Chapter 16

(γ) It is, thirdly[417], a characteristic of genius that it should possess, and indeed it is a part of this natural endowment[418], facility in creating that which it is impelled to create, and in adapting itself to the technical requirements of all the subsidiary aspects of artistic work. We talk, for instance, of the fetters with which the verse, measure, and rhyme shackle a poet; or, when referring to a painter, of the endless difficulties that draughtsmanship, knowledge of tints, chiaroscuro, and the rest fling in the way of invention and execution. Unquestionably a long course of study is a necessary condition of success in all the arts, a perseverance that never tires, a facility that is continually assisted by repetition; the greater the native strength, however, of the genius or superior gift, and the richer its resources the less it will feel the weight of its effort in securing all the necessary accomplishments involved in creative excellence[419]. A really first-rate artist has the lustof workborn in himand an imperative impulse akin to any other natural want to give artistic form to his emotional and imaginative life that is in him. His emotional life and his ideas irresistibly run into this artistic mould; he finds as it were the instrument already within him made to the hand, so fitted to express his soul-life that all the pains it takes him to learn it are as nothing. A musician can thus unfold to us in his melodies the depths of all that stirs and moves his soul and only by this means. What he feels is at once wafted into melody, just as the life of a painter is impressed upon form and colour, or that of a poet is transmuted into the creations of his imagination, that poetry which clothes his ideas in the beauty and music of the written word. And this gift of vital form the artist does not merely possess as an imaginative power, a phantasy, an emotional impulse "that leaves not a wrack behind," but as a direct stimulus of feeling to active enterprise, as a gift, that is, of real executive accomplishment. Both of these aspects are united in the real artist. What springs to life in his imagination is immediately alert upon his mobile fingers, precisely as the sudden thought of our mind breaks into word from the tips, or as our most intimate thoughts, ideas, and emotions are reflected on the outward man and his demeanour. Genius of the real stamp, whenever and wherever found, is easily quit of the difficulties presented by the technical workshop; and indeed has found the most beggarly and apparently impracticable material to accept and embody as it pleased the inward shapes of imagination. No doubt the endowment which the artist finds as a direct gift to himself must be kept alive and alert by indefatigable recourse to it, but he must also possess naturally a practical power of immediate execution. Without this all the facility he may have acquired in imaginative conception will never produce an essentially creative work of art. The very notion of art demands of us that both things should go together hand in hand, the productive energy of the soul and its technical realization in the forms of art.

The activity of the imagination, then, and the power of technical execution, taking both together as the inseparableantecedents of a real artist, are commonly understood asinspiration.[420]

(α) The first question that presents itself to us for solution with regard to it is under what conditions it arises, as to which many different views have been held.

(αα) There is, for instance, the strange notion, to some extent arising from the general truth of the peculiar intimacy with which genius attaches itself to the worlds of conscious life and Nature, that inspiration can be conjured up through mere excitation of the senses. But making our blood dance will not carry us far; we are still a long way off from the Muses, despite the champagne bottle, Such, at least, was the experience of Marmontel, for he tells us that he tried it in a wine-cellar with six thousand bottles of champagne to choose from; but not a breath of the Muses passed over him[421]. Ay, your genius may be as great as he lists, and for all that stretch himself many a time morning and evening on the green grass, while the fresh breeze floats over him, and stare up into the sky, and not a whisper shall the inspired Muses breathe in his ear.

(ββ) Just as little is it likely that we shall make the charmed gates of inspiration spring open by merely presenting ourselves before them with a desire to enter. Whoever fondly imagines that he is in the right mood to compose a poem, or paint a picture, or run off a first-rate melody without already possessing the stuff in him to quicken that spark into vital form, and has first to hunt about for something to say, despite all his talent, will find himself no better off for his best intuitions, quite unable, at any rate, to conceive any complete thing of beauty, or perfect a really sterling work of art. Neither the mere tickling of our senses nor any act of will or determination can father on us true inspiration. To attempt such things simply proves that both the emotional life and the imagination have asyet no real object of artistic interest. When once we have the artistic impulse of the real kind, we may conclude the interest there has already its fixed seal and object, a content that it intends to master.

