Chapter III · (continued 6)

(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 on all reflection of external objects. On the contrary genuinely concrete lyric compositions disclose the individual in his external conditions; they accept, therefore, as an essential feature of their content, natural and local environment. In fact there are poems entirely limited to such descriptions. In such cases, however, it is not so much the reality in its objective presence and its plastic presentment, as the accord with which such objects affect the soul, the mood excited by them, the feelings of the heart under such positive conditions, which are, in fact, the lyric result. It is in short not this or that object as presented to our eyes, in its several features, which ought mainly to impress our inward vision, but the emotional forces which are made vital in the same, and which have for their aim a similar state of feeling and contemplation in ourselves. Romances and ballads are perhaps the most obvious illustration of this, which, as I have previously maintained, approach the lyrical type in proportion as they exclusively emphasize those characteristics of a given event which are consistent with the state of the inner life, in which the poet writes, and disclose the course of his narrative in such a way, that we receive a distinct and life-like echo back again of this personal temper. For such reasons all out and out reproduction of material objects, even though stamped with considerable emotion, nay, even the diffuse characterization of emotional states, can only be of subordinate effect in lyrical effort, if compared with concise concentration of effect and the vivid and significant expression.

(ββ) We may add that episodes are permissible as well to the lyric poet; but he ought to employ them on other grounds than those which justify their epic use. In the latter case they are implied in the notion of the externally independent collocation of the different aspects contained; and, in respect to the advance of the epic action, they also are significant as points of retardation and hindrance. Their lyrical justification is rather subjective in its character. The living personality in short surveys his private world more rapidly; his memory recurs to the most varied subjects on equally various occasions; he combines material of the most divergent nature; and, without departing from his true and fundamental emotional state, or the object of his thought, gives free play on all sides to his imagination and contemplation. An animating spirit of the same kind pervades the inner poetical life, although for the most part it is impossible to say whether this or that feature in a lyric poem is to be understood as episodical or not. As a general rule, however, digressions, so long as they do not violate the unity, and above all unexpected changes, witty combinations and sudden, or even violent transitions are peculiarly appropriate to the Lyric.

(γγ) On account of this the nature of the forward movement and bond of connection in this domain of poetry may be various, and in some measure marked by excessive contrast. Generally no doubt the Lyric, quite as little as the Epos, adopts the caprices of ordinary conscious life, or the purely scientific consequences, or the speculative process of philosophical thought in its necessary development. It requires indeed a freedom and self-subsistency in its single features. But whereas, in the case of the Epos, this relative isolation is referable to the form of the phenomenal reality, in the type of which its realization is centered, the lyric poet, on the contrary, communicates to the particular emotions and ideas, in which he is himself expressed, the character of a free self-assertion. Each and all, although equally distrained from similar modes of feeling and observation, nevertheless, as viewed separately, absorb his spirit, which remains concentrated upon each severally, until it is diverted to other points of view or other emotional states. The movement of the whole may therefore have little to arrest its tranquil flow, but with equal right we may find it pass without any mediation, and in one bound to material of a totally different character. The poet, instead of following the logical current of his thought, becomes, it would seem, in this sudden flight of ecstatic intoxication mastered by a force, the pathos of which rules and carries him away in spite of himself. The impulse and conflict of such passionate intensity is so characteristic a feature of certain forms of lyric composition, that, for example, Horace in many of his poems is at pains to harmonize with deliberate artistic means such apparently dislocating breaks in the poem's connection. For the rest I must entirely pass over the various intermediate phases of treatment, which fall between the extremes of the most lucid connection and most even flow on the one side, and that of the unrestrained impetuosity of passion and enthusiasm on the other.

(γ) Finally, of our above three divisions of the immediate subject, we have left us to discuss the external form and actual presentment of the lyric composition. Above all we shall have to deal with metre and the musical accompaniment.

(αα) It is obvious enough that the hexameter in its even, sustained and none the less life-like forward movement is most exceptionally fitted as the measure of the Epic. The demand of the Lyric is rather for an extreme variety of metres with every kind of co-ordination in their form. The material of the lyric poem in short is not the object in the form wherein it unveils itself in Nature, but the movement of the poet's own soul, the regularity or change of which, its perturbation or repose, its peaceful flow or tumultuous wave and leap, must find expression in the time-movement of the word-length, in which such inward life is asserted. The nature of the prevailing mood and the mode of imaginative conception throughout ought to meet with an echo in the verse-measure itself. The lyric effusion indeed is placed in a far more intimate relation to time, regarded as the external medium of its communication, than the epic narrative, which consigns its phenomenal facts to the past, and associates or interweaves them under a mode of extension more analogous to that of spatial condition. The Lyric, in contrast to this, displays the momentary emergence of emotion and idea in the temporal juxta-position of their origin and elaboration. It has therefore to clothe in artistic form the varied temporal movement itself. To this distinctive character belongs, in the first place, the more diverse sequence of long and short syllables in a more strongly emphasized inequality of rhythmical feet; and, secondly, the more varied use of the caesura verse—and thirdly the rounding off of the strophes, which not only admit of abundant alternation in respect to the comparative length of particular lines, but also relatively to the rhythmic configuration of these on their own account and in their immediate sequence to each other.

(ββ) Yet more lyrical in its effect—a second feature this—is the musical sound of words and syllables simply. The most important examples of this are alliteration, rhyme and assonance. In the system of versification under discussion what is predominant, as I have already explained in a previous passage, is, on the one hand, the ideal significance of syllables, the accent of the meaning, which disjoins itself from the purely natural element, as taken by itself, of their assured quantity, and then defines under the direction of the mind their duration, emphasis and subordination; which, from a further point of view, asserts itself in isolation as the expressly concentrated sound of definite letters, syllables, and words. The Lyric is pre-eminently associated with this spiritualizing process effected by ideal significance, no less than this emphatic insistence of sound. It in fact not merely restricts its acceptance and expression of all that positively is or appears to the meaning which such possesses for the inward life, but also lays hold of sound and musical tone as the significant medium of its communication. No doubt in this sphere, too, the element of rhythm may associate with rhyme; but even here this is effected in a manner which is closely related to the time-beat of music. Strictly speaking, therefore, the poetic use of assonance, alliteration and rhyme is limited to the province of the Lyric. For although the Epos of the Middle Ages is, in accordance with the nature of more modern languages, unable to keep itself aloof from these forms, this is mainly permitted for the reason that here, too, the lyrical element is throughout more insistently active within the domain of epic poetry itself, and effects a more forceful entrance where the subject-matter consists of heroic songs, romances, ballads, tales, and the like. And we find the same thing in dramatic poetry. What, however, is the peculiar possession of the Lyric, is the diversified configuration of rhyme, which is elaborated and perfected by means of the recurrence of similar or the alternation of different letters, syllables and verbal quantity in variously organized and alternated strophes of rhyme. Such differentiation is also of undoubted service both to epic and dramatic poetry, but only on the same ground that rhyme itself is not excluded altogether. The Spaniards, for instance, in the most cultured epoch of their dramatic development, gave the freest play to such craft in the expression of passion by no means appropriate to the genuine drama, interweaving octave rhymes, sonnets and the like with more usual verse-measures. By so doing they at least testify, in the continuity of such assonances and rhymes, their predilection for the musical element in language.

(γγ) Finally, lyric poetry, to a far more considerable extent than is possible with the unassisted aid of rhyme, avails itself of music, by means of which the uttered word becomes veritable melody and song. Such a leaning may, moreover, be completely justified. Or, in other words, the less lyric subject-matter and content possess on their own account independence and objective stability, but are rather, above all, of an ideal character, rooted exclusively in the personal life, while at the same time an external medium of articulate arrest is essential, to that extent is the demand for a decisive medium of communication more insistent. Precisely for the reason that it remains of ideal intention, the means it employs as a stimulus to others must be the more effective. Such an excitant of our emotional life can only be music.

We find consequently, even in respect to external execution, that lyric poetry is almost invariably associated with musical accompaniment. At the same time we should note an essential gradation in this power of combination. The romantic and above all the modern lyric, no doubt more exceptionally so in such songs, in which the temper, the emotional mood is predominant, and the function of music is to emphasize and expand this inner beat of soul-life in actual melody—are no doubt most readily adapted to such melodic fusion. The folk-song is an obvious example which both delights in and demands a musical accompaniment. We shall find in modern times more rarely a composer for the canzonet, elegy, epistle, or even the sonnet. The reason of this is that in cases where idea, reflection, nay, even emotion are made completely explicit in the poetry, and increasingly liberated from the bare point of spiritual selfconcentration, and, further, from the sensuous medium of the art, the Lyric already secures, in its deliverance as speech, a greater self-stability, and lends itself less simply to a free association with the vague definition of music. On the other hand in proportion as the inner life expressed is not made explicit to that extent the aid of melody is required. How it came about, however, that the ancients, despite the pellucid clarity of their diction, availed themselves of music in its actual delivery, and the measure in which they did thus make use of it, I shall have occasion to deal with subsequently.

