Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art, vol. 4, sels.

AUTHOR OF “THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET,” “AN ESSAY ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY,” AND OTHER WORKS

THE temple of classical architecture demands a god, who resides therein. Sculpture exhibits the same in plastic beauty, and confers forms on the material it employs for this purpose, which do not in their nature remain external to what is spiritual, but are the form itself immanent in the defined content. The corporeality, however, and sensuousness, no less than the ideal universality of the sculptured figure, are opposed on the one hand to subjective ideality, and in part to the particularity of the individual, in whose element the content of the religious, no less than also the worldly life, must secure reality by virtue of a novel form of art. This mode of expression, which is of subjective import, and at the same time particularized in its characterization, the art of painting itself contributes under the principle of the plastic arts. In other words it subordinates the realistic expression of form to the more ideal presentment of colour, and makes the expression of the ideality of soul the central point¹ of the presentment. The universal sphere, however, in which these arts are motived, the one in the ideal of symbolism, the other in the plastic ideal, the third in the romantic type, is the sensuous or external form of spirit and natural objects.

The spiritual content possesses, however, as essentially appertinent to the ideality of consciousness, a determinate 4existencewhich is for this ideality at the same time foreign to the medium itself of the external appearance and envisagement presented to it by material form. From this foreign element it is further necessary that it removes its conceptions in order to place them in a realm which, in respect to material no less than the mode of expression, is independently of an ideal or subjective character. This was the forward step which we saw music make, in so far as it embodied pure ideality and subjective emotion in the configurations of essentially resonant sound rather than in visible forms. It, however, passed by this very means into a further extreme, that is, an ideal mode of concentration not fully explicit, whose content in musical tones itself only found symbolic expression. For tone taken by itself is without content, and has its definition in the numerical relations, so that what is qualitative in the spiritual content no doubt generally corresponds to these quantitative relations which are expressed in essential differences, oppositions, and mediation, but in its qualitative determinacy is not entirely able to receive its impression in musical tone. If this aspect is not wholly to fail the art of music must, by reason of its onesidedness, summon to its assistance the more definite articulation of language, and requires for its more secure attachment to particularity and the characteristic expression of the content a text, without which it is unable to complete fully the ideality which is poured forth by means of musical tones.

By virtue of this expression of ideas and emotions, the abstract ideality of music receives a clearer and more secure exposition. At the same time what we have here unfolded by its means is, to a certain extent, not the point of view of idea and the artistic mode adapted to its expression, but merely the emotional life as it accompanies the same; also in part we find that here, too, music entirely divests itself of fusion with the verbal text in order to develop its own movement without restraint in the world of tone simply. For this reason the realm of idea, which is unable to remain under such a more purely abstract mode of ideal intensity, and seeks a configuration in a world which embraces its one homogeneous and concrete reality, breaks away on its part likewise from the bond of music, and in the exclusive art of poetry discovers the adequate realization it demands.

5Poetry, in other words the art of human speech, is the third or final step, the totality, which unites and embraces in a yet higher sphere, in the sphere of the very life of Spirit itself,¹ the two extremes of the plastic arts and music. For on the one hand poetry contains just as music does the principle which apprehends an ideal content in its ideality, the principle which in architecture, sculpture, and painting is lost, or at most incompletely asserted. And on the other hand it expatiates itself, under the modes of ideal conception, intuition, and feeling simply, in an objective world, which does not entirely destroy the defined forms of sculpture and painting, and is capable of unfolding all the conditions of an event, a succession or interchange of emotional states, passions, conceptions, and the exclusive course of human action with more completeness than any other art.

2. But in a still more intimate way the art of poetry constitutes a third or final term in its relation to painting and music regarded as the romantic arts.

(a) One reason of this is that its principle is that generally of an intelligence which has nothing further to do with gross matter as such, seeking, as is the case with architecture, to transform it through symbolism to an environment related analogically to spiritual life, or as in the case of sculpture in order to implant upon material substance the natural form congenial to such life under the spatial condition of its expression. What the end is now is to express immediately for mind the manifestations of Spirit with all its ideas of imagination and art, without setting forth their external and visible bodily presence. And a further reason consists in this, that poetry is able to grasp in the form of ideality itself and with a far greater wealth than is possible for music or painting, not merely the innermost actuality of conscious life, but also what is particular and individual in external existence, and equally able to contrast such facts in the complete diversity of their specific traits and accidental peculiarities.

(b) The art of poetry is, however, as totality, also again, 6from another point of view, essentially to be distinguished from the above-mentioned arts whose fundamental qualities it thus in a measure combines.

(α) In this respect, if we compare it with painting, the latter art is throughout at an advantage, where it is of importance to bring before our senses a content under the condition of its external appearance. It is true no doubt that poetry is able by various means to envisualize objects precisely in the way that for the imagination generally the principle of objectification is made real to our intuitive sense. But in so far as conceptive power, in the element of which poetry pre-eminently moves, is of a spiritual nature and implies the presence of the universality of thought, it is incapable of attaining the definition of sensuous perception. On the other hand, the varied traits which poetry brings together, in order to make the concrete form of a content visible, do not fall as with painting into one and the same totality, which is set before us wholly as a simultaneous appearance of all its details, but they break apart, inasmuch as the imagination can only give us the complexity it contains under the form of succession. This is, however, only a defect from the sensuous point of view, a defect which reason is able in its own way to rectify. That is to say, inasmuch as human speech, even in the case where it endeavours to summon before our sight a concrete object, is not concerned with the sensuous apprehension of an immediate external object, but always with the ideal relation, the mental intuition, for this reason the particular characteristics, albeit they are set before us in a series, are nevertheless fused together in the element of one essentially homogeneous spirit, which is able to qualify the effect of succession, to bring the varied array into one picture, and to secure and enjoy this picture in imaginative contemplation. Moreover, this deficiency of sensuous realization and objective definition, when we contrast poetry with painting, brings as a contrary result the possibility of an incalculable superfluity of material. For inasmuch as the poetic art in painting restricts itself to a determinate space, and even more to a distinct moment in a situation or action, for this reason it is prevented from portraying an object in its entire ideal profundity no less than in the extension of its temporal develop7ment. But what is true is throughout concrete in the sense that it comprises within its embrace a unity of essential determinations. In its phenomenal appearance, however, these are not merely unfolded as a co-existent spatial phenomenon but in a temporal series as a history, whose course painting is only able to present in a relatively inadequate manner. Even in the case of every stalk, every tree, each has in this sense its history, a change, sequence, and exclusive whole of varied conditions. And this is even more true of the sphere of spirit, which can only be exhaustively portrayed as veritable spirit in phenomenal guise when it is set before our imagination as such a process.

(β) We have already seen that poetry possesses for its external medium that of tone in common with music. The wholly external, or, as we might say in the false sense of the expression, the objective material in the progressive series of the particular arts finally vanishes in the subjective medium of sound, which is divested of all visibility, and which suffers an ideal content only to be apprehended by a conscious state independent of sight.¹ For music, however, the configuration of musical tone as such is the essential end. For although the soul in the course and movement of melody and its harmonic relations presents what is ideal in objects, or its own ideal content, to the emotional life; yet the ideality thus presented is not pure ideality, but the human soul interwoven in the closest way with the musical tone as its expression, and the configuration of such musical expression which confers on music its true character. So much is this the case that music receives its independent position as an art just in proportion as the animation given by it to the emotional life is more emphasized in the world of pure music than in that of man’s ordinary spiritual activity.² But for this very reason it is only to a relative degree capable of reproducing the variety of spiritual ideas and intuitions, the entire extension of the ideal wealth of conscious life: it remains restricted to the more abstract 8universality of all that it grasps as content, and the more indefinite manifestations of our emotion.