(γγ) True inspiration consequently is fixed in the presence of a specific content, which the imagination takes up in order to give artistic expression to it. It is, in fact, the object of this active process of giving form both as inwardly made visible to the mind, and as outwardly reproduced in the execution of a work of art. Inspiration is equally necessary for both these aspects of artistic activity. The question once more presents itself to us, in what way such a material will come to an artist, in order to bring about this inspiration. We find many various opinions expressed on this head. On the one hand it is frequently required of an artist that the material of his work should be drawn up from the world within him. No doubt this may be so when "the poet sings as a bird from the bough." His own cheerfulness of spirit is then the incentive which enables him to represent a particular mood of his own as the content of his production, and by this very expression of it he gives vent to his enjoyment of the same. A song of this kind, straight from the heart[422], is indeed a rich reward. But quite as often, however, the greatest works of art are created from the suggestion of objects wholly external to himself. The odes of Pindar were frequently the result of direct commissions; and, in the same way, the object and subject has times without number been given to artists both for buildings and pictures, and they have been able to arouse in themselves an enthusiasm for such. Indeed, it is only too frequently the express complaint of artists that they have not the subject-matter on which to work. Such a reference to things outside, and its stimulus to artistic production, presents just that relation of the artist to Nature and her immediacy which is essential to the notion of superior executive gifts[423], and is at the same time a condition to theappearance of genuine inspiration. If we consider the artist from this point of view, we shall find that it is here that this natural endowment relates itself immediately to a material already found for him, and through the incentive thereby offered him, through the inspiration of actual fact, or as, for example, was the case with Shakespeare, through that which was presented by old tales, ballads, romances, and chronicles, proceeds to embody such material in artistic form, and thereby generally to express his own personality. The impulse to production can therefore be given by something entirely outside the artist's life, and the only condition essential to a successful result is that the interest, which fixes the artist's attention should be of real artistic significance, and that he is able to reproduce the same in all its vitality. Such conditions virtually imply the presence of rare inspiration. And an artist who is really alive and awake himself, by reason of this very vitality of his own powers, discovers endless opportunities for actively asserting the same, and feeling inspired while doing so, opportunities which pass over other people without similarly affecting them.

(β) If we ask further, viz., of what precisely this artistic inspiration consists, we may perhaps best describe it by saying that it is the capacity of being entirely absorbed in a given subject, a capacity not merely wholly to realize it, but incapable of resting until the same is completely minted anew, and rounded off in its artistic form.

(γ) Moreover, when an artist has thus entirely appropriated his subject, it is but saying the same thing the other way to affirm that he must know how to forget his own individual idiosyncrasies, and all that accidentally attaches to them; he must, in short, on his part lose himself in the matter on hand. He must make his artistic personality the pure form under which the content he has assimilated is clothed and embodied. An inspiration in which the particular individual receives too emphatic a predominance and assertion, rather than being the vitally active instrument which displays the ideal significance of the material worked upon, is an inferior type of inspiration. This truth opens the way to a fuller consideration of what is generally understood as the objective character of artistic production.

2. THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF THE REPRESENTATION

(a) In the ordinary sense of the word we understand objectivity to mean that the content in any work of art necessarily receives the form of the reality already given, and in its artistic embodiment we have the same clearly repeated. In this sense, that we desire to see objective truth reproduced for us, we are entitled to call Kotzebue an objective poet. In his work we undoubtedly find ordinary reality simply as it is again. The object of art is, however, more precisely stated, to strip away not merely the appearance, but the actual content of all that meets us every day, and by means of the spiritual activity of the artist most personal to himself, to work out that which is essentially rational in that content in its really adequate external form. Indeed, if we look at yet better examples of art than Kotzebue's, such as those we have already glanced at in the youthful productions of Goethe, we shall find that this realistic type of objectivity can be made essentially living in its expression, and by virtue of this quality prove highly attractive to ourselves, and yet, on account of the fact that the artistic form remains defective, fail to arrive at the real beauty of art. Purely external objectivity, therefore, which still lacks the abiding and substantial significance, is not that for which an artist should strive.

