Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
Thus Christ pointed to the lilies of the field to knit His followers'
reliance on Providence with the phenomena of nature: and could they jet
forth in royal beauty, exceeding that of Solomon, if the inner ground of
nature were not beauty?
We may also name beauty in a certain sense a mystery, as it mediates to
us in a sensuous sign a heavenly gift of grace, that it opens to us a
view into the eternal Being, teaching us to know nature in God and God in
nature, that it brings the divine even to the perception of sense, and
establishes the energy of love and freedom as the ground, the bond, and
the end of the world.
In the midst of the temporal the eternal is made palpable and present to
us in the beautiful, and offers itself to our enjoyment. The separation
is suppressed, and the original unity, as it is in God, appears as the
first, as what holds together even the past in the universe, and what
constitutes the aim of the development in a finite accord.
The beautiful not only presents itself to us as mediator of a foreign
excellence or of a remote divinity, but the ideal and the godlike are
present in it. Hence aesthetics requires as its basis the system in
which God is known as indwelling in the world, that He is not far distant
from any one of us, but that He animates us, and that we live in Him.
Aesthetics requires the knowledge that mind is the creative force and
unity of all that is extended and developed in time and space.
The beautiful is thus, according to these later thinkers, the revelation
of God to the mind through the senses; it is the appearance of the idea.
In the beautiful spirit reveals itself to spirit through matter and the
senses; thus the entire man feels himself raised and satisfied by it. By
the unity of the beautiful with us we experience with delight that
thought and the material world are present for our individuality, that
they utter tones and shine forth in it, that both penetrate each other
and blend in it and thus become one with it. We feel one with them and
one in them.
This later view was to a great extent expressed by Schiller in his
"Aesthetical Letters."
But art and aesthetics, in the sense in which these terms are used and
understood by German philosophical writers, such as Schiller, embrace a
wider field than the fine arts. Lessing, in his "Laocoon," had already
shown the point of contrast between painting and poetry; and aesthetics,
being defined as the science of the beautiful, must of necessity embrace
poetry. Accordingly Schiller's essays on tragic art, pathos, and
sentimental poetry, contained in this volume, are justly classed under
his aesthetical writings.
This being so, it is important to estimate briefly the transitions of
German poetry before Schiller, and the position that he occupied in its
historic development.
The first classical period of German poetry and literature was contained
between A. D. 1190 and 1300. It exhibits the intimate blending of the
German and Christian elements, and their full development in splendid
productions, for this was the period of the German national epos, the
"Nibelungenlied," and of the "Minnegesang."
This was a period which has nothing to compare with it in point of
art and poetry, save perhaps, and that imperfectly, the heroic and
post-Homeric age of early Greece.
The poetical efforts of that early age may be grouped under--(1) national
epos: the "Nibelungenlied;" (2) art epos: the "Rolandslied," "Percival,"
etc.; (3) the introduction of antique legends: Veldeck's "Aeneide," and
Konrad's "War of Troy;" (4) Christian legends "Barlaam," "Sylvester,"
"Pilatus," etc.; (5) poetical narratives: "Crescentia," "Graf Rudolf,"
etc.; (6) animal legends; "Reinecke Vos;" (7) didactic poems: "Der
Renner;" (8) the Minne-poetry, and prose.
The fourth group, though introduced from a foreign source, gives the
special character and much of the charm of the period we consider. This
is the sphere of legends derived from ecclesiastical ground. One of the
best German writers on the history of German literature remarks: "If the
aim and nature of all poetry is to let yourself be filled by a subject
and to become penetrated with it; if the simple representation of
unartificial, true, and glowing feelings belongs to its most beautiful
adornments; if the faithful direction of the heart to the invisible and
eternal is the ground on which at all times the most lovely flowers of
poetry have sprouted forth, these legendary poems of early Germany, in
their lovely heartiness, in their unambitious limitation, and their pious
sense, deserve a friendly acknowledgment. What man has considered the
pious images in the prayer-books of the Middle Ages, the unadorned
innocence, the piety and purity, the patience of the martyrs, the calm,
heavenly transparency of the figures of the holy angels, without being
attracted by the simple innocence and humility of these forms, the
creation of pious artists' hands? Who has beheld them without tranquil
joy at the soft splendor poured, over them, without deep sympathy, nay,
without a certain emotion and tenderness? And the same spirit that
created these images also produced those poetical effusions, the same
spirit of pious belief, of deep devotion, of heavenly longing. If we
make a present reality of the heroic songs of the early German popular
poetry, and the chivalrous epics of the art poetry, the military
expeditions and dress of the Crusades, this legendary poetry appears as
the invention of humble pilgrims, who wander slowly on the weary way to
Jerusalem, with scollop and pilgrim's staff, engaged in quiet prayer,
till they are all to kneel at the Saviour's sepulchre; and thus
contented, after touching the holy earth with their lips, they return,
poor as they were, but full of holy comfort, to their distant home.