(c) Types of the Genuine Lyric

With regard to specific types, in which we may classify lyrical composition, I have already referred with more detail to some which form the transition step from the narrative form of the Epos to the more subjective mode of exposition. From a contrary point of view it might seem desirable in the same way to demonstrate the beginnings of the dramatic. This inclination, however, of passage to the animation of the drama is exclusively and in essentials restricted to the circumstance that the lyric poem too as conversation, without, however, carrying the movement of action to the point of actual conflict, may itself accept the external form of dialogue. We shall nevertheless omit further allusion to these intermediate and hybrid stages, and restrict our cursory examination to those forms in which the real principle of the Lyric fully asserts itself. The main cause of this distinction is to be found in the attitude, which the artistic consciousness assumes relatively to its object.

(α) To be more definite the poet—this at least is one direction—annuls the particularity of his emotion and idea, and is absorbed in the general contemplation of God or gods, whose greatness and might permeates the whole of the personal life, and causes the poet as an individual person to vanish. Hymns, dithyrambs, paeans, psalms, all belong to this class, which are moreover quite differently treated by different peoples. I propose merely to draw general attention to the following characteristic of such poetry.

(αα) The poet, who is raised above the narrow limitation of his own purely personal life and external conditions, or the ideas which are therewith associated, replacing these with that which appears to him and his people as absolute and divine, may, in the first instance, completely depict the divine in an objective presentment, and set forth this, as thus projected and executed for the spiritual vision of others, to the honour and power of the glorified god. The hymns which are ascribed to Homer are of this character. They contain above all mythological situations and histories of the divine Being, in whose celebration they are composed, which are not merely conceived in the ideas of symbolism, but are clothed in the downright objectivity of the Epos.

(ββ) In contrast to this, secondly, the dithyrambic impulse, in its more personal aspect of an exalted divine service—overwhelmed, as it is, by the power of its object, shattered and stunned to its soul-foundations—cannot, by reason of the general diffusion of its emotional state, go so far as to present an objective image and form. It is more akin to the lyrical absorbtion. We have here simply ecstatic rapture of soul. The singer breaks out and forth from himself; he is so exalted directly into the Absolute, steeped in the being and might of whom he exultantly sings his praise of the Infinite, into the depth whereof he plunges, or that of the natural world, in whose splendour the profound wealth of the Godhead is declared.

The Greeks, in the solemnities of their worship, have not limited themselves for long to such mere outcries and appeals. They have sought to intermingle with such ecstasies the narrative of, definite mythical situations and actions. Such expositions interposed between the effusion of lyric poetry, became gradually of most importance, and created the drama, such narratives being asserted as action in its lifelike form, and independently on its own account, a drama, which again in its turn received as a constituent feature the lyrics of its choruses.

Even more searching in its utterance is this impulse of exultation, this adoration, jubel and outcry of soul to the One; wherein the individual discovers the end of conscious life and the true object of all might and truth, no less than glory and praise, as we meet it in many of the sublime psalms of the Old Testament. Take the words of the thirty-third psalm, for example:

"Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely for the upright.

"Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.

"Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.

"For the word of the Lord is right; and all his works are done in truth.

"He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth."[12]

Or take the twenty-ninth psalm: "Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.

"Give unto the Lord the honour due unto his name: worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon great waters.

"The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

"The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

"He maketh them to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

"The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire.

"The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh," etc.

An exaltation and lyric sublimity such as the above contain a power of personal detachment,[13] and is consequently less adapted to self-absorbtion in the concrete content, wherein the imagination can lay hold of the fact in tranquil satisfaction. It is rather inclined to soar up in an indefinite enthusiasm, which strains to make present to feeling and perception what is unutterable for the intelligence. In this atmosphere of indeterminacy the individual soul is unable to envisage its unreachable object in quiescent beauty, or enjoy its self-expression in a work of art. Instead of a tranquil picture the imagination sets forth external phenomena without co-ordination and in fragments; and, inasmuch as it does not succeed with emotional effort in any consistent articulation of its separate ideas, in its positive artistic form, too, it employs a somewhat arbitrary and insurgent rhythm.

The prophets, who oppose the mass of the community, partly in the fundamental tones of grief and lamentation over the condition of their people, partly, too, in this feeling of alienation and decadence, carry to yet a further extreme this type of paranetic lyric in the sublime flame of their emotion and political indignation.

In a more modern age of imitation this sublime passion, however, is exchanged for a more artificial warmth, which easily cools and becomes abstract. Thus, for example, we have much hymn and psalm-writing of Klopstock, which possesses neither depth of thought, nor the tranquil development of any religious content whatever. What is expressed is, above all, an effort of this exaltation to the Infinite, which, agreeably with modern scientific ideas, merely discloses the empty incommeasurability and inconceivable might, greatness, and splendour of God, in its contrast to the very intelligible impotence and finitude of the poet.

(β) From a second point of view, we have those types of lyric poetry which may be described generally as odes, in the more modern meaning of the term. In these, as distinguished from the type above described, it is the personal life of the poet, in its independence, which asserts itself as a fundamental feature. It is, indeed, the culmination, which may be enforced in a twofold manner.

(αα) From one point of view the poet may, within this new mode of expression, select, as he previously did, a subjective matter itself of essential importance, such as the glory and celebration of gods, heroes, princes, love, beauty, art, friendship, and the like, while he displays his inner life as so completely steeped and carried away by this content and its concreteness, that it appears as though, in this impulse of enthusiasm, the subject has wholly mastered his soul, and is present in it now, as the one predominant power. If this was entirely so the facts which master him might secure, in their independence, the plastic form, motion, and stability of an epic sculpturesque image.

Or, as a converse case, it is just the personal life of the poet himself and its greatness which he seeks to express and make real on its own account. As for the object itself, it is that whereof he makes himself master; he assimilates this in his own life, expresses himself in and through this. By so doing he freely and without reserve breaks up the more positive course of his subject with his own emotion or reflection; he illuminates it from within; he changes it; and the final result is that it is not so much the subject, but rather the personal enthusiasm in which it has steeped him, which is most effective. In this connection, however, we have two distinct aspects to consider. First, there is the compelling force of the subject-matter; secondly, we have that independent freedom of the poet which flashes into view in its conflict with that which would otherwise master it. It is above all the stress of this opposition, which renders inevitable the swing and the boldness of utterance and image, the apparent absence of order in the ideal construction and course of the poem, its digressions, lacunae, and sudden transitions, and which preserves the ideal elevation of the poet, by means of the mastery with which he is enabled, through the artistic perfection of his work, to overcome this disunion, and to produce an' essentially harmonious whole, which places him, as his work, in relief above the greatness of his subject.

It is to such a type of lyric enthusiasm that many of the Pindaric odes are referable, whose triumphant, albeit personal glory is disclosed in a mode of rhythm equally conspicuous for its varied movement, and yet for all that stringently regulated measure. Horace, on the contrary, more especially where he aims most at self-assertion, is rather lacking in warmth and insipid. We detect here an imitative artificiality, which vainly endeavours to conceal the purely technical preciosity of his composition. The enthusiasm of Klopstock in the same way is never entirely genuine. It too frequently gives the impression of laboured artifice, despite the fact that many of his odes are rich in true and genuine emotion, and stamped with an engaging masculine worth and force of expression.

(ββ) From another point of view, however, it is not at all necessary that the content itself should be substantial or important. The poet is himself, in his own personality, of such weight that he can attach to even the more trifling objects worth, nobility, or at least in a general way a more exalted interest owing to the fact that they are embodied in his poetic work. Many of the Odes of Horace are of this type. Klopstock, too, with many another, may be included in such a category. In such cases it is not the importance of the material itself, which engages the poet's effort, but on the contrary that of the process in virtue of which he exalts what is on its own account insignificant, either in external facts or petty occurrences, to the height of the emotion and idea they excite in himself.

(γ) In conclusion, the entire infinite multiplicity of lyrical mood and reflection reaches its fullest compass in the sphere of the song, in which consequently differences of national custom and creative individuality have their freest play. Characteristics of every extreme of diversity meet together here, and the task of adequate classification is beset with difficulty. We will restrict ourselves to pointing out a few of the most general character.