(b) A second type of objective realization presents itself to us in the case where we find the external is not the artistic aim, but the artist has seized hold of his subject with all the depth and strength of his emotional life. This inward aspect of his work remains, however, so entirely enclosed within itself and concentrated that it fails to assert itself with a clearness thoroughly possessed, or to unfold itself in its full truth. The eloquence of pathos simply restricts itself by means of illustrations external to it, without possessing either the power or the culture to be able to present the fulness of that content in an explicit form. Folksongs pre-eminently belong to such a mode of artistic production. Extremely simple as they are in their form, they suggest an emotional life which lies at their root of still wider range and depth, but which they are unable clearly to express. Their art, in fact, is itself not sufficientlyelaborate or complete enough to carry into the light of day with transparent reflection all that it would unfold, and is forced to rest satisfied with suggesting to our sympathies the same by means of an external symbolism. The heart remains thrown back and concentrated upon itself, and in order to make its life intelligible to others, casts but a fainter reflection of its world upon entirely finite and external circumstances and phenomena, which, no doubt, are thus eloquent in a degree, albeit we receive from them only a far-off echo of the emotions and life they would bring home to us. Goethe has himself written many quite exquisite songs of this kind. "The Shepherd's Lament" is one of the most beautiful. In this refrain a heart that is broken with pain and yearning still remains silent and reserved beneath the purely external traits which would fain relieve it; and, despite of this, we hear, as through an undertone, all the concentrated depth of emotion it fails to express. In the "Erl-king," and many other of his songs, we hear the same tone. This tone, however, we may also meet in degenerate form right down to the most futile barbarism, unable to grasp either the essential character of the facts or the situation, merely clinging to their most finite aspects in all their crudeness and absence of artistic taste. An example we may give from the "Drummer-comrade of the boy Wunderhorn,"[424]such inanities as "O thou dwelling house of man, O gallows," or "Adjutant sir corporal," expressions which are supposed to move us deeply. When on the contrary Goethe sings:

Der Strauss, den ich gepflücket,Grüsse Dich viel tausendmal,Ich habe mich oft gebücketUnd ihn aus Herz gedrücket,Ach, wie viel tausendmal[425].

strong emotion is suggested in a very different way, which brings before our mind nothing trivial or contrary to the main idea. What however is, as a rule, defective in this particular type of poetical realization is the expression of emotion in all its true intensity. This, in the rarest art, should not be suffered to remain a depth shut away, which merely reflects a distant echo through the external objects presented: it should either break forth in its full character, or be seen through the vehicle with complete transparency. Schiller, for example, brings out his soul in its full strength in the pathos of his work, withal a great soul, which penetrates to the very core of his subject, and is able to express its very deepest significance in the freest and most perspicuous way through the wealth and music of his verse.

(c) In conformity, then, with the notion of the Ideal, we may conclude that even when we are dealing with the mere expression of emotional life, we shall never fully establish our title to truly objective art so long as any part of all that is comprised in the subject-matter, which stirs the artistic inspiration, remains still wrapped up within the soul that seeks to express itself; rather all that lies there should be completely unfolded, and unfolded in a way which not merely shall reveal to us the essential soul and substance of the content selected, but shall embody it in some completely homogeneous type of individual art, through which, as through a transparency, both soul and substance shall radiate. For that which is highest and most excellent is not by any means that we are unable to express, as though the poet contained in himself still greater depths than those expressed on the face of his work. The work of an artist is the consummate fruit of that artist, and reflects precisely what he is, and only what he is, and all that remains behind in the temple of his soul is a naught or nothing[426].