In the like degree, then, that mind (Geist) elaborates the more abstract universality in a concrete whole of idea, ends, actions, and events, and no less contributes to its conformation the particularizing perception, it not only forsakes the subjective life of mere emotion and builds up that life into an unfolded realm of objective reality in this case, too, within the ideal world of the imagination itself, it is compelled, by virtue of the nature of such transformation, to forsake the attempt to express the new realm thus secured solely and exclusively by means of tone relations. Precisely as the medium of sculpture is too poor to express the more ample content that it is the function of the art of painting to call into life, so too the conditions of musical tone and melodic expression are unable to realize fully the imaginative pictures of the poet. For these in part possess the ideas more accurately defined to consciousness and, in part, the form of external appearance impressed on the inner sense of perceptive reason. Spirit consequently withdraws its content from musical tone as such, and declares itself through words, which it is true do not entirely forsake the element of sound, but sink to the purely external sign of the communication. In other words, by means of this repletion with spiritual ideas, musical tone becomes the voice of articulate words; language, in its turn, is diverted from an end in itself to a means of ideal expression which has lost its independent self-subsistency. This constitutes in fact what we have already established as the essential difference between music and poetry. The content of the art of speech is the collective art of the world of ideas elaborated by the imagination, the spiritual which remains at home in its vision, which remains in this ideal realm, and, even in its movement toward an objective world, is only conscious of the same as a symbol that differs from its own conscious content. In music art reproduces the penetration of Spirit in a sensuously apparent and present form. In poetry it even forsakes the element of musical tone and articulation opposed to it, at least to the extent that this musical tone is no longer reclothed in fully adequate externality and the exclusive expression of that content. The ideal no doubt is expressed, 9but it fails to discover its real existence in the sensuous medium of tone, despite the fact that it is of a more ideal character; this it discovers exclusively in its own essential content, by virtue of which it expresses the content of mind as it is realized in the ideality of the imagination simply as such.

(c) In the third place, and finally, if we consider the specific character of poetry relatively to this distinction between music and painting, and we may include with it the other plastic arts, we shall find the same simply to consist in the subordination of the mode under which all poetical content is envisaged and configured by the medium of sense. In other words, when tone, as it does in the art of music, or for that matter, colour as in that of painting, no longer essentially recovers and expresses the entire content, in that case the musical treatment of the composition under its aspects of time, no less than those of harmony and melody, drops away; we have left us merely the generalized configuration of the time-measure of syllables and words, to which we may add rhythm, euphony, and the like. And further, it is to be noted that we have this, not in the sense of a genuine medium for the content, but rather as a mode of externality which is accidental, and which only receives an artistic form, because art cannot permit any mode of its external manifestation whatever to be entirely a question of accidental caprice.

(α) In connection with this withdrawal of the spiritual content from the sensuous medium we are at once met with the question what it is then which, under such a view, constitutes the actual externality or objectivity in poetry, that of tone being thus excluded. The answer to this is simple. It is the ideal envisagement and imaginative content itself. We have here spiritual forms substituted for sensuous, and supply a configurative material, such as we met with before in marble, bronze, colour, or musical tones. In other words, we must guard ourselves from such an inadquate statement of the facts as that ideas and imagery are nothing more or less than the content of poetry. This is unquestionably true in a sense, as we shall demonstrate more closely later on. Despite this, however, we are equally justified in asserting that idea, imagery, emotion, and the like are specific modes, 10under which every content in poetry is subsumed and manifested; and consequently, that is, owing to the fact that the sensuous aspect of the communication remains throughout a purely accidental one¹—it is these forms which supply the real material which the poet has to elaborate artistically. No doubt the fact, the content, must in poetry, as in other arts, receive its due objectification for spirit; objectivity in this sense, however, is the exchange of what was previously an external reality for one that is ideal; one which receives an existence exclusively in conscious life itself, as something conceived or imagined exclusively by mind. Mind is here on its own ground objective to itself, and it suffers the medium of speech merely as a means, that is to say, partly as one of communication, and partly as one of immediate externality, from which, as from the pure symbol merely, it is withdrawn throughout from itself into itself. For this reason, in the case of genuine poetry, it is of no consequence whether a poetical work be read in private or listened to; and for the same reason it can also, without essential depreciation of its value, be translated into other tongues, be transferred from versification into prose, and thereby transmitted in tonal relations of an entirely different character.²

(β) In the second place the question presents itself as to the nature of the object for which the ideal concept is employed in poetry. We answer that it is thus used relatively to essential truth in everything of interest to Spirit; not merely, that is, relatively to what is substantive in the same in the universality of its symbolic significance or classical differentiation, but equally to all that is at the same time specific and particular, in short, to practically everything in and with which mind is in any way interested and concerned. The art of language, consequently, both in respect to its content and the mode under which that content is made explicit, possesses a field of immeasurable compass, wholly incomparable with that of the other arts. Every content, every 11sort of spiritual or natural fact, event, history, deed, action, all conditions, whether ideal or external, fall within the domain and configurative powers of poetry.

(γ) Material of this most varied character is not, however, made poetical merely by reason of the fact that it is in a general way the content of idea. Ordinary consciousness is able to elaborate precisely the same content in the field of ideas, and to particularize concepts without creating any poetical result. We recognized this fact when we called the concept of mind merely the material or medium, which only receives a form adapted for poetry, in so far as it partakes of a novel configuration by virtue of art. In precisely the same way mere colour and tone in their immediacy are not as such the colour or tone of a painter or a musician. We may in a general way describe the distinction by stating that it is not the idea as such, but the imagination of the artist which creates a poetical content, under conditions, that is, in which the imagination grasps the same content in such a way that it is itself therewith associated in language, words and their more beautiful conjunction as human speech, just as in the other arts we find it present in the architectonic form; the plastic of sculpture, that adapted to painting, or musical tones and harmony.

A further necessary limitation of the art’s appearance is this that the content must, on the one hand, not be embraced in relations applicable to mere thinking, whether that of science or speculative philosophy, nor further in the form of inarticulate emotion, or with a clarity and self-sufficiency which appeals exclusively to the organs of sense;¹ neither, in another direction, must it suffer the idea to pass entirely into what we may in general terms describe as the contingency, divisions, and relativity of finite reality. The imagination of the poet in this respect must maintain a middle course between the abstract universality of pure thinking and the concrete corporeality of material objects, in so far as we are acquainted with the latter in the productions of the plastic arts. Furthermore such an art must generally conform to the requirements we have, in an early section of this work, insisted as essential to every art-product. In other 12words, the art itself must find in its content the adequate object of its appearance, must elaborate everything, which it embraces, so far as the interest appeals to the intelligence simply,¹ as an essentially independent and self-exclusive world. Only in so far as it does this is the demand of art satisfied, and the content thereof becomes, by virtue of the specific mode of its manifestation, an organic whole, which in its parts presents the appearance of a limited association and ideal synthesis, while at the same time, as contrasted with the world of accidental subordinations, its consistency is one of essential freedom, a whole made explicit through itself.