(αα) We have, then, first, the genuine song intended for singing or purely musical practice,[14] whether in private or before others. Much intelligible content, ideal greatness and loftiness is not necessary. On the contrary, worth, nobility, weight of thought can only prove an obstacle to the desire of direct self-expression. Imposing ideas or reflections, or sublime emotions compel the artist to detach himself from his immediate personality and its interests. And yet it is precisely this immediacy of joy and sorrow, what we may call the unrestricted and momentary personal experience, which ought to find its expression in the song. And it is on this account that every folk is in a peculiar way at home and at ease in its songs. Despite the unlimited variety of content and of melodic exposition that offers itself here, every song is without exception distinct from types previously considered by virtue of the simplicity of its subject-matter, movement, metre, verbal expression, and images. The point of departure is direct from the soul; the movement of inspiration is not so much from one object to another, but is, generally speaking, centered exclusively in one and the same content, whether it be a single emotional state, or any definite expression of delight or sorrow, that mood, in short, the effect of which carries the heart with it. In this emotion or temper the song persists with no interruption in its flight and impression, quietly and simply abiding therein without any strikingly bold contrast or transitions of idea; and it creates thereby in the even flow of its images this one perfected whole, sometimes without any interruption or disunion, at others in a more expansive and consequential survey, employing therewith rhythms adapted to song or the recurrence of rhymes easily intelligible and without any considerable complexity. Inasmuch, however, as it possesses for the most part as its content what is essentially transitory we are not to suppose that a nation is likely to sing the same songs over and over again, for a hundred or a thousand years. A people which can at all claim progressive development is neither so poor nor so so barren as only to possess poets of the song at one period of its life. It is just the poetry of the song, which, in contrast to the Epopaea, does not so much die as it is forever being awakened anew. This field of blossom starts up afresh every spring; and it is only in the case of oppressed peoples, peoples precluded from every advance, which are unable to experience the ever requickened delight in poetic composition, that the old and the oldest songs are retained. The particular song, just like the particular mood, arises, and then passes; it animates, delights, and is forgotten. Whoever knows or sings, for example, the songs which fifty years ago were everywhere known and beloved? Every century strikes its own particular keynote; the previous one sounds out of tune, until it stops altogether. None the less, however, must every song possess not so much a revelation of the personality of the singer as a certain community of sentiment, which meets with response from all sides; which excites in others a like emotion and so, too, passes from mouth to mouth. Songs which are not generally current as such in their time are seldom of the genuine stamp. As an essential distinction in the composition of song I will merely emphasize two main aspects which I have already referred to. On the one hand the poet may express his inner life in its emotions quite openly and without reserve, more especially the feelings and state of joyfulness, and so that he communicates completely all that he experiences. On the other hand, and in extreme contrast to this, he may only suffer us to surmise through his very speechlessness, what is brought to a focus in the unopened chamber of his heart. The first type belongs mainly to the East, and more especially to the careless hilarity and contented expansiveness of Mohammedan poetry, the splendid outlook of which loves to dilate itself hither and thither in all the breadth of sensuous perception and witty conceit. The second type, on the contrary, applies with more force to our Northern self-concentration and intimacy of soul-life, which in its compressed tranquillity is often only able to seize hold of objects which are wholly external and to put suggestions in them, while the essentially suppressed spirit is unable to express itself or find a bent, but rather, like the child with whom that father in the Erl King rides through the night and the wind, dies away with its glow on the wick. The distinction above noticed applies also in a broader sense to other forms of lyrical composition such as the folk-song and more elaborate poetry; it recurs again in the simple song with many shades and intermediate links in its variety. With regard to particular forms applicable to this class of composition I will restrict myself to the following examples.

We may mention, to start with, the folk-song, which, on account of its direct appeal, is mainly of the nature of the simple song, being also generally adapted to singing, or, rather, requiring the musical accompaniment. Its subject-matter is in part national exploit and event, in which the nation is emotionally made aware of and recalls again its most essential life; in part, too, feelings and situations are directly expressed which relate to particular classes. It associates, in short, civic life with its natural condition and its closest human relations, and it does so with every variety of note, whether of exultation or sorrow, which may duly harmonize with such. In contrast to the above, we have, secondly, songs of a more various and enriched culture, a culture which finds its entertainment in the companionable amusement of all kinds of pleasantry, graceful turns of phrase, casual occurrences, or polite modes of address, or, with more intensity of feeling, recurs to the pathos or necessities of less favoured conditions of life, describing therein both the facts and the consequent feelings they excite, the poet always making his appeal from his own breast and the facts of his own sympathetic experience. If such songs go no further than the bare narrative, more particularly of natural phenomena, the result is likely to be trivial and to betray the lack of imaginative resources. The bare description of emotional states, moreover, not unfrequently fares little better. The truth is that our poet in such descriptions, whether of objective facts or emotions, must not restrict his survey to the narrow outlook of direct wishes and desires, but must already in the freedom of his intelligence have raised himself into a more serene atmosphere wherein the main thing of importance to himself is the satisfaction which the exercise of his imagination has afforded. An undisturbed sense of freedom such as this, through expansion of heart and delight in conceptive idea on its own account, confers on many songs of Anacreon, as also certain poems of Hafis and the Westöstliche Divan of Goethe the rarest charm of an unfettered creative gift.

There is a yet further type of composition of this general class, to which we must concede a more exalted or, at least, a more widely embracing content. The large majority of Protestant hymns composed for spiritual edification are essentially songs. They express the yearning after God, the plea for His grace, repentance, hope, trust, doubts, faith, and the like of the religious heart; no doubt, in the first instance, to meet the importunity of the individual soul, but at the same time in a manner of general significance, wherein such feelings and states of soul may or ought to apply, to a greater or less extent, to every member of the Christian Church.

(ββ) We may further return to another division of this class, the sonnet, sestine, elegy, epistle, and a few other such modes. These latter assert themselves as distinct from the ordinary sphere of song previously discussed. The immediacy of feeling and expression is emphasized in this class as a mediating bond with reflection, and a contemplation which, while remaining alert to many features of its subject, conceives the particular detail of perception and soul-experience under more general points of view. Science, learning, and, in short, a wide culture may be here effective; and if also in all the relations thus established the personal life, which connects and mediates in itself the particular fact with the general concept, is and remains the insistent and predominant factor, yet the standpoint presupposed is of a wider and more universal import than that of the ordinary song. The Italians in particular have given us splendid examples of a highly sensitive type of feeling and reflection in their sonnets and sestines. Such not only directly expresses in a given situation states of yearning, grief, longing, and the like, or the counterfeit of external objects, with a peculiarly intimate concentration, but includes many a diversion, many a shrewd glance into mythology and history, whether past or present, while remaining throughout able to return upon itself, true to the fundamental demand of selfrestriction and concentration. The simplicity of the song is incompatible with a culture of this kind. The exalted character of the ode is equally disallowed. As a primary consequence of this the possibility of actual musical delivery vanishes; but, on the other hand, as some set-off to the absence of musical accompaniment, the verbal expression itself, in its sound and composed rhymes, becomes a melodic flow of speech. The Elegy, moreover, may, in the measure of its syllables, its meditation, its comments, and the descriptive display of emotional life, assume the form of the Epic.

(γγ) The third type of composition in this class is characterized by a mode of treatment which in recent times is most clearly represented among us Germans in the work of Schiller. The majority of his lyrical poems, such as those named by him Resignation, the Ideals, the realm of Shades, Artists, the Ideal and Life, are just as little songs in the true sense as they are odes or hymns, epistles, or elegies in the classic sense. Their position, on the contrary, is distinct from all these types. Their significance consists above all in the imposing fundamental thought of their content by the force of which, however, the poet neither appears to be carried away as a dithyrambic poet might be, nor in the press of his enthusiasm is there any appearance of conflict with the greatness of his subject. He remains rather throughout completely master of the same, and unfolds all that is therein implied from every point of view with his own poetic reflection. And he does this in the full impulse of genuine feeling, no less than with the comprehensive breadth of his intelligence, expressed with a compelling force in the most admirable and full-toned utterance and image, and yet, withal, for the most part in quite simple, if really arresting rhythms and rhymes. These great thoughts and fundamental interests, to which his entire life was dedicate, appear consequently as the most intimate possession of his spirit. But he does not sing so much as one tranquilly self-absorbed,[15] or to a circle of companions, as the rich-songed mouth of Goethe was wont to do, but as a singer who delivers himself of what is on its own account intrinsically of worth in a storehouse of all that is most excellent and distinguished. His songs ring out, in fact, much as he says of his bell:

Hoch über'm niedern Erdenleben Soll sie im blauen Himmelszelt, Die Nachbarin des Donners, schweben Und grenzen an die Sternen weit, Soll eine Stimme seyn von oben, Wie der Gestirne helle Schaar, Die ihren Schöpfer wandelnd toben Und führen das bekränzte Jahr. Nur ewigen und ernsten Dingen Sei ihr metall'ner Mund geweiht, Und stündlich mit den schnellen Schwingen Berühr' im Fluge sie die Zeit.[16]

3. HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE LYRIC.

It will already have sufficiently appeared from what I have pointed out in relation to the general character, as also the more detailed features discussed with reference to the poet, the lyrical composition and the several types of the art that to a singular degree in this province of poetry a concrete treatment is only possible which accepts the historical narrative as a constituent feature. The universal, which can be set forth in its independence, does not merely remain restricted in its compass, but is also abstract in its valid worth. And this is so because in no other art to the like extent does the particularity of the time, condition, and nationality, no less than the specific idiosyncracy of individual genius, supply the determinating factor of the content and form of the artistic product. But in proportion as the strength of the demand forces itself on our attention that such an historical exposition should be avoided, I feel myself obliged, in the interests of the very variety of material comprised in the embrace of lyric composition, to limit myself exclusively to a very partial survey of all that I am acquainted of in this particular class of work, and in which my lively interest could have been extended.