3. MANNER, STYLE, AND ORIGINALITY

However much it may be imperatively required of the artist that he should give to his work an objective character such as we have above indicated, this must not make us oblivious to the fact that the artist's production is at thesame time the work ofhisinspiration; it is he alone who has, by his entire identification of his personality with the specific subject-matter and its artistic embodiment, brought into being the entire creation out of the life of hisownemotional nature and imagination. And it is this identity of the free personality of the artist and the truly objective construction of his artistic creation which constitutes the third fundamental aspect of his activity as set forth above and which we must now shortly consider, in so far as we may be thus enabled to unite that which we have hitherto separated in our independent consideration of the conceptions of genius and the objective presentment of a work of art. We may characterize such a unity as the conception of true artisticoriginality.Before, however, we come to close quarters with all that is implied in this conception, it is necessary to clearly grasp two points of view already related to it whose insufficiency we have to expose on the ground of their one-sidedness before a true conception of originality can be fully appreciated. These may be sufficiently indicated by the terms "subjectivemanner"[427]andstyle.

(a) The Subjective Manner

The point of first importance in discussing the meaning of the expression "artistic manner" is to differentiate it fundamentally from artistic originality. The term "manner," in our view, is only used in direct relation to thespecificand consequentlyaccidental idiosyncrasiesof the artist, that is, merely in so far as such qualities assert themselves as effective in his work without being called forth by the nature of the subject itself and its ideal exposition.

(α) A manner thus interpreted has no connection with the universal types of art, that is to say, types which require an essentially different mode of representation, as, for instance, the landscape painter necessarily treats the objects of Nature in quite a different way from that under which a historical painter would so treat them; or the epic poet would handle similar subject-matter in a different way from that appropriate to the dramatic poet. On the contrary, "a manner" is a form of artistic expression wholly emanatingfrom a particular individuality, an entirely supposititious idiosyncrasy of executive ability which may be carried so far as to contradict absolutely the true notion of the Ideal. As thus defined "manner" stands at the bottom of the scale among the forms which may characterize an artist's general handling. An artist who thus expresses his individuality simply gives free rein to any chance notions of his own without testing them as subject to the substantive claims of art. But it is a fundamental principle of art that it should abolish precisely all that is merely accidental to its content no less than to its artistic or rather external mode of presentment. And this is only to say that it requires of the artist that he should efface from his work all traces of purely personal tastes and idiosyncrasies he shares with no one else[428].

(β) And for these reasons we would point out that "a manner" of this kind is not so much to be contrasted directly with the true exposition of art as to be considered in relation to the purely external aspects of art where the individuality of the particular mode of treatment comes into play. This kind of manner is most conspicuous in the arts of painting and music for the reason that these arts[429]present to the artist the widest variety of external characterization for him to seize upon and reproduce. What we find here is a certain artificial manner of general execution entirely peculiar to some particular artist and the school of imitators or pupils who follow him, which through constant repetition degenerates into mere habit.

(αα) And its tendency is to develop on one of two ways in which we may regard the artistic work. First, there is the aspect of its composition. To take painting, for example, we have all the variety of ways under which the prevailing atmospheric tone, the arrangement of foliage, the contrast of light and shade, in short the entire scheme of colour maybe treated. Most particularly in this feature of the general scheme[430]of the colouring and lighting of a picture we find that painters permit themselves the most varied freedom of individual preference and distaste. Of course such a prevailing tone may appear to us as that we do not find in Nature for the simple reason that we have not had our attention directed to it although it is really there. But we shall often find that such a scheme has simply been adopted by this or that artist on grounds of personal taste or convenience[431], and it becomes simply a habit in him to use everything now as subject to that particular scheme. And what we have observed with reference to colouring is equally true when applied to the treatment of natural objects, their grouping, position, motion, and general characterization. This inferior mode of treatment is particularly to be observed in the works of the Dutch school. Take the case of Van der Neer's night-scenes and his artificial presentation of moonlight, or Van der Goyen's sand-hills in so many of his landscapes. The ever-repeated reflections of light from satin and silk stuffs that we find in so many pictures of other masters of the same school are indications of the same artificial mode of handling.

