we have
here very, very much indeed that is hollow, without definite substance, and
utilized simply as machinery for something else, all of which, combined
with the absence of continuity in the content and its mode of conception,
has even already covered the entire poem with oblivion. Things only live
and remain green, which, essentially vital in themselves, unfold to us
original life and activity in their pristine mould. For this reason we must
hold fast to the primitive Epopees, and keep aloof, not only from modes of
conception which are antagonistic to the actual presence which is
vindicated in such, but also and above all from false aesthetic theory and
predilection, at least if we are really anxious to enjoy and study the original
world-outlook of nations, that great and spiritual[22] natural history. We
have every reason to congratulate recent times, and our German nation in
particular, that it is now on the road to the attainment of this object; that it
has, in short, broken through the former obtuseness, of ordinary methods of
thinking, and by its liberation of the mind from restricted views made it
more receptive to ideas of the world which it is imperative that we as
individuals enter into, and which alone are able to restore to us, to the full
extent of their claim, the resurrected spirits of nations, whose ideal
significance and deed thus appear struck into life in these their own
Epopees.
(c) The Epos as Unified Totality
Hitherto, in considering the necessary qualifications of a genuine Epos, we
have on the one hand discussed the general world-environment and from a
further point of view the nature of the particularized event transacted on
such a background by individuals either acting under the direction of gods
or subject to destiny. These two fundamental aspects have yet further to
coalesce in one and the same epic totality. In respect to this I will merely
confine the reader's attention to the following points of interest:
In the first place we propose to consider the collective aggregate of objects,
a satisfactory exposition of which is necessary to disclose the connection

between the particular action and the substantive ground referred to.
Secondly, we have to examine the nature of the difference which obtains
between the epic mode of disclosure and that of lyric or dramatic poetry.
Thirdly we have to deal with the unity in which an epic composition is
rounded off despite all its breadth of extension.
(α) The content of the Epos, as already observed, is the entirety of a world
in which an individual action is eventuated. In such a world the greatest
variety of objects appear necessarily appertinent to the general views,
deeds, and conditions of such a world.
(αα) Lyrical poetry is, no doubt, involved in definite situations, within
which the subject of the lyric is permitted to import a great variety of
content into its emotion and reflection. In this type of poetry, however, it is
throughout the form of conscious life itself which characterizes such
content; and for this reason excludes the outlook on the objective world in
all its breadth of extension. Conversely the dramatic composition presents
us characters and the carrying out of the action itself with all the animated
appearance of life, so that here, too, the portrayal of local accessories, the
external form of the active personages and all that happens, in the nature of
the case tends to disappear. As a rule, what we have to express is the soul-
motive and purpose rather than its extensive relations with the surrounding
world of objects, or a description of individuals in their positive appearance
as part of them. In the Epos, however, quite apart from the national actuality
in the widest sense, upon which the action is based, we must find room for
the ideal or soul aspect no less than the external or world aspect. We have in
this type, therefore, under review and in coalescence the entire totality of all
that we may reckon as comprised in the poetic presentation of our human
existence. In this content we must not merely include on the one side the
natural environment in the sense of this or that specific locality in which the
action takes place, but also the more universal objective outlook such as I
have already pointed out is a feature we find illustrated in the Odyssey,
enabling us to understand how the Greeks in the times of Homer regarded
the shape of the Earth, the configuration of the seas, and similar
geographical facts. At the same time these natural aspects are not the object
of most importance in the poem; they are merely the foundation; there is, in
short, the further and more essential aspect of the composition unfolded in

the existence, activities, and co-operation of the entire world of divinities;
and between these two extremes we have humanity simply as such in its
collective relation to domestic, public, peaceful, and warlike situations,
ethical habit, customs, characters and events. And, moreover, throughout we
have to assume in both directions, whether that is from the point of view of
the individual event, or the general condition, the all-embracing national
and other actual complexus.
Finally, if we consider the nature of this intelligible content it is not merely
an external événement that is presented us, but in conjunction with such we
must have, too, placed before us the ideal world of emotion, the aims and
purposes of mind, all that may contribute to justify or condemn a deliberate
line of conduct. In short, the real subject-matter of lyric and dramatic poetry
is not wholly excluded, although in the epic type these aspects merely are
valid as subordinate features; they do not, as in the former cases, constitute
the essential form of the exposition, nor do they deprive the Epos of its
distinctive character. We may consequently affirm that the distinctive note
of the Epic is absent, when lyric expression determines both tone and
colour, as is the case, for example, in Ossian, or when passages are
emphasized in which the execution of the poet is made as consummate as
possible, as is to some extent the case with Tasso, and to a still more
marked degree characteristic of Milton and Klopstock. Emotions and
reflections ought rather, no less than the portrayal of objective fact, to be
transmitted as something done, already spoken and thought, and not
interrupt the tranquil course of the Epic narrative. The incoherent
exclamation of emotion, the direct outcry of the soul mainly intent with its
utterance upon self-revelation, is out of place in such poetry. It will for the
same reason and as strongly abstain from an imitation of the animation of
dramatic dialogue, in which individuals carry on a conversation as though
face to face with each other, where the aspect of most importance
throughout is the contrast presented by different types of character in their
interchange of speech as they strive to convince, command, impose upon,
or passionately unravel their motives to one another.
(ββ) And, secondly, the Epos has not merely to bring before our vision the
manifold content above described in its actually independent and subsistent
objective form, but also the form in which it essentially becomes the Epos
is, as I have more than once already described it, an individual event. If this

essentially limited action is to remain united with all other material
introduced, this additional accretion of fact, must throughout be brought
into definite relation with the course of the individual event, that is to say, it
must not fall outside it as independent. We could not find a more perfect
illustration of this interweaving of all threads than that of the Odyssey. The
domestic arrangements of the Greeks, for instance, no less than the ideas we
get of foreign and barbarous folk and countries, or of the realm of the
shades, and much else, are so closely interwoven with the personal
wanderings of the home-returning Odysseus and the fortunes of Telemachus
on his journey after his father, that not one of these aspects of the tale is
held in a loose and independent position apart from the main event, or, as
with the chorus of tragedy, which does not usually enter into the action and
merely deals with generalized reflections, is able to relapse inactive into
retrospection, but co-operates in the actual progress of the event. In a
similar manner Nature also and the world of gods for the first time receives,
not so much on their own account as in their relation to the particular
events, which it is the function of the godlike to direct, an individual
representation and one of rich vitality. Only when such a condition is
fulfilled, or, in other words, when the narrative throughout informs us of the
progressive movement of the event, which the poet has selected as the
unifying material of his composition, can it never appear as a mere
portrayal of independent objects. On the other hand, the particular event for
its part should not be involved in and absorb the substantive national basis
and totality upon which it moves forward to such a degree, that these are
themselves divested of all independent existence, and fall by necessity into
a relation simply of service. In this respect the expedition of Alexander
against the East would not supply satisfactory subject-matter for the true
Epopee. An heroic exploit of this kind not merely in respect to the original
resolve, but also to its manner of execution, depends so entirely on this one
single individual, his personality and character is so exclusively that which
supports it, that we lose altogether the independent existence and self-
assertion of the national basis, the host and its leaders, which we have
shown to be a necessary condition. Alexander's army is his people, wholly
bound up with him and his command: it follows him rather in the relation of
vassalage than that of free will. In contrast to this the true vitality of the
epic consists in this, that both these fundamental aspects, the particular
action with its individual agents and the general world-condition, while no

doubt continuing under a mediated relation, yet in this relation of
reciprocity no less preserve their necessary independence and thereby
enforce themselves as one existing whole, at the same time securing and
possessing an independent entity.
(γγ) In a previous passage we laid it down generally that in order to have an
individual action the substantive basis of epic poetry must offer the
opportunity of collisions, and furthermore observed, that the general
foundation must not appear as wholly independent but under the form of a
specific event; we may now add that it is in this individual événement that
we must seek the point of departure for the entire epic poem. This is pre-
eminently of importance for the situations connected with its
commencement. Here, too, we may take the Iliad and Odyssey for models.
In the first the Trojan war is placed before us as the general background of
contemporary life, but only so far as it comprises the particular events
connected with the wrath of Achilles. And for this reason the poem
commences without any possible confusion with situations which excite the
passion of the principal hero against Agamemnon. In the Odyssey there are
two classes of subject-matter which determine the content of its opening,
that is to say, the wanderings of Odysseus and the domestic complications
at Ithaca. Homer brings them together by giving us briefly information
concerning Odysseus on his home-journey to the effect that he is detained
by Calypso, and then at once passes to the sorrows of Penelope and the
voyage of Telemachus. We are, consequently, able to review at one glance
what obstacle stands in way of the return, and what is consequently
rendered necessary for those left behind at home.
(β) The advance, then, of the epic poem from a commencement such as this
is totally different from that of lyric or dramatic poetry.
(αα) In the first place we should draw attention to the possibilities of
extension within the range of the Epos. These are quite as much due to the
form as they are to the content. We have already seen what a variety of
objects may be comprised in the world of the Epic as fully elaborated, not
merely in its ideal capacities, motives, and aim, but also in respect to its
objective situation and environment. Inasmuch as all these aspects assume
an objective form, an appearance of reality, each one of them takes to itself
a form of essentially independent ideality and externality, in which the epic
poet, either in his exposition or description, is permitted freely to linger, and

to disclose in its positive appearance. The lyric, on the contrary,
concentrates all that it lays hold of within the ideal realm of the emotions,
or refines it away in the generalized vision of reflection. In the objective
world it is the immediate complex in juxtaposition, or the varied wealth of
manifold characteristics, which is presented us. In this respect we find that
in no other type of poetry is the claim to introduce episodical matter, even
to the point of to all appearance absolute independence, more indisputable
than in the Epos. The delight, however, in actual fact for its own sake and in
its natural form must, as already observed, not be carried so far as to import
into the poem circumstances and facts which have no real connection with
the important action. Such episodes must assert themselves as effective in
the advance of such action, whether as events which are obstructive to its
course, or assistant in their mediation. Yet, despite of this, the particular
portions of the epic poem will be somewhat loosely bound together. This is
a necessary result of the mode of its objectivity. For in what is objective
mediation persists as the ideal essence; what in contrast to this confronts the
external aspect is the independent existence of particular aspects. This
defect in the direction of a stringent unity and the emphasized relation of
specific portions of the epic poem, which, according to its primitive form,
possesses moreover a primitive period of origination, has this result, that it
lends itself more readily than lyric or dramatic compositions to subsequent
additions and continuations; and, further, it is enabled to appropriate under
its more recent and embracing whole even examples of the saga which have
already received artistic expression of a definite, if not so exalted character.
(ββ)Secondly, if we look at the way in which epic poetry may be justified in
its motivisation of the progress and course of events, we shall find that it
ought not either exclusively to take the ground of what happens from the
individual mood, nor yet from what is purely personal character. In other
words, it should not encroach upon what is the proper sphere of the lyric
and drama; it must, in this respect too, adhere to the form of objectivity
which constitutes the fundamental epic type. We have, in fact, seen more
than once previously that external conditions were of no less importance,
for an exposition that takes the form of narrative, than states of soul which
revealed character. In the Epos character and the necessary rational
condition coalesce completely on terms of equality, and the epic character
may therefore give way to external conditions, without impairing his poetic
individuality, may be, in short, in his action, the result of relations in such a

way that these appear as the predominant factor rather than the exclusively
effective character as we find it in the drama. We find in the Odyssey that
the progress of events is almost entirely motived in this way. We find the
same thing in the adventures of Ariosto and other Epopees, where the
material of the song is borrowed from the the Middle Ages. The divine
command, too, which induces Æneas to found Rome, no less than the
varied episodes which extend its embrace over a wide field, would involve
a type of motivisation wholly uncongenial to the drama. A further
illustration of this is Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," in which, quite apart
from the brave antagonism of the Saracens, many a natural event is opposed
to the object of the Christian host. Such examples might be indefinitely
multiplied from almost all the more famous Epopees. And, indeed, it is
precisely material of this kind, in which an exposition of this type is
possible and necessary, that the epic poet ought to select.
The same thing is effected where it is bound to appear as the result of the
actual decision of individuals. Here, too, we have neither to assert nor to
express that which the character in the dramatic sense of the term—that is,
according to his aim and the individual passion which uniquely animates
him—makes of the circumstances and relations, in order to maintain his
personality against this external resistance no less than against other
individuals. Rather the epic character excludes this action viewed simply in
reference to its personal character, just as it excludes the tumult of purely
subjective states and feelings. Instead of this it cleaves fast, on the one
hand, to the circumstances and their reality; and on the other that, whereby
its movement is effected, must necessarily render explicit all that is
essentially valid, universal, and ethical. In Homer, as in no other writer, we
shall find inexhaustible material for pertinent thought on this head. The
lament of Hecuba over Hector, for instance, or of Achilles over the death of
Patroclus—episodes which, so far as content is concerned, would lend
themselves admirably to lyric treatment—are in Homer held throughout
within the epic temper. And to quite as little extent do we find this poet
handle in dramatic style situations which would primarily adapt themselves
to dramatic exposition, such as the conflict between Agamemnon and
Achilles in the council of the chiefs, or the parting of Hector and
Andromache. Only to glance at the last-mentioned scene, this belongs
unquestionably to one of the finest conceivable efforts of epic poetry. Even
in Schiller's dialogue between Amalia and Carl in "The Robbers," where the

same subject ought to be treated in the lyric vein throughout, we distinctly
hear an epic reverberation from the Iliad. How consummately epic in its
effect, however, is Homer's description in the sixth book of the Iliad of the
way in which Hector vainly seeks for Andromache at home, then at last
meets her on the way to the Scæan gate, how she hurries toward him, and
when close to him, as he looks with a peaceful smile on his little boy lying
on the arm of his nurse, exclaims: "Amazing man, thy courage will destroy
thee, and thou compassionest neither thy infant boy nor me, hapless wight,
who will soon be widowed of thee. Ay, for soon the Achaeans will slay thee,
storming against thee together. And if I lose thee it were better for myself to
pass beneath the earth. No other comfort is left for me, but only sorrow, if
thou art stricken by fate! Neither have I my father any more, nor yet my
lady mother." After which she narrates at length all the story about her
father and the death of her seven brothers, all of whom Achilles had slain,
also the captivity, ransom, and decease of her mother. Then at length she
turns with earnest plea to Hector, who is henceforward to her father and
mother, brothers, and spouse in the bloom of life, and implores him to
remain on the walls, and not to make his son an orphan and his wife a
widow. Hector replies in much the same spirit: "All this is also a care to me,
wife; but I fear too much the Trojans, if I avoid the battle here, like a
coward; the eddy, too, of the moment worries me not, who am wont to be
ever dauntless, and to fight in the foremost ranks of the Trojans, protecting
the high fame of my father and mine own. Ay, well indeed I wot, both in
mind and soul, that the day will come in which sacred Troy shall fall, as
also Priam and the folk of the king cunning with the spear. But I sorrow not
so much for the Trojans, nor yet for Hecuba herself and Priam, nor the
brothers of my flesh, who shall fall beneath the foe, as for thee, when some
bronze-greaved Achæan shall bear thee away, robbing thee of thy day of
freedom, and thou shalt spin from the flax of another in Argos, or wearily
draw water, loth indeed, but the might of necessity will be upon thee; and I
doubt not there will be someone who will say, as he sees thee weeping: 'See
yonder Hector's wife, the bravest of all who fought among the Trojans when
the fight was over Ilium.' Thus perchance shall someone speak; and woe
will come upon thee, that thou hast no longer such a husband, to fend thee
from such serfdom. As for myself, may the earth cover me, or ever I hear
thy bitter cry and thy carrying off." All that Hector says here is full of
feeling, pathetic enough, yet not merely expressed in a lyrical or dramatic