As the basis of our general classification of the varied national and more personal lyric compositions, as in the case of epic poetry, we cannot do better than follow the order of those radical types under which artistic creation generally is unfolded, and which we now know as symbolic, classic, and romantic art. As the main division, therefore, of our present subject-matter, we may, in other words, adopt a similar sequence from Oriental compositions to the Lyric of the Greeks and Romans, and then from this to the Slavonic, Romance, and German peoples.

(a) Taking, then, the Oriental lyric first, we may observe that it differs essentially from the lyrical composition of the West through its inability to attach to it the independent personality and free spirit of the poet, or that unity which characterizes every content of romantic art, its essential infinity, reflecting, in fact, the potential depth of the romantic soul. Such a distinction is only in keeping with the universal principle of the East. The individual conscious life is here, referably to its content, directly absorbed in the detail of external fact, expressing itself under the condition and specific relations of this inseparable unity. And, from a further point of view, it asserts itself, without being able to secure a firm ground of stability in itself, as opposed to what it conceives to be of potency and substance in Nature and the conditions of human existence, which it wrestles to reach whether through emotion or imagination, at one time situated towards it rather in the relation of pure opposition, at another with more freedom, but in either case with ultimate failure. What we find here, therefore, if we confine our attention to form, is not so much the poetic expression of independent ideas over objects or their connections, as it is the bare mirror of this unreflecting absorption,[17] wherein the individual consciousness does not disclose itself in its own self-concentration as free personality,[18] but rather in its self-annulment[19] before the external object or condition. Thus regarded, the Oriental lyric frequently, particularly in its contrast to the romantic, assumes a more objective tone. Here we shall often enough find that the poet does not so much express facts and conditions as they affect him, but rather as they are in themselves, a disclosure which frequently bestows on them an independent soul of vitality of their own. For illustration we may take that exclamation of Hafis:

"Come, O come! The nightingale passeth from the soul of Hafis once again over the scent of the roses of delight."

Regarded in another light, the tendency of this lyrical poetry, by freeing the poet from the limitations of his private individuality, is to replace this with a kind of primitive expansion of soul, which, however, very easily loses itself in mere boundlessness, or is merged in a deliberate effort to express that which it accepts as object but cannot fully penetrate, because this content is itself the formless substance. For this reason, speaking generally, the lyric of the East, more especially among the Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians, possesses the character of hymns of exaltation. With spendthrift prodigality all greatness, might, and glory are lavished upon the creature, in order to make all such transitory splendour vanish before the unspeakable majesty of God; or, at least, it never is tired of stringing together in some precious chain everything that is lovable or fair, in order to present the same as a thankoffering to the object, be it Sultan, the beloved, or the wine-shop, which the poet has set himself above all things to celebrate.

In conclusion, if we look more closely at form of expression in this type of poetry, we shall find that it is mainly the metaphor, the image, and the simile which are favoured. For, in the first place, on account of the fact that he is not himself wholly free to express his own personal life, the poet can only disclose himself in something else, something external to himself, with the aid of life that can compare with himself. And also we may observe that what is here universal and substantive remains abstract; that is to say, it is unable to merge itself in the definite form of a free individuality, so that now, even on its own account, it is only in comparisons with the varied phenomena of the world that it is able to envisage itself; and we may add that both these cases, in the last instance, only possess the worth of being able to assist some comparable approach to that One which alone possesses significance, and is worthy of honour and praise. These metaphors, images, and similes, however, in which the individual soul, as it asserts itself, is exclusively identified almost to the point of visibility, are not the actual feeling and spiritual state itself, but rather a mode of expression which is wholly personal and of the poet's composition. What, therefore, the lyrical artist here loses in the concreteness of his spiritual freedom, this we find is replaced by the freedom of his expression, which moves forward through all the most manifold phases; that is, from the naïve simplicity of its images and similes to every conceivable audacity and the acutest ingenuity of novel and surprising combinations. As regards particular nations in which we find this Oriental type of lyric represented, we may mention, first, the Chinese; secondly, the Hindoos; thirdly, and to a pre-eminent degree, the Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians. I cannot, however, enter into any closer description of these.

(b) In the case of the second principal division of our present poetic type, that is in the Lyric of the Greeks and Romans, it is the principle of classic individuality which, above all, distinguishes its character. In accordance with this principle, the artistic consciousness, which seeks for lyrical expression, neither loses itself in the facts of the natural world, nor exalts itself over itself to the height of that Sublime outcry to all creation: "Let all that hath breath praise the Lord!" Nor is it absorbed, after divesting itself joyfully from all the bonds of finite existence, in that One Being in which all live and move. Rather the poet here is freely merged in the Universal, regarded as the very substance of his own spirit; and in this personal union within himself attains his self-conscious poetic activity.

And just as the Lyric of the Greeks and Romans is distinct from that of the Orientals, so too, from another point of view, it differs from the romantic. In other words, instead of unveiling its depths in the intimacy of particular moods and states of feeling, it rather elaborates, to the point of the most explicit definition, this inward life of its individual passion and meditation. And by doing so it even retains, even as the expression of this inward spirit, so far as this is permitted to the Lyric, the plastic type of classic art. All that it communicates, in short, of the views and maxims of life and wisdom, despite all the penetration of its general principle, nevertheless does not dispense with the free individuality of independent thought and conception. It expresses itself less in the wealth of image and metaphor, than directly and categorically. At the same time, also, the personal feeling, at one time in more general relations, at another in the form of vision itself, is on its own account objective. In the same mode of individuality the particular types may be classified as distinct from each other in conception, expression, phraseology, and verse-measure, until they reach the culminating point of their independent elaboration. And as we have found it true of the soul itself and its ideas, so, too, the external presentment is of more plastic type. In other words, from a musical point or view, it emphasizes less the ideal soul-melody of emotion than the sensuous verbal quantity in the rhythmical measure of its movement, to which it may further attach the complex mazes of the dance.

(α) With the richest originality this artistic form of Greek lyric poetry is perfected. In the first instance we may trace it in those hymns possessing a content as yet more akin to the epic mode, which do not so much express in their epic metre a personal enthusiasm as they set before us a plastic image of gods in deliberately objective outlines. The next step, so far as metre is concerned, we mark in the elegiac syllabic measure, which associates the pentameter with the hexameter, which, in the regular recurrence of its ending after the hexameter, and with its two equally divided sections, opens the way to the complete singularity of the verse strophe. The elegy is also throughout in its tone of the lyric type. This is so in the case of the political elegy no less than the erotic, although, particularly as gnomic elegy, it still closely approaches the epic insistence upon and expression of the substantive as such, and for this reason almost exclusively belongs to the Ionians, with whom the objective point of view was generally predominant. In respect also to its musical side, it is primarily the aspect of rhythm which is here successfully worked out. And, on parallel lines with it, we may observe, thirdly, the development of the Iambic poem in a novel verse-measure. This, however, is, by reason of the keenness of its invectives, from the first of a more subjective or personal tendency. The genuine mode of lyrical reflection and passion, however, receives for the first time its full development in the so-called Melisian[20] lyric. The metres are more varied, more capable of change; the strophes are more rich; the suggestions of musical accompaniment are more complete in virtue of the nature of the accepted modulation. Each poet creates a syllabic measure which corresponds with his or her lyrical nature. Thus Sappho adapts one to a type of composition which is sensuous, inspired with the glow of passion and expressed with an effect which works up to a supreme crisis. Alcaeus moulds one in harmony with his masculine and bolder odes. To an exceptional degree, too, the Scoliasts supply many indications of the finer nuances of diction and metre by reason of the variety of their content and melodic utterance.