(ββ) A manner of this type may be still further, traced in the execution of other details, the handling of brush or pencil, the laying on and blending of tints and many other features of executive work.

(γγ) The general conclusion we come to, after considering all such examples of specialized handling and conception in which constant repetition grows at last habitual to, and indeed becomes a second nature of the artist, is this, that just in proportion as the manner adopted is more specialized[432],there is an increasing and dangerous tendency for it to degenerate into that which is nothing more than a soulless and consequently arid repetition and mechanical exercise, throughout which the artist is no longer present with the fulness of his spiritual resources and the entire strength of his inspiration. When this takes place his art necessarily sinks to the level of a mere executive facility or accomplishment of his hands, and a manner, otherwise innocent enough, may very readily grow starved and lifeless.

(γ) The more truly artistic "manner" has consequently to disengage itself from such jejune peculiarities, to broaden out into a freer atmosphere[433], so that no specialized mode of handling shall be suffered to sterilize itself into what is simply a matter of habit. In this way an artist will approach the facts of Nature with a breadth of view more in keeping with her own, and will understand how to identify his larger conceptions and the general technique of his craft with the same ideal spirit. In something of the same sense we may describe it as a peculiar manner of Goethe that he is particularly apt in concluding not merely poems of society but also openings to works of a more serious character with a sudden turn of pleasantry, in order to remove the impression of or throw into the background the serious nature of previous reflection or situation. We meet with the same characteristic in the correspondence of Horace. It is, in fact, an application of the art of conversation and general sociability, which, in order to avoid following up any matter more deeply, comes to a stop, breaks off and cleverly diverts the serious into more cheerful channels. Such a mode of the literary art is undoubtedly part of the manner of the artist and his individual style, but the individuality thus exemplified is based upon a broader principle, and is asserted in a way wholly justified by the artistic purpose of the work in hand. And this particular type of an artistic manner will enable us to pass readily to the consideration of "style" generally.

(b) Style

Le style c'est l'homme mêmeis a famous phrase of the French. Style is here generally understood as the unique characterization of personality, the particular mode of expression, however it may be applied, which wholly reveals to us its substance. Herr von Rumohr, on the other hand ("Italian Investigations," i, p. 87), endeavours to interpret the expression as a mode habitual through its constant repetition of bringing together the most vital characteristics of the subject-matter artistically treated, by virtue of which the sculptor informs his figures with reality, and the painter gives to his the appearance of life. He further adds important observations upon the appropriate form of representation which, in the case of an art such as sculpture, the specificsensuousmaterial either permits or proscribes. It is, however, not necessary to attach the expression "style" solely to this aspect of sensuous material; we may unquestionably extend it to all those determinations and rules of artistic production which apply naturally to any particular type of art, and in virtue of which an object is reproduced in the medium of any one of them. We consequently distinguish in the art of music the style of church music from that of opera, and in that of painting, the historical style from the style ofgenrepainting. Style is therefore a mode of artistic presentation, which not merely follows closely the fundamental conditions of its material, but asserts itself as adequate to all that any particular type of art demands for its composition and execution and in strict conformity with the laws which apply to the subject-matter on hand. Defect of style will then, in this extension of the meaning, either imply an inability to present a composition in accordance with such necessary conditions, or will amount to a personal caprice which rather gives free rein to its own particular predilections than accepts the conditions of composition which are really proposed to it, in other words adopts an inferior "manner" of its own. Consequently it is inadmissible, as Herr von Rumohr has already pointed out, to apply principles peculiar to one type of art to another, as Mengs has done in his famous museum in the villa Albani, where both in the general conception and execution of his Apollo he adopts the modes of colouringapplicable only to sculpture. A defect of the same kind may be traced in many of the pictures of Dürer, where we see that even in painting, especially in the folding of his drapery, he adopts the style of wood-cut in which he is so consummate a master.