manner, but in the epic vein, inasmuch as the picture which he outlines of
suffering, and which brings pain to himself, in the first place depicts
circumstantially objective conditions as such, and in the second place
because all that affects and moves him does not appear as personal volition,
or individual resolve, but rather as a necessity which is not at the same time
his own aim and will. Of much the same epic effect are the pleas with
which the vanquished plead, as they may on various grounds, for their life
with their victors; for a movement of the soul, which proceeds merely from
circumstances, and only attempts to affect us through the causative effect of
objective relations and situations, is not dramatic, although modern
tragedians from time to time also make use of such a type of effect. The
scene, for example, in Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," on the battle-field
between the English knight Montgomery and Joan,[23] is, as others have
already justly observed, rather epic than dramatic. In the moment of danger
all courage forsakes the knight; yet, for all that, when pressed by the fierce
Talbot, who punishes cowardice with death, and the Maid, who conquers
even the bravest, he is unable to have recourse to flight, and exclaims:
O, wär ich nimmer über Meer hieher geschifft,
Ich unglücksel'ger! Eitler Wahn bethörte mich,
Wohlfeilen Ruhm zu suchen in dem Frankenkrieg,
Und jetzo führt mich das verderbliche Geschick
In diese blut'ge Mordschlacht. Wär ich weit von hier
Daheim noch an der Savern' bluhendem Gestad
Im sichern Vaterhause, we die Mutter mir.
In Gram zurückblieb und die zarte süsse Braut.[24]
Expressions such as these are unmanly, and make the figure of this knight
neither fit for the genuine Epos nor the tragic drama, are in fact rather
suggestive of comedy. And when Joan, after exclaiming,
Du bist des Todes! Eine britt'sche Mutter zeugte dich![25]
advances towards him, he throws away sword and shield and pleads at her
feet for his life. The reasons he gives at length in order to arouse her
sympathy: his defencelessness; the wealth of his father, who would ransom
him with gold; the gentleness of the sex to which Joan belongs as maid; the
love of his sweet bride, who waits for his return home in tears; the grief of
the parents whom he has left at home; the grievous fate of death unwept for

in a foreign land—all these motives are themselves, in one aspect of them,
essentially objective conditions, effective and of value as such, and on the
other hand, the tranquil exposition of them is itself in the epic vein. In the
same way the poet motives the condition, that Joan must hearken to him,
through the external circumstance of the defencelessness of the pleader,
although from the dramatic point of view she ought without delay and at the
bare sight to have slain him, being as she was the relentless foe of all
Englishmen, and in fact expresses such destructive hatred with every
resource of rhetoric, justifying her action by the statement that she is bound
with most fearful vow to the spirit-world.
Mit dem Schwert zu tödten alles Lebende, das ihr
Der Schlachten Gott verhängnissvoll entgegenschickt.[26]
If the point of importance to the maid were merely that Montgomery ought
not to die defenceless, he possessed apparently an excellent means in his
grasp of retaining his life; in other words he had merely to refuse to take up
his weapons. This view is supported by the fact that Joan has already
listened to him so long. Yet when she demands that he should fight for his
life with her, of mortal flesh like himself, he again takes up his sword and
falls by her hand. Such a development of the scene had been more in
keeping with the drama had it dispensed with all this varied epic exposition.
(γγ) In general, then, we may characterize the type in which we have the
poetic passage of epic events set before us in the following way, namely,
that the epic presentation does not merely linger over the picture of
objective reality and ideal conditions, but over and above this provides
obstacles to a final solution. This not only applies to its relation to the wide
field of external condition, to which the more immediate vision enforces us,
but also in respect to the culminating movement of the action, more
especially in its contrast to dramatic poetry. For this reason above all it
diverts us from the execution of the fundamental purpose, the connected
course of whose evolved conflict a dramatic poet ought never to lose sight
of, into much digressive matter; and, moreover, by this means avails itself
of the opportunity, to bring before our vision the complex unity of a world
of circumstances, which otherwise could not have been expressed in
speech. We have an illustration of such an obstacle in the beginning of the
Iliad. Homer here at once tells us about the fatal sickness, which Apollo had
spread throughout the Greek camp, and connects with it the strife between

Achilles and Agamemnon. This wrath is the second impediment. Even more
obviously in the Odyssey is every adventure that Odysseus has to pass
through, a delay to his home return. More particularly, however, the distinct
episode serves to interrupt the unimpaired progression of the story, and is to
a great extent an obstacle to this. Such, for instance, is the shipwreck of
Æneas, his love for Dido, the appearance of Armida in Tasso, and we may
add as a rule the many independent love affairs of particular heroes in the
romantic Epos, which, in the poetry of Ariosto, accumulate and interlace
with such profusion, that the conflict between Christian and Saracen is
thereby entirely hidden. In the "Divine Comedy" of Dante we do not find
such definite examples of obstruction to the plot or narrative. In this case
we must associate the slow advance of the Epic denouement partly with the
generally pausing manner of the description, and in part with the many little
episodical histories and conversations with particular characters, whether
damned or otherwise, about whom the poet permits himself more detailed
information.
In this connection it is above all things necessary that impediments of this
description, which interfere with the flow of narrative to its final end,
should not be presented as though they were merely means directed to
objects of an objective character. For inasmuch as already the general
condition, on the basis of which the movement of the epic world is carried
forward, is only truly poetical where it appears as a self-constructed growth,
so too its entire course, either in virtue of circumstances or the inherent
destiny, must also appear self-originated without our being able to detect
thereby the personal views of the poet; and this is all the more so because,
in the form of its objectivity—not merely under its aspects of phenomenal
reality, but also in respect to the substantive character of its content—it
claims for the whole no less than its divisible content that it is a positive
growth, spontaneous in its origin and independent. If, however, a directive
world of gods is its apex, controlling the course of events, it is even more
necessary that the poet himself should possess a lively and vivid faith in
them, because in that case it is generally through the instrumentality of
these that obstructions such as we have referred to are asserted;
consequently where these divine forces are treated merely as some lifeless
mechanism, it is inevitable that everything for which they are responsible
must equally become so in a poetic composition which is artificial even in
intention.

(γ) Having thus briefly adverted to the totality of objects, which the Epos is
able to unfold by interweaving a particular event with a universal national
world-condition, and, further, having discussed the manner in which the
course of events is developed, we have now, thirdly, and in conclusion, to
examine the problem as to the nature of the unity and rounding off of an
epic composition.
(αα) This is a point all the more important for the reason that in our own
day people are ready to take up the view that we may end an Epic as we
like, or continue it just as capriciously. Although this is the opinion of men
of talent and learning—it is in fact the contention of F. N. Wolff—it remains
none the less a crude and illiterate view. It in fact amounts to nothing less
than excluding from the finest ethic compositions any genuine character of
artistic composition. For it is only in virtue of the fact that an Epos depicts
an essentially exclusive, and thereby, for the firs time independent world,
that it is at all a work of fine art in contrast to what is, in part, the diffuse,
and, in part, the finite, series of independent sections, causes, effects, and
other modes of self-causative reality. One can, of course, so far admit that
for the genuine and primitive Epos the wholly aesthetic review of the
design and organization of the parts, of the position and completion of the
episodes, of the kind of similes employed, and so forth, this is not the point
of most importance, inasmuch as here, more than in lyrical poetry of a later
date, and its artificial elaboration of the drama, the general world-outlook,
the faith in divine beings, and, in a word, what is most essential in such
national Bibles, must be expressed as the aspect of most weight.
Nevertheless, these great national books, such as are the Ramajana, the
Iliad, and the Odyssey, and even the "Song of the Nibelings," ought not to
lose that quality which alone, in respect to both their beauty and their art,
can endow them with the worth and freedom of artistic works, the quality,
that is, whereby they bring before our vision a complete sphere of action.
What we have simply to do, therefore, is to discover the appropriate form of
this exclusive unity.
(ββ) The term Unity, if employed in this general sense, has become a very
commonplace one even for tragedy, one capable of much misuse. For every
event, in its causes and effects, creates an infinite chain, which, in the
direction of the past no less than the future, and in a way that is in both
directions incalculable, leads to a further series of particular circumstances

and actions, it being impossible to determine all that may form part of the
circumstances and detail in other respects, or the mode of their coalescence.
If we merely confine our attention to this series, no doubt an Epos may be
extended backwards and forwards indefinitely; and, over and above this
such always offers opportunity for digression. But it is just such a series as
this which makes the composition prosaic. To adduce an example the Greek
cyclic poets have celebrated the entire cyclus of the Trojan war, and in
doing so continue at the point where Homer stops, with a beginning, too,
from the egg of Leda. But it is precisely on account of this that they
degenerate into prose, if we contrast them with Homer's compositions. Just
as little—I have already drawn attention to this—can an individual as such
surrender the central focus of his unity, inasmuch as it is from this that the
most varied events issue, and are able to effect a union in the same, though
they may be entirely without connection regarded simply as events. We
have consequently to seek for another type of unity. In this respect we must
briefly determine the distinction between a mere event, and a definite
action, which accepts the form of event in the epic narrative. We may define
a mere event as the external aspect and realization of every human action,
without involving with it the execution of a particular end; or, in general
terms, we may call it every external modification in the form and
appearance of what actually exists. When anyone is struck by lightning, that
is a mere event, an external occurrence. More is implied in the sack of a
hostile city; we have here the fulfilment of a predeterminate purpose. An
essentially distinct object of this kind, such as the liberation of the Holy
Land from the yoke of the Saracens and heathen, or better still the
satisfaction of a specific impulse, such as the wrath of Achilles, must, under
the mode of the epic eventuality, constitute the synthetic unity of the
Epopaea; and by this I mean that the poetic narrative must restrict itself to
that which is uniquely the effect of this conceived purpose or specific
impulse, and in this co-operation be rounded off in an essentially exclusive
unity. Action and execution of this type is, however, only possible to human
agency; so that, as the culminating point of our composition, we must have
in progressive conjunction with purpose and impulse a human personality.
Furthermore, if the action and satisfaction of the entire heroic character,
from which both purpose and impulse proceed, are merely the result of
wholly definite situations and motives, which are dissipated as we look
back in an extensive complexity of relation, and if, further, the execution of

the purpose, as we look forward, carries with it a variety of result, then in
that case on the one hand no doubt a large number of presuppositions will
be involved with such a specific action, and on the other hand we shall have
many effects of reaction, which, however, will not be placed in any more
intimate poetic connection with just this determinate character of the end
under exposition. In this sense, for instance, the wrath of Achilles has as
little connection with the rape of Helen or the judgment of Paris, although
the one fact is presupposed in the other, as it has with the actual sack of
Troy. When, therefore, it is contended that the Iliad neither possesses a
necessary beginning, nor an appropriate conclusion, such a verdict is due to
an inability to see distinctly that it is the wrath of Achilles which is the main
subject of the Iliad, and which consequently should supply the focus-point
of unity. If, on the contrary, we form a stable conception of the heroic figure
of Achilles, and assume that this, as asserted in the wrath aroused in him by
Agamemnon, is the connecting thread of the whole, we shall be unable to
conceive either a beginning or termination of greater beauty. It is, as I have
already pointed out, the direct motive of this anger, which forms the poem's
commencement; the consequences of the same are comprised in all that
follows. Against this critics have attempted to enforce the view that in such
a case the last cantos are irrelevant, and might just as well be omitted. Such
an opinion, if we look at the poem itself, is untenable. For just as the
dallying of Achilles himself by the ships and his abstinence from the
conflict are purely the result of his indignant wrath, and are in this inactivity
bound up closely with the almost immediate success of the Trojans over the
Grecian host, no less than with the fight and death of Patroclus, so, too, the
lament and revenge of the noble Achilles and his victory over Hector is
closely linked with this fall of his brave friend. If in the previous opinion it
is implied that death is the end of everything, and after that we may as well
pack and be off, such a view merely indicates extreme crudity of
imaginative conception. With the idea of death it is merely Nature that is
brought to a standstill; man is not so, nor yet are the obligations of his
ethical life and habit,[27] with their claim of honourable recognition for the
fallen hero. In this sense the sports that form part of the funeral rites of
Patroclus, the heartrending pleas of Priam, the reconciliation of Achilles,
who returns the father the corpse of his son, in order that in this case, too,
honour to the dead may not be absent, each and all are connected with the

previous events, and contribute to the supreme and satisfying beauty of the
narrative's conclusion.
(γγ) Inasmuch, however, as we have attempted above to make a specifically
individual action, which issues in accordance with a deliberate purpose or
heroic impulses, conform to the type of an epic whole in which focal points
are ascertainable that bind it together and round off its completeness, the
view is at least possible that we have made the unity of the Epos too nearly
identical with that of the drama. For in the drama also it is one particular
line of action issuing from self-conceived purpose and character with its
conflict which constitutes the focal centre. In order, therefore, not to involve
these two types of poetry, the epos, that is, and the drama, in confusion,
though the confusion merely appear to be such, I will yet again draw the
reader's attention emphatically to my previous explanation of the distinction
between human action and event. And quite apart from this the epic interest
is not simply confined to those characters, objects, and situations which
have their ground in the particular action as such, whose progress is the
subject of the epic narrative, but this action possesses the further stimulus to
its opposed factors and their resolution, and in fact is directed throughout its
course and exclusively within a national and collective whole, or
substantive content, which claims on its own account to assert a variety of
characters, conditions, and events. In this respect the final consummation of
the Epos does not merely consist in the particular content of the
predominant action selected, but quite as much in the entire synthesis of the
general world-survey whose objective reality it undertakes to depict; in fact,
the epic unity is only then fully complete when the particular action, from
one point of view no doubt, in its independent character, but also from
another, regarded in its progression as the essentially rounded world within
the sphere of which it moves, is placed before us as one indissoluble
totality; and both of these spheres, or aspects of one sphere, repose together
in the mediating fulness and unimpaired unity of very life.
Such, then, are the most essential characteristics we find it possible, within
the limits accepted, to draw attention to in respect to the genuine Epos.
It is, however, possible to apply the same form of objectivity to other
subject-matter, whose content does not carry with it the true significance of
genuine objectivity. It is very possible that a theorist in Art will feel
embarrassment when, with such modes of speech before him, he is asked to

