Laughing Truths/Literature
The maxim that the Epic is no longer permissible in modern times is one of the most precious gems in the thesaurus of every man of culture. If one ventures to knock shyly at the portals of the brain and beg for a friendly explanation of why this is the case, one is met by a peevish murmur to the effect that the primitive days of the nations, the youth of mankind, and a naïve outlook on the universe form the only tolerable atmosphere for the Epic. Besides, the conclusion goes practically without saying, as is proved by the total absence of this form of art to-day, accompanied by the brilliant development of the romance, the true epic of the nineteenth century. In fact, it is an eternal and fundamental truth.
Thus, since the Homeric period furnished the above-mentioned conditions, the epic was then all right. Since they are lacking to-day, the epic is now all wrong. Verbum sap.
Good. The idea is plausible. But nobody seems to find it necessary to prove the assumption that the alleged fact is a knockdown blow, that the Homeric age really did afford the required conditions. That is, presumably, another eternal and fundamental verity. Or what would be the good of the popular catchwords that enable us to dispense with thinking, knowledge, learning, and other annoyances of that kind? And, of course, when we have not the most primitive ideas of what a given era was, it is clear that it must have been a primitive era.
I do not need here to give a historical lecture. But if the cavalier manner in which Homer handles his gods betokens a naïve outlook on the universe; if the exceedingly blasé and degenerate culture of the Ionic Asia Minor represents a state of infancy; if never-ending bewailing of the present, homesick longing for the past, and despair of the future are signs of the youth of humanity, then I claim the right to assert that the nineteenth century is an example of childhood and to call even the Barrisons naïve.[1]
This shows that the left leg of the fundamental verity is rather lame. Let us next deal with the right leg.
"Primitive condition, childhood, youth of humanity," "naïveté of outlook on the universe", "bloom, maturity, old age of nations". Who would venture to argue here as if these were known quantities? What if I asserted that humanity was never young and that no era was ever naïve? And this is just what I do assert. Is there really a biology of nations? Does anyone know when a people is young or when it is old? Is there anyone who would venture to decide dogmatically whether (e.g.) the Germans or Russians of to-day are an old or a young race, or whether they are at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of their career? And so on.
And more. Or rather still less!
We do not even know what a "nation" or a "people" is. Is it determined by its mother-tongue and traditions, or by its constitution, politics, fatherland, and boundaries, or by its habits, customs, festivals, and religion? Do we know a single law of the life of nations, even if it be assumed that there can be laws of life for an abstract collective personality like a "people"? Such considerations show that all the wisdom about naïve views of the universe, or the childhood and youth of mankind, or the youth and age of nations, is sheer foolishness.
Moreover, the fate of this eternal and fundamental verity is just the same as that of all other such verities. If we take the trouble to make a closer examination, we shall always discover, low down in the right hand corner, a proper name in small characters, with "fecit" and a date appended. The eternal and fundamental verity that the epic belongs to youthful nations only has taken a course at the University of Tübingen and speaks the Swabian dialect. Before the days of Vischer no one knew the first thing about it. Even in the eighteenth, as in all previous centuries, the epic was still regarded as the dearest and highest aim of every poet. Lessing put it in the first place, Goethe essayed it, Schiller yearned to it. And what has become of the famous sun of Homer? I suppose it has suffered an eclipse.
I am no more blind than other people to Vischer's merits. But the proposal that, out of affection for this Swabian Isaiah, we should propagate by a process of natural selection the owlish idea of trading the epic for the romance, is surely a piece of the most egregious tomfoolery.[2]
Should we then wait for the epic until the gracious return of primitive conditions, naïve views of the universe, and the youth of mankind? Then we'll have to wait until the evening of time. For this state of affairs will never return, for the very good reason that it has never been there before.
The necessity of energetic labour after the inspiration has arrived no longer needs to be proved, for even the children and the children's children of to-day know quite well that works of art do not fly readymade to the pen. But I wish to point out here that industry has an important rôle to play also as the forerunner and pioneer of inspiration; the old counsel to await the proper mood or inspiration would better be replaced by the diametrically opposite maxim, which tells us to challenge and entice the mood and the inspiration.