3. The last point to which we must in conclusion draw attention in respect to this distinction between poetry and the other arts is connected with the different mode under which the imagination of the poet substantiates its ideas in the objective medium of its exposition. The arts hitherto considered were entirely serious in their attachment to the material of sense, a medium in which they themselves were operative, in so far as they merely bestowed on their content a form, which could be throughout accepted and elaborated by means of conglomerations of material substance, whether bronze, marble, or wood, or the media of colour and tones.² In a certain sense, no doubt, poetry also has to meet a condition somewhat similar. That is to say, in poetical composition we must not overlook the fact that its results have to be intelligible to mind by means of the communication of human speech. But we shall find none the less that the situation in the two cases is essentially altered.

(a) Otherwise expressed, by reason of the importance pertaining to the material aspect in the plastic arts and music, we find that, as a result of the defined restrictions of this material, only a limited number of conceptions can be fully reproduced in a particularized form of reality such as stone, colour, and tone: the content therefore and the possibilities of artistic composition are narrowed within very definable limits. It was on account of this fact that we were able to associate closely and exclusively every one of 13these specific arts with one particular form of artistic creation pre-eminently adapted to it. In this way the form of symbolism was appropriate to architecture; the classical to sculpture, and the romantic to painting and music. It is no doubt true that the particular arts in both directions from and toward their proper domain tended to pass over into the other forms. We took account of this fact when we found it possible to refer to a classic and romantic style of architecture; a symbolical and Christian type of sculpture, and even used the term classic in connection with painting and music. Departures such as these from the prevailing type were, however, merely experimental essays which prepared the way in subordination to a new type rather than its culminating effort or they showed us how one art tended to pass beyond its true limits in seeking to grasp a content or a relation to its material of a type that only a further art development could adequately elaborate. Generally speaking, we have seen that architecture has least resource in the expression of its content; in sculpture there is already an increase of possibility, which is further extended to its widest range¹ by painting and music. And the reason of this is that in proportion as the ideality and particularization under all its aspects by the external medium is made more explicit the variety of the content and of the forms it receives also increases.

Poetry, on the other hand, casts itself free of all subordination to the material of sense, at least to this extent, that in the definition of external or objective expression no reason whatever remains why it should restrict itself to specific content or any limitation to its power of composition and reproduction. It is therefore exclusively united to no specific art types rather we may define it as the universal art, which is capable of reclothing and expressing under every conceivable mode every content that can possibly enter into or proceed from the imagination of man. And it can do this because its material is nothing more or less than the imagination itself, which is the universal root and ground of all the particular arts and their specific types.

We have already, in another connection, when concluding our discussion of the particular artistic types, come across 14what was practically the same thing. What we sought for, then, in our conclusion was that art in one of its types should make itself independent of that mode of representation properly called specific, remaining thereby predominant above the entire sphere in which such a totality of particularization is reproduced. An elaboration so comprehensive is among all the particular arts by the very nature of the case only possible to poetry. Its realization is effected through the development of poetical creation in part by means of the actual reconstitution of every particular type, and partly by the liberation of the mode of conception and its content from the boundaries fixed for it in the essentially exclusive types of conception, whose character we have severally defined as symbolical, classical, and romantic.

(b) The above considerations will further serve to justify the position, which, in the course of our inquiry, regarded as the development of a philosophy, we previously assigned to the art of poetry. In other words by reason of the fact that poetry is, to a degree quite impossible to any other mode of artistic production, concerned with the universal simply as such in Art, we might appear to have some reason for insisting that it marks the commencement of an investigation in the full sense of the word philosophical, and only from such a starting point can we enter into the sphere of particularization, in which we find the series of the other arts as limited and determined by their specific sensuous medium. Looking back, however, at the result arrived at in our investigation of the particular art types we shall find that the course of philosophical evolution consisted, first, in an increased penetration of the ideal content, and, from another point of view, in the demonstration that originally Art sets forth in the search, then in the discovery of and finally with an advance beyond that content compatible with its powers. This notion of the beautiful and Art must enforce itself in the arts themselves. The starting-point of our inquiry, therefore, was architecture, in which we found merely an impulse toward the complete representation of what pertains to Spirit in a material medium. This is so much the case that it is only through sculpture that art first attains to a genuine interfusion of ideality with the medium; and further that only in the arts of painting and music do 15we reach the stage where, by virtue of the ideal and subjective character of their content, we find the perfected fusion effected no less under the aspect of conception than that of practical execution in the medium accepted. This process culminates most decisively in poetry, by virtue of the fact that the very nature of its objective realization can only be apprehended as an effort to draw apart from and cancel the material of sense rather than one of reproduction which does not as yet venture to clothe itself and move in the objective medium of sense-perception. In order, however, to make this liberation intelligible in philosophical terms it is of importance that we have already disposed of the question what it is from which art undertakes to liberate itself. This question stands in close relation to the fact that poetry is essentially capable of embracing the entirety of intelligible content and artistic modes of expression. We may add further that we have viewed this as the acceptance of a totality, which can only be interpreted philosophically as the abrogation of limitation in particularity. Our previous consideration of what we mean by things that are one-sided would be involved in such an exposition, the self-exclusive character of such one-sidedness being cancelled by such a totality.

It is only through the course of such an exposition that we can effectively demonstrate that poetry is the specific art in which a point is reached which marks the beginning of the disintegration of art itself, a point at which the philosophical consciousness discovers its bridge of passage to the notion of religion as such, as also to the prose of scientific thought. The boundary lines of the realm of beauty are, as we have already seen, on the one hand the prose of finite condition and our ordinary conscious life, starting from which Art makes its effort in the direction of truth, and, on the other, of the loftier spheres of religion and science, from which it passes over into a comprehension of the Absolute still more emancipate from all material association.

(c) Despite therefore the completeness with which the art of poetry reproduces, under a mode of objectification that is most ideal, the entire totality of Beauty, nevertheless intelligence is able to discover even here too in this final domain of art a residue of defect. We may for this purpose 16within our art-system directly contrast the poetic art with that of architecture. In other words architecture was still unable to subordinate the external material to the ideal content sufficiently to clothe the same in a form adequate to mind; poetry on the other hand carries the process of negating its sensuous medium so far that instead of transforming that which stands in opposition to gross spatial matter, namely tone, as architecture does with its material into a significant symbol, it rather reduces it to a mere sign of no significance. But by doing so it destroys the fusion of spiritual ideality with external existence, so thoroughly that to this extent it ceases to be compatible with the original notion of Art. In other words it comes dangerously near to bidding goodbye to the region of sense altogether, remaining wholly absorbed in that of ideality. The fair mean between these extremes of architecture and poetry is secured by sculpture, painting, and music. Every one of these arts not merely still reproduces the spiritual content completely in a medium borrowed from the objective world, but also leaves us with that which lies open to our senses, no less than our intelligence. For although painting and music, regarded as romantic arts, attach themselves to a medium already more ideal, they do none the less supply the immediacy of objective existence, which, however, in this increase of ideality, shows indications of disappearance, while again from the opposite point of view they prove themselves, through their media of colour and tone, more profuse in fulness of particularization and manifold configuration than is required from the material of sculpture.

No doubt the art of poetry in its turn also endeavours, as a set-off to this defect, to place the objective world before us with a breadth and variety which even painting, at least in a single composition, fails to secure: none the less this comprehensiveness remains throughout merely a realization confined to consciousness itself; and, if it so happens that poetry, in response to a demand for more material artistic realization, attempts to increase the impression on our senses, it is only able to do this by either borrowing these effects from music and painting, in order to secure artistic means otherwise foreign to it; or it is forced, if it seeks to 17retain its genuine character, to employ these sister arts only under a subordinate relation of service, while the main stress is laid on the ideas of conscious life, the imagination which appeals to the imagination, with which it is above all concerned.