Last of all, the lyric of the chorus is richest of all in the wealth of what it unfolds, and not merely so in what concerns idea and thought, boldness of transition and connection or the like, but also relatively to its external presentment. The choral song may be interchanged for the single voice, and the ideal movement is not merely satisfied with the bare rhythm of speech and the modulations of music, but summons as its associate the plastic pose and movement of the dance. The ideal aspect of the Lyric is consequently balanced to perfection with the sensuous character of its delivery. The subject-matter of this type of inspired verse is the most substantive and weighty. Such poems celebrate the power and glory of the gods, or that of victors in the games. Greeks, who not unfrequently were divided in their political relations, found in them the positive vision of their national unity. And, partly for this reason, aspects of their ideal construction are not wanting which approach the objective standpoint of the Epic. Pindar, for example, who reaches the highest point of attainment in this type of composition, moves with ease, as I have already pointed out, from the external motives of his compositions to profound observations upon the general nature of ethical principle and divine matters, or it may be upon heroes, heroic exploit, the foundations of States, and the like. His creative gift possesses, in short, the plastic sense of realization quite as much as the individual sweep of imaginative energy. On this very account, however, it is not so much the facts which follow their independent course in the epic manner, as the personal enthusiasm, carried away by its object so completely that the latter appears to be the burden and product of the soul.

Later lyric verse of the Alexandrines is less an independent development and more a mere scholastic imitation and affectation of elegance and correctness of expression, until finally it dissipates itself in trifling graces and pleasantries, or seeks to bind up afresh flowers of art and life already to hand in a garland of tender feeling and conceit, and the witty experiment of eulogy or satire.

(β) Among the Romans lyric poetry finds a soil no doubt fashioned for it in various ways, but of less original productive qualities. The period of its splendour is limited mainly to the age of Augustus, in which it is cultivated as the elaborate expression and relaxation of cultured society; or indeed, to a considerable degree, it is rather an affair of the clever translator or copyist, and the fruit of taste and research, than that of spontaneous feeling and really original conception. At the same time it must be admitted that, despite the learning and an alien mythology, to say nothing of the preferred imitation of Alexandrine models, where the warmth of life is least apparent, yet as a rule the characteristics of Roman personality no less than the individual genius of particular poets, do assert an independent position, and, so long as we put entirely on one side the most intimate soul and expression of the art of poetry, have accomplished sterling and consummate results, not merely in the province of the ode, but also in that of epistles, satires, and elegy. On the other hand, the later type of satire, which follows as a kind of supplement, in its bitterness toward the decadence of the times, its goaded indignation and virtuous declamation, fails to represent the genuine sphere of an unperturbed poetical vision just in the degree that it possesses nothing whatever to oppose to its picture of a demoralized present save this very indignation and abstract rhetoric of virtuous excitement.

(c) For this reason, consequently, it is only after more modern nationalities have appeared that a really original content and spirit are communicated to lyrical composition, as we have previously seen, was the case, too, with the Epic. This is due to the German, Romance, and Slavonic peoples, which already, in their previous pagan days, but principally after their conversion to Christianity, both in the Middle Ages and in more recent times, have brought into being, and continuously elaborated in various ways, a third fundamental revival of lyrical creation in what we may generally characterize as the romantic art-type.

In this third branch of its activity, lyric poetry is of so overwhelming an importance that its principle is enforced, more —especially in the first instance, relatively to the Epos, but consequently in its more modern development and relatively to the drama, with a far profounder significance than was possible with either Greek or Roman. Indeed, among certain nations, even genuine epic materials are treated exclusively under the type of the lyric narrative; in this way we have compositions as to which we may find real difficulty in deciding the class to which they more truly belong. The cause of this conspicuous tendency towards lyric composition is mainly due to the fact that the entire evolution of the life of these nations is based on this very principle of subjectivity, which is constrained to assert and clothe what is substantive and objective as its own from its own resources, and grows more and more self-conscious of this penetration into its own personal wealth. Such a principle declares its vigour in its least perturbed and most complete character among the German peoples. The Slavonic races have, on the contrary, first to wrestle forth from the Oriental absorption in the substantive One and Universal. Between the two we may place the Romance stock, which are confronted, in the conquered provinces of the Roman Empire, not merely with the residue of Roman science and culture, but a social system more elaborate from every point of view. In the process of self-fusion with such conditions, they inevitably lose a part of their original character. As for the subject-matter of this poetry, we may describe it as dealing with pretty nearly every phase of national or individual development, capable of expressing either the religious or secular life of these nations as it expands in ever widening range, and through the process of the centuries reflects in varied condition and emotional state the heart of its spiritual substance. And the fundamental type of it is either the expression of an emotional state, concentrated to the most intimate self-possession, whether the immediate object of attraction be national and other events, Nature and external environment, or simply and solely itself, or whether it be of the nature of reflection, both searching and self-introspective, upon all that is implied for itself in such an extension of culture. Regarded on its formal side, the plastic character of rhythmical versification is exchanged for the music of alliteration, assonance, and manifold alternations of rhyme. These novel elements it makes use of sometimes in a quite simple and unassuming manner; in other connections with much art and invention of modes of versification wholly distinct in character. At the same time the external delivery becomes increasingly more elaborate in its powers of adaptation to the accompaniment of vocal and instrumental music.

In our classification of the extensive compass of this group, we cannot do better than follow that we accepted in the case of epic poetry.

Firsts we have the lyric composition of these modern nations while still in the state of primitive paganism.

Secondly, there is the richer development of this type in the Christian Middle Ages.

Thirdly, there is that lyric art based in some measure on the reawakened study of ancient art, and in part on the fundamental principle of modern Protestantism, a principle essential to its final elaboration.

In the present work, however, I shall be unable to discuss with more detail the characteristics of the above development. I will, by way of conclusion, merely draw attention to one German poet, whose influence has given in modern times a quite extraordinary impetus to the lyric poetry of our own fatherland, and whose services in this respect are by no means appreciated by contemporary criticism as they deserve to be. I refer to the poet of the Messias. Klopstock is among the great Germans, who have inaugurated the new artistic epoch of their people. He is a great figure, who, by means of courageous enthusiasm and superb self-respect, wrested our poetry from the stupendous insignificance of the Gottsched[21] period, which with its blockish superficiality had completely destroyed the life of all that is noble and of worth in the genius of our race; who has, in short, given us poems fully awake to the highest demand of the poet's vocation, in a form of thorough artistic excellence, if also somewhat austere, the majority of which are stamped with the permanency of a classic. Some of the odes of his youth are dedicated to a generous friendship, which was to him at once symbolic of nobility, staunchness, honour, the pride of his soul, a temple of his spirit. Others have reference to a personal attachment of real emotional depth, although it is precisely in this field that we meet with many compositions which a critical sense can only regard as so much prose. "Selmar and Selma" is a poem of this class, a gloomy and tedious altercation between lovers, which, not without many tears, woe, empty yearning, and useless feats of melancholy emotion, revolves round the one mouldy and musty question, which of the two, Selmar or Selma, is first to die. But in Klopstock we find at least a genuine impulse of patriotism alive in every pore. As a good Protestant the Christian mythology, with its sacred legends and so forth—we must except the angels, for whom he retained as a poet a profound respect, although they can only appear abstract and lifeless in a type of poetry such as his, which claimed the realism of life—neither satisfied his sense of the ethical seriousness of art, nor yet the vigour of life and an intelligence, which aspired to something more than blind wailing and self-abasement, was, in short, both self-respecting and actively religious. The need of some mythology, however, and one connected with Germany impressed him strongly as a poet, in order that he might have definite names and characters ready to hand as a stable basis of his imaginative creation. It is impossible to associate such patriotic sentiments with the gods of Greece. Consequently Klopstock attempted, we may justly say from genuine national pride, to give a renewed life to the old mythology of Wodan, Hertha and the rest. He was unfortunately as little able to carry his aim to the point of objective effect and sufficiency by this adoption of names of gods, which are no longer really Germanic, however much they may have been so, as, let us say, the imperial museum in Regensburg is qualified to stand for the ideal of our present political life. However strongly, then, he may have felt the need to be able to realize in poetry and as fact in a national form a general folk-mythology, the truth of Nature and conscious life, these twilight gods remain entirely devoid of essential truth; we may add there is a kind of childish self-flattery in the belief that either reasonable people or the national faith could take such an attempt seriously. Apart from this, as objects of interest to the imagination, the figures of Greek mythology are elaborated in ways with incomparably more variety, infinitely stronger appeal to our aesthetic taste, our sense of delight and freedom. In lyric poetry, however, it is the self-revelation of the poet that is all-important. We ought at least to honour in our patriotic poet this his solicitude and effort, an effort which was sufficiently effective to bear subsequent fruit, and, even in the field of poetry, to stimulate by its suggestion composition on similar subjects. We have, however, to conclude our review, no word to say against the purity, excellence, and admirable influence of this patriotic sentiment of Klopstock as expressed in his enthusiasm for the honour and value of our German speech, and certain characters of our former history, that of Herrmann, for example, and above all particular German Kaisers, who in some instances have even been self-celebrated in song. Vital in him throughout is his justifiable pride in the German muse, and his faith in her increasing courage to contend on equal terms and in high-spirited self-reliance with that of the Greek, the Roman, and the Englishman. And no less a genuine reflection of his patriotism is the nature of his survey of the royal princes of Germany, the expectations which their character have or had it in their power to arouse on all that generally concerns honour, art, and science, questions of public import and spiritual objects of essential value. On the one hand we find him expressing his contempt of our princes, who, as he tells us, remain on their comfortable chairs, surrounded with the tobacco smoke of courtiers, buried in present obscurity and yet deeper to be buried in the future. Or he may express his feelings in the lament that even Frederick II

Nicht sah, dass Deutschland's Dichtkunst sich schnell erhob, Aus fester Wurzel daurendem Stamm, und weit, Der Æste Schalten wurf![22]

With pain of a like quality those vain hopes, too, return back to him, in which he saw in Kaiser Joseph the uprise of a new world of spiritual effort and poetry. And, finally, it is an honour to the heart of the old veteran at least as great that he sympathizes with the present fact that a people had shattered its fetters of every kind, had trodden under foot the injustice of a thousand years, and for the first time sought to found its political life on reason and right.