make a classification adapted to all poems without distinction; and we must
not forget that under the generic term of poem these hybrid forms have also
to be reckoned. In any really just classification, however, we ought only to
include that which only conforms with a definition of the generic notion.[28]
All that is, on the contrary, incomplete in content or form, or both, precisely
for the reason that it is not as it ought to be, is only subsumed defectively
under the notion, or in other words under the definition, which gives us the
thing as it ought to be, and in truth actually is. I only propose, therefore, in
conclusion and by way of supplement, to add a few observations upon such
subordinate and collateral branches of the true epic composition.
To this class of poetry above all the idyll belongs in the modern sense of
that term, viz., that in which poetry stands aloof from the profounder
interests of spiritual and ethical life, and depicts mankind in its innocence.
Innocent life in this sense amounts to little more than an ignorance of
everything except eating and drinking. We may add that what we eat and
drink here is extremely simple, it is goat's milk merely, or sheep's milk, or
at the most cow's milk, roots, acorns, vegetables, and cheese made from
milk. I should say that bread is no longer in the truly idyllic sphere; we
must, however, allow to it flesh-eating; for it is hardly possible that our
idyllic shepherds and shepherdesses could have wished to sacrifice their
herds exclusively to the gods. Their occupation will consist in looking the
whole day long after their beloved herds with their faithful hound, in
providing their food and drink, and along with this giving vent, with as
much sentimental feeling as possible, to every kind of mood which does not
disturb this condition of repose and contentment. In a word, they are
satisfied with their peculiar piety and gentleness, piping away on their reed
or oat-pipes, warbling to each other, and above all making love with the
greatest tenderness and innocence.
The Greeks, on the contrary, possessed in their plastic representations a
more jubilant world, with its attendants of Bacchus, Satyrs and Fauns, who,
in their harmless service of a god, stimulated animal life and human
joviality with a vivacity and truth totally different from the above
pretentious innocence, piety, and emptiness. We may also recognize the
same essentially animated outlook on the world as illustrated in lively
pictures of national condition, in the Greek Bucolic poets such as
Theocritus; this is so whether our poet lingers over actual situations of the

life of fisher-folk, or shepherds, or extends the mode in which he expresses
this, or similar spheres of life, to a yet wider circle, either depicting such
states in an epic form, or treating them in lyric form and that of the
objective drama. Virgil already sings to us with less warmth in his
Eclogues. Most tedious of all, however, is Gessner, so tedious that I suppose
no one reads him nowadays. We can only wonder that the French ever had
so much taste for him that they even ranked him highest among German
poets. Their morbid sensibility on the one hand, which evades the tumult
and changes of life, while yearning also for some kind of movement, and on
the other the absence of all true interest in such poetry, so that the otherwise
disturbing influences of our culture were not represented—both of these
factors, no doubt, contributed to this preference.
We may reckon as a further class of this hybrid type of Epic those poems
which are half description and half lyrics, a favourite type with the English,
and one which for the most part accepts for its subject-matter Nature, the
Seasons, and similar subjects. We may also associate with this type the
various didactic poems concerned with physical science, astronomy,
medicine, chess, fishing, and hunting—in short, the art which loves to
elaborate in a poetic form what is really the content of prose, an art which
has been cultivated with much talent in later Greek poetry, and after that by
the Romans, and, in our time, pre-eminently by the French. Such poetry,
despite its general epic temper, will very readily pass over into the lyric
treatment.
The romances and ballads, which we find both in the Middle Ages and
modern times, are no doubt poetry of a kind, though it is impossible to
define accurately their type; so far as their content is concerned they are in
part epic. If we look at the form of their composition, however, they are for
the most part lyrical, so that we have perforce to reckon them from different
points of view to different types.
The romantic novel, that Epopaea of modern society, opens a different field
altogether. In this we possess, on the one hand, in all its completeness and
variety, an epic prodigality of interests, conditions, characters, and living
relations, the extensive background in fact of an entire world. We have also
the epic exposition of events. What fails us here is the primitive world-
condition as poetically conceived, which is the source of the genuine Epos.
The romance or novel in the modern sense pre-supposes a basis of reality

already organized in its prosaic form, upon which it then attempts, in its
own sphere, so far as this is possible from such a general point of view, both
in its treatment of the vital character of events and the life of individuals
and their destiny, to make good once more the banished claims of poetical
vision. For this reason one of the most common collisions in the novel, and
one most suitable to it, is the conflict between the poetry of the heart and
the prose of external conditions antagonistic to it, including with such the
contingency such imply. This is a conflict which may be resolved on the
lines of tragedy or comedy, or finds its settlement in the twofold conclusion,
first, that the characters which in the first instance contend with the ordinary
course of life are taught to recognize in it what is the genuine heart of
things, becoming thereby reconciled to their conditions and ready to
cooperate with them; and, secondly, that they learn how to brush away the
purely prosaic aspect of all that they do and accomplish, and thereby
replace the prose which they have found there with a reality allied and
congenial to beauty and art. In so far as the form of the exposition is
concerned, the genuine romance pre-supposes, precisely as the Epos does,
the synthesized purvey of the world and life as one whole, the manifold
contents of which are manifested within the reach of the individual event
which supplies the focal centre of the entire complexus. In his attitude to
detail, however, the poet must here permit himself a freer play both of
conception and execution, and all the more so because he is here less able to
avoid the prose of actual life in his descriptions, though this freedom should
not make him any more inclined to dwell exclusively in such an atmosphere
of prose and ordinary occurrence.

3. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EPIC POETRY

In looking back upon the course of our previous consideration of the other
arts, we find that we reviewed the different stages of the art of building
throughout in their historical development as successively in symbolic,
classic, and romantic architecture. In the case of sculpture, on the contrary,
we accepted the Greek type, by virtue of its complete identity with the
notion of this classic art, as the real focal centre, from which we proceeded
to develop the specific characteristics of importance, so that here we did not
find it necessary to extend so far as in the previous case the range of our
historical survey. This contrast is further illustrated in our treatment of the

romantic art-character of painting, which, however,[29] not merely in respect
to the fundamental notion of its content, but also in that of the mode of its
presentation, embraces an equally wide and important range of
development in different nations and through different schools, so that in
this case it was necessary to make our reference to history more extensive
and varied. The nature of the art of music invited us to historical
comparisons of the same kind. Inasmuch, however, as I have neither
obtained access to the foreign literature dealing with the history of this art,
nor can claim personally to possess the adequate knowledge, I have been
forced to restrict myself to the mere outlines of what is required
incidentally. With regard to our immediate subject, that is, epic poetry, the
course of our enquiry will be very much that followed in the case of
sculpture. In other words, though the mode of exposition branches off in
several direct or collateral divisions, and embraces many historical periods
and peoples, yet we have already recognized in the Epos of Greek literature
the genuine type of it in its consummate form and most artistic mode of
realization. And the reason of this is that in general the Epos possesses the
closest affinity with the plastic of sculpture and its objective presence; and,
not merely in respect to its substantive content, but equally so in the form of
its presentation as that of phenomenal reality. It is therefore by no means
simply an accident that we find epic poetry, no less than the art of sculpture,
assert itself pre-eminently among the Greeks in its original and unsurpassed
perfection. Stages of development, no doubt, are to be met with on either
side of this culminating point, stages which are neither intrinsically
subordinate or insignificant, but are necessary conditions of the art's
growth, inasmuch as all nations are essentially within the sphere of poetic
creation, and it is above all the Epos which brings before us the heart and
core of the national life. And for this reason, the historical development of
the Epic is of greater importance than was the case with sculpture.
We may then classify the entire compass of epic poetry, or, to express
ourselves more accurately, of the Epopaea, in three fundamental stages; and
these, speaking generally, constitute the course of the art's evolution.
Firsts we have the Oriental Epos, which makes the symbolic type its focal
centre.
Secondly, there is the classical Epos of the Greeks, with its imitation in
Roman authors.

Finally, we have the abundant and many-sided unfolding of epic-romantic
poetry among Christian peoples; which, however, in the first instance
appears in Teutonic paganism; and again, from another point of view, that is
quite apart from what we may style the chivalrous poetry of the Middle
Ages, we find the old classic world active in another province of life as
instrumental to the purification of literary taste or style, or still more
directly utilized as a model, until finally the modern romance replaces the
Epos altogether.
We may now proceed to some review of single epic compositions: in this it
will only be possible to emphasize what is of most importance; and,
generally speaking, I can only pretend to give a rapid outline of this field in
the space at my disposal.
(a) In the case of Oriental peoples the art of poetry is, as we have already
observed, generally of a more primitive type, inasmuch as it remains more
closely related to what we may style the essential[30] mode of envisagement,
and the diffusion of the individual consciousness in the sublime Unity of the
One. And because of this, as a further aspect, and relatively to the specific
divisions of poetic composition, it is unable to work out individual
personality in the self-subsistency of determinate characterization, with its
aims and collisions, an elaboration which is of first importance in the
composition of genuine dramatic poetry. The most essential result therefore
we meet with here is limited—if we exclude from attention an endearing,
sweet-scented, and delicate type of lyric, or one that uplifts itself to the one
unutterable God—to poems, which are to be counted of the epic mould.
Nevertheless it is only among the Hindoos and the Persians that we come
across the genuine Epopaea; but here at least we do meet it in colossal
proportions.
(α) The Chinese, on the contrary, possess no national Epos. The prosaic
basis of their imaginative vision, which even to the earliest origins of
history offers the jejune form of a prosaically organized historical reality,
opposes from the first to this the most noble type of epic composition an
insuperable obstruction. The religious conceptions of this people, little
adapted as they are to artistic configuration, contribute to the same result.
We find, however, at a later date and as some compensation, for their
elaboration is most profuse, little narratives, and romances spun out to great
length, which astound us by the vividness in which situations are realized,

the accuracy with which private and public relations are depicted, the
variety, fine breeding, or rather I should say frequently the fascinating
tenderness they display, more particularly in their female characters, and in
short by the art in every respect which succeeds in making works so
consummate.
(β) A world of great contrast to the above presents itself in the Hindoo
Epopaea. We find already in the most primitive compositions, if we may
form an opinion from the little made known to the general public up to the
present time from the Veda, most fruitful germs for a mythology fitted to
epic exposition; and these, associated with the heroic exploits of men many
centuries before Christ—for chronological accuracy is still impossible—are
elaborated into genuine Epopaea, works, however, which are still composed
in part from the wholly religious point of view, and in part from that of
unfettered poetry and art. Pre-eminently do the two most famous of these
poems, namely the Ramajana and the Maha-Bharata, place before us the
entire world-outlook of the Hindoo race in all its splendour and glory, its
confusion, fantastical absurdity and dissolution, and withal, from the
reverse point of view, in the exuberant loveliness and the here and there fine
traits of heart and emotion, which characterize the profuse vegetation of its
spiritual growth. Mythical exploits of men are expanded into the actions of
incarnate gods, whose deed hovers vaguely between the divine and human
nature, and the determinate outlines of personality and exploit are dissolved
in an infinitude of extension. The substantive bases of the whole are of a
type such as our Western world-outlook, assuming that it does not choose to
surrender the higher claims of freedom and morality, is neither able to find
itself truly at home in or to sympathize with. The unity of the particular
parts is of an extremely unstable kind; and layers upon layers of episodical
matter, consisting of tales of the gods, narratives of ascetic penances, and
the powers they create, tediously long expositions of philosophical
doctrines and systems, so entirely impair the collective unity that we are
forced to regard many of them as later accretions. But, however this may
be, the spirit from which these stupendous poems have originated bears
constant witness to an imagination, which is not only anterior to all prosaic
culture, but as a rule is wholly incompatible with the faculty of ordinary
common sense, and is capable in fact of endowing the fundamental
tendencies of this national consciousness, in its essentially unique and
collective conception of the universe, with an original artistic form. The

later Epics, on the contrary, which are called Puranas, in the more restricted
sense of the term, that is, poems of the Past, appear rather to be compiled in
the prosaic and dull style similar to that adopted by post-Homeric cyclic
poets, and pursue their downward course at great length from the creation
of the gods and the universe to the genealogies of human heroes and
princes. Finally the epic care of the old myths dissolves into vapour and
artificial elegance of a purely external poetic form and diction, while on the
one hand the phantasy, which exhausted itself in a dreamy wonderland,
becomes the wisdom of fables whose most important function is to instruct
us in morality and worldly wisdom.
(γ) We may compare side by side in a third division of epic Oriental poetry
that respectively belonging to Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians.
(αα) The sublimity of the Jewish imagination no doubt in its conception of
the Creation, in the histories of the Patriarchs, the wandering in the
wilderness, the conquest of Canaan, and in the further historical course of
national event, full as such a vision is of sterling content and natural truth,
possesses many elements of primitive epic poetry; the religious interest is
here, however, so predominant, that, instead of being genuine Epopaea, they
merely approximate either to religious myths in the guise of poetry, or to
religious narratives which are wholly didactic.
(ββ) The Arabs have always possessed a poetic nature, and from very early
days we find genuine poets among them. Even their heroic songs of lyric
narrative, styled the moallakat, which in part originate in the century
immediately previous to Mahomet, depict either with a few bold and
detached strokes and vehement ostentation, or at other times with more
tranquil self-possession, or a melting softness, the original conditions of the
still pagan Arabs. Here we find the honour of the clan, the passion of
revenge, the rights of hospitality, love, delight in adventure, benevolence,
sorrow, and yearning, in undiminished strength, and in traits which remind
us of the romantic character of Spanish chivalry. Here, too, we meet with in
the East for the first time a real poetry, without fantastic elements, or prose,
without mythology, without gods, demons, fairies, genii, and everything
else of the kind common to the East, but rather with solid and self-sufficient
characters and, however unique and marvellous in the play of its images
and similes, yet for all that humanly real and self-contained. We have the
vision of a similar pagan world also set before us by a later age in the

collected poems of Hamasa, as also in the not yet edited "Divans of the
Hudsilites." After the extensive and successful conquests of the
Mohammedan Arabs this primitive heroic character gradually disappears;
and, in the course of the centuries, the province of Epic poetry is replaced in
part by the instructive fable and the witty proverb, in part by the fairy-like
narratives, of which the "Thousand and One Nights" is an example, or in
those tales of adventures which Rückert, through a translation which
reproduces for us the equally witty and artistically elaborate Macamen of
the Hariri in their metre, rhymes, and articulate meaning, has unveiled in a
manner deserving thoughtful attention.
(γγ) In some contrast to this the efflorescence of Persian poetry falls in the
period of that reconstructed culture effected by the change of language and
nationality under the influence of Mohammedanism. We, however, come
across, in the very first opening of this lonely springtime, an epic poem
which, at least in its material, takes us back to the remotest Past of ancient
Persian saga and myth, and carries forward its narrative through the heroic
age right down to the last days of the Sussanides. This comprehensive work
is the Shahnameh of Firdusi, the son of the gardener of Tus, a work the
origins of which are traceable to the Bastanameh.[31] We are, however,
unable to call even this poem a genuine Epopaea, because it does not make
any specific and individual line of action its focal centre. On account of the
lapse of centuries we lose our hold of the costume appropriate to an age or a
locality, and in particular the most ancient mythical figures and gloomy
intricate traditions hover in a world of the phantasy, among the indefinite
outlines of which we are often at a loss to know whether we are face to face
with persons or entire clans; and then again we are often suddenly
confronted with really historical characters. As a Mohammedan the poet
was no doubt able to handle his subject-matter more freely; but it is just in
this type of freedom that we fail to meet with the stability in definite
characterization, as it was present in the design of the primitive heroic
songs; and, on account of the great gulf which separates him from that long-
buried world of saga, the freshness and breath of its immediate life vanish,
though absolutely necessary to the national Epos.
In its further course the epic art of the Persians expands into Love-epopees
of excessive softness and sweetness, as an author of which Risami is pre-
eminently distinguished. It further makes use of its rich stores of life-