This will suffice for discussion of the general relation under which poetry is placed to the other arts. We shall now proceed to a closer examination of the art of poetry itself, and with a view to this propose to co-ordinate the same as follows.

We have already seen that in poetry it is the ideal concept itself from which we derive content no less than medium. By reason, however, of the fact that we already find outside Art’s domain the world of idea to be the most obvious mode of conscious life, it is above everything else important to distinguish the conception of poetry from that of prose. The art of poetry, however, is not complete in this ideal world of the imagination alone. It is necessary that it should clothe the same in expressive language. It has therefore a twofold task confronting it. On the one hand it is called upon so to arrange this world of constructed idea that it may admit of complete translation into speech: on the other it must take care not to leave this medium of language in the form appropriated by ordinary conscious life. In other words such must be treated poetically in order that the expression of art may be distinguishable in the selection of words no less than their position, and even their sound from that of ordinary prose.

Furthermore, on account of the fact that, though poetry avails itself of language as a means of expression, it secures by far the most unqualified freedom from those conditions and restrictions imposed on the other arts by virtue of the particularization of their material, it is possible for a poetical composition in a pre-eminent degree to elaborate every one of the various modes of expression, otherwise adopted unaffected by the onesidedness incidental to their application to a particular art. The subdivision of such modes of expression in all their variety is consequently by far the most complete in the works of poetry.

18First, we have to elucidate what is in general terms poetical, and the poetical composition in particular.

Thirdly, we shall deal with the subdivision of the art into Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic poetry.

WE find it difficult to recall a single writer among all who have written on the subject of poetry who has not evaded the attempt to describe what is poetical as such, let alone a clear definition. And in fact if any one begins a discussion upon poetry, regarded as an art, without previously having investigated the nature of the content and mode of conception appropriate to Art in its most general terms, he will find it an extremely difficult matter to determine where we must look for that in which the essential character of poetry consists. To an exceptional degree is this failure to tackle this problem visible in those cases where a writer takes as his point of departure the actual execution in particular works of art, and seeks to establish, by means of this connoisseurship, some general principle which he may apply as relevant to every sort and kind of composition. In this way works of the most heterogeneous character come to rank as genuine poetry. If we once start from such assumptions, and then proceed to the inquiry by virtue of what productions of this nature can be reasonably classed together as poems we are at once confronted with the difficulty I have above adverted to. Happily our own position here is not that of these inquirers. In the first place we have by no manner of means arrived at the general notion of our subject-matter through an examination of any particular examples of its display; we have on the contrary sought to evolve the actual constitution of the same by a reference to the fundamental notion.¹ Agreeably with this it is not part 20of our demand that everything in ordinary parlance regarded as poetry should in our present inquiry fall into the general notion we have accepted. At least this is certainly not so in so far as the decision whether any particular work is or is not poetical is only deducible from the notion itself. Furthermore it is unnecessary now to expound more fully what we understand by the notion of poetry. To do this we should simply have to repeat again the course of our inquiry into the nature of Beauty, and the Ideal as developed in general terms in the first part of this work. The intrinsic character of what is poetical stands in general agreement with the generic notion of artistic beauty and the art-product. That is to say, the imagination of the poet is not, as is the case with the plastic arts and music by reason of the nature of the materia, through which they are reproductive, constrained in its creative activity in many directions, and forced to accept many others of a onesided or very partial completeness; it is on the contrary merely subservient to the essential requirements and general principle of an ideal and artistic presentation.

From the many different points of view applicable to our present purpose, I will attempt to emphasize merely those of most importance, as for example, first, that which relates to the distinction between the mode of composition employed respectively by poetry and prose; secondly, that which contrasts a poetical work as completed with one of prose; and, finally, I propose to add a few observations relative to the subjective faculty which creates, or, shall we say, the poet himself.

THE field of vision which first will occupy our attention, but the boundless expanse of which we can only traverse with a few general observations, is that which concerns the poetic generally, the content no less than the mode of conception and organic association adapted to the poetic work of art. This background will help to emphasize the second aspect of our subject, which is poetic expression more strictly, the idea in the ideal objectivity of the word appropriated by it as symbol of the image, and the melodious vehicle of its speech.

We may infer the nature of the relation between poetic expression generally and the mode of presentment proper to the other arts from our previous examination of the characteristics of the poetic art. Language and the sounds of words are neither a symbol of spiritual conceptions, nor an adequate mode of projecting ideality under the condition of spatial objectivity in the sense applicable to the corporeal forms of sculpture and painting, nor yet an intonation in musical sound of the entire soul. They are an abstract sign simply. As the vehicle of the poetic image or conception, however, it is necessary that this side also, in theory no less than deliberate elaboration, appear as distinct from the kind of expression appropriate to prose.

We may for this purpose emphasize with more detail three main points of distinction.

Our first point is this, that although poetic expression is throughout exclusively embodied in articulate words, and apparently as such is simply related to human speech, yet in so far as the words themselves are merely abstract signs representative of ideas, the true source of poetic speech is 57not to be discovered in the selection of particular words, and in the manner they are associated in sentences and elaborated phrases, nor in harmonious rhythm, rhyme and so forth, but in the type of conception employed. We have, in short, to look for our point of departure for the constructive use of expression in the choice of the idea or image, and our first and foremost question will be what kind of conception will give us an expression suitable to poetry. Secondly, however, it remains the fact that the imaginative idea essentially pertinent to poetry is exclusively made objective in language. We have consequently to investigate the expression of speech according to its purely verbal aspect, in the light of which poetic words are distinguishable from those of prose, poetic phrases from those of our ordinary life and prosaic thought, abstracting in the first instance the mere sound of them to our sense of hearing.

Finally, we have to recognize the fact that poetry is a mode of articulate speech, the sounding word, which in its temporal duration no less than its actual sound, must receive a definite configuration, one that implies the presence of time-measure, rhythm, melodious sound and rhyme.

THE two fundamental aspects, according to which we have hitherto examined the poetical art were, in the first instance, that of poetical significance or content in the broadest sense, the nature of the outlook of a poetical composition and the creative activity of the poet; secondly, poetical expression, not merely respectively to the ideas which have to be embodied in words, but also to the modes under which they are expressed and the character of versification.

1. What we, above all, in these respects endeavoured to enforce consisted in this, that poetry has to embrace the ideality of conscious life as its content; yet, in its artistic elaboration of the same, it cannot rest satisfied with the objective form of direct perception, as other plastic arts; nor can it accept as its form the emotional ideality which alone reverberates through our soul-life, nor yet that of thinking and the relations of reflective thought. It has to maintain a mediate position between the extremes of immediate objectivity and the inner life of feeling and thought. This intermediate sphere of conception overlaps both sides. From thought it borrows the aspect of ideal universality, which binds together the immediate particularity of the senses in more definitive simplicity; while, on the other hand, its mode of envisagement shares with plastic art the haphazard¹ juxtaposition of objects in space. The poetic imagination, moreover, is essentially distinct from thinking in that it permits, under the mode of sensuous apprehension from which it starts, particular ideas to remain in an unrelated series or 100contiguity; pure thinking, on the other hand, demands and promotes the reciprocal dependence of determinate concepts on each other, an interstructure of relations, consequential or conclusive judgments, and so forth. When, therefore, the poetical imagination in its art-products renders necessary an ideal unity of all particularity, such integration may easily meet with obstruction by virtue of the above-mentioned diffuseness¹ which the nature of its content forbids it wholly to eschew; and it is just this which puts it in the power of poetry to embody and present a content in organic and vital inter-connection of successive aspects and divisions, yet impressed at the same time with the apparent independence of these. And by this means it is possible for poetry to extend the selected content at one time rather in the direction of abstract thought, at another rather under the condition of the phenomenal world, and consequently to include within its survey the most sublime thoughts of speculative philosophy, no less than the external objects of Nature, always provided that the former are not put forward in the logical forms of ratiocination and scientific deduction, or the latter as void of all vital or other significance. The function, in short, of poetry is to present a complete world, whose ideal or essential content must be spread before us under the external guise of human actions, events, and other manifestations of soul-life, with all the wealth and directness compatible with such art.