I must, however, make at once some important reservations, to guard against misunderstandings. The indispensable assumption is, of course, preëminent poetic talent, because, when that is lacking, I know only one practical rule for creative work: "give it up". Further, the value of diligence as a preliminary to inspiration does not apply to the conception of the work, for here all depends on the inspiration and the degree of its value; not even the most admirable artistic skill can make up for deficiencies or gaps in this sphere. The poet who sets about his task without an adequate imaginative impulse is foredoomed to shipwreck along with his work. The original inspiration has its birth, as everyone knows, in regions of the soul far beyond the powers of sense, will, and intellect; preliminary work is mediate and passive, and requires to be well shaken up by life. I go even a step farther and maintain that the first inspiration, no matter how strong it may be, is not in itself adequate. The young make a mistake when they proceed to work immediately after an inspired plan has suggested itself. On the contrary, before a plan can be considered ripe for execution, there are a great number of secondary and supplementary conceptions to be considered. For any thorough work there should be a specific idea for each scene, so that a continuous chain of pictures should remain steadily before the imagination. Then only is the work ready to be begun; and at this stage it generally renders the patient so uneasy that he is compelled to work, whether he wishes or no. Now these secondary inspirations are no more docile than the original parent conception, and any attempt at coercion leads to a pernicious forgery. The poet is thus often, indeed usually, compelled to let his valuable designs slumber and germinate in the unplumbed depths of his soul for years, until they have accreted other related sub-inspirations in sufficient number and fullness. Those who begin too soon rob their material, in spite of all their art, of some of its finest possibilities. Thus it is that care in his estimate of the exact state of his ripening plan is one of the greatest needs of the artist.
After the task has actually been taken in hand, the whole man must devote to it the tensest activity of his mind and all his other spiritual forces, and must not rest until it is completed. I hold interruptions during the period of accomplishment to be highly unsatisfactory; the same is true of too easygoing experiment and too protracted weighing of one thing against another. Here, as I believe, more respect is due to industry than is generally granted. In all far-reaching plans, in spite of the most careful preparation, in spite of all boldness of will and all genuineness of inspiration, there suddenly comes, sooner or later, a disagreeable hitch. This may be because a hitherto unnoticed difficulty creeps into the light out of a fold in the material; or because body and mood fail to work after months of tension; or because unavoidable claims of the outer life are too insistent and drag us out of the proper connection, so that the earlier pride of creation refuses to return in its pristine fervour. In such cases I hold it wrong to give way and wait for the revival of desire and mood, though this practice has been practised and recommended by celebrated poets. This conduct is assuredly prudent and sure, but it is not great. If the musicians of the eighteenth century and the painters of the fifteenth had acted on this principle, we should have been deprived of half their works. Is it not possible to think of a similar quick accuracy of aim in the case of a poet's execution? I venture to hope so and to believe so. If my hopes do not deceive me, the world may one day, in favourable auspices, witness the spectacle of poets who will rival the fertility of the great painters and composers. This means that the present output of poetic production would be increased threefold. For what interrupts the continuous flow of creation is not any deficiency in the supply of inspiration of the first order; every great artist has his magazine-gun full of cartridges. Nor is it the time they take to ripen, because, though they ripen slowly, there are always, as in the case of oranges, some ripe fruit on the tree. The meagreness of output is due partly to the struggle for the proper artistic form, partly to hesitation and fastidiousness in execution. The first may be spared us by a timely birth in a favourable era, where definite forms of art already exist. The second is a matter of energy, which, it is true, does not always accommodate itself to the hygienic rules of Niemayer.[3]
My position, then, is this. After the work has been begun, one should pay no attention to the mood of the moment, nor evade any form of difficulty, nor allow oneself any sort of pause; the work should be completed out of hand. Is this, however, possible; and if it is possible, is it advantageous? The necessary brevity does not prevent me from answering this question distinctly. Inspiration, though it always arrives unexpectedly and unsummoned, is not so independent of thought as is generally assumed. On the contrary, the process of thinking serves to fill the imagination with fertilising elements, out of which, in some unforeseen moment, the vision bursts on our gaze like the lightning flash from the pregnant cloud. Work is therefore like a lightning conductor or (to vary the figure) like a plough, which routs out all the good things slumbering below the surface and brings them under the illuminating coöperation of the ever-busy imagination. Hardly any artist would deny the fact that, immediately after a strenuous effort, the creative imagination is present in greater bulk and more willing mood than in a state of dreamy repose. Experience shows also that the more vigorously an author deals with the old inspirations, the more diligently he has worked during his life, the richer flows the stream of new inspirations. There must, then, be a relationship of cause and effect between industry and inspiration.