He greets this new

Labende, selbst nicht geträumte Sonne. Geseegnet sei mir du, das mein Haupt bedeckt, Mein graues Haar, die Kraft, die nach sechzigen Fortdauert; denn sie war's, so weithin Brachte sie mich, dass diess Erlebte![23]

Nay, he will even express his gratitude to France:[24]

Verzeiht, O Franken (Namen der Bruder ist Der edle Name) dass ich den Deutschen einst Zurufte, das zu fliehen, warum ich Ihnen jetzt flehe, euch nachzuahmen.

And, naturally, the acerbation of the poet was all the more bitter, when this fair dawn of freedom changed to a day that was steeped in horror and blood, one that murdered liberty. Klopstock, however, was unable to give poetical expression to such painful feelings. What he did find the opportunity to say was all the more prosaic, without definite structure and logical consequence on account of the fact that he had no higher purpose,[25] veiled in such facts, to set off against his disappointed hope. His genius was in short entirely blind to any more profound demand of reason in the facts of such a revolution.

The greatness of Klopstock consists then essentially in his national sympathies, his keen sense of freedom, friendship, love, and his staunch Protestantism. We may justly honour him for his noble character and his noble art, for his effort and achievement. And if, too, in many directions he shares the limitations of his own times, and in truth is responsible for many odes that are solely of interest to the critic, the grammarian, the metrist, odes deficient in all poetic vitality, we may affirm, nevertheless, that with the single exception of Schiller, we shall find in our subsequent literature no more noble figure, no disposition of such serious and masculine independence.

We have, indeed, to compare with him Schiller and Goethe, who are not merely the poetic exponents of their own times in a spirit resembling his own, but in their experience as poets are of course far more comprehensive. And, above all, in the songs of Goethe we Germans unquestionably possess the most consummate, profound, and influential poetic compositions of modern times. If they are wholly an expression of the poet they are equally the treasure of his people; and, in fact, as the genuine growth of his native soil, are completely in accord with the fundamental tones of our national life and genius.

C. DRAMATIC POETRY

The reason that dramatic poetry must be regarded as the highest phase of the art of poetry, and, indeed, of every kind of art, is due to the fact that it is elaborated, both in form and substance, in a whole—that is the most complete. For in contrast to every other sort of sensuous materia, whether it be stone, wood, colour, or tone, that of human speech is the only medium fully adequate to the presentation of spiritual life; and further, among the particular types of the art of articulate speech, dramatic poetry is the one, in which we find the objective character of the Epos essentially united to the subjective principle of the Lyric. In other words it presents directly before our vision an essentially independent action as a definite fact, which does not merely originate from the personal life of character under the process of self-realization, but receives its determinate form as the result of the substantive interaction in concrete life of ideal intention, many individuals and collisions. This mediated form of epic art by means of the intimate personal life of an individual viewed in the very presence of his activity does not, however, permit the drama to describe the external aspects of local condition and environment, nor yet the action and event itself in the way that they are so described in the epic. Consequently, in order that the entire art-product may receive the full animation of life, we require its complete scenic representation. And, finally, the action itself, regarded in the full complexus of its ideal and external reality, is adapted to two distinct types of composition of the most opposite character, the predominant principles of which, regarded severally as the tragic and comic type, create in their turn also a further fundamental and specific point of view in our attitude to the dramatic art.

Starting then from the vantage of these general observations we may indicate the course of our inquiry as follows:

Firsts we propose to consider the dramatic composition, both in its general and more detailed features, in the contrast it presents to epic and lyrical poetry.

Secondly, our attention will be directed to its scenic presentation and the conditions of this necessity.

Thirdly, we shall pass under review the different types of dramatic poetry as we find them realized in the concrete facts of past history.

1. THE DRAMA AS A POETICAL ART-PRODUCT

What we have, in the first instance, to define more emphatically is the poetic aspect of the dramatic composition as such, that is to say in its independence of the fact that the same is necessarily presented to our direct vision on the stage. Our investigation of this will do well to concentrate itself on the following points:

Firsts there is the general principle of dramatic poetry.

Secondly, we have the several specific types of dramatic composition.

Thirdly, there is the relation which obtains between these and the public audience.

(a) The Principle of Dramatic Poetry

The demand of the drama, in the widest sense, is the presentation of human actions and relations in their actually visible form to the imaginative consciousness, that is to say, in the uttered speech of living persons, who in this way give expression to their action. Dramatic action, however, is not confined to the simple and undisturbed execution of a definite purpose, but depends throughout on conditions of collision, human passion and characters, and leads therefore to actions and reactions, which in their turn call for some further resolution of conflict and disruption. What we have consequently before us are definite ends individualized in living personalities and situations pregnant with conflict; we see these as they are asserted and maintained, as they work in co-operation or opposition—all in a momentary and kaleidoscopic interchange of expression—and along with this, too, the final result presupposed and issuing from the entirety of this interthreading and conflicting skein of human life, movement, and accomplishment, which has none the less to work out its tranquil resolution. The mode of poetical composition adapted to this novel type of content can be, as already suggested, no other than a mediating union of the principles of epic and lyrical art respectively.

(α) The first point of importance we have to settle to our satisfaction is that of the time at which dramatic poetry is able to assert itself in all its predominance. Drama is the product of an already essentially cultured condition of national life. It already presupposes as essentially a feature of past history not only the primitive poetic period of the genuine Epos, but also the independent personal excogitation of lyrical rapture. The bare fact that, while combining these two points of view, it is satisfied with neither sphere in its separation proves that this is so. And in order that we may have this poetic combination the free self-consciousness of human aims, developments and destinies must be already fully alert and awake, must have attained, in short, a degree of culture such as is only possible in the intermediate and later epochs of a nation's development. For this reason, too, the greatest exploits and events of a nation's primitive history are rather of an epic than a dramatic type. Such are features of the national existence for the most part related to communities outside it, such as the Trojan war, or the wave of popular migration, as illustrated in the Crusades, or the national resistance to a common enemy, as was the case in the war of Greece against Persia. It is only at a later stage that we meet with the more stable independence of single heroes, who create for themselves and out of themselves in their isolation definite ends, and carry through the undertakings they imply.

(β) We may add the following remarks upon the nature of this mediation between the opposed principles of epic and lyric poetry.

The Epos already makes an action visible to our imaginative sense. It is, however, here presented as the substantive entirety of a national spirit under the form of definite events and exploits of external life, in which personal volition, the individual aim and the externality of vital conditions, together with the obstructions which such external facts present, are retained in an equal balance. In the Lyric, on the contrary, it is the individual person, which is emphasized in the independence of his subjective life and as such expressed.

(αα) In combining these two points of view drama has in the first place, following in this respect the Epos, to bring before our vision an event, action, or practical affair. But above all in everything that is thus presented the factor of bare externality must be obliterated, and in, its place the self-conscious and active personality is posited as the paramount ground and vital force. The drama, in short, does not take exclusive refuge in-the lyric presence of soul-life, as such stands in contrast to an external world, but propounds such a life in and through its external realization. And in virtue of this the event does not appear to proceed from external conditions, but rather from personal volition and character; it receives in fact its dramatic significance exclusively in its relation to subjective aims and passions. At the same time the individual is not left exclusively rooted in his self-exclusive independence; he comes to his own through the peculiar nature of the conditions in which he is placed, and subject to which his character and purpose become the content of his volitional faculty, quite as much so in fact as in virtue of the nature of the particular purpose itself in its opposition to and conflict with other ends. Consequently the dramatic action in question must submit to a process of development and collision with other forces, which themselves, on their own account, and even in a contrary direction to that willed and intended by the active personality, effect the ultimate course of the events through which the personal factor, in its essential, characteristics of human purpose, personality, and spiritual conflict, is asserted. This substantive or objective aspect, which is enforced along with the individual character, in other respects acting independently from its own ideal resources, is no other than the very point of view which we find effective and vital in the principle of dramatic poetry, when it coincides with that of the epic composition.