2. This explication, however, does not receive its sensuous embodiment in stone, wood, or colour, but exclusively in language, whose versification, accentuation, and the rest are in fact the trappings² of speech, by means of which the ideal content secures an external form. If we ask ourselves now, to put the thing somewhat crudely, where we are to look for the material consistency of this mode of expression, we must reply that language is not essentially on all fours with a work³ of plastic art, independent, that is, of the 101artistic creator, but it is the life of our humanity itself, the individual speaker alone who is the vehicle of the sensuous presence and actuality of a poetical work. The compositions of poetry must be recited, sung, acted, reproduced, in short, by living people, just as the compositions of music are so reproduced. We are no doubt accustomed to read epic and lyric poetry, and only to hear drama recited and to see the same accompanied by gesture. Poetry, however, is essentially and according to its notion, sonorous expression, and we may, in particular, not dispense with this, if a complete exposition of the art is our aim, for the reason that it is the aspect and the only aspect, under which it comes into genuine contact with objective existence. The printed or written letter is, no doubt, also in a sense objectively present, but it is merely as the indifferent symbol of sounds and words. We no doubt have in a previous passage regarded words as the purely external means which give us the signification of ideas. We must not, however, overlook the fact that poetry, at any rate, so informs the temporal element and sound of these signs, as to ennoble them in a medium suffused with the ideal vitality of that, whereof, in their abstractness, they are the symbols. The printing press merely makes visible to our eyes this form of animation under a mode which, taken by itself; is essentially indifferent and no longer coalescent with the ideal content; it consigns it, in its altered form of visibility, to the element of time-duration and the sound of ordinary speech,¹ instead of giving us in fact the accented word and its determinate time-duration. When we, therefore, content ourselves with mere reading we do so partly owing to the ease with which we can thus picture to ourselves what is real as actually uttered in speech, partly because of the undeniable fact that 102poetry alone among the arts, in aspects of fundamental importance, is already completely at home in the life of spirit, and neither the impression of it on our sense of sight or hearing give us the root of the matter. Yet for all that, precisely by virtue of this ideality, poetry, as art, ought not wholly to divest itself of this aspect of objective expression, if at least it is anxious to avoid an incompleteness similar to that in which, for instance, the mere outlined drawing attempts to reproduce the picture of famous colourists.

3. As an artistically organic whole referred no longer to a specific type of exclusive execution on account of the onesided character of its medium, the art of poetry accepts in a general way for its determinate form various types of art-production, and it is consequently necessary to borrow the criteria of our classification of such poetical types or species from the general notion of artistic production.¹

(A) In this respect it is, first, and from one point of view, the form of objective reality, wherein poetry reproduces the evolved content of conscious life in the ideal image, and therewithal essentially repeats the principle of plastic art, which makes the immediate object of fact visible. These plastic figures of the imagination, poetry furthermore unveils as determined in the activities of human and divine beings, so that every thing, which takes place, issues in part from ethically self-subsistent human or divine forces, and in part also, by virtue of obstructive agencies, meets with a reaction, and thus, in its external form of manifestation, becomes an event, in which the facts in question disclose themselves in free independence, and the poet retires into the background. To grasp such events in a consequential whole is the task of Epic poetry, inasmuch as its aim is just to declare poetically, and in the form of the actual facts, either an essentially complete action, or the personalities, from which the same proceeds in its substantive worth or its eventful complexity amid the medley of external accidence. And by so doing it represents the objective fact itself in its objectivity.

103And, moreover, the minstrel does not recite this positive world before conscious sense and feeling in a way that would seem to announce it as his personal phantasy, and his own heart’s passion; rather this reciter or rhapsodist recites it by heart, in a mechanical sort of way, and in a metre which, while it repeats something of this monotony with its uniformity of structure, rolls onward in a tranquil and steady stream. What, in short, the minstrel narrates must appear as a part of real life, which, in respect to content no less than presentation, stands in absolute independence aloof from himself, the narrator; he is throughout, in relation that is to the facts of his tale no less than the manner in which he unfolds them, not permitted wholly to identify his own personality with their substance.

(B) In direct contrast to epic poetry we have our second type, that namely of lyrical poetry. Its content is that within ourselves, the ideal world, the contemplative or emotional life of soul, which instead of following up actions, remains at home with itself in its own ideal realm, and, consequently, is able to accept self-expression as its unique and indeed final end. Here we have, therefore, no substantive totality, self-evolved as external fact or event, but the express outlook, emotion and observation of the individual’s self-introspective life shares in what is substantive and actual therein as its own, as its passion, mood or reflection; we have here the birth of its own loins. Such a fulfilment and ideal process is not adequately realized in a mechanical delivery such as we saw was conceded as appropriate to epic poetry. On the contrary the singer must give utterance to the ideas and views of lyrical art as though they were the expression of his own soul, his own emotions. And inasmuch as it is this innermost world, which the delivery has to animate, the expression of it will above all lean to the musical features of poetical reproduction; whether permitted as an embellishment or a necessity we shall here meet with the varied modulation of the voice, either in recitation or song, and the accompaniment of musical instruments.

(C) Our third and final mode of poetical composition unites the two previous ones in a new totality. In this we not only discover an objective exposition, but also can trace 104its source in the ideal life of particular people; what is objective here is therefore portrayed as appertinent to the conscious life of individuals.¹ To put the case conversely, the conscious life of individuals is on the one hand unfolded as it passes over into actual life experience, and on the other as involved in the fatality of events, which brings about passion in causal and necessary connection with the individual’s own action. We have here, therefore, as in Epic poetry, an action expanded to our view in its conflicts and issues; spiritual forces come to expression and battle; the element of contingency is everywhere involved, and human activity is either brought into contact with the energy of an omnipotent destiny, or a directive and world-ruling Providence. Human action, however, does not here only pass before our vision in the objective form of its actual occurrence, as an event of the Past resuscitated by the narrative alone; on the contrary, it is made to appear as actually realized in the particular volition, morality or immorality of the specific characters depicted, which thereby become central in the principle of lyric poetry. Add to this, however, that such individuals are not merely disclosed in their inner experience as such; they also declare themselves in the execution of passion directed to ends; whereby they offer a criterion—in the way that epic poetry asserts what is substantive in its positive reality² for the evaluation of those passions and the aims which are directed to the objective conditions and rational laws of the concrete world; and it is, moreover, by this very test of the worth and conditions, under which such individuals continue in their resolve to abide, that their destiny is discovered by implication. This objective presence, which proceeds from the personality itself, no less than this personal experience,³ which is reproduced in its active realization and all that declares its worth in the world, is Spirit in its own living totality; it is this which, as action, supplies both form and content to dramatic Poetry.

