Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
life. This is because the infinite character has, in a manner, enlarged
our mind beyond its natural measure, so that nothing it finds in the
world of sense can fill its capacity. We prefer to fall back in
contemplation on ourselves, where we find food for this awakened impulse
towards the ideal world; while, in the simple poet, we only strive to
issue out of ourselves, in search of sensuous objects. Sentimental
poetry is the offspring of retirement and science, and invites to it;
simple poetry is inspired by the spectacle of life, and brings back life.
I have styled simple poetry a gift of nature to show that thought has no
share in it. It is a first jet, a happy inspiration, that needs no
correction, when it turns out well, and which cannot be rectified if ill
turned out. The entire work of the simple genius is accomplished by
feeling; in that is its strength, and in it are its limits. If, then, he
has not felt at once in a poetic manner--that is, in a perfectly human
manner--no art in the world can remedy this defect. Criticism may help
him to see the defect, but can place no beauty in its stead. Simple
genius must draw all from nature; it can do nothing, or almost nothing,
by its will; and it will fulfil the idea of this kind of poetry provided
nature acts in it by an inner necessity. Now, it is true that all which
happens by nature is necessary, and all the productions, happy or not, of
the simple genius, which is disassociated from nothing so much as from
arbitrary will, are also imprinted with this character of necessity;
momentary constraint is one thing, and the internal necessity dependent
on the totality of things another. Considered as a whole, nature is
independent and infinite; in isolated operations it is poor and limited.
The same distinction holds good in respect to the nature of the poet.
The very moment when he is most happily inspired depends on a preceding
instant, and consequently only a conditional necessity can be attributed
to him. But now the problem that the poet ought to solve is to make an
individual state similar to the human whole, and consequently to base it
in an absolute and necessary manner on itself. It is therefore necessary
that at the moment of inspiration every trace of a temporal need should
be banished, and that the object itself, however limited, should not
limit the flight of the poet. But it may be conceived that this is only
possible in so far as the poet brings to the object an absolute freedom,
an absolute fulness of faculties, and in so far as he is prepared by an
anterior exercise to embrace all things with all his humanity. Now he
cannot acquire this exercise except by the world in which he lives, and
of which he receives the impressions immediately. Thus simple genius is
in a state of dependence with regard to experience, while the sentimental
genius is forced from it. We know that the sentimental genius begins its
operation at the place where the other finishes its own: its virtue is to
complete by the elements which it derives from itself a defective object,
and to transport itself by its own strength from a limited state to one
of absolute freedom. Thus the simple poet needs a help from without,
while the sentimental poet feeds his genius from his own fund, and
purifies himself by himself. The former requires a picturesque nature, a
poetical world, a simple humanity which casts its eyes around; for he
ought to do his work without issuing from the sensuous sphere. If
external aid fails him, if he be surrounded by matter not speaking to
mind, one of two things will happen: either, if the general character of
the poet-race is what prevails in him, he issues from the particular
class to which he belongs as a poet, and becomes sentimental to be at any
rate poetic; or, if his particular character as simple poet has the upper
hand, he leaves his species and becomes a common nature, in order to
remain at any rate natural. The former of these two alternatives might
represent the case of the principal poets of the sentimental kind in
Roman antiquity and in modern times. Born at another period of the
world, transplanted under another sky, these poets who stir us now by
ideas, would have charmed us by individual truth and simple beauty. The
other alternative is the almost unavoidable quicksand for a poet who,
thrown into a vulgar world, cannot resolve to lose sight of nature.
I mean, to lose sight of actual nature; but the greatest care must be
given to distinguish actual nature from true nature, which is the subject
of simple poetry. Actual nature exists everywhere; but true nature is so
much the more rare because it requires an internal necessity that
determines its existence. Every eruption of passion, however vulgar, is
real--it may be even true nature; but it is not true human nature, for
true human nature requires that the self-directing faculty in us should
have a share in the manifestation, and the expression of this faculty is
always dignified. All moral baseness is an actual human phenomenon, but
I hope not real human nature, which is always noble. All the faults of
taste cannot be surveyed that have been occasioned in criticism or the
practice of art by this--confusion between actual human nature and true
human nature. The greatest trivialities are tolerated and applauded
under the pretext that they are real nature. Caricatures not to be
tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world
and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a
lower nature; and it enters into the very definition of a satirical poet:
but then a beauty by its own nature must sustain and raise the object,
and the vulgarity of the subject must not lower the imitator too much.
If at the moment he paints he is true human nature himself, the object of
his paintings is indifferent; but it is only on this condition we can
tolerate a faithful reproduction of reality. Unhappy for us readers when
the rod of satire falls into hands that nature meant to handle another
instrument, and when, devoid of all poetic talent, with nothing but the
ape's mimicry, they exercise it brutally at the expense of our taste!