(ββ) However much, therefore, we may have as a centre of attraction the intimate soul-life of particular men and women, nevertheless dramatic composition cannot rest content with the purely lyrical conditions of the emotional life; nor can the poet of such merely limit his sympathy to the dusty record of exploits that are already complete, or, speaking generally, merely describe the experience of enjoyment or other states of emotional or contemplative life. The drama, on the contrary, has to exhibit situations and the spiritual atmosphere that belongs to them as definitely motived by the individual character, which is charged with specific aims, and which makes these an effective part of the practical content of its volitional self-identity. The definition of soul-life, therefore, in the drama passes into the sphere of impulse, the realization of personality by means of active volition, in a word, effective action; it passes out of the sphere of pure ideality, it makes itself an object of the outer world, and inclines itself to the concrete facts of the epic world. The external phenomenon, however, instead of attaining existence in the bare fact of an event, is here, in the view of the acting character himself, charged with the opinions and aims he forms on his own account. Action is here the executed will, which as such is at the same time recognized, recognized, that is, not merely in its origin and point of departure from the soul-life, but also in respect to its ultimate purpose. In other words, all that issues from the action, issues, so far as the personality in question is concerned, from himself, and reacts thereby on his personal character and its circumstances. This constant relation of the entire complexus of external condition to the soul-life itself of the self-realized and self-realizing individuality, who is at once the basis and assimilating force of the entire process, marks the point where dramatic poetry falls in line with the truly lyrical principle.

(γγ) It is only when thus regarded that human action asserts itself as action in the supreme sense, that is, as actual execution of ideal intentions and aims with the realization of which the individual agent associates himself as with himself, discovers himself and his satisfaction therein, and thereupon further takes his stand with his entire being in all that proceeds from it as a constituent of the objective world. A character which is dramatic plucks for himself the fruit of his own deeds.

Inasmuch, however, as the interest, in a dramatic sense, restricts itself to the personal aim, whose hero the active personality is, and it is only necessary in the artistic work to borrow from the external world so much as is bound in an essential relation to this purpose, which originates in self-conscious life, for this reason the drama is primarily of a more abstract nature than the epic poem. For on the one hand the action, in so far as it reposes in the self-determination of character, and is deducible from this vital source and centre, does not presuppose the epic background of an entire world through all the varied aspects and ramifications of its positive realization, but is concentrated in the simpler definition of circumstance subject to which the individual man is absorbed in his immediate purpose and carries the same to accomplishment. And from a further point of view we have not here the type of personality which asserts its development to our vision in the entire complexity of national qualities as such are displayed by the epic, but rather character viewed in direct relation to its action, character which possesses a definite end directed to spirit life in its universality. This end or purpose, this eventual fact on which it depends, is placed in a more exalted position than is possible to the extension of the purely individual life, which appears inclusively as living organ and animating vehicle of the same. A more widely extended unveiling of character under the most varied aspects which are present either in no connection at all or only in a more remote one to its action, as we find it concentrated on one single point of interest would be a superfluity; consequently in this respect, too, that is, in its relation to the active personality, dramatic poetry ought to be more simply concentrated than epic poetry. The same generalization is applicable to the number and variety of the characters represented. For in virtue of the fact, as previously insisted, that the movement of the drama is not thrown upon the background of a national existence essentially complete in its envisagement of every conceivable variety of class, age, sex, activity, and so forth, but on the contrary, rivets our attention throughout on one fundamental purpose and its achievement, a realization of objective fact so extended and intricate as this would not merely be ineffective, but would actually impair the result proposed. At the same time, however, and secondly, the end and content of an action is only dramatic by reason of the fact that on account of its defined character, in the distinctive qualities of which the particular personality itself can alone lay hold of it under equally definite conditions, it calls into being in other individuals other objects and passions opposed to it, This pathetic excitant[1] may, no doubt, in each separate active agent, assume the form of spiritual, ethical, and divine forces, such as duty, love to fatherland, parents, wife, relations, and the like. If, however, this essential content of human feeling and activity is to assert itself as dramatic it must in its specialization confront us as distinct ends, so that in every case the action will inevitably meet with obstruction in its relation to other active individuals, and fall into subjection to changing conditions and contradictions, which alternately prejudice the success of their own particular fulfilment. The genuine content, the essential operative energy throughout may therefore very well be the eternal forces, the essentially explicit ethical State, the gods of vital reality, in a word the divine and the true, but it is not these in the might of their tranquillity, in that condition, so to speak, wherein the unmoved gods abide, saved from all action, as some serene figures of sculpture self-absorbed in a state of blessedness. What we have here is the divine in its community, as content, that is, and object of human personality, as concrete existence in its realization,[2] invited to act and charged with movement.

If, however, as above described, the godlike presence constitutes the most vital objective truth in the external precipitate[3] of human action, then, thirdly, the deciding factor in the course and original departure of such an evolution and conflict cannot reside with particular individuals, which are placed in a relation of opposition to one another; it must be referred to the divine presence itself, regarded as essential totality: and for this reason, the drama, it matters not in what form it may be shaped, will have to propound to us the vital energy of a principle of Necessity which is essentially self-supporting, and capable of resolving every conflict and contradiction.

(γ) Consequently, we have before everything else the demand made on the dramatic poet in his creative capacity, that to the fullest extent his intelligence is awake to that ideal and universal substance which is at the root of human ends, conflicts, and destinies. He must fully acquaint himself with all the contradictions and developments which the particular action will, under the proposed conditions, necessarily involve and display. He must not merely be aware of them in so far as they originate in personal passion and the specific characterization of particular individuals, or as he finds such related to the actual content of human designs and resolves; but also in so far as they are simply referable to the external relations and circumstances of concrete life. And, along with this, it should be within his powers to recognize what the real nature of these paramount forces are, which apportion to man the just guerdon of his achievements. The rightful claim, no less than the wrongful misuse of the passions, which storm through the human heart, and excite to action, must lie disclosed to him with equal clarity, in order that precisely in those cases where the ordinary vision can only discover the ascendancy of obscurity, chance, and confusion, he, at least, will find revealed the actual selfaccomplishment of what is the essence of reason and truth itself. It follows, therefore, that the dramatic poet ought as little to confine his efforts to the indefinite exploration of the depths of emotional life, as the one-sided retention of any single exclusive mood of soul-life, or any limited partiality in the type of his sense-perception and spiritual outlook generally. He ought, rather, to exclude nothing from his vision that may be embraced by the widest expansion of Spirit conceivable. And this is so because the spiritual powers which are exclusively distinct in the mythological Epos, and which, by virtue of the many-sided aspects of actual individualization[4]tend to lose the clear definition of their significance, assert themselves in dramatic poetry in consonance with their simple substantive content as pathos altogether, and as apart from individual characters. The drama is, in fact, the resolution of the one-sided aspect of these powers, which discover their self-stability in the dramatic character. And this is so whether, as in tragedy, they are opposed to such in hostility, or, as in comedy, they are displayed within these characters themselves, without further mediation, in a condition of resolution.

(b) Dramatic Composition

In discussing the drama as a concrete work of art, I propose to emphasize, briefly, the following fundamental points:

First there is the unity of the same viewed in contrast to that of the Epos and the lyric poem.

Secondly, we have to consider the articulation of its parts, of its separate parts and their development.

Thirdly, there is the external aspect of diction, dialogue, and verse-measure.

(α) What we have in the first instance to observe and, from the broadest point of view, to establish with regard to the unity of the drama, is connected with a remark made in a previous passage to the effect that dramatic poetry, in contradistinction to the Epos, must be more strenuously self-concentrated. For, although the Epic makes a specific event its centre of unity, this is none the less expanded over a wide and manifold field of the national existence, and may break up into very various episodes and the independent presentation which belongs to each as parts of the entire panorama. An analogous appearance of merely general connection, on grounds which are converse to the above, is permissible to certain types of lyrical poetry. Inasmuch, however, as in dramatic poetry, from one point of view, that epic foundation, as we have seen, falls away—and as, otherwise regarded, the individual characters do not find their expression under the insulation proper to lyric expression, but rather assert in such a way their mutual relations to one another, by means of the opposed features of their characterization and aims, that it is just this personal relation which constitutes the ground of their dramatic realization—it follows, as by a law of necessity, that the synthetic unity of the entire composition is of a more stringent character. Now this more restricted homogeneity is quite as much objective as it is ideal in its nature. It is objective relatively to the features of the practical content of the objects, which the different characters carry out in a condition of conflict. It is ideal or subjective in virtue of the fact that this essentially substantive content appears in dramatic work as the passion of particular characters, so that the ill-success or achievement, fortune or misfortune, victory or defeat, essentially affect the individuals, whom such concern, in their actual intention.[5]

The more obvious laws of dramatic composition may be summarized in the time-honoured prescription of the so-called unities of place, time, and action.