105Moreover, inasmuch as this concrete whole is itself no less essentially conscious life than it is, under the aspect of its external realization, also a self-manifestation, quite apart from all question of local or other artistic means of realization, we are bound, in respect to this representation of actual facts, to meet the claim of genuine poetry that we should have the entire personality of the individual envisaged; only as such the living man himself is actually that which is expressed. For though, on the one hand, in the drama, as in lyric poetry, a character ought to express the content of its own soul-life as a veritable possession, yet, from another point of view, it asserts itself, when, in its entire personality it is confronted with other personalities, as effective in its practical existence, and comes thereby into active contact with the world around it, by means of which it attaches itself immediately to an active disposition,¹ which, quite as truly as articulate speech, is an expression of the soul-life, and requires its artistic treatment. Already we find in lyrical poetry some close approach to the apportionment of various emotions among different individual speakers, and the distribution of its subject-matter in acts or scenes.

In the drama, then, subjective emotion passes on likewise to the expression of action; and, by so doing, renders necessary the manifestation to our senses of the play of gesture which concentrates the universality of language in a closer relation with the expression of personality,² and by means of position, demeanour, gesticulation and other ways is individualized and completed. If, however, this aspect of deportment is carried forward by artistic means to a degree of expression, that it can dispense with speech, we have the art of pantomime, which resolves the rhythmical movement of poetry in a harmonious and picturesque motion of limbs, and in this, so to speak, plastic music of bodily position and movement gives animated life in the dance to the tranquil and cold figures of sculpture, that it may essentially unite by such means music and the plastic art.

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

First, we shall attempt to describe the general character of what is Epical:

Secondly, we shall proceed to some particular features, which in respect to the real Epos are of exceptional importance:

Thirdly, we shall enumerate by name certain specific methods of treatment, which have been actually in use in particular epic compositions within the historical elaboration of the type.

The poetic imagination does not, as the plastic arts do, present the objects of its creation before our vision in an objective shape, but only envisages them to the inward vision and emotions. No doubt from the first, relatively to certain aspects of this universal type of composition, it is the personal quality of ideal creation and construction which pre-eminently asserts itself in the presented work, and as such is to be contrasted with plastic construction. But when epic poetry offers to our contemplation its object either in its substantive universality, or under a mode comparable with that of sculptor and painter—in other words, in its living presence—in that case, at least where the art is most consummate, the individual mind and soul of the creator involved in the creation disappears before the objective result created. The above personal or subjective aspect of mind can only completely be discarded in so far as, in the first place, the entire world of objects and relations are essentially absorbed by it and then permitted to stand forth freely from the veiled presence of the individual consciousness, and, further, in so far as the self-centred soul unbars its doors, opens wide its ears and eyes, extends the purely unenlightened feeling to vision and idea, and attaches to this wealth of hidden content word and speech as the vehicle of its intimate self-expression. And just in proportion as this kind of communication persists in shutting itself away from the objective manifestation of epic art, to that extent, and precisely for that reason, the subjective type of poetry is bound to find its own forms, in a province of its own, wholly independent of the Epos. In other words, the human spirit descends from the objectivity of the object into its own private domain; it peers into its particular conscious life; it endeavours to satisfy the desire to reproduce the presence and reality of that, as displayed in soul, in the experience of heart and reflected idea, and in doing so to unfold the content and activity of the personal life rather than the actual presence of the external fact. But, again, inasmuch as this 194expression, if it is not simply to remain the chance expression of mere individuality¹ in its immediate feeling and conception, must assert itself in speech as the reflection of an inner life that is poetic, all that is thus envisaged of feeling or otherwise—and however much, too, it may be a part of the poet’s unique personality, and be presented by him as such—must nevertheless possess a universal validity, in other words, it must essentially include feelings and reflections for which the art of poetry is able to discover the vital and adequate means of expression. And although, apart from this, pain and desire, as conceived, described, and expressed in speech, may lighten the heart, and poetic ebullition is unquestionably permissible for such a purpose, yet its function is not restricted to such domestic service. Rather it has a nobler vocation, which is not so much to liberate the human spirit from emotion, but in the medium of the same. The blind tumult of passion surges on in a union with the entire soul-life unenlightened, unawakened to the grasp of mind. In such a state the soul cannot assert itself in idea and expression. It is the function of poetry no doubt to free the heart from such a prison house, in so far as it presents that life as an object to it. But it does more than this mere translation of content from the immediacy of emotional experience; it creates therefrom an object which is purified from all mere contingency of the passing mood; an object in which the soul-life in this deliverance returns once more to itself freely and with self-conscious satisfaction, and remains there at home. Conversely, however, this primary objectivisation ought not to be carried to the point of a reflection that actually discloses the individual activity of the soul-life and its passions as it is carried forward in practical impulse and action; in other words, in the self-return of the individual upon himself in veritable deed. For the most pertinent reality of our inner life is still itself an inward something, and consequently this passage from itself can only give us the sense of deliverance from the immediate concentration of heart in its blind and formless presence, which now unbars itself in self-expression, and in doing so grasps and expresses what was previously merely felt in the form of a self-conscious vision and ideas. And with these remarks I 195think we have determined in their essential features both the sphere and function of lyric poetry as contrasted with the epic and dramatic types.

As regards the more detailed examination and classification of our new subject-matter, we cannot do better than follow the course previously adopted in our examination of epic poetry.

Secondly, we shall consider the particular characteristics which make the lyric work of art and the types of the same worthy of attention in their more direct relation to the lyric poet.

Thirdly, we shall conclude the survey with a few remarks upon the historical development of this class of poetic work.

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

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:

First, 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.

249Secondly, 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.

Accompaniment, Music as, iii, 377-379, 413-418; of human voice, iii, 383.

Æschylus, reference to the “Agamemnon,” i, 285; to the “Eumenides,” i, 302, 303, 372; ii, 213-215, 223; iv, 306, 324; to the “Coephorae,” and the “Seven before Thebes,” iv, 318; change of scene in his dramas, iv, 257; universal powers in dramas, i, 377; character of Clytemnaestra, ii, 345.

Æsop, Fables of, ii, 115.

Anacreon, odes of, iv, 203, 233.

Aphrodite, description of, iii, 185.

Architecture, types of classical, iii, 80-90; Roman, iii, 87-88; Gothic, iii, 91-104; Byzantine, iii, 105.

Aristophanes, subject-matter of his comedies, iv, 277, 283, 304, 329; himself an actor, iv, 286; his “Ecclesiazusae,” iv, 303.

Aristotle, reference to the “Poetics,” i, 19; on tragedy, i, 283; on use of simile, ii, 143; proper subject of tragedy, iv, 131; on unities of time and place, iv, 256.

Artist, as executant, iii, 426-430.

Athene, nature of as goddess of Athens, iv, 325.

Bach, J. S., supreme master of ecclesiastical music, iii, 419.

Beethoven, L. van, soul-release in art’s freedom, iii, 349; symphonies of. iii, 355 n.

351c2Bosanquet, B., references to translation of Hegel’s Introduction by in present translator’s notes, i, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 40, 45, 52, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 73, 76, 88, 93, 96, 100, 108, 109, 116, 181.

Bradley, A. C., reference to Lectures on Poetry, i, 265 n.

Bradley, F. H., i, 73, 96 n.

Brahman, supreme godhead in Hindu theosophy, ii, 50-61, 91.