experience in the interest of the teacher. In this sphere the far-travelled
Saadi was master. Finally, it plunges into that pantheistic Mysticism, which
Dschelaleddin Rumi recommends and teaches in tales and legendary
narrative.
I must, I fear, restrict myself to the above sketch.
(b) In the poetry of Greece and Rome we find ourselves for the first time in
the genuine sphere of epic art.
(α) Among these above all are included of course the Homeric poems,
which we have already noted as the culminating point of all.
(αα) Either of these poems, despite all that may be advanced to the contrary,
is essentially self-complete, so definite and sensitive to its construction as a
whole, that in my own opinion the very view which regards the present
form of both as merely that in which they were sung and handed down to
posterity by rhapsodists, simply amounts to little more than the just eulogy
of such works in virtue of the fact that they are, with regard to the entire
atmosphere of their content, national and realistic, and even in their
particular parts are so consummately finished, that all and each of them may
be taken as a whole in itself. Whereas in the East what is substantive[32] and
universal in the poet's survey still impairs the individuality of character, and
its aims and exploits by its symbolism or deliberate instruction, and thereby
injures the definite articulation and unity of the whole. Here for the first
time in these poems[33]we find a world beautifully suspended as it were
between the general life-conditions of morality in family, state and religious
belief, and the individuality of distinctive character, and in this fair balance
between the claims of spirit and Nature, intentional action and objective
event, between a national basis of enterprise and particular aims and deeds,
even though individual heroes appear as the predominant feature in their
free and animated movement, yet this too is so mediated by the
distinctiveness of the aims proposed and the severe presence of destiny, that
the entire exposition can only remain even for ourselves the ne plus ultra of
all attainment that we can either enjoy or admire in epic composition. For
we find no difficulty here in recognizing the real significance of even the
gods who withstand or assist these primitive masculine heroes in their
bravery, their straightforward and noble actions: nor can we fail to return

the merry smiles of an art which depicts them as we see them here in all the
naïveté of their very human, if also godlike impersonations.
(ββ) The cyclic poets of an age subsequent to the Homeric poems depart
more and more from this genuine type of epic poetry. On the one hand the
tendency here is to break up the completeness of the national world-survey
into its petty provinces and aspects; and from another point of view, instead
of retaining a firm grasp of the poetic unity and distinctive character of an
individual action, to insist more exclusively on the completeness of events
as an historical series, or on the unity of the personality, and by so doing to
assimilate epic poetry with the already emphasized historical impulse of the
logographers in their historical compilations.
(γγ) Finally Epic poetry of a still later date after the time of Alexander either
turns aside to the more limited province of bucolic poetry, or introduces
more learning and artifice than is compatible with the truly poetic Epopaea
being at last wholly didactic, a type which increasingly suffers to escape
every vestige of the primitive freshness, simplicity and animation.
(β) This characteristic, with which the Epos of the Greeks terminates, is
from the first predominant among the Romans. An epic Bible, such as are
the Homeric poems, we shall therefore seek for here in vain, however much
critics have attempted, even quite recently, to resolve the most ancient
Roman history into national Epopaea. On the other hand, even from the
earliest times, along with genuine epic art, of which our finest extant
example here is the Æneid, the historical Epos and the didactic poem
supplies us with a proof that it is the Romans who are mainly responsible
for the elaboration of that province of poetry which is already half prose;
just as also it was in their hands that the satire received its most perfect
form, being also that most congenial to their character.
(c) For this reason epic poetry could only be infused with a fresh breath and
spirit through a change in its outlook on the world and in its religious belief,
and through the actions and destinies of new nationalities. This is what we
have in the case of the Germans, not only as we see them in their primitive
paganism, but also after their conversion to Christianity. It may be further
illustrated by the Romance nations and all the more strongly, in proportion
as their subdivision into groups is more complete, and the principle of the
Christian view of life and reality is unfolded in all its various phases. Yet it

is precisely this many-sided expansion and subdivision which oppose to a
brief survey great difficulties. I will consequently only draw attention to and
emphasize fundamental tendencies.
(α) In our first group we may reckon the residue of genuine poetry, which
later nationalities have still retained from an age previous to Christianity,
for the most part by means of oral tradition, and consequently not wholly
unimpaired.
We may include above all among these the poems which are usually
ascribed to Ossian. Although English critics of repute, such as Johnson and
Shaw, have been blind enough to publish them as the sole composition of
Macpherson, it is none the less wholly impossible that a poet of our own
time could create from his own resources alone such ancient social
conditions and events; consequently we must presuppose here previous
poems as the foundation of such a work, although too in their entire
atmosphere, and the mode of conception and feeling expressed in them,
many changes more in accord with our modern life may have been
introduced in the course of so many centuries. It is true their actual date is
not established; they may, however, very well have retained a vital form in
the mouth of the folk for one thousand or even fifteen hundred years.
Taking them as a whole their form appears to be predominantly lyric.
Ossian is here presented as the old minstrel and hero, who has lost his sight,
and suffers in a retrospect of lament, the days of glory to rise before him.
Yet although his songs originate in woe and mourning they nevertheless are
in themselves fundamentally epic; for even these lamentations refer to what
has been, and depict this world which has now just vanished, with its
heroes, its love-adventurers, its exploits, its expeditions aver sea and land,
its chance of arms, its destiny and its downfall, in just the same epic and
realistic way—although broken here and there with lyrics—as we find in
Homer the heroes Achilles, Odysseus, or Diomede, talking of their exploits,
expeditions, and mischances. Yet the development of spiritual emotion, and
indeed of the entire national existence, despite the fact that here heart and
sentiment have a more exacting rôle to play, is not carried so far as in
Homer's case. Most of all we miss the assured plastic form of his
characterization and the daylight clarity of his presentment. We are, in
short, so far as locale is concerned, exiled in the tempestuous mists of the
North, with its gloomy sky and heavy clouds, upon which the spirits ride or

appear to heroes, raimented in their form. We may add that it is only quite
recently that other Gaelic minstrels of olden time have been discovered,
rather connected, so Wallis informs us, with England than Scotland or
Ireland, minstrelsy having been for a long time continuous in that country,
which already must have possessed a considerable literature.
In these poems we have among other things reference to emigrations to
America. Mention is also made of Caesar; but the reason here given for his
invasion is a private passion for some king's daughter, whom he saw in
Gaul and followed to England. As a striking characteristic of their form
triads are worthy of attention, which combine in three organic parts three
events of similar character, though dating from different periods of time.
Finally, and more famous than these poems, are on the one hand the heroic
songs of the more ancient Edda, and on the other the myths with which for
the first time in this cycle of song along with the narrative of human
destinies we also come across various histories concerning the origin,
exploits, and downfall of the gods. I must, however, confess I have been
unable to acquire a taste for the empty exuberance of these origins of a
natural philosophy of symbolism, which, however, are further attached to
the appearance of particular human form and physiognomy, such as Thor
with his hammer, the Werewolf, the wild mead-carousals, and in a word, the
savagery and troubled confusion of such a mythology. We must admit, of
course, that all that intimately concerns this folk of the North lies nearer to
ourselves than, say, the poetry of the Persians and Mohammedanism; but to
press upon the educated man among us such an admission to the point that
it has still at this time of day a claim upon his sympathy, and indeed ought
to pass for us as something national—such an assumption, though often
ventured, means not merely to overrate conceptions, which are to a great
extent misshapen and barbarous, but also to wholly misunderstand the
significance and spirit of our own times.
(β) If we, secondly, cast a glance over the poetry of the Christian Middle
Ages, what we ought in the first instance and above all to consider are those
works which have, without more direct and penetrating influence of the old
literature and culture, sprung up from the fresh spirit of the Middle Ages
and consolidated Catholicism. Here we find the most multifold elements
ready to supply the material and stimulus of epic poetry.

(αα) We may in the first place draw retention to that truly epic subject-
matter which comprises in its content interests, exploits, and characters of
the period mentioned of a wholly national character. Among these the Cid
is pre-eminently worthy of our notice. The significance of this blossom of
national heroism in the Middle Ages to the Spanish, this is set before us in
epic guise in the poem Cid, and then at a later date with more attractive
excellence in a succession of narrative romances, which Herder first
brought to the notice of Germany. We have here a string of pearls, every
single picture entirely complete in itself, and yet all so admirably in tune
with each other that they make a consistent whole; though throughout
composed in the spirit of chivalry, yet at the same time Spanish and
national; eminently rich in the content of their varied interests, whether
these concern love, marriage, honour, or the mastery of kings in wars waged
between Christians and Moors. All this material is voiced in so epic and
plastic a style, we have set before us the pertinent fact so simply in the
purity of its exalted content, and withal with such a wealth of the noblest
pictures of human life displayed in a panorama of the most glorious exploit,
and all this bound together in a wreath so fair and fascinating, that we
moderns may compare it with the most beautiful creations of the ancient
world.[34]
As a matter of fact it is as impossible to compare the Nibelungenlied, as it is
the Iliad and Odyssey, with this world of romance, which, however
dissevered in fragments it maybe, is none the less epic in its fundamental
type. For although in the former precious and truly German work we have
no lack of a national and substantive content, in respect to family,
matrimonial affection, duty of vassalage, loyalty of service, heroism, and, in
a word, genuine marrow and substance, yet the entire collision, despite all
its epic breadth of vision, is rather one of a dramatic type, than truly epic,
and the exposition, with all its detail, neither tends towards the
individualization of its abundance, nor to a presentment that is wholly
lifelike; and from a further point of view it is frequently squandered in pure
harshness, savagery and ferocity, so that the characters, although we find
them compactly braced and robust in action, yet in their abstract ruggedness
rather resemble coarse images of wood, than are comparable to the
humanely evolved, genial individuality of the Homeric heroes and women.

(ββ) A second fundamental source of such literature is to be traced in the
religious poems of the Middle Ages, which take as their subject the life of
Christ, or those of the Madonna, the Apostles, the saints and martyrs and
the Last Judgment. The most essentially complete and rich composition,
however, the genuine art-Epic of Catholic Christianity in the Middle Ages,
the greatest subject-matter and the greatest poem is in this sphere Dante's
Divine Comedy. It is true that we cannot call even this severely, rather I
should systematically organized poem, an Epopaea in the ordinary sense of
the term. For we have not here one progressive action, individual and
exclusive, on the broad basis of the entire poem: what, however, we do get
in a conspicuous degree in this Epos is the most secure articulation and
consummate finish. Instead of a particular event it has for its subject-matter
the eternal event, the absolute end, the Divine Love in its imperishable
eventuality, and in its unalterable circles' of relation to the object.
Possessing further Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise for its locality, it plunges
the living world of human action and suffering or, more closely, that of
individual acts and destinies in this changeless existence. Everything single
and particular in human interests and aims here vanishes before the absolute
greatness of the purpose and end of all things; at the same time, however,
what is otherwise most perishable and evanescent in the living world
receives here a completely epic form objectively based on its own
innermost life, and adjudged in its worth and unworth by the supreme
notion of all, that is God. For as individuals were in their life and suffering,
their opinions and accomplishment on Earth, so are they here set before us
for ever consolidated, as it were, into images of bronze. It is in this way that
the poem embraces the totality of the most objective life, that is, the eternal
condition of Hell, of Purification, and of Paradise; and it is on these
indestructible foundations that the characters of the actual world move in
their particular personalities, or rather they have already moved, and are
henceforward rendered moveless, together with their action and being, in
the everlasting righteousness, and are themselves eternal. The Homeric
heroes indeed endure in our memories through the song of the Muse. These
characters assert their condition on their own account, and in the cause of
their own individuality: they do not so much exist in our imagination; they
are themselves essentially eternal. The perpetuation through the
Mnemosyne of the poet has here the objective force of the very judgments

of God, in whose Name the most dauntless spirit of his time has damned or
beatified the entire present and past.
The exposition also must perforce follow the above character of an object,
which is received rather than given. It can only be a wandering through a
world that is for ever determined; which, although it is discovered,
organized, and peopled with the freedom of the imagination wherewith
Hesiod and Homer created their gods, nevertheless undertakes to give us a
picture and a report of what has actually happened, an account full of
energetic movement, yet plastic in the rigidity of its pains; rich in the
flashes of its horror, yet mitigated pitifully in Hell through Dante's own
sympathy; more gracious in purgatory, but none the less fully and
completely elaborated; and, finally, translucent as light in Paradise, and for
ever without materia form in the eternal ether of thought.
The ancient world no doubt peers into this world of the Catholic poet, but
only as the guiding star and companion of human wisdom and culture; for,
where it is a question of doctrine and dogma, it is the scholasticism of
Christian theology and love which speaks.
(γγ) A third fundamental subject-matter, which arrests the interest of the
poetry of the Middle Ages, is that of chivalry. This interest is not merely
limited to its worldly and romantic association with love-adventure and
tilting matches, but is occupied with religious objects in virtue of the
mysticism of Christian knighthood. The actions and events of such
compositions have no relation to national interests; they are matters effected
by individuals, which only concern the personal agent as such; they are
generally similar to what I have described in my previous reference to
romantic chivalry. Individuals are consequently placed in a position of
complete freedom and independence. A novel form of heroism is thereby
created within a social environment that is not as yet stereotyped to the
prosaic mode and temper; a heroism, however, which, on account of
interests which in part are due to religious phantasy, and in part—that is
from the worldly point of view—are wholly personal and imaginary,
eschews that substantive Real, upon the basis of which the Greek heroes are
united, or as units contend, are victorious or are vanquished. Despite all the
varied epic compositions, which such a course as the above occasions, the
adventurous character of the situations, conflicts and plots rather tends, on
the one hand, in the direction of a treatment usually met with in romances,

where the various examples of adventure are loosely interwoven in no more
stringent bond of unity, and on the other to that which, while sharing the
general features of such works, is not evolved on the background of a
consistently organized civic order and a truly prosaic condition of general
life. Moreover the imagination is not content with the mere invention of
knightly characters and adventures outside the pale of the ordinary world of
things; it furthermore associates the exploits of the same with important
legendary centres of interest, pre-eminent historical personages, decisive
conflicts of the age, and receives by doing so, if we view its broader lines,
at least a foundation such as we found indispensable to epic creation. Such
a basis, however, we shall find is as a rule commingled with fantastic
elements, and is unable to secure the clarity of objective vision in its
elaboration, which above all distinguishes the Homeric Epos. Add to this
the fact that on account of the very similar treatment accorded to the same
subject-matter by Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, and to some extent
even Spaniards, we fail to find here relatively at least, and if we contrast it
with that of the Hindoo, Persian, Greek, and Celt, the essentially national
temper, which in the last-mentioned cases constitutes in its security the epic
core of the content and its execution. I must, however, excuse myself here
from entering further into the detail of this aspect, either by way of
illustration or critical judgment. It will be sufficient if I merely draw
attention to the larger circle, within which the most important of these
Epopaea of knight-errantry are to be met with if we estimate them relatively
to their subject-matter.
As a leading figure in this respect we have first Charles the Great with his
peers in the conflict fought against Saracens and pagans. In this Frankish
circle of legend feudal chivalry forms a background of prime importance,
and branches off into poems of every description, whose most significant
material is concerned with the exploits of one of the twelve heroes, such as
Roland or Doolin, of Maintz and others. More particularly in France during
the reign of Philip Augustus many of such Epopees were composed. We
have a further garland of legend with an English source, one which aims at
reproducing the exploits of King Arthur and the Round Table. Legendary
tale, the chivalry of Normans and Englishmen, service to woman, the fealty
of the vassal, are all here involved together in melancholy or fantastic
combination with Christian mysticism. The search for the Holy Grail, that
chalice containing the sacred blood of Christ, is, indeed, one main object of