But vulgar nature has even its dangers for the simple poet; for the
simple poet is formed by this fine harmony of the feeling and thinking
faculty, which yet is only an idea, never actually realized. Even in the
happiest geniuses of this class, receptivity will always more or less
carry the day over spontaneous activity. But receptivity is always more
or less subordinate to external impressions, and nothing but a perpetual
activity of the creative faculty could prevent matter from exercising a
blind violence over this quality. Now, every time this happens the
feeling becomes vulgar instead of poetical.
No genius of the simple class, from Homer down to Bodmer, has entirely
steered clear of this quicksand. It is evident that it is most perilous
to those who have to struggle against external vulgarity, or who have
parted with their refinement owing to a want of proper restraint. The
first-named difficulty is the reason why even authors of high cultivation
are not always emancipated from platitudes--a fact which has prevented
many splendid talents from occupying the place to which they were
summoned by nature. For this reason, a comic poet whose genius has
chiefly to deal with scenes of real life, is more liable to the danger
of acquiring vulgar habits of style and expression--a fact evidenced in
the case of Aristophanes, Plautus, and all the poets who have followed
in their track. Even Shakspeare, with all his sublimity, suffers us to
fall very low now and then. Again, Lope De Vega, Moliere, Regnard,
Goldoni worry us with frequent trifling. Holberg drags us down into
the mire. Schlegel, a German poet, among the most remarkable for
intellectual talent, with genius to raise him to a place among poets of
the first order; Gellert, a truly simple poet, Rabener, and Lessing
himself, if I am warranted to introduce his name in this category--this
highly-cultivated scholar of criticism and vigilant examiner of his own
genius--all these suffer in different degrees from the platitudes and
uninspired movements of the natures they chose as the theme of their
satire. With regard to more recent authors of this class, I avoid naming
any of them, as I can make no exceptions in their case.
But not only is simple genius exposed to the danger of coming too near to
vulgar reality; the ease of expression, even this too close approximation
to reality, encourages vulgar imitators to try their hand in poetry.
Sentimental poetry, though offering danger enough, has this advantage, to
keep this crowd at a distance, for it is not for the first comer to rise
to the ideal; but simple poetry makes them believe that, with feeling and
humor, you need only imitate real nature to claim the title of poet. Now
nothing is more revolting than platitude when it tries to be simple and
amiable, instead of hiding its repulsive nature under the veil of art.
This occasions the incredible trivialities loved by the Germans under the
name of simple and facetious songs, and which give them endless amusement
round a well-garnished table. Under the pretext of good humor and of
sentiment people tolerate these poverties: but this good humor and this
sentiment ought to be carefully proscribed. The Muses of the Pleisse, in
particular, are singularly pitiful; and other Muses respond to them, from
the banks of the Seine, and the Elbe. If these pleasantries are flat,
the passion heard on our tragic stage is equally pitiful, for, instead of
imitating true nature, it is only an insipid and ignoble expression of
the actual. Thus, after shedding torrents of tears, you feel as you
would after visiting a hospital or reading the "Human Misery" of
Saltzmann. But the evil is worse in satirical poetry and comic romance,
kinds which touch closely on every-day life, and which consequently, as
all frontier posts, ought to be in safer hands. In truth, he less than
any other is called on to become the painter of his century, who is
himself the child and caricature of his century. But as, after all,
nothing is easier than to take in hand, among our acquaintances, a comic
character--a big, fat man--and draw a coarse likeness of him on paper,
the sworn enemies of poetic inspiration are often led to blot some paper
in this way to amuse a circle of friends. It is true that a pure heart,
a well-made mind, will never confound these vulgar productions with the
inspirations of simple genius. But purity of feeling is the very thing
that is wanting, and in most cases nothing is thought of but satisfying a
want of sense, without spiritual nature having any share. A
fundamentally just idea, ill understood, that works of bel esprit serve
to recreate the mind, contributes to keep up this indulgence, if
indulgence it may be called when nothing higher occupies the mind, and
reader as well as writer find their chief interest therein. This is
because vulgar natures, if overstrained, can only be refreshed by
vacuity; and even a higher intelligence, when not sustained by a
proportional culture, can only rest from its work amidst sensuous
enjoyments, from which spiritual nature is absent.
Poetic genius ought to have strength enough to rise with a free and
innate activity above all the accidental hinderances which are
inseparable from every confined condition, to arrive at a representation
of humanity in the absolute plenitude of its powers; it is not, however,
permitted, on the other hand, to emancipate itself from the necessary
limits implied by the very idea of human nature; for the absolute only in
the circle of humanity is its true problem. Simple genius is not exposed