Calderon, quotation from, ii, 542; comparisons of, ii, 149.

Camoens, the “Lysiad” of, iv, 190.

Cervantes, type of comedy in “Don Quixote,” i, 262; ii, 374; dissolution of chivalry as depicted by Cervantes and Ariosto, ii, 373.

Chivalry, general description of, iv, 185-187.

Chorus, Greek, nature of, iv, 315-317.

Cid, the Spanish poem of the, description of, iv, 182; heroic personality of the, ii, 348; iv, 138-140; nature of collision in, i, 321.

Columns, Greek, iii, 69-76; orders of, iii, 82-85; on the Greek temple generally, iii, 79.

Creutzer, his work on symbolism, iii, 17, 18; affinity of Egyptian and Hellenic art on coins, iii, 203. See also ii, 138; iii, 39, 41.

Cuvier, analytical power of, i, 176.

352Dante, conciseness of, i, 350; allegory in, ii, 19; on the love of Beatrice, iii, 340; description of the damned, iii, 319; the “Divine Comedy” contrasted with “Æneid” and “Odyssey” as epical narrative, iv, 163; general description of “Divine Comedy,” iv, 184.

Denner, realistic portraits of, iii, 270

Destiny, supreme significance of in Epos, iv, 144; fate in tragedy, iv, 312, 322; as necessity, iv, 254. See also particularly as to Greek art, ii, 261-264.

Drapery. See under Sculpture.

Dutch School, description of, i, 228-230; ii, 382-386; iii, 334-337; landscape in art of, i, 397; colouring of, iii, 276.

Einbildungskraft, meaning of as distinct from Phantasie and Vorstellung. i, 55 n., 62 n., 381 n.

Euripides, the “Alcestis” of, i, 275; treatment of love in the Phedra, iii, 340; transition of drama of to sentimental pathos, iv, 321.

Eyck, H. van, supreme conception of God the Father, iii, 252; his picture of the Madonna, iii, 255; his “Adoration,” iii, 262; description of brothers Hubert and John, iii, 330.

Ferdusi, “Shahrameh” of, i, 251, 277.

Fichte, his position in history of Æsthetic Philosophy, i, 89-91.

Flesh-colour, nature of, in painting, iii, 285.

Giotto, reforms of, in painting, iii, 322.

Goethe, definition of the beautiful by, i, 21, 36-38, 91; reference to his “Iphigeneia,” i, 262, 304-306, 373; iv, 307; to 352c2“Faust,” iv, 333; to his Tasso, iv, 307; to “Hermann and Dorothea,” i, 256, 353; to “Werther,” i, 271, 321; to the “Bride of Corinth,” ii, 270; to the “Westöstlicher Divan,” i, 372; ii, 96, 400; iv, 233; to “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” iii, 289; to the “King of Thule,” ii, 363; his “Mignon,” iii, 298; his theory of colour, i, 117 n.; on the innate reason of nature, i, 179; Goethe on Hamlet, i, 307; ii, 364; his pathos contrasted with that of Schiller, i, 313; rivalry of with Shakespeare, iv, 338; quotation from Goetz von Burlichengen, i, 366; the ripeness of his maturity, i, 384; on Gothic architecture, iii, 76; Xenien of, ii, 145; on harmonious colouring, iii, 283; supreme quality of folk-songs of, 386; songs of comradeship, iv, 205; prose in his dramas, iv, 71; imitation of Icelandic, iv, 208; as a Lyric poet generally, iv, 217.

Greek art, origin of in freedom, ii, 183; content of, ii, 184-6; Gods of, ii, 224-228; iii, 183-186, 188; absence of the sublime in, ii, 237; incapable of repetition, iii, 396; Greek epigrams, ii, 398; character of dramatis personae in Greek art, iv, 317-320.

Greek chorus. See under Chorus.

Greek mysteries. See under Mysteries.

Greek oracles. See under Oracles.

Hafis, Lyrics of, iv, 237; quotation from, ii, 94, 95, 147.

Helmholtz, researches of in music, iii, 390 n.

Herder, his conception of Volkslied, i, 364.

Herodotus, statement of as to Homer and Hesiod, ii, 190, 231; his account of temple of Belus, iii, 37; date of his history’s 353commencement, iv, 39; on battle of Thermopylae, iv, 23; as general authority for Egyptian history and art, see vol. iii, ch. i.

Hesiod, mythology of, ii, 63, 64, 167, 216; reference to his “Works and Days,” iv, 108.

Hindoos, architecture of, iii, 48-51; religion of, ii, 47-64.

Hippel, humour of his “Life’s Careers,” ii, 365.

Hirt, connoisseur, his emphasis on the characteristic, i, 22-24; on origins of architecture, iii, 27; on Memnons, iii, 41; on the original materials of building, iii, 66.

Homer, vividness of his characterization, i, 225, 235; the heroes of, i, 250; starting-point of Iliad in wrath of Achilles, i, 290; iv, 30, 156, 167; hero as focus of many traits, i, 316; landscape in, i, 341; iv, 123, 154; type of society in Iliad, i, 352, 377; whether personal experience of poet, i, 357; iv, 122; his use of simile, ii, 154; quotations from the Iliad, ii, 154, 155; sacrifices in the Iliad, ii, 192; unity of Homeric god-world, ii, 219; human motives defined through god’s action, ii, 234, 235; freedom of Greek gods in, ii, 239; individuality of gods in, ii, 242-258; poet later than the Trojan war, iv, 124.

Horace, Ars Poetica of, i, 19, 69; artificial character of his Odes, iv, 229.

Iffland, reference to, iv, 290, 344; superficial quality of, ii, 381.

Immortality, contrast of conception in Pagan and Christian thought, ii, 287-290.

Irony, the views of Schlegel, Solger and Tieck on, i, 90-94; iv, 271.

353c2

Jacobi, the “Woldemar” of, i, 322.

Kant, Immanuel, relation of his philosophy to Philosophy of Aesthetik, i, 78-84, 149, 154 n.; on the sublime, iii, 86, 87.

Klopstock, his rank as an Epic poet, iv, 150-152; his personality, iv, 216, 244, 245; partly artificial enthusiasm, iv, 229.

Kotzebue, popular effects of, i, 362; superficial rapidity of, ii, 381; bad composition of, iv, 290; ethical baseness of, iv, 304.

Landscape gardening, i, 332-333.

Laocoon, statue group, iii, 191.

Lessing, his introduction of prose into drama, iv, 71; didactic drama of, iv, 277.

Libretto, nature of good, iii, 355-357.

Light, the nature of as an element, ii, 225-226.

Longinus, his Essay on the Sublime, i, 19.

Lötze. See i, 82 n.

Luther. See ii, 53.

Memnons, iii, 41-43.

Meredith, George, i, 36 n., 216 n.; ii, 339 n.; iv, 347 n.

Michelangelo, his power to depict devils, iii, 307. See also, i, 224 n.; iii. 27 n.

Molière, character of comedies of, iv, 345-347.

Mozart, example of precocity, i, 37 n.; symphonies of, iii, 385; Libretto of his “ Magic Flute,” iii, 415; just mean of splendour in opera, iv, 291.

Mysteries, Greek, ii, 221.

Natural, the natural in art as distinct from the barbarous or childish, iii, 6-8; natural diction in Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, iv, 265-267.

354Oracles, Greek, ii, 205-208.

Originality, nature of in art, i, 394-405.

Ossian, character of his heroes, i, 343; similes of, ii, 151, 153; authorship of, iv, 146, 180. See also iv, 114, 127.

