Note 342 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY

“Volksdichtung und Kunstdichtung,” in Nord und Süd, LXVIII. (1894), 76 ff. It may be noted here that the temptation to take this easy attitude toward poetry of the people, as toward a fictitious and fanciful affair, is largely due to a misunderstanding of the evolutionary side of the case. The distinction is not one of coexistent forms of poetry so much as of successive stages of evolution. It is no hard matter to take so-called popular poetry of the day and reduce it to terms of art—the lowest terms, of course; but with poetry of the people treated as a closed or closing account, and with historical evidence about it in former times, a very different problem is presented. An important hint to this effect was given by Dr. Eugen Wolff in his paper “über den Stil des Nibelungenliedes,” Verhandlungen der vierzigsten Versammlung deutscher Philologen, etc., Leipzig, 1890, pp. 259 ff.