all knightly exploit, and every description of fantastic adventure originates
in this source, until, finally, the entire company takes flight to Abyssinia.
The above two subjects of legendary story are worked out with most
completeness in Northern France, England, and Germany. And as a last
illustration we have a third circle of chivalrous poetry, composed with yet
more caprice and less substantive content, which ever tends to emphasize
knightly heroism to an excess with ideas of fairyland and fable; this rather
points to Portugal or Spain as its original nursery. In this the family of the
Amadi are accepted as principal heroes.
The great allegorical poems, so much beloved mainly in Northern France in
the thirteenth century, are more nearly prose compositions in their abstract
type. I will only mention one example of these, that is, the famous Roman
de la Rose. We may compare or rather contrast such with the many
anecdotes and still lengthier narratives, the so-called fabliaux and contes,
which rather borrow their subject-matter from contemporary life, tales of
knights, priests, citizens, and above all amours, lawful and the reverse,
retailed to us sometimes in the comic vein, at others in the tragic, now in
prose, and again in verse. Such was the type of writing which the clear
intellect and trained culture of a Boccaccio carried to its perfection.
There is a final class of such compositions, which, turning to the ancients—
with a casual knowledge of the Epic of Homer and Virgil, or ancient legend,
celebrates also, in precisely the manner of the Epopaea of chivalry, the
exploits of Trojan heroes, the foundation of Rome by Æneas, the conquests
of Alexander, and other like subjects.
And this will conclude what I have to say upon the Epic poetry of the
Middle Ages.
(γ) In a third principal group of which I have still to speak, the rich and
pregnant study of ancient literature marks a point of departure for the purer
artistic taste of a new culture, in whose learning, assimilation, and blending
of diverse elements, however, we frequently miss that primitive creative
power, which we admire in the Hindoos, Arabs, as also in Homer and
writers of the Middle Ages. In the many-sided development in which,
dating from this age of the re-awakened sciences and their influence on
national literatures, the actual conditions of mankind undergo a reform in
religion, political condition, morals, and social relations, epic poetry also

seizes hold of the most varied content, as also the most manifold forms, the
historical course of which I can only direct attention to in its most essential
characteristics.
(αα) First, we may remark that it is still the Middle Ages, which now, as
previously, supplies the material for the Epos, although the same is
conceived and presented in a new spirit, namely, one permeated with the
culture of classic literature> We find here pre-eminently two directions in
which the art of epic poetry displays itself.
On the one side the awakening consciousness of the age shows a necessary
tendency to treat as ridiculous all that is capricious in the adventurous feats
of the Middle Ages, all that is fantastic and exaggerated in chivalry, all that
is merely formal in the independence and personal isolation of the heroes,
and which is now contained within a social reality embracing more
abundance of national conditions and interest; a consciousness which
further brings this entire world before our vision in the light of comedy,
which does this, however much what is really genuine within it is also
asserted, with seriousness and delight. As the culminating points of this
genial conception of the entire world of chivalry I have already pointed to
Ariosto and Cervantes. I will therefore in the present passage merely draw
attention to the brilliant facility, the charm and wit, the loveliness and
intense ingenuousness, with which Ariosto, whose poem still hovers among
the poetic aims of the Middle Ages, merely in a more veiled and humorous
fashion makes what is fantastic vanish away by means of the incredibility
of his nonsense, while the profounder romance of Cervantes already
assumes knight-errantry to be a Past behind it; which, consequently, can
only enter into the real prose and presence of life as vanity in its isolation
and fantastic folly; yet at the same time it gives equal prominence to its
great and noble aspects in their contrast to what is awkward, stupid, devoid
of reason and order in this very prosaic reality, making the defects of the
same live before our eyes.
Among writers who have contributed to a second phase in this type of epic
development I will merely mention the representative name of Tasso. In his
"Jerusalem Delivered" this poet, in contrast to the poetry of Ariosto, selects
for his central theme, without any admixture of the humorist's temper
whatever, the great and common aims of Christian chivalry, the recovery of
the Holy Sepulchre, the victorious pilgrimage of the Crusades, and, after the

model of Homer and Virgil, creates an Epos with enthusiasm and study,
which may even be compared with the great prototypes abovementioned.
And no doubt we do discover in this work, quite apart from a genuine, and,
in part, too, national and religious interest, a type of unity, development,
and elaboration of the whole such as we have previously fixed as a primary
condition. We may add to this a fascinating music in the verse, which makes
the same still harmonious to living speech. What, however, is pre-eminently
wanting in this poem is just that kind of primitive origin which is alone able
to create the real Bible of an entire nation. In other words, instead of
having, as in Homer's case, a work which, as true Epos, expresses once for
all in language, and with direct simplicity, that which the nation is through
its actions, the epic in question rather appears simply a poem, that is, a
poetically constructed event. We are mainly pleased and satisfied with it in
virtue of the artistic effect of its beautiful speech and form, whether we
consider its more lyrical aspects, or its epic descriptions. Consequently,
however much Tasso may have taken Homer for his model in the collective
arrangement of his material, in the entire spirit of the conception and
presentation it is rather and in chief the influence of Virgil that we actually
discover in the work, and of course do so not to the poem's advantage.
Finally, among the great Epopaea, which are constructed upon the basis of
a classic culture, we must include the "Lysiad" of Camoens. In the subject-
matter of this entirely national composition, which celebrates the bold sea-
faring of the Portuguese, we are already beyond the true Middle Ages, and
have interests unfolded, which inaugurate a new era. But here, too, despite
the glow of its patriotism, despite the life-like character of the descriptive
matter, based for the most part upon the author's own experience, we are
still conscious of a real barrier between the subject that is national and an
artistic culture which is partly borrowed from the ancients and in part from
the Italians, and which impairs its impression as a truly original epic.
(ββ) The essentially new manifestations in the religious belief and actual
composition of modern life originate in the principle of the Reformation.
The whole tendency of this general change of outlook is, indeed, rather
favourable to lyric and dramatic, than epic poetry. But we do find
nevertheless, even in the latter sphere, an autumnal blossoming of the
religious Epopaea, of which the pre-eminent examples are Milton's
"Paradise Lost" and Klopstock's "Messias." In breadth of culture, gained

through study of the ancients, and the correct elegance of his language,
Milton is no doubt an admirable master of his age. In the profundity of his
content, in energy, original invention and execution, and, above all, in the
epic objectivity of his presentment, however, he is in every respect inferior
to Dante. For not only does the conflict and the catastrophe of "Paradise
Lost" take a direction which is contrary to its dramatic character; but, as I
have above incidentally observed, it is, in a unique way, supported by a
lyrical impulse and ethical or didactic predilections, which lie far enough
away from the subject in its original form.[35] I have already, in discussing
Klopstock, referred to a similar cleft between the material and the form,
which a particular age gives to it in its epic reflection. In the case of
Klopstock, moreover, an endeavour is throughout apparent through a
rhetoric, which is little more than the caricature of the Sublime, to infuse
the reader with that recognition of the worth and solemnity of his subject,
which the poet has himself experienced. From a somewhat different point of
view we arrive at very much the same conclusion in the case of Voltaire's
"Henriade." At any rate here too the poetry is an artificial production, and
all the more so, inasmuch as the material, as already observed, is not
adapted to the truly primitive Epos.
(γγ) If we try to discover really epic compositions in our own day we shall
find ourselves in an atmosphere totally different from that of the genuine
Epopaea. The general condition of the world to-day has assumed a form,
which, in its prosaic character, is diametrically opposed to everything which
we found indispensable to the genuine Epos, while the revolutions, which
have been imposed upon the actual social conditions of states and nations,
are still too strongly riveted in our memory as actual experiences that they
should be able to receive an epic type of art. Epic poetry has consequently
taken refuge from the great national events in the narrow circle of the
domestic life of individuals in the country and in the small town, striving to
find here the material adapted to epic composition. In this way, more
particularly among us Germans, the Epic has become idyllic, after the
genuine Idyll, of the sweet sentimentality and wishy-washy type, died out.
As an example lying close to hand of an idyllic Epos I will merely mention
the "Luise" of Voss, as also and above all Goethe's masterpiece, "Herman
and Dorothea." In the latter work we have no doubt our attention directed to
the background of the greatest world-event of our age, with which the

circumstances of the innkeeper and his family, of the pastor and the
apothecary, are directly associated. And inasmuch as the little country town
is not placed before us in its political relations we at once remark a gap in
the narrative which is not explained or mediated by any connecting link. Yet
it is precisely through this omission of the intermediate link that the whole
keeps its unique character. For with the stroke of a master Goethe has
removed the revolution into the background, despite the fact that he has
known how to make the most happy use of it in the enlargement of his
poem. He only interweaves such circumstances with the action as, in their
simple humanity, connect themselves absolutely without constraint with
domestic and civic conditions. The main point, therefore, is that Goethe in
this work has succeeded in detaching from the reality of our modern life
traits, descriptions, conditions, and developments, and depicting the same,
which in their province once more make that alive which contributes to the
imperishable charm of those primitive human conditions of the Odyssey
and the patriarchal picture of the Old Testament.
In respect to other spheres of our present national and social life I would
observe in conclusion that in the field of epic poetry there are practically
unlimited opportunities for the romance, the narrative, and the novel. I am,
however, unable, even in the most general outline, to follow the history of
these in the breadth of their development from their first appearance until
the present time.

[1] Die echt poetische Abrundung. Not, however, merely literary finish, but
complete ideal totality.
[2] Einem bestimmten Tone. Perhaps more truly "a particular strain or
atmosphere." But both aspects are suggested.
[3] There is a misprint here eine recht for einer echt, and also I should prefer
eight lines lower down die for das agreeing with Freiheit rather than Leben.
[4] This sentence is obviously ironical, but the sense intended is not very clear.
The words die sic are clearly a misprint for die sick, and I presume kindisch is
not used in its more common depreciatory sense of childish. I am, however, not
very confident of my translation. War es ein Zeichen would apparently refer back
to the general intention of the previous sentence, i.e., the attempt of Klopstock
and others to make a national book.
[5] See vol. I, pp. 240-289, and particularly pp. 270-289.
[6] Eine Sittlichkeit.
[7] Poet., c. 14.
[8] That is to say, that the whole remains intact in its opposition. The question of
international ethics is not directly considered, though reference is here made to
historical evolution in its widest sense.
[9] Wrong that is inflicted on a state which is, as a whole, innocent.
[10] I presume the reference is mainly to the United States. Hegel's sentence is
so möchten diese nur den Sieg dereinstiger Americanischer lebendiger
Vernünftigkeit über die Einkerkerung in ein ins Unendliche fortgehendes Messen
und Particularisiren darzustellen haben. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether he
would have expressed himself with equal confidence in our own day. At least the
position of the German States of his own time no doubt was strongly present in
his mind.
[11] Von einem anderen beschränkt. Curtailed, I imagine, as a spontaneous and
free power.
[12] That is acting in subservience to eternal forces, not directing those forces.
Hegel conceives the event as supplying the lines of direction through which the
forces are effective.
[13] Aus der Dumpfheit des Bewusstseyns. Out of the confusions of
consciousness.
[14] I have adopted the masculine gender in accordance with the text, though of
course it does not imply personality in the ordinary sense.
[15] I suppose the meaning is that it is a purely objective panorama.
[16] Seiner Sache, Somewhat vague and difficult to translate. It means more than
his affair or business.
[17] Trauer. Mournfulness or gloom is perhaps better.
[18] Liv., ii, c. 32.
[19] Lit., so far as they do not emphasize essential phases in (Momente).

[20] I presume the allusion is to the way, already illustrated, the Homeric gods
do not take themselves seriously.
[21] Messias, Canto II, w, 627-850.
[22] It is possible Hegel means by geistige intelligible.
[23] Act II, sc. 6.
[24] "O, that I had never shipped hither over the sea, unhappy that I am! Vain
was the fancy which befooled me to seek an empty fame in France; and now a
fatal destiny carries me to this bloody field of death. O that I were far from here
housed at home on the banks of the blue Severn, where the mother remained
behind and the gentle sweet bride mourning for me."
[25] "To Death thou art decreed! A British matron it was that conceived thee!"
[26] "With vow to slay at everything alive with the sword that the fateful god of
battles confronts her with."
[27] Sitte und Settlichkeit.
[28] That is of the Epos.
[29] The course of painting is similar to that of sculpture in virtue of the fact that
it is wholly of one type, viz., romantic, but it differs from it in being less
objective and requiring more historical illustration.
[30] Substantiellen, i.e., an outlook which concentrates attention on the one
Divine substance, the essence beneath the phenomenal.
[31] I presume this is another Persian composition, but it may be a cult of some
kind.
[32] Substantive as contrasted with phenomenal.
[33] That is the Iliad and Odyssey.
[34] What Hegel means to say by this and the following paragraph is by no
means clear. He first seems to state as a fact that a rivalry may be asserted, or at
least has been asserted by others, between the Spanish romances and the finest
Greek and Latin epic literature, and then immediately afterwards denies the fact
so far as the Iliad and Odyssey is concerned. The confusion and indeed
uncertainty seems to be due to the fact that while explaining the disadvantage in
which the German work is placed as compared with the Spanish romances, he
merely contrasts the Homeric poems with the former. What he apparently means
us to infer is that the latter are as superior as the German work is, at least as an
Epos, inferior. The words "we moderns" are apparently ironical. In any case the
entire passage is, I think, clearly one which needed revision, and it is possible
that the two paragraphs have been tacked together by Hegel's editors from
different connections.
[35] As we find it, presumably, in Genesis.