The final result, then, of our inquiry on this head is that true originality does not consist in merely conforming to the paramount conditions of style, but in a kind of inspired state[434]personal to the artist which, instead of committing itself wholly to a mere external manner of composition, seizes hold of a particular subject-matter that is essentially rational, and by virtue of its own resources and quality, re-clothes the same as from within the artist himself and not merely in a way conformable to the essential notion of the art adopted, but also in a form adequate to the universal notion of the Ideal.

(α) True originality is consequently identical with true objectivity, and combines that which is due to the personality of the artist and the actual subject-matter of his work in such a way that both aspects of his artistic product are held together in complete accord. Looked at in one way, such a work appears to reveal to us the very essence of the artist's personality, while regarded from another we only find there the essence of the subject-matter artistically treated, so that this very uniqueness of expression appears to arise from the unique characteristics of the material to which it is applied; and we may say with equal truth either that the expressed form is due to those characteristics, or that this unique impression we obtain from them proceeds from the creative unity of the artist.

(β) True originality must be entirely kept distinct from individual caprice and every kind of personal expression that is due to fortuitous causes. A common idea of originality is simply the stringing together of so many curiosities, things which this particular individual and no other could perpetuate or even faintly imagine. That is, however, merely idiosyncracy gone mad. No people on earth are more original in this meaning of the term than Englishmen, acountry where every one prides himself on committing some folly or other, which no man in his senses is likely to repeat, and then fondly imagines his performance to be original.

We may in this connection briefly refer to what has been so extolled, and never more than in our own days as the originality of wit and humour. An artist of this type of humour starts off from a point of view or an experience wholly personal to himself, and constantly recurs to the same so that the real object of his artistic production is merely treated as the peg on which he may hang, or the field in which he may give full play to, whatever wittiness, jest, quirks, and sallies his mood may chance to light upon. In this way the real object of his art and that which should render it vital in himself fall entirely apart, and we have a capricious mode of artistic production, in which the idiosyncrasy of the artist is made to appear as of first importance. A humour of this kind is often replete with intellectual brilliance and deep feeling, and in its general result is very apt to impose on us; yet for all that it is not generally such a difficult matter as is commonly believed. To constantly interrupt the rational content of that which we are really dealing with, interrupting all steady progress with a stream of capricious fresh starts and conclusions, a sort of patchwork of whims and emotional excursions, and thereby to create a caricature of imaginative vigour is far easier than to develop and round off with completeness an artistic whole of sterling quality throughout such as will testify to the real Ideal. Moreover, our humour nowadays is only too ready to give us the repulsive features of a talent for wit essentially crude, and is constantly degenerating into coarse buffoonery and emptiness. We do not often get from it real humour at all. The stalest trivialities are wont to pass now for brilliancy and depth of soul provided they only rig themselves out in the pretentious motley of humour. Shakespeare, on the contrary, possessed a grand and profound sense of humour, but even his works are by no means destitute of shallows. The humour of Jean Paul too often surprises us with the depth of its wit and the beauty of its sentiment, but we are quite as often repelled by the absurdly eccentric way in which he hitches together his subjects, or rather leaves them with thebare jointure to lie apart, and then floods all he has to say with a kind of humour that leaves it almost impossible to make head or tail of. No humourist, however great he may be, is likely to find anything resembling it in his memory; and our main impression is frequently, even in the case of Jean Paul's kaleidoscopic effects, that they are rather the result of mechanical pasting together than a spontaneous product from the crucible of genius. For this reason Jean Paul finds it necessary, in order continually to present new effects, to drag into books differing wholly in kind, botanical, legal and philosophical disquisitions, no less than descriptions of travel; whatever whim in fact may strike his fancy at the time is promptly inserted. Even when his subject relates to scientific discovery he will run together the most heterogeneous material such as a collection of Brazilian plants and observations upon the old imperial chamber[435]. There are people who will praise a motley of this kind as original. But it is really precisely the kind of caprice which originality of the genuine stamp excludes.