Ovid, Metamorphoses of, ii, 126; similes of, ii, 152, 198.

Pathos, nature of, i, 308-325; pathos of drama, iv, 265; that of Goethe and Schiller compared, i, 313.

Pheidias, school of, i, 235; materials used by, iii, 199; the plastic ideal of, iii, 133; Elgin marbles, iii, 138; the “Zeus” of, iii, 117, 184.

Pindar, Odes of as occasional, i, 271; his odes compared with elegies of Callinus and Tyrtaeus, iv, 201; Pythian priestess on his merit, iv, 216; enthusiasm of, iv, 229; his creative gift, iv, 241.

Plastic, personality, of Greeks, as Pericles, Pheidias and Sophocles, iii, 133.

Plato, relation of his philosophy to the universal concept or notion, i, 27, 28, 197; his relation to art generally, i, 141; citation from, i, 210; his use of simile, ii, 143.

Portraiture, in painting, iii, 307-311.

Praxiteles, iii, 190.

Prometheus, ii, 209-215.

Psalms, Hebrew, general character of, i, 378; illustrate the sublime, ii, 102-104; iv, 226-228.

Pyramids, the, iii, 55.

Racine, the “Esther” of, i, 361; his Phèdre, i, 321.

Ramajana, the, episodes from, ii, 51-53, 61. See also iv, 110, 112, 165, 175.

Raphael, general references to, i, 37, 212, 380, 385; possesses 354c2“great” manner with Homer and Shakespeare, i, 405; his Madonna pictures, iii, 227; cartoons of, iii, 242; mythological subjects, iii, 245; his “Sistine Madonna,” iii, 255, 262, 304; his “School of Athens,” iii, 254; vitality of drawings of, iii, 275; perfection of technique, iii, 328; translator’s criticism on extreme praise of Raphael and Correggio, iii, 329 n.

Reni, Guido, sentimental mannerisms of, iii, 264.

Richter, J. P., Kaleidoscopic effects of, i, 402; sentimentalism of, ii, 365; humour of compared with Sterne’s, ii, 387.

Rösel, Author of “Diversions of Insect life,” i, 59.

Rumohr, von, Author on Aesthetic Philosophy, i, 148, 232; on style, i, 399; on Italian painters and in particular, Duccio, Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Perugino, Raphael and Correggio, iii, 316-330.

Ruskin, J., i, 62 n., 72 n., 230 n.

Sachs, Hans, religious familiarity of, i, 359

Satire, in Plautus and Terence, ii, 277; iv, 305; in Sallust and Tacitus, ii, 278; not successful in modern times, ii, 279; belongs to third type after tragic and comic drama, iv, 305.

Schelling, Art Philosophy of, iii, 23 n.

Schiller, rawness of early work, iii, 38; his “Letters on Aesthetic,” i, 84-86; quotation from, i, 214; reference to “Braut von Messina,” i, 258; to “Kabale und Liebe,” i, 261; iv, 333; to Wallenstein,” iv, 288; to the “Maid of Orleans,” i, 261; iv, 291, 339; extreme scenic effect of the latter drama, iv, 291; narrative too epical in same drama, iv, 161; 355reference to “ Wilhelm Tell,” i, 379; pathos of Schiller, i, 394: his use of metaphor, ii, 144; attitude to Christianity, ii, 268; profundity of, iii, 414; character of his songs, iv, 207, 239; his criticism of Goethe’s Iphigeneia, iv, 275; leaves much to actor, iv, 288.

Schlegel, F. von, Aesthetic theory of, i, 87-89; art as allegory, ii, 134; statement of, that architecture is frozen music, iii, 65.

Sculpture, drapery of, iii, 165-171; materials of, iii, 195-201; Egyptian, iii, 203-210; Etruscan, iii, 211; Christian, iii, 213; the Laocoon group, iii, 178-191; soul-suffering of, iii, 256.

Shakespeare, William, materials of his dramas, i, 255, 324; reference to drama “Macbeth,” i, 277; to Lady Macbeth, i, 324; to witches of “Macbeth,” i, 307; ii, 366; to “Macbeth,” iv, 337, 341; to “Hamlet,” ii, 378; iv, 334, 342; to “Othello,” iv, 337; to “Falstaff,” ii, 375; to tragedy of “Othello,” i, 283; to “King Lear,” i, 296; to “Romeo and Juliet,” i, 319; iv, 342; to “Richard III,” iv, 341; the clowns of, i, 320; the fool in “King Lear,” ii, 375; quotations from “Richard II,” ii, 141, 159; from “Romeo and Juliet,” ii, 153; from “Henry IV,” ii, 158; from “ Henry VIII,” ii, 159, 160; from “Julius Caesar,” ii, 260; from “Macbeth,” ii, 160; from “Anthony and Cleopatra,” ii, 161; mythical material of dramas, i, 351 n.; his historical dramas, i, 374; his use of metaphor, ii, 144, 156; the fidelity of Kent in “King Lear,” ii, 346; self-consistency of characters, ii, 356-358; iv, 340; intelligence of vulgar characters, ii, 366, 373; subsidiary interest of part of material in 355c2dramas, iv, 260; vitality of characterization, iv, 274, and in particular, iv, 337; superiority in modem comedy, iv, 348.

Sophocles, reference to the “Philoctetes,” i, 275, 301; iv, 306; to “Œdipus Rex,” i, 276; iv, 319; to the “Antigone,” i, 293; ii, 215; iv, 318; to “Œdipus Coloneus,” i, 503; iv, 319; to the “Electra,” iv, 318; the choruses of, i, 371; no unity of place in the “Ajax,” iv, 257; quotation from “Œdipus Coloneus,” ii, 222; treatment of love in the “Antigone,” ii, 339; praise of the “Antigone” as work of art, iv, 324; the “Œdipus Coloneus” as a drama of reconciliation, iv, 325.

Style, significant of vitality, iii, 9; the beautiful style, iii, 10; the great style, ii, 400; educated style of Roman poetry, iii, 11.

Tasso, his “Jerusalem Liberated,” iv, 141. See also iv, 132, 149, 159, 189, and for Goethe’s play under head of Goethe.

Thorwaldsen, the “Mercury” of, i, 270.

Tieck, novels of, ii, 167; and for both Tieck and Solger under “Irony.”

Van-Dyck, the portraiture of described, iii, 292.

Velasquez, reference to Turner and Velasquez, i, 336 n. See also iii, 337 n.

Vergil, artifice of V. and Horace, iv, 69; eclogues of compared with idylls of Theocritus, iv, 170. The “Æneid” as a national Epos, iv, 179.

Versification, rhythmical of ancients discussed, iv, 81-84. That of rhyme compared, iv, 84-98.

Vishnu, the Conserver of Life in 356Hindoo theosophy, iii, 52; second Deity in triune Trimûrtis with Brahman and Sivas, ii, 59.

Voltaire, contrasted with Shakespeare, i, 313; his “Hendriad,” iv, 132; his “Tancred” and “Mahomet,” iv, 290.

Watts, George, R.A., flesh colour 356c2of, i, 337 n.; relation to symbolism, ii, 27 n.

Weber, his “Oberon “ and “Freischütz,” i, 216.

Winckelmann, on Greek sculpture, iii, 138, 150-155, 172-176, 182, 184; on Greek coins, iii, 181.

Zend-Avesta, light-doctrine of, ii, 37-44; cultus of, ii, 44.