(B.) LYRIC POETRY

The poetic imagination does not, as the plastic arts do, present the objects of
its creation before our vision in an objective shape, but only envisages them
to the inward vision and emotions. No doubt from the first, relatively to
certain aspects of this universal type of composition, it is the personal
quality of ideal creation and construction which pre-eminently asserts itself
in the presented work, and as such is to be contrasted with plastic
construction. But when epic poetry offers to our contemplation its object
either in its substantive universality, or under a mode comparable with that
of sculptor and painter—in other words, in its living presence—in that case,
at least where the art is most consummate, the individual mind and soul of
the creator involved in the creation disappears before the objective result
created. The above personal or subjective aspect of mind can only
completely be discarded in so far as, in the first place, the entire world of
objects and relations are essentially absorbed by it and then permitted to
stand forth freely from the veiled presence of the individual consciousness,
and, further, in so far as the self-centred soul unbars its doors, opens wide
its ears and eyes, extends the purely unenlightened feeling to vision and
idea, and attaches to this wealth of hidden content word and speech as the
vehicle of its intimate self-expression. And just in proportion as this kind of
communication persists in shutting itself away from the objective
manifestation of epic art, to that extent, and precisely for that reason, the
subjective type of poetry is bound to find its own forms, in a province of its
own, wholly independent of the Epos. In other words, the human spirit
descends from the objectivity of the object into its own private domain; it
peers into its particular conscious life; it endeavours to satisfy the desire to
reproduce the presence and reality of that, as displayed in soul, in the
experience of heart and reflected idea, and in doing so to unfold the content
and activity of the personal life rather than the actual presence of the
external fact. But, again, inasmuch as this expression, if it is not simply to
remain the chance expression of mere individuality[1] in its immediate
feeling and conception, must assert itself in speech as the reflection of an
inner life that is poetic, all that is thus envisaged of feeling or otherwise—
and however much, too, it may be a part of the poet's unique personality,
and be presented by him as such—must nevertheless possess a universal
validity, in other words, it must essentially include feelings and reflections

for which the art of poetry is able to discover the vital and adequate means
of expression. And although, apart from this, pain and desire, as conceived,
described, and expressed in speech, may lighten the heart, and poetic
ebullition is unquestionably permissible for such a purpose, yet its function
is not restricted to such domestic service. Rather it has a nobler vocation,
which is not so much to liberate the human spirit from emotion, but in the
medium of the same. The blind tumult of passion surges on in a union with
the entire soul-life unenlightened, unawakened to the grasp of mind. In such
a state the soul cannot assert itself in idea and expression. It is the function
of poetry no doubt to free the heart from such a prison house, in so far as it
presents that life as an object to it. But it does more than this mere
translation of content from the immediacy of emotional experience; it
creates therefrom an object which is purified from all mere contingency of
the passing mood; an object in which the soul-life in this deliverance
returns once more to itself freely and with self-conscious satisfaction, and
remains there at home. Conversely, however, this primary objectivisation
ought not to be carried to the point of a reflection that actually discloses the
individual activity of the soul-life and its passions as it is carried forward in
practical impulse and action; in other words, in the self-return of the
individual upon himself in veritable deed. For the most pertinent reality of
our inner life is still itself an inward something, and consequently this
passage from itself can only give us the sense of deliverance from the
immediate concentration of heart in its blind and formless presence, which
now unbars itself in self-expression, and in doing so grasps and expresses
what was previously merely felt in the form of a self-conscious vision and
ideas. And with these remarks I think we have determined in their essential
features both the sphere and function of lyric poetry as contrasted with the
epic and dramatic types.
As regards the more detailed examination and classification of our new
subject-matter, we cannot do better than follow the course previously
adopted in our examination of epic poetry.
First, we have to discuss the general character of lyric composition.
Secondly, we shall consider the particular characteristics which make the
lyric work of art and the types of the same worthy of attention in their more
direct relation to the lyric poet.

Thirdly, we shall conclude the survey with a few remarks upon the
historical development of this class of poetic work.
Generally I may remark that this survey will be extremely restricted, and for
two reasons—first, because I am compelled to reserve the necessary space
for the discussion of the dramatic field; secondly, because I must limit
myself exclusively to general considerations, inasmuch as the detail
embraced by it possesses far more incalculable resources of manifold
complexity than in the case of the Epos, and could only be treated in greater
fulness and completeness if viewed historically, which is not within the aim
of the present work.

1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE LYRIC.

In the stimulus of epic poetry is the desire to hear the thing or matter which
is unfolded on its own account, and independently of the poet,[2] as an
objective and essentially exclusive totality. In the lyric, on the contrary, it is
the converse need which finds its satisfaction in self-expression and the
coming to a knowledge of the soul in this expression of itself. With regard
to the nature of this effusion,[3] we may enumerate its most important
constituents as follows:
First, there is the content in which soul-life is aware of itself and reflects
itself in idea.
Secondly, there is the form, in virtue of which the expression of this content
becomes lyric poetry.
Thirdly, there is the stage of conscious life and culture from which the
person thus lyrically viewed discloses his feelings and ideas.
(a) The content of the lyric work of art cannot comprise the development of
an objective action in its possibilities of expansion into all the breadth and
wealth of a world. It is the single person, and along with him the isolated
fact of situation and objects, no less than the mode and manner in which the
soul is made aware of itself in such content, with its private judgments, its
joy, its wonder, its pain, and its feeling, which it presents to our vision.
Through this principle of division and particularity, as present in the Lyric,
the content may be of the greatest variety, associated with every tendency of
national life. There is, however, this essential distinction, that whereas the

Epos combines in one and the same work the spirit of a people in all its
breadth, and in its actual deed and fashion, the more definite content of
lyrical poetry limits itself to one particular aspect, or at least is unable
successfully to attain to the explicit completeness and exposition which the
Epos ought at least to possess. The entire wealth of lyrical poetry in a nation
may, therefore, no doubt embrace the collective exuberance of national
interest, idea, and purpose; but it is not the single lyrical poem that can do
this.
The Lyric is not called upon to produce Bibles such as we have discovered
in Epic poetry. It does, however, enjoy the advantage of being able to touch
upon every conceivable aspect of national development; whereas the true
Epos is limited to distinct epochs of a primitive age, and its success in our
more recent times of prosaic culture is very jejune.
(α) Within this field of particularization we have, to start with, the universal
as such—the supreme height and depth of human belief, imagination, and
knowledge—the essential content of religion, art, ay, even of scientific
thought, in so far as the same is adaptable to the form of imagination and
creation, and can enter the sphere of emotions. Consequently general
opinions, what is of permanent substance in a view of the world, the
profounder grasp of far-reaching social conditions are all not excluded from
the Lyric; and a considerable part of the material I have referred to[4] when
discussing the more incomplete types of the Epic falls rightly, and with
pertinency into the sphere now under review.
(β) And along with such essentially universal topics we have associated the
aspect of particularity, which can be so interwoven with what is thus
substantive that any specific situation, feeling, or idea is thereby seized in
its profounder significance and expressed in a way wholly accordant
thereto. This is, for example, almost always the case in Schiller's lyrical
work, as also in his ballads; in this connection I will merely recall the
superb description of the Eumenides chorus in the Cranes of Ibicus, which
is neither dramatic nor epic, but lyrical. From a further point of view we
may have this combination so asserted that a variety of particular traits,
moods, occurrences are introduced by way of testimony to comprehensive
views and maxims, interlaced in vital coalescence by virtue of the general
principle. This style of writing is frequently employed in the elegy and
epistle, and generally in reflections upon life of a comprehensive character.

(γ) In conclusion, inasmuch as in lyrical composition what is self-expressed
is the individual person, a content, which is extremely slight, will primarily
suffice for this purpose. It is, in other words, the soul itself, subjective life
simply, which is the true content. The emphasis is therefore throughout
upon the animation of feeling, rather than upon the more immediate object.
The most fleeting moods of the moment, the overjoyment of the heart, the
swiftly passing gleams or clouds of careless merriment and jest, sorrow,
melancholy, and complaint, in a word, all and every phase of emotion are
here seized in their momentary movement or isolated occurrence, and
rendered permanent in their expression. What we find here in the domain of
poetry may be paralleled with what I previously referred to when describing
genre paintings. The content, the subject-matter, is here the wholly
contingent, and what is over and above this important is exclusively the
character of the individual conception and mode of presentment, the charm
of which in the Lyric will either consist in the aroma of exquisite feeling, or
in the novelty of arresting points of view, and the genial suggestion of
literary phrases and turns which surprise.
(b) In the second place we may observe in general with respect to the form,
wherein the Lyric is composed, that here too it is the individual person, in
the intimacy of his ideas or emotion that constitutes the focal centre. The
growth of the whole is rooted in the heart and temperament; it starts, to be
more precise, from a particular mood and situation of the poet. By virtue of
this fact the content and conjunction of the particular aspects of its growth
are not inferred from it objectively as a substantively independent content,
or from its external manifestation as some really self-exclusive event, but
are borrowed from the individual subject as such. But for this reason it is
essential that the individual in question should himself appear poetical, rich
in fancy and feeling, or imposing and profound in his views and reflections,
and above all should be essentially independent, the possessor of a unique
ideal world, from which the servility and caprice of a prosaic nature is
excluded.
The lyric poem, then, retains a mode of unity wholly different from that of
the Epos, in other words, the mysterious intimacy of the mood or reflection,
which expatiates upon itself, mirrors itself in the objective world, describes
itself, or concerns itself as it wills with any other matter, always, however,
retaining the right in the pursuit of such an interest to begin and break off

very much as it pleases. Horace, for instance, very frequently comes to a
stop at the very point, where, in the commonplace view of its literary
treatment, we might suppose he had only just started with his subject. In
other words, what he describes is simply his feelings, commands or
arrangements for a banquet, say, without giving us further information as to
how it went off. In the same way we have every conceivable mode of
progression and combination supplied by the nature of the mood, the actual
condition of the individual soul-life, the degree of passion, its excitement or
rapid transition of conflicting emotion, or the tranquillity of the heart or the
mind in some long-drawn process of contemplation. As a rule, in respect to
all such subject-matter, we are able to determine very little that is fixed,
owing to the repeated changes in the ever varied facets of the soul. I will
therefore restrict myself to a few salient points of distinction.
(α) Just as we met with several specific kinds of epic poetry which showed
a tendency to adopt a lyric vein of expression, so, too, the Lyric may accept
as its subject-matter and its form an occurrence, which, so far as content
and external appearance are concerned, are epic, and to this extent it will
approximate to the latter type. Heroic songs, romances, and ballads belong
to such a class. The form of the whole is in such examples narrative,
inasmuch as it is the progressive advance of a situation or event, as among
other instances, a particular direction in the fate of a nation, which is
communicated. And yet at the same time the fundamental temper is wholly
lyric, inasmuch as the main object is not to give us a description and
representation of the actual fact apart from all relation to the narrator, but
rather to disclose his personal attitude to it in the way he conceives and
feels it, whether with delight or complaint, whether as a stimulus to good or
depressed spirits, the mood in short that rings throughout it. And similarly
the nature of the impression which the poet endeavours to produce thereby
is entirely that of the province of the lyric. In other words, what the poet
seeks to effect in his audience is precisely that state of emotion, which the
recounted event has produced in himself, and which he therefore has
attached to his composition. He expresses his dejection, mourning,
merriment, his fire of patriotism, and so forth, in an appropriate occurrence
in such a way that it is not this fact so much which contributes, as it were,
the focus, but rather the state of his emotional life we find reflected therein.
And for this reason he, above all emphasizes those traits, and depicts the
same with feeling, which are in accord with his own personal impulses; and

in the degree of vivacity with which these are expressed by them the same
feelings are likely to be excited in his audience. And thus, though the
content may be epic, the treatment is lyrical.
(αα) To come yet more directly to detail there is, first, the example of the
epigram, in such a case where it is not merely an inscription which states
concisely the bald nature of some fact, but further associates with this an
emotional state; where, in short, the content, regarded as the bare statement
of external fact, is merged in a condition of the soul. In other words, the
writer here ceases to surrender himself wholly to the object: rather he
makes his own personality expressive in it; he records his desires with
regard to it; he attaches to it his own sportive fancies, his acute or
unexpected suggestions and associations. The Greek Anthology contains
many such witty epigrams which have lost the epic manner. In more recent
times we find similar examples in the piquante couplets of the French,
abundantly illustrated in their Vaudevilles. We Germans have much the
same thing in our didactic distiches, Xenien, and the like. Even tomb
inscriptions frequently approximate to this lyrical character in virtue of the
strong emotions expressed.
(ββ) In much the same way the Lyric accepts a wider range in descriptive
narrative. I will merely mention, as a composition of this class, the
romance. It is the most obvious and simple form of it, in so far that is as it
isolates the different scenes of an event, and then depicts rapidly and with
the full force of their most important characteristics each on its own
account, in descriptions marked throughout by sympathetic feeling. Such a
consistent and well-defined grasp of the characteristic features of a
situation, together with an emphatic assertion of the writer's absolute
sympathy with his subject, is above all nobly represented in Spanish
literature and makes such romances strikingly impressive. A peculiar clarity
of atmosphere surrounds these lyrical representations which rather
identifies them with the clear-cut definition of objective vision, than with
the ideal world of the imagination.
(γγ) The class of the ballad, in contrast to the above, includes for the most
part, if in less degree than the truly epic poem, the completeness of an
independent event, whose reflection, of course, it merely embodies in the
most conspicuous of its phases, while it seeks at the same time to give full,
if concentrated and ideal emphasis, to the depth of the sentiment with which

it is throughout interwoven, and therein the plaint, dejection, joy, and so
forth, of the soul. English literature above all contains many such poetic
compositions in the early and more primitive epoch of its history; and,
generally, popular poetry delights in the narration of such histories and
collisions, usually unfortunate, with a true and emotional emphasis
calculated to make both heart and voice thrill and falter with anguish. But in
more recent times also among ourselves Bürger and, most famous of all,
Goethe and Schiller, have composed masterpieces in this field; Bürger in
virtue of his sombre tone of naïveté; Goethe through the impeccable clarity
of his emotional, no less than imaginative vision, which forms the lyrical
thread throughout; and Schiller, on account of his superb emotional
emphasis on the fundamental thought which he seeks, in a wholly lyrical
manner, to express under the form of an event, in order thereby to affect the
hearts of his readers with a similar lyric movement of feeling and
contemplation.
(β) The purely personal element of lyric poetry is rightly emphasized in
those cases, when the fact of a given situation is taken by the poet as an
effective means of expressing his own individuality therein. Such is the case
in the so-called poems of occasion. So far back as the poems of Callinus
and Tyrtaeus we find elegies of battle based on conditions regarded as real,
which are made the stimulus of a personal enthusiasm, albeit the poet's own
individuality, his purely private affections and feelings, are as yet not so
much in evidence. The Pindaric Odes also bring to light in their panegyrics
of particular contests, victors, and circumstances, a vein or impulse that is
more private; and yet more in some of the odes of Horace we mark a
definitely personal motive, or rather expressed thought to the effect, "I will
as myself a man of culture and fame, write a poem on this subject." But the
best illustration of all we have in our own Goethe, whose partiality for such
a style was due to the fact that he discovered a poem in every incident of his
life.
(αα) If, however, the lyric work of art is to be divested of all dependence of
external occasion and purpose, that may be implied in it, and to be
composed as a self-subsistent whole on its own account, it is obviously
essential that the poet also only make use of such external stimulus as an
opportunity to express himself, his mood, delight, sorrow, or modes of
thought and reflection generally. The condition of most importance to such

