Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
which we need calm, and not when our faculties aspire after movement and
exercise. A morbid mind will find its cure in them, a sound soul will
not find its food in them. They cannot vivify, they can only soften.
This defect, grounded in the essence of the pastoral idyll, has not been
remedied by the whole art of poets. I know that this kind of poem is not
without admirers, and that there are readers enough who prefer an Amyntus
and a Daphnis to the most splendid masterpieces of the epic or the
dramatic muse; but in them it is less the aesthetical taste than the
feeling of an individual want that pronounces on works of art; and their
judgment, by that very fact, could not be taken into consideration here.
The reader who judges with his mind, and whose heart is sensuous, without
being blind to the merit of these poems, will confess that he is rarely
affected by them, and that they tire him most quickly. But they act with
so much the more effect in the exact moment of need. But must the truly
beautiful be reduced to await our hours of need? and is it not rather its
office to awaken in our soul the want that it is going to satisfy?
The reproaches I here level against the bucolic idyl cannot be understood
of the sentimental. The simple pastoral, in fact, cannot be deprived of
aesthetic value, since this value is already found in the mere form. To
explain myself: every kind of poetry is bound to possess an infinite
ideal value, which alone constitutes it a true poetry; but it can satisfy
this condition in two different ways. It can give us the feeling of the
infinite as to form, by representing the object altogether limited and
individualizing it; it can awaken in us the feeling of the infinite as to
matter, in freeing its object from all limits in which it is enclosed, by
idealizing this object; therefore it can have an ideal value either by an
absolute representation or by the representation of an absolute. Simple
poetry takes the former road, the other is that of sentimental poetry.
Accordingly the simple poet is not exposed to failure in value so long as
he keeps faithfully to nature, which is always completely circumscribed,
that is, is infinite as regards form. The sentimental poet, on the
contrary, by that very fact, that nature only offers him completely
circumscribed objects, finds in it an obstruction when he wishes to give
an absolute value to a particular object. Thus the sentimental poet
understands his interests badly when he goes along the trail of the
simple poet, and borrows his objects from him--objects which by
themselves are perfectly indifferent, and which only become poetical by
the way in which they are treated. By this he imposes on himself without
any necessity the same limits that confine the field of the simple poet,
without, however, being able to carry out the limitation properly, or to
vie with his rival in absolute definiteness of representation. He ought
rather, therefore, to depart from the simple poet, just in the choice of
object; because, the latter having the advantage of him on the score of
form, it is only by the nature of the objects that he can resume the
upper hand.
Applying this to the pastoral idyls of the sentimental poet, we see why
these poems, whatever amount of art and genius be displayed in them, do
not fully satisfy the heart or the mind. An ideal is proposed in it,
and, at the same time, the writer keeps to this narrow and poor medium of
pastoral life. Would it not have been better, on the contrary, to choose
for the ideal another frame, or for the pastoral world another kind of
picture? These pictures are just ideal enough for painting to lose its
individual truth in them, and, again, just individual enough for the
ideal in them to suffer therefrom. For example, a shepherd of Gessner
can neither charm by the illusion of nature nor by the beauty of
imitation; he is too ideal a being for that, but he does not satisfy us
any more as an ideal by the infinity of the thought: he is a far too
limited creature to give us this satisfaction. He will, therefore,
please up to a certain point all classes of readers, without exception,
because he seeks to unite the simple with the sentimental, and he thus
gives a commencement of satisfaction to the two opposite exigencies that
may be brought to bear on any particular part of a poem; but the author,
in trying to unite the two points, does not fully satisfy either one or
the other exigency, as you do not find in him either pure nature or the
pure ideal; he cannot rank himself as entirely up to the mark of a
stringent critical taste, for taste does not accept anything equivocal or
incomplete in aesthetical matters. It is a strange thing that, in the
poet whom I have named, this equivocal character extends to the language,
which floats undecided between poetry and prose, as if he feared either
to depart too far from nature, by speaking rhythmical language, or if he
completely freed himself from rhythm, to lose all poetic flight. Milton
gives a higher satisfaction to the mind, in the magnificent picture of
the first human pair, and of the state of innocence in paradise;--the
most beautiful idyl I know of the sentimental kind. Here nature is
noble, inspired, simple, full of breadth, and, at the same time, of
depth; it is humanity in its highest moral value, clothed in the most
graceful form.
Thus, even in respect to the idyl, as well as to all kinds of poetry, we
must once for all declare either for individuality or ideality; for to
aspire to give satisfaction to both exigencies is the surest means,
unless you have reached the terminus of perfection, to miss both ends.