While we are on this topic it will not be out of place to add some further remarks upon irony, which particularly prides itself upon presenting us with the very flower of originality on just those occasions when it has ceased to treat any artistic material with seriousness and converts the whole affair into a subject of witticism, only worth notice for the sake of the wit it suggests. Looked at from another point of view this irony rakes together a lot of things which are quite foreign to the essence of the matter in hand, things the deeper significance of which the poet keeps to himself, and his notion seems to be that by this subtle exercise of his powers the imagination will be enlarged. And it is just in external associations of this sort that we get what we have already described as the poetry of a poetry, wherein everything that is deepest and most excellent is concealed from us for no other reason than this, that we must not be allowed to look at it because it is so profound. And we really find in Friedrich von Schlegel's poetry, more particularly when he became vain over his title to the rank of poet, that which clearly is set forth as the aroma of all is just that which isnever expressed: no wonder this poetry of poetry turns out to be the flattest prose.

(γ) A genuine work of art must consequently be held intact from all originality of this perverse type. True originality will be asserted throughout by this and this alone, that the work has the appearance of being the unique creation ofoneindividual mind, which does not go about picking up scraps from around it and then make thereof a patchwork, but permits the material of that work, in complete accordance with the unity most congenial to its own substance, to bind itself together in a whole all parts of which are strictly related, as truly stamped with one mint as the founder's cast. When we find scenes and motives introduced upon grounds that are foreign to the real artistic purpose, that is to say, which do not directly grow out of the true subject, we must inevitably lose that subtle and necessary connection of all the parts which create this unity, and what we thus interpolate will unavoidably impress us as something fortuitously attached by personal caprice. Much in this way it has been the fashion to give exceptional praise to the "Götz von Berlichingen" of Goethe on the grounds of its great originality. No doubt it is true enough, as we have above remarked, that in this drama Goethe has with much intrepidity given the lie direct to and turned his back upon all that had been taken as the established principles of the aesthetic science of his age; the execution of this work, however, does not bear the stamp of genuine originality. One finds, on the contrary, in this youthful production indications of the poverty of the material upon which it is founded, so that many traits and entire scenes appear to have been raked together and united by connections foreign to the subject from material of an interest contemporary with that of the artist's life instead of being the genuine elaboration of the fundamental subject-matter. The scene, for example, between Götz and brother Martin, where Martin Luther is clearly suggested, contains ideas which Goethe could only have borrowed from a time such as his own when people began once more to wail over the conditions of monastic life, how they durst not drink wine, could only sleep off their meals, were at the mercy of evil desires and generally must submit to the three intolerable vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.Brother Martin, on the other hand, grows enthusiastic over the knightly life of Götz, how he recalled to memory the load of booty he took from his foe, whom he ran through with lance on horseback before he could shoot, then tumbled over, horse and all, and finally returned to his castle and wife. Whereupon the good monk drinks the health of the dame Elizabeth, wiping his eyes the while. With mundane reflections of this sort Luther never started on his journey, but rather as a pious monk who had penetrated to their depths the religious conceptions and convictions of Augustine, another source altogether. Subject to precisely similar defects are the pedagogical references to that period which occur in the following scene and for which Vasedow is mainly responsible. We are informed that children of that age are taught much that is unintelligible, that the true method of instruction should rather educate their minds through the senses and experience. Karl, for example, repeats phrases to his father by heart precisely similar to those current in Goethe's own younger days: "Junthausen is a village and castle on the Junt and for two hundred years has been the ancestral property of the lords of Berlichingen." When Götz asks him if he knows any lord of Berlichingen personally the lad stares blankly at him and through sheer over-teaching does not know his own father. Götz declares that he knew every path and road in the country before he knew the names of a single river, village, or mountain. All this kind of thing is mere literary stucco which has nothing to do with the actual subject at all. And when an occasion does arise in which we ought to find some really characteristic grip of the very marrow of the subject, as in the conversations between Götz and Weisslingen, we get nothing more than cold reflections upon the times.