an intimate mode of personal expression consists in the poet's ability to
absorb the real content absolutely, converting it thereby into his own
possession. The true lyric poet lives a life of introspection, he grasps
relations in the light of his poetic individuality; and, however in varied
fashion his inner life may be blended with the world around him, in its
conditions and destiny, what he presents to us exclusively in such material
is the unique and independent animation of his own emotions and
observations. When, to take our former example, Pindar was invited to
celebrate a victor of the Hellenic games, or undertakes this uninvited, he
made himself so entirely master of his subject-matter, that his composition
no longer so much appears a poem on the victor as an effusion of song
created from his own resources.
(ββ) If we consider more closely the manner of presentment of such a poem
d'occasion, we shall, no doubt, be ready to admit that the same can to a real
extent borrow its more defined material and character, no less than its
conceived organization as an artistic work, from the actual features of the
occurrence or individual which constitute its content. It is, in fact, precisely
from this content that the emotional movement of the poet proceeds. As the
most illuminating, though an extreme example, I will merely mention
Schiller's "Song of the Bell," which makes out of the varied stages of bell-
foundry the significant and arresting moments in the composition of the
entire poem, and only subject to this introduces the emotional element
relevant thereto, as also the various observations upon human life and the
description of its conditions. In a somewhat different manner, too, Pindar
makes use of the place of birth of the victor, the exploits of the family to
which he belongs, or other relations of life as an opportunity in his own
person to exalt certain gods to the exclusion of others, or to mention these
particular exploits and results alone, or to emphasize exclusively the
observations or maxims he has interpolated. From a further point of view,
however, the lyric poet is absolutely free, inasmuch as it is not the external
occasion as such, but rather the poet's own soul-life which is here the
subject; and consequently it entirely depends on the particular views of the
poet and the character of his general mood, what aspects of the subject-
matter and in what threads of connection and sequence they shall be
composed. In other words, we are unable to predict decisively and a priori
the degree in which the objective occasion with its given content, or the

purely personal factor of poet, shall be predominant, or whether both
aspects shall on equal terms coalesce.
(γγ) Furthermore, it is not the incentive and its positive reality, but the ideal
movement and conception of the individual soul which supplies the focus of
unity. The particular mood or general review, which is aroused poetically by
the occasion, these constitute the centre, radiating from which not merely
the colour of the whole, but also the embrace of the particular features
unfolded, the very mode of the execution and construction, and therewith
the build and coalescence of the poem as a work of art are determined. In
this way, to return to our previous example, Pindar possesses in the life-
conditions of his victors a genuine core of reality for differentiation or
amplification. In the particular poems, however, which he has written it is
invariably other points of view, another mood altogether, whether it be of
warning, comfort, or exaltation, which he makes most pervasive, and
which, although such exclusively belong to the poet in his creative capacity,
do none the less give him precisely that grasp of all he wishes to touch
upon, execute, and hand to posterity in those historical facts, while
unfolding therewith the illuminating and constructive power of genius,
without which he would fail to secure the lyric effect intended.
(γ) But, thirdly, it is not absolutely necessary for the genuine lyrical poet to
start from the external occurrence, which he recounts in a medium rich with
emotion, or, indeed, from any such objectively real stimulus of his efforts.
He is, let us repeat, a truly exclusive world in himself. He may find there
both the original incentive and content, and consequently go no further than
this ideal world of condition, event, and passion discovered in his own heart
and soul. This is that domain in which man becomes, in virtue of his private
inner life, himself the work of art; while the epic poet avails himself
exclusively of the hero and his exploits and experiences for this purpose.
(αα) And yet in this field, too, an element of narrative may enter, where, as
in the case of the songs of Anacreon, bright little pictures of adventure with
Eros and the like receive the finish of delightful miniatures. Such an event,
however, must obviously rather resemble the unveiling of a condition of
personal soul-life. In a somewhat different mode of the same thing Horace,
in his Integer vitæ makes use of the fact of his meeting a wolf, not to the
extent that we can, therefore, call his poem the verse occasion, but rather

regarding this fact as the prompting force of his first sentence and the
serenity of the feelings of affection with which he concludes.
(ββ) As a rule we may also observe that the situation under which the poet
depicts himself should not restrict itself merely to the inner personal life as
such. It must rather attest itself as concrete, and thereby we may even say
external totality. The poet, in short, reveals himself not merely in that
inward personal life, but as one of the objects of the external world. In the
example just cited of the Anacreon odes the poet depicts himself among
roses, fair maidens, and youths in the merry enjoyment of wine and dance,
without regret or yearning, without obligation, and yet without dislike of
loftier aims, which, indeed, are not present at all; reveals himself rather as a
hero, who freely and without reserve, and consequently without hesitation
or loss, is just this unity, is what he is, a man of his own type, and figures as
such in this intimate artistic presentment. In the love-songs of Hafis also we
may observe the entire vital individuality of the poet in all its changes of
content, pose, and an expression which approaches close to self-conscious
humour. And yet his poetry is without any specific theme, any objective
picture, any god, or mythology; or, rather, when we peruse these light-
hearted ebullitions, one feels as though it would be impossible for the
Oriental to possess any such definite picture and constructive art. He passes
easily from one object to another; he takes his walks abroad, but it is a
scene in which the entire man, with his wine, his damsels, his court-life, and
all the rest of it, is placed before us with delightful unreserve, without
passion or self-seeking in the simplicity of his enjoyment eye to eye and
soul to soul. Improvisations of this type adapt themselves in the most
various ways not merely to a reflection of the soul-life, but also to external
condition. If, however, the poet is absorbed in his own individual
experience, we are not so much concerned to hear his particular fancies,
love affairs, domestic arrangements, and the history of his uncles and aunts.
We are so invited, for instance, in Klopstock's Eidli and Fanny, as to nave
some vision given us of what is of universal human interest, in order that
our sympathies may be roused. From this point of view, therefore, such
lyrical poetry can readily degenerate into the spurious assumption that what
is essentially private and particular must necessarily awaken interest. On the
contrary, it would be no incorrect description of many songs of Goethe if
we called them "Songs of Comradeship," although they are not exactly
executed by the poet under such a category. In other words, it is not so

much himself that a man offers in society; rather he places his particularity
in the background, and converses with the help of something else, whether
it be a story or an anecdote, seizing its specific features in some particular
mood, and communicating them agreeably to such a temper. In a case like
this it is not exactly the poet, and yet it is himself for all that. It is not
himself he gives us, but something else as best he can. He is, in short, an
actor, who runs through an infinite variety of parts. First he lingers on this,
then on that; he reviews momentarily a scene, then maybe a group of
people. But whatever he may endeavour to reproduce, it is throughout his
individual artistic soul-life, his own experience, his own feeling, which is
vitally interwoven with it.
(γγ) But, further, in so far as the individuality of self-conscious life is the
true source of the Lyric, the poet is justified in limiting his expression to his
own moods and reflections without any further combination of them in a
concrete situation that includes a truly objective character. It is in this
direction that examples of what is little more than an empty fluting for
fluting's sake, the song and trill simply on its own account, will yet give us
genuine lyrical satisfaction. In such the words are to a more or less extent
merely the vehicle of cheerfulness or sorrow, whose effect, moreover, very
readily serves as an invitation to musical accompaniment. Folk-songs
especially very often amount to little more than this. In the songs of Goethe,
too, though we may no doubt discover here a more defined and abundant
mode of expression, it is not unfrequently simply a single and transitory bit
of merriment that is vouchsafed, a passing mood that the poet does not
attempt to throw aside, but on the tune of which he pipes for a moment in
his tiny song. In others, of course, his treatment of similar moods is on a
larger scale, even systematic, as, for instance, in the poem: "Ich hab mein
Sach' auf nichts gestellt," in which the poet passes before us as things that
come and vanish, first, money and property, then women, travel, fame,
honour, and, last of all, fight and war, retaining throughout as the ever-
recurring refrain of stability his own free and careless cheerfulness.
Conversely, however, the intimate individual life may from the same point
of view grow in depth and expansion, in conditions of the soul of the most
imposing proportions and ideas that embrace the world itself. A
considerable number of Schiller's poems are of this type. What is great,
what opens to intelligence, this is the incentive of his heart. But he will
neither celebrate in hymn fashion a religious or otherwise profound subject;

nor will he be the minstrel who looks for inspiration without him to the
pertinent fact or occasion. He sings in the presence of, and inspired by, his
own soul-life, the highest interest of which are the ideals of life, beauty, and
the imperishable claims and thoughts of our humanity.
(c) There is a third consideration we have to deal with in connection with
the general character of lyric poetry. It is the nature of the general stage of
human development and culture from which the isolated poem originates.
In this respect, too, the Lyric occupies a position which is to be contrasted
with Epic poetry. In other words, while we regarded as necessary for the
full bloom of the true Epos a phase in the nation's growth which was,
speaking generally, undeveloped, at least in the sense that it had not ripened
in the prosaic acceptance of its actual life, the times which favour most of
all lyrical composition are those which already are in possession of a more
or less fixed organization of social condition. It is in such a period that the
individual seeks a reflection of his intimate personal life in contrast to this
outer world, creating from it and within its limits an independent whole of
emotion and idea. For in the Lyric it is not, we repeat, the objective
solidarity and individual action, but the individual person as self-conscious
life which supplies both content and form. This, however, must not be
understood in such a way as though the individual, in order to express
himself in lyrical form, must perforce disjoin himself from every
connection with national interests and the opinions, and with rigid and
exclusive severity remain as he stands.
On the contrary, with such an abstract self-subsistency we should only have
left us for content the wholly contingent and particular passion, the mere
caprice of concupiscence and affection, false idiosyncrasies and distorted
originality would have unlimited opportunities. Genuine lyrical poetry, like
all other poetry, has no doubt to express the content of the human heart in
its truth. Yet none the less, regarded as the content of the Lyric, what is most
a matter of fact and substantial must appear absorbed in personal feeling,
vision, imagination, and thought. And, in the second place, the question
here is not so much simply expression of the personal inner life, is not so
much concerned with a primary and direct statement in the epic fashion,
what the facts are, as with an expression of the poetical nature in a manner
both artistically fruitful and wholly different from chance and ordinary
modes. It follows that the Lyric requires, precisely on account of the fact

that the concentrated life of the heart unfolds itself in manifold feelings and
comprehensive views, and the individual is conscious of the poetry of his
most intimate life as nested in a world that is already more prosaically
organized—an artistic culture already secured, which must assert itself as
the flower and independent product of the individual's natural endowment
thus trained to a perfect result. For these reasons the Lyric is not limited to
particular epochs of the spiritual development of a people, but is the rich
blossom of the most varied. To an exceptional degree is it favoured in more
recent times, in which everybody is entitled to have and express his own
views and emotions.
I will, however, draw attention, in the interest of really important
distinction, to the following general considerations.
(a) In the first place, we have the type of lyrical expression peculiar to folk-
songs.
(αα) In these above all we have witness to the varied and distinct qualities
of national character. It is on account of this, and consonant with the
widely-prevailing curiosity of our generation, that great efforts are made to
collect folk-songs of every kind, in order to increase our acquaintance with
the peculiarities of every national spirit, and therewith our sympathies and
vital contact with such. Already Herder has done much in this direction.
Goethe, too, with the help of his own more independent imitations, has
materially assisted an approach to very different examples of this style of
poetry. Complete sympathy is, however, only possible for the songs of one's
own people; and however much we Germans are able to make ourselves at
home in the work of foreign lands, the fact remains that the ultimate aroma
in song[5] of the intimate life of another folk can only appear as alien, that
we shall only catch the echo of the tone of feeling that truly belongs to it,
with the assistance of a more native reflection of its content.[6] This Goethe
has imported into his songs of a foreign subject-matter, stamped as they are
with the finest sympathy and beauty. We may take as an example the lament
of the noble spouse of Asan Aga, imitated from the Icelandic—only so far
as to retain throughout the unique spirit of such poems unimpaired.
(ββ) The general character of the lyrical folk-song is comparable to the
primitive Epos in virtue of the fact that here too the poet does not make
himself his subject-matter, but is absorbed in his selected material.

Although, therefore, intensity of soul in its extreme concentration may
express itself in the folk-song, it is nevertheless not a single person with the
artistic expression of whose private experience we are made acquainted. It
is rather a national state of feeling, which the author completely assimilates,
in so far as it possesses, when taken by itself, no intimate form of idea or
feeling wholly independent of the nation's existence and interests. And a
condition is necessary, as the presupposition for such an inseparable union,
in which independent personal reflection and culture is not yet awakened,
so that the poet is simply in his creative capacity merely the vehicle in the
background, by means of whom the national life is expressed in its lyrical
emotion and general outlook. This directly primitive character no doubt
communicates to the folk-song an unconscious freshness of downright
grasp and striking veracity, which is often very effective; but it receives
thereby along with it very readily a fragmentary appearance; it is defective
in the continuity of its exposition, which may amount to actual obscurity.
The feeling dives into depth, but cannot and will not attain to full utterance.
Moreover, as before observed, what is absent from such a point of view
throughout, however much the form in general is wholly lyric, in other
words subjective, is just the lyrical individuality, which expresses this form
and its content as the possession of its own heart and mind, and the creation
of its own artistic resources.
(γγ) Peoples, therefore, which confine themselves to poetry of this type, and
do not combine such composition with that of the further stages of lyrical,
epic, or dramatic work, are as a rule in great measure barbarous nations,
uncultured, characterized by transitory feud and catastrophes. If they
themselves, in such heroic ages, really combined to form a truly pregnant
whole, whose particular aspects were already fused together in an
independent and withal harmonious objective union, which could supply
the ground for essentially concrete and individually distinct exploits, we
should find in them, along with such primitive poetry, epic poets as well.
The condition, out of which such songs assert themselves as the single and
ultimate mode of poetic expression, is therefore rather limited to the field of
family life and the association of clans, without any further organization
such as belongs already to the riper perfection of the heroic community. If
we are reminded here and there of national exploits, such are for the most
part conflicts waged against foreign aggressors, expeditions of pillage,
reprisals of savagery with savagery, or deeds of one individual against

another in the same people, in the narration of which lament and dejection
or ecstatic jubilation over one conqueror after another, are the moods
throughout prevailing. The national life as it actually is, as yet unfolded in
its wholly free development, is relegated to the background in contrast with
the world of more personal feeling, which also, on its own account, betrays
an immaturity; and, however much thereby we gain in concentration of
effect, the result only too frequently remains, so far as content is concerned,
rude and barbarous. The question then, whether folk-songs should possess
for us a poetic interest, or on the contrary repel us to some extent, depends
on the kind of situation and emotion they portray. That which appears
admirable to the imagination of one people, will readily strike another as
wanting in taste, horrible, and offensive. There is, for example, a folk-song
which tells us the story of a wife who was immured at the command of her
husband, and all that her plea for mercy could effect was that apertures
should be left open for her breasts, in order that she might suckle her child;
we are told that she remained alive until her child was weaned. This is a
barbarous and frightful situation. And in the same way tales of robbery,
exploits of the bluster or sheer savagery of individuals, possess nothing in
them in which alien peoples of a higher culture can sympathize. Folksongs,
consequently, very often run into great detail as to the quality of which
there is no fixed standard of comparison, because such is too far removed
from our common humanity. When we consequently, in more recent times,
are made acquainted with the songs of the Iroquois, the Esquimaux, and
other wild nationalities, the circle of a true poetic enjoyment is in no wise
thereby enlarged.
(β) Further, inasmuch as the Lyric is the entire expression of the inward life
of Spirit, it can neither restrict itself to the mode of expression nor the
content of the genuine folksong, or of later poems composed in a similar
spirit.
(αα) In other words, on the one hand, it is of essential importance, as
already remarked, that the wholly self-absorbed soul should detach itself
from this absolute concentration and its direct introspection, and should
pass on instead to the free grasp of itself which, in the conditions above
described, is only incompletely the case. On the other, it is necessary that it
should expand in a world abundant in ideas, passions, varied conditions,
and conflicts, in order to endow with ideal expression everything that the