If the modern poet thinks he feels enough of the Greeks' mind to vie with
them, notwithstanding all the indocility of his matter, on their own
ground, namely that of simple poetry, let him do it exclusively, and
place himself apart from all the requirements of the sentimental taste of
his age. No doubt it is very doubtful if he come up to his models;
between the original and the happiest imitation there will always remain
a notable distance; but, by taking this road, he is at all events secure
of producing a really poetic work. If, on the other hand, he feels
himself carried to the ideal by the instinct of sentimental poetry, let
him decide to pursue this end fully; let him seek the ideal in its
purity, and let him not pause till he has reached the highest regions
without looking behind him to know if the real follows him, and does not
leave him by the way. Let him not lower himself to this wretched
expedient of spoiling the ideal to accommodate himself to the wants of
human weakness, and to turn out mind in order to play more easily with
the heart. Let him not take us back to our infancy, to make us buy, at
the cost of the most precious acquisitions of the understanding, a repose
that can only last as long as the slumber of our spiritual faculties; but
let him lead us on to emancipation, and give us this feeling of higher
harmony which compensates for all his troubles and secures the happiness
of the victor! Let him prepare as his task an idyl that realizes the
pastoral innocence, even in the children of civilization, and in all the
conditions of the most militant and excited life; of thought enlarged by
culture; of the most refined art; of the most delicate social
conventionalities--an idyl, in short, that is made, not to bring back man
to Arcadia, but to lead him to Elysium.
This idyl, as I conceive it, is the idea of humanity definitely
reconciled with itself, in the individual as well as in the whole of
society; it is union freely re-established between inclination and duty;
it is nature purified, raised to its highest moral dignity; in short, it
is no less than the ideal of beauty applied to real life. Thus, the
character of this idyl is to reconcile perfectly all the contradictions
between the real and the ideal, which formed the matter of satirical and
elegiac poetry, and, setting aside their contradictions, to put an end to
all conflict between the feelings of the soul. Thus, the dominant
expression of this kind of poetry would be calm; but the calm that
follows the accomplishment, and not that of indolence--the calm that
comes from the equilibrium re-established between the faculties, and not
from the suspending of their exercise; from the fulness of our strength,
and not from our infirmity; the calm, in short, which is accompanied in
the soul by the feeling of an infinite power. But precisely because idyl
thus conceived removes all idea of struggle, it will be infinitely more
difficult than it was in two previously-named kinds of poetry to express
movement; yet this is an indispensable condition, without which poetry
can never act on men's souls. The most perfect unity is required, but
unity ought not to wrong variety; the heart must be satisfied, but
without the inspiration ceasing on that account. The solution of this
problem is properly what ought to be given us by the theory of the idyl.
Now, what are the relations of the two poetries to one another, and their
relations to the poetic ideal? Here are the principles we have
established.
Nature has granted this favor to the simple poet, to act always as an
indivisible unity, to be at all times identical and perfect, and to
represent, in the real world, humanity at its highest value. In
opposition, it has given a powerful faculty to the sentimental poet, or,
rather, it has imprinted an ardent feeling on him; this is to replace out
of himself this first unity that abstraction has destroyed in him, to
complete humanity in his person, and to pass from a limited state to an
infinite state. They both propose to represent human nature fully, or
they would not be poets; but the simple poet has always the advantage of
sensuous reality over the sentimental poet, by setting forth as a real
fact what the other aspires only to reach. Every one experiences this in
the pleasure he takes in simple poetry.
We there feel that the human faculties are brought into play; no vacuum
is felt; we have the feeling of unity, without distinguishing anything of
what we experience; we enjoy both our spiritual activity and also the
fulness of physical life. Very different is the disposition of mind
elicited by the sentimental poet. Here we feel only a vivid aspiration
to produce in us this harmony of which we had in the other case the
consciousness and reality; to make of ourselves a single and same
totality; to realize in ourselves the idea of humanity as a complete
expression. Hence it comes that the mind is here all in movement,
stretched, hesitating between contrary feelings; whereas it was before
calm and at rest, in harmony with itself, and fully satisfied.
But if the simple poet has the advantage over the sentimental poet on the
score of reality; if he causes really to live that of which the other can
only elicit a vivid instinct, the sentimental poet, in compensation, has
this great advantage over the simple poet: to be in a position to offer
to this instinct a greater object than that given by his rival, and the
only one he could give. All reality, we know, is below the ideal; all
that exists has limits, but thought is infinite. This limitation, to
which everything is subject in sensuous reality, is, therefore, a
disadvantage for the simple poet, while the absolute, unconditional
freedom of the ideal profits the sentimental poet. No doubt the former
accomplishes his object, but this object is limited; the second, I admit,
does not entirely accomplish his, but his object is infinite. Here I
appeal to experience. We pass pleasantly to real life and things from
the frame of mind in which the simple poet has placed us. On the other
hand, the sentimental poet will always disgust us, for a time, with real