(αα) The inalterability of one exclusive locale of the action proposed belongs to the type of those rigid rules, which the French in particular have deduced from classic tragedy and the critique of Aristotle thereupon. As a matter of fact, Aristotle merely says[6] that the duration of the tragic action should not exceed at the most the length of a day. He does not mention the unity of place at all; moreover, the ancient tragedians have not followed such a principle in the strict sense adopted by the French. As examples of such a deviation, we have a change of scene both in the Eumenides of Æschylus and the Ajax of Sophocles. To a still less extent can our more modern dramatic writing, in its effort to portray a more extensive field of collision, dramatis personae of whatever kind and incidental event, and, in a word, an action the ideal explication of which requires, too, an external environment of greater breadth, subject itself to the yoke of a rigid identity of scene. Modern poetry, in so far, that is, as its creations are in harmony with the romantic type, which as a rule displays more variety and caprice in its attitude to external condition, has consequently freed itself from any such demand. If, however, the action is in truth concentrated in a few great motives, so that it can avoid complexity of external exposition, there will be no necessity for considerable alternation of scene. Indeed, the reverse will be a real advantage. In other words, however false such a rule may be in its purely conventional application, it contains at least the just conception that the constant transition of scene, without any particular reason why we should have one more than another, is obviously quite inadmissible. The dramatic concentration of the action ought necessarily to assert itself also in this external aspect, and thus present a contrast to the Epos, which is permitted in the most varied way to adapt itself to the fresh expatiation in the form of the spatial condition and its changes. Moreover, from a further point of view, the drama is not, as the Epos, composed exclusively for the imaginative sense, but for the direct vision of our senses. In the sphere of the pure imagination we can readily pass from one scene to another. In a theatrical representation, however, we must not put too great a strain on the imaginative faculty beyond the point which contradicts the ordinary vision of life. Shakespeare, for example, in whose tragedies and comedies there is a very frequent change of scene, had posts put up with notices attached to them indicating the particular scene on view. A device of this kind is a poor sort of affair, and can only impair the dramatic effect. For this reason the unity of place is at least commendable to the extent that its intelligibility and convenience are primâ facie assured, in so far, that is, that all confusion is thus avoided. But after all, no doubt, much may still be trusted to the imagination, which would conflict with our ordinary perception and notion of probability. The most convenient course in this, as in other matters, is a happy mean; in other words, while not wholly excluding the claim of purely natural fact and perception, we may still permit ourselves considerable license in our attitude to both.

(ββ) The unity of time is a precisely similar case. In the pure realm of imaginative idea we may no doubt, with no difficulty, combine vast periods of time; in the direct vision of perception we cannot so readily pass over a few years. If the action is, therefore, of a simple character, viewed in its entire content and conflict, we shall do best to concentrate the time of such a conflict, from its origin to its resolution, in a restricted period. If, on the contrary, it demands character richly diversified, whose development necessitates many situations which, in the matter of time, lie widely apart from one another, then the formal unity of a purely relative and entirely conventional duration of time will be essentially impossible. To attempt to remove such a representation from the domain of dramatic poetry, on the primâ facie ground that it is inconsistent with the strict rule of time-unity would simply amount to making the prose of ordinary facts the final court of appeal, as against the truth of poetic creation. Least of all need we waste time in discussing the purely empirical probability that as audience we could, in the course of a few hours, witness also, directly through our sense, merely the passage of a short space of time. For it is precisely in the case where the poet is most at pains to illustrate this conclusion that, from other points of view, he wellnigh invariably perpetrates the most glaring improbabilities.

(γγ) In contrast to the above examples of unity, that of action is the one truly inviolable rule. The true nature, however, of this unity may be a matter of considerable dispute. I will therefore develop my own views of its significance at greater length.

Every action must without exception have a distinct object which it seeks to achieve. It is through his action that man enters actively into the concrete actual world, in which also the most universal subject-matter is in its turn accepted in the poetic work and defined under more specific manifestation. From this point of view, therefore, the unity will have to be sought for in the realization of an end itself essentially definite, and carried under the particular conditions and relations of concrete life to its consummation. The circumstances adapted to dramatic action are, however, as we have seen, of a kind that the individual end meets with obstructions at the hands of other personal agents, and this for the reason that a contradictory end stands in its path, which in its turn equally strives after fulfilment, so that it is invariably attached to the reciprocal relation of conflicts and their devolution. Dramatic action in consequence rests essentially upon an action that is involved with resistance;[7] and the genuine unity can only find its rationale in the entire movement which consists in the assertion of this collision relatively to the definition of the particular circumstances, characters, and ends proposed, not merely under a mode consonant to such ends and characters, but in such a way as to resolve the opposition implied. Such a resolution has, precisely as the action itself has, an external and an inside point of view. In other words, on the one side, the conflict of the opposed ends is finally composed; and on the other the particular characters, to a greater or less extent, have committed their entire volitional energy and being to the undertaking they strive to accomplish. Consequently the success or misadventure of the same, to complete or partial execution, the inevitable disaster or the secure union effected with intentions that are apparently opposed to their extent, also determine the destiny of the character in question, that it is inextricably involved with that which it was impelled to commit to such activity. A true end is therefore only then consummated, where the object and interest of the action, around which all revolves, are identified with the individuals concerned, and absolutely united to them. And whether the difference and opposition of the dramatic character assumes a simple form or branches out in various accessory episodes and individuals, the unity in either case may be of a more severe or less stringent nature. Comedy, for instance, in the many-sided features of its worked-out intrigue does not require such deliberate self-concentration as tragedy does, which is as a rule motived on grandiose and simple lines. Romantic tragedy, however, is also in this respect more varied and less consistent in its unity than is classic tragedy. And even where there is more licence the relation of the episodes and supplementary characters must be throughout recognizable; and the entirety of the piece should also naturally and without strain fit in with and help to complete the conclusion. So, for example, in "Romeo and Juliet," the discord between the families, which lies outside the lovers and their object and destiny, is no doubt the base on which the action is shaped, though not the actual matter on which all actually depends. Shakespeare consequently devotes the necessary, if also wholly subordinate attention to the final issue of this conflict in his conclusion. In the same way in "Hamlet" the fortunes of Denmark remain a subsidiary interest, though with the entrance of Fortinbras they are apparently considered, and are settled at last satisfactorily.

No doubt in the particular end, which resolves the colliding factors, the possibility of fresh interests and conflicts may be presented; it is, however, the one collision with which the action is concerned, which has to discover its final adjustment in the essentially independent composition. Of this type are the three tragedies of Sophocles borrowed from the Theban cycle of myths. The first contains the discovery by Œdipus of the murderer of Laius; the second his peaceful death in the home of the Eumenides; the third the fate of Antigone. And, despite of this connection, every one of the three is equally an intrinsically complete whole independent of the other two.

(β) With regard to our second point, namely, that of the mode of denouement in a dramatic composition, we have three main features of distinction to consider between it and epic composition or the song, namely, the size of its extension, the nature of its progression and its division into scenes and acts.

(αα) We have already seen that the embrace of a drama—is not so extensive as the demand of the epos implies. I propose, therefore—over and above the two features already discussed of that world-condition, which is necessarily implied in the complete picture of the epic, and the more simple collision which is an equally essential constituent of the content of drama—merely to advert to the further ground, that in the drama the greater part of everything that the muse of the epic poet has to describe and linger over as servant of our imaginative vision, is omitted altogether from the scenic reproduction. And, further, in the case of drama it is not actual exploit, but the exposition of personal passions which is here the main thing. This personal life, however, in contrast to the expanse of the phenomenal world, is concentrated in simple emotions, sentences, decisions, and the like; and here, too, as distinct from the collateral display of epic narration and its historical part, it gives effect to the principle of lyric absorption and the origination and expression in present time of passion and idea. Dramatic poetry is, however, not satisfied with merely one situation;[8] it presents the ideal world of emotional life or intelligence in active self-assertion as a totality of circumstances and ends of very various character, which expresses taken together, all that, if viewed relatively to its activity, passes in such an inward world. In comparison with the lyrical poem, the drama reaches out to and is completed in a far more extensive embrace of subject-matter. To summarize this comparative relation we may say, perhaps, that dramatic poetry stands as a mean between the wide embrace of the Epopaea and the concentrated compression of the Lyric.