human heart is essentially able to apprehend, and then communicate as the
birth of its own spirit. For the collective wealth of lyrical poetry should
express in poetic form all that the inner life comprises, so far as the same
can pass into poetry, and therefore finds itself at home alike in all phases of
spiritual culture.
(ββ) And, secondly, with the advent of a free self-consciousness is bound up
the freedom of an assured art of its own. The folk-song sings forth, just as
any natural song, straight from the heart. A free art, however, is aware of
itself; it requires a knowledge and desire of that which it produces; and
requires culture to promote this knowledge, as also an executive power,
which is expert in the finest composition. When, consequently, genuine epic
poetry has to conceal the individual creative power of the poet, or rather it
lies with the entire character of the age of its origin that such should not yet
be visible, this result is merely because of the fact that the Epos deals with
the nation's positive existence rather than that which issues from the
personal life of the poet himself, and that it is not present in poetry in such a
close personal relation, but rather appears as a self-evolved product
essentially independent. In lyrical poetry, on the contrary, the creative
activity no less than the content are inseparable from the inner life, and are
bound to declare themselves as such in actual fact.
(γγ) In this respect, later forms of lyric art are expressly distinguishable
from the folk-song. There are, no doubt, folk-songs which originate
contemporaneously with the works of a genuine lyrical art. These latter,
however, belong to a range and type of individuals such as—far from
participating in more modern stages of artistic culture—are, in the entire
nature of their general outlook, not yet liberated from the immediate
popular sense. We must, however, not regard this distinction between the
Lyric of the folk-song and the artistic poem as though it was only when
reflection and the artistic consciousness, in union with deliberate executive
ability, appear with all the elegance of such a union, that the Lyric attains to
its perfection. Such a notion would really amount to this—that a Horace, for
instance, and the Roman lyric poets generally, were to be reckoned among
the finest writers of this type, or even in their own range that the Master
Singers were preferable to the preceding epoch of the genuine Minnesong.
Such an extreme deduction from our previous statement is not justified.
What we ought to conclude is this, that individual imagination and art

directed to the service of this very self-consistent personal life, which in
fact constitutes its principle, presupposes also, for the basis of their true
perfection, a free and self-trained recognition of imaginative idea no less
than artistic activity.
(γ) We have our final phase of composition to distinguish from those
already discussed. The folk-song appears before the true elaboration of a
prosaically organized condition of actual conscious life. Lyric poetry of the
truly artistic type, on the other hand, wrests itself away from the prosaic
coordination which surrounds it, and creates from the poet's imagination, in
its acquired independence, a new poetic world of inward observation and
emotion, by means of which, for the first time, the true content and type of
expression truly adequate to the human soul, as seen from within, becomes
the object of vital art. There is, however, over and above this, a form of
intelligence which, from this point of view, stands in a more exalted
position than the imagination of the emotional or conceptive life, inasmuch
as it is able, with more penetrative universality and more necessary
coalescence to bring its content before our free cognition than is ever
possible to art. This is philosophical thought. Conversely, however, this
form is attached to the abstract condition of being exclusively evolved in
the medium of thought, posited as wholly ideal universality; and, in
consequence, the concrete man may find himself also constrained to express
the content and the results of his philosophical consciousness in a concrete
way, that is, as permeated by his temperament and sensuous perception, his
imagination and feeling, in order thereby to possess and exhaust the
absolute expression of all that engages either soul or intellect.
From such a standpoint we may distinguish between two principal types of
conceptive activity. It may, in short, either be the imagination which,
straining beyond its own domain, struggles with the movement of pure
thinking, without successfully attaining the clarity and secured exactness of
philosophical exposition. In this case the Lyric is for the most part the
ebullition of a soul engaged in strife and contention, which in its
fermentation does violence both to art and abstract thought. It transgresses
one province without the ability to make itself at home in another. Or we
may find that it is rather the tranquil movement of philosophical thought in
its essential medium, which may seek to animate its clearly grasped and
systematically developed thoughts with emotion, to make them perceptible

to sensuous apprehension, and to exchange the explicit scientific process
and sequence in its causal necessity for that free play of particular aspects,
beneath the apparently loose connection of which art is the more compelled
to conceal their ideal bonds of association in proportion as it is disinclined
to narrow itself to the jejune style of purely didactic exposition. As an
illustration of this latter tendency, we may point to many of Schiller's
poems.

2. PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF LYRICAL POETRY

Having thus considered the general character of the content of lyric poetry,
and the mode of its expression, as also the varied grades of culture which
are more or less consonant with its fundamental principle, it will be our
further task to examine these general points of view more nearly in the
detail of their more important features and relations.
Here, too, I ought at starting once again to emphasize the distinction which
obtains between epic and lyrical poetry. In our consideration of the former
we directed our attention above all to the primitive national Epos, and
merely referred incidentally to the inadequate collateral branches, as also to
the poet in his creative capacity. This we are unable to do in the case of the
type under discussion. On the contrary, we shall find that subjects of the
greatest importance invite our review as respects the individual creative
power; and, on the other hand, in respect to the classification of the several
types in which lyrical poetry, whose general principle it is to disintegrate
and isolate the content and its configurations, is respectively differentiated.
We may define the subsequent course of our investigation as follows:
First, our attention will be directed to the lyrical poet himself.
Secondly, we propose to examine the lyrical work of art as the creation of
the individual poet's imagination.
Thirdly, we shall classify the types which are deducible from the general
notion of lyrical composition.
(a) The Lyric Poet
(α) Now the content of the Lyric embraces, as we have seen, first, a type of
contemplation, which connects the universal quality of determinate being

with its conditions, and, secondly, the manifold character of its detailed
aspects. Regarded, however, as pure generalizations and particular points of
view of emotional condition these constituents, both of them, are nothing
more than abstractions. In order that these may acquire a vital lyrical
individuality, a principle of combination is necessary which can only be of
an ideal, in other words really personal[7] character. Consequently the
creatively concrete person, the poet himself, must be further presupposed as
the focus and in fact realized content of lyrical poetry. He must be there,
however, in a form which is not carried to the point of definitive act and
deed, or to that of the evolved movement of dramatic conflicts. His
exclusive expression and activity is on the contrary restricted to the fact that
he endows his inner experience with an articulate speech such as portrays
the spiritual significance of himself as subject in his self-expression,
whatever the material selected may be, and endeavours to arouse in and
keep the hearer alive to the like meaning and spirit, the same soul-state, the
similar course of reflection.
(β) But, furthermore, the expression cannot rest alone in this result,
however successful, in so far as it is for others a free overflooding of
buoyant delight, or the resolution and reconciliation of grief in song and
lyric, or the yet profounder impulse, which issues in the most serious
emotions of heart and the most far-reaching views of intelligence. The man
who sings and can write poetry has a necessary vocation thereto. He
composes because he cannot do otherwise. At the same time the external
incentive, the direct invitation and the like are by no means excluded. The
great lyric poet, however, in such a case soon swerves aside from such an
external stimulus. His supreme object is himself. To take the example once
more to which we have constantly recurred, Pindar was frequently invited
to celebrate this or that laurel-crowned victor, nay, he frequently accepted
payment therefor; and yet, for all that, it is he himself, the minstrel, who
changes places with his hero. He combines freely his own unfettered
imagination with his praise of the exploits of ancestors, or it maybe his
memory of myths; or, when he gives voice to his profound views of life, of
wealth, of mastery, of all that is great and deserving, of the supremacy and
loveliness of the Muses, and above all of the high vocation of the singer. It
is not so much the hero in the renown that he spreads far and wide, that he
honours in his poems. We are invited to listen to him, the poet. The honour
is not to him in that he celebrates the victor, but rather to the victor that he

is celebrated by Pindar. And it is this emphatic personal sense of greatness
which constitutes the nobility of the lyric poet. Homer, as an individual
person, is in his Epos so entirely sacrificed that people nowadays are loth to
admit that he ever existed at all. His heroes live on for ever. Pindar's heroes
are for us little better than empty names. He himself, however, the self-
celebrated and self-honoured, remains before us immortal as the poet. The
fame which his heroes claim is merely an appanage to that of the lyric
singer. Even among the Romans the lyric poet to some extent aspires to
such an independent position. Suetonius tells us, for instance, that Augustus
wrote these works to Horace; an vereris, ne apud posteros tibi infame sit,
quod videaris familiaris nobis esse. Horace, however, with the exception of
those times, easily demonstrable, where he writes in an ex officio manner of
Augustus, betrays for the most part a precisely similar proud self-
consciousness. His fourteenth ode of the third book, for example, opens
with a reference to the return of Augustus from Spain after his victory over
the Cantabrians. But the poet goes on to celebrate the fact, that on account
of the tranquillity, which the emperor has given the world, he himself as
poet is able quietly to enjoy his easy-going leisure and his muse; he calls for
garlands, unguents, and venerable wine to celebrate the occasion, and
invites in all haste his mistress—in a word, he is simply preoccupied with
the arrangements for his own banquet. We hear, however, at this time less of
his love difficulties than in his youth, when Plaucus was consul, an occasion
where he expressly says to the messenger he despatches:
Si per invisum mora janitorem
Fiet, abito.
We may regard it as an even more honourable trait of Klopstock, that he felt
in his day the independent worth of the singer, and by his free expression of
this and his regulation of his behaviour consonantly thereto, disengaged the
poet from his subservience to a court and any or every patron,[8] as also
from a tedious and useless toying with trifles, which is the ruin of a man.
However, the fact remains that it was no other than this very Klopstock
whom, in the first instance, the bookseller regarded as his poet. It was
Klopstock's publisher in Halle who paid him one or two thaler, it appears,
for the manuscript of his Messias, adding over and above this, however, an
order for a waistcoat and breeches, and introduced him thus set up into
society, letting it clearly be seen from the nature of such a get up that he

was responsible therefor. In some contrast to this, so at least we are
informed at a later date on evidence, however, that is not irreproachable,[9]
the Athenians erected a statue to Pindar, because he had celebrated them in
one of his poems, and sent him, moreover, twice the amount of the fine[10]
the Thebans refused to exempt him from on account of the inordinate praise
he had lavished on an alien city. Indeed we have the statement that Apollo
himself declared through the mouth of the Pythian prophetess that Pindar
was worthy of receiving half of all the gifts which the whole of Hellas, as in
custom bound, brought to the Pythian games.
(γ) Throughout the entire compass of lyric poetry the synthetic unity of a
single personality asserts its presence in virtue of its poetic soul-movement.
The lyric poet is, in fact, moved to express everything that assumes a poetic
form either in his emotional or intelligent life in the song. In this type of
composition Goethe is pre-eminently noteworthy, who in all the variety of
his full life was thus continuously creative. He was unquestionably in this
respect a quite exceptional model. It is rarely that we find an artistic
personality, who, while retaining as Goethe's did, an interest so active on all
sides and is able to live a life, despite all such self-expansion, so entirely
self-possessed, so ready to transmute everything it touches into the poetic
vision. His life in its public relations, the peculiar nature of his heart, which
rather impressed with its reserve than the ease of its approach, the
indefatigable effort of his scientific pursuits and enquiry, the general
conclusions of his trained and practical experience, his ethical maxims, the
impressions, which the varied and conflicting facts of his times made upon
him, the inferences he deduced from such, the effervescent joy of life and
courage of his youth, the well-organized force and ideal beauty of his
manhood, the comprehensive genial wisdom of his old age—all this passed
into the magic crucible of his lyrics, where the most delicate play of
emotion, no less than the most severe and painful conflicts of spirit, alike
find their expression and by this means their deliverance.
(b) The Lyric Work of Art
Secondly, in respect to the lyric poem as a poetic work of art, we are no
doubt in general not able to advance much. The fortuitous character of the
abundance of its many modes of expression, and the forms of its equally
varied and incalculable content make this inevitable. The peculiarly
personal nature of this class of work, however much the same is

imperatively subject to the general principles of beauty and art, none the
less brings with it the necessary result, that the range of the formal and
melodious possibilities of its exposition admit of no theoretic definition. For
our purpose, therefore, the only question of importance is the nature of the
distinction of artistic type that obtains between the lyric and the epic
product.
Upon this I will briefly draw attention to the following points of
importance:
First, the unity of the lyric composition.
Secondly, the nature of its progressive disclosure.
Thirdly, the external aspect of its verse-measure and general exhibition.
(α) The importance, which the Epos possesses for art lies, as already
observed, and pre-eminently so, in the case of the primitive Epopaea, in the
consummate elaboration of the perfected artistic form, which as from the
repository of the full embrace of the national spirit, places before our vision
one and the same composition in all the wealth of a completely evolved
content.
(αα) The true lyric work of art will not undertake to present thus before us a
synthesized whole of such extension. The principle of personality can no
doubt proceed to a comprehension of subject-matter of universal
pretensions. To be able truly to enforce itself, however, in its individual
independence, it necessarily implies the collateral principle of disintegration
and isolation. At the same time a variety of truth, phenomenal or ideal,
derived from natural environment, the memory of one's own or another's
experience, from mythical and historical events, and the like, is not
therefore excluded: but such an extension of view must not be permitted, as
with the Epos, on the ground that it belongs to the unified complexus of a
given sphere of reality, but is rather solely justifiable for the reason that it
springs to renewed life in the memory of the poet, and in his impulse and
gift of vivid association.
(ββ) We must consequently regard the intimate personal life as the true
integrating principle of the lyric poem. This inward life, taken simply, is in
part the wholly formal unity of the self-conscious self; in part also it is split
up and dispersed in the most varied particularity, and the most diverse

content of ideas, feelings, impressions, and perceptions, whose power of
combination is solely due to the fact that it is one and the selfsame personal
identity which serves essentially as their vehicle. In order therefore that this
selfidentical subject may form the focal centre of the work of art, it must,
on the one hand, have reached the point where the mood or situation is
defined in its concreteness, and on the other it must affiliate itself with this
isolation of its own possessions as with itself to the extent that it feels and
pictures itself in the same. It is only by this means that it becomes an
essentially defined whole of such a personal character, and exclusively
expresses that which is emphasized by reason of such definition, and is yet
coalescent with it.
(γγ) Lyrical in the most pertinent sense is in this connection the emotional
mood or colour as concentrated in a concrete condition, inasmuch as the
sensitive heart is that which is the most vital and personal factor of the
subjective lips. Reflection and a contemplation which is mainly absorbed in
generalization very readily tend to the didactic, or are likely to assert what
is substantive and positive in the content under an epic mode.
(β) With respect to our second point, viz., the progressive disclosure of the
lyric subject-matter, speaking generally, exact definition is here too out of
the question. I shall, therefore, restrict myself to a few searching
observations.
(αα) The progressive exposition of the Epos is of a dilatory description, and
it expands throughout in the display of an actual world of diversified
character. In the Epos the poet projects himself into the objective world,
which is set before us in the independent form and movement of its own
reality. In contrast thereto it is the emotions and reflection which in the lyric
composition absorb the given world into themselves, animate the same
within this ideal element, and, only after it is itself converted into a
constituent of this personal life, give form and expression to it in language.
In contrast to the epic principle of extension we have therefore in the Lyric
that of assimilation,[11] and have above all to seek for our effect by means
of the implied ideal depth of expression rather than the diffuseness of
descriptive or explanatory detail. None the less, however, between the
extremes of an almost speechless conciseness and the idea worked out into
absolute lucidity of speech every conceivable sort of nuance and degree of
clarity is still possible. To as little extent is it necessary that a ban be placed