We find much the same association of irrelevant matter in the same poet's "Wahlverwandschaften."[436]The laying out of pleasure grounds, the living pictures, the observations upon pendulum oscillations, the testing of metals, the headaches, the entire description of elective affinities, which is borrowed straight from chemical science, are all of this category. It may, of course, be freely admitted that in a romance, referring to an essentially prosaic age, such things areprima facieadmissible,and more particularly so when we have a Goethe to introduce them so cleverly and apply them so charmingly; moreover no work of art of any kind can be kept wholly unaffected by the culture of the artist's own age. It is one thing to allow the reflection of contemporary culture to appear as part of the artistic whole, quite another to bring together such material of research in a way that places it as something wholly outside and independent of the genuine substance of the composition. For the true originality of the artist no less than that of his work consists exclusively in their being vitally bound up with that which is only intelligible as part of the real subject-matter treated. When the artist has fully Appropriated this objective reason, without mixing up with it, to the detriment of its clarity, details he may have borrowed from his personal experience or other sources which do not strictly belong to it; in that case alone will he stamp the material with the genuine mark of his own artistic mintage. This personal effect upon his work merely serves him as a bridge of Life over which he passes to secure a work of art wholly complete in itself, just as in all genuine thought and action true freedom consists in allowing that which is of essential significance to assert itself without restraint, so that it becomes itself the force which dominates both the particular thought and volition of the man who thus appropriates it, and by so doing reconciles every vestige of opposition. In this way the originality of art absorbs every accidental trait peculiar to a given personality; but it only absorbs it that the artist may follow without reserve the impulse and bent of his genius as inspired through every fibre of the material he moulds, and instead of reflecting a purely barren wilfulness and caprice of his own may give an objective form to his true artistic individuality conjoined with consummate accomplishment. To have no "manner" was ever the one great "manner," and in this sense alone can we ascribe originality to Homer, Sophocles, Rafael, and Shakespeare.

[271]Einer specifischen Seele.We certainly should not in ordinary speech say that inorganic objects possessed a soul. The phrase indeed is difficult to follow, except as explained by the previous technical discussion ofEinzelheit.

[272]The expressionin dieser der Allgemeinheit entgegengehobenen Äusserlichkeitrefers to the manifold in opposition to which the principle of universality is posited as a test for the selection of those aspects which manifest it as vital individuality.

[273]Seligkeit.

[274]Heiterkeit.I cannot satisfy myself with one English word. It seems to combine bothblithesomenessandcheerfulnessin the literal meaning of the word.

[275]In das einfache Beisichseyn.Self-containedness would be more literal.

[276]Eine Versöhnung des Gemüths.I think this refers to the emotions of the spectators. The use of the word in the next sentence points to this.

[277]Diese Festigkeit,e.g., such a religiously austere mode of treatment, rather this than "rigorously true," is I think the sense.

[278]Compare that wonderful poem of G. Meredith, "Theodolinda."

[279]Schönthuerei.

[280]See Introduction, pp. 86, 87.

[281]Such appears to me the sense of the above passage, but it is not very clearly expressed. Hegel states the case of those who contend that a picture must be a good one because the ideal element is the main thing and to get that you have merely to borrow from poetry. He then takes an example to show this is not so.

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