"While the knightly poetry is the poetry of the splendid secular life,
full of cheerful joy, full of harp-tones and song, full of tournaments
and joyous festivals, the poetry of the earthly love for the earthly
bride, the poetry of the legends is that of the spontaneous life of
poverty, the poetry of the solitary cloister cell, of the quiet,
well-walled convent garden, the poetry of heavenly brides, who without
lamenting the joys of the world, which they need not, have their joy in
their Saviour in tranquil piety and devout resignation--who attend at the
espousals of Anna and Joachim, sing the Magnificat with the Holy Mother
of God, stand weeping beneath the cross, to be pierced also by the sword,
who hear the angel harp with St. Cecilia, and walk with St. Theresa in
the glades of Paradise. While the Minne-poetry was the tender homage
offered to the beauty, the gentleness, the grace, and charm of noble
women of this world, legendary poetry was the homage given to the Virgin
Mother, the Queen of Heaven, transfiguring earthly love into a heavenly
and eternal love."
"For the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the time of woman cultus,
such as has never been before or since seen; it is also the time of the
deepest and simplest and truest, most enthusiastic and faithful
veneration of the Virgin Mary. If we, by a certain effort, manage to
place ourselves back on the standpoint of childlike poetic faith of that
time, and set aside in thought the materializing and exaggeration of the
hagiology and Mariolatry produced by later centuries, rendering the
reaction of the Reformation unavoidable--if now in our age, turned
exclusively to logical ideas and a negative dialectic, we live again by
thought in those ages of feeling and poetry--if we acknowledge all these
things to be something more than harmless play of words and fancy, and as
the true lifelike contents of the period, then we can properly appreciate
this legendary poetry as a necessary link in the crown of pearls of our
ancient poetry."
In short, the first classical period of German literature was a time of
youthful freshness, of pure harmony, plunged in verse and song, full of
the richest tones and the noblest rhythm, so that rhyme and song alone
must be looked for as the form of poetic creations. Accordingly it had
no proper prose. Like our own youth, it was a happy, free, and true
youth, it knew no prose; like us it dreamed to speechless songs; and as
we expressed our youthful language and hopes, woes and joys, in rhyme and
song, thus a whole people and age had its beautiful youth full of song
and verse tones. The life was poetry and poetry was the life.
Then came degeneracy and artifice; after that the great shock of the
Reformation; subsequently a servile and pedantic study of classical forms
without imbibing their spirit, but preparing the way for a truer art
spirit, extracted from their study by the masterly criticism of
Winckelmann and Lessing, till the second classical period of German
literature and poetry bloomed forth in full beauty, blending the national
and legendary elements so well expressed by Herder with the highest
effusions of dramatic poetry, partly creative and partly imitative of the
Greek models, in Schiller and Goethe.
Modern German literature presents a very remarkable spectacle, though far
from unique in history, for there we see criticism begetting genius.
Lessing, the founder of the modern German drama, sought to banish all
pomp from the theatre, and in doing so some critics have thought that he
banished the ideal and fell into affectation. At any rate, his
"Dramaturgy" is full of original ideas, and when he drew out the sphere
of poetry contrasted with that of painting in his "Laocoon," all Germany
resounded with his praise. "With that delight," says Goethe, "we saluted
this luminous ray which a thinker of the first order caused to break
forth from its clouds. It is necessary to have all the fire of youth to
conceive the effect produced on us by the 'Laocoon' of Lessing." Another
great contemporary, whose name is imperishable as that of art, struck a
mortal blow at a false taste in the study of the antique. Winckelmann
questioned the works of the Greek chisel with an intelligence full of
love, and initiated his countrymen into poetry by a feeling for
sculpture! What an enthusiasm he displayed for classical beauty! what a
worship of the form! what a fervor of paganism is found in its eloquent
pages when he also comments on the admirable group of the Laocoon, or the
still purer masterpiece of the Apollo of Belvedere.
These men were the vanguard of the great Germanic army; Schiller and
Goethe alone formed its main column. In them German poetry shows itself
in its perfection, and completely realizes the ideal designed for it by
the critic. Every factitious precept and conventional law was now
overthrown; these poetical Protestants broke away entirely from the yoke
of tradition. Yet their genius was not without a rule. Every work bears
in itself the organic laws of its development. Thus, although they laugh
at the famous precept of the three unities, it is because they dig still
deeper down to the root of things, to grasp the true principle from which
the precept issued. "Men have not understood," said Goethe, "the basis
of this law. The law of the comprehensive--'das Fassliche'--is the
principle; and the three unities have only value as far as they attain
it. When they become an obstacle to the comprehension it is madness to
wish to observe them. The Greeks themselves, from whom the rule is
derived, did not always follow it. In the 'Phaeton' of Euripides, and in
other pieces, there was change, place; accordingly they prefer to give a
perfect exposition of their subject, rather than blindly respect a law
never very essential in itself. The pieces of Shakspeare violate in the
highest degree the unity of time and of place; but they are full of