Without any doubt, however, the inspiration never appears exactly on the spot where I desire and need it. The attempt to overcome a difficulty satisfactorily, or to fill neatly a definite gap in the imagination, by an act of will and careful thought, will certainly fail. All the same I should apply myself to the work with all my power, because in its course visions appear that will be advantageous for other parts of the work, of which I am, for the moment, not thinking at all. I believe I can lay down the following law for the phenomena of visions. A vision never appears at the point on which the creator has concentrated his attention, but at a point referring to either an earlier or a later stage of the work. And the number of the visions will be proportional to the energy of the labour. For my own use I call this the law of the ricocheting imagination. Work spreads snares, in which some fine day the visions are enmeshed. For this reason I set myself to work, quite unconcernedly, even in the bleakest and most barren mood. For what is a mood? Merely a matter of the nerves. But the creative imagination is not a matter of nerves, but a sacred thing. A true and beautiful legend tells us that the Muse visits the poet without invitation. Still more true and beautiful is it when the poet returns the visit and does not let himself feel dismayed if he does not find her at home. Or, in more prosaic language, the artistic mood is always present in good material. He who subdues his nervous mood will assuredly find the artistic mood just as soon as he really grapples again with the material.
It would be a grave error to expect and wait for the counsel of inspiration in such difficulties as relate to the work of composition; if the creator (e.g.) postponed the work for later reconsideration when faced by apparently inextricable entanglements or by the necessity of choice between motifs of seemingly equal value. These things really lie outside the realm of the unknown. There are no complicated visions. Visions are always simple and absolute; they cannot disentangle, sift, and separate; they cannot select, arrange, and collect; they can neither discover relationships nor supply glosses. They never extend beyond the bounds of a single, clearly defined scene, and they are unable to combine things separated by either time or space. Indeed, if we investigate more closely, we find that persons and groups of things, within a frame of time and place, are accessible for the vision only when they are combined in a perspicuous and easily recognised manner. It follows that any hindrance to composition must be overcome by the labour of thought and will, that the very simplest conditions of time and space must prevail, before we can expect a poetic picture from the imagination. Indeed, while one is doing this, the imagination will generally leap as eagerly into the newly-created clearance as a rabbit would jump at a fresh and fragrant head of lettuce.
Such, then, are my modest personal experiences. As, however, I have no private preserve of natural laws, I assume that the situation will be very much the same anywhere else.
To judge from the unanimity of pamphlets and reviews, it seems that in the Germany of to-day waiting and pausing, as exemplified in creation and publication at long intervals only, are accounted to the poet for a virtue. This judgment may be quite in place as a protest against the customary journeyman labour, which regularly turns out its drama or romance once or twice a year; and I acknowledge this all the more willingly because I trace in myself the liveliest aversion to this sort of hack-work.
Unfortunately it is the curse of Alexandrian ages that every æsthetic truth is so long mumbled in the mouth of wisdom that it eventually becomes septic. If the maxim is supported also by the word or example of authorities, thought generally retires gracefully, with the result that no account is taken of correcting or supplemental facts.
It appears to me that we are now threatened by the danger that the fresh courage and richness of the younger generation will be twisted into a reproach, merely because it so happened that one or other of the modern bigwigs lent his sanction to a thrifty and cautious method of production. There is obviously no intelligent correction here; but experience teaches us that it is beyond the powers of a theoretically critical generation to estimate disparate things in the same manner at the same time. The danger is imminent, and, in order to forestall it, I venture to remind you of a few facts in the domain of artistic physiology.
Richly endowed and original natures are at all times fertile and in the highest degree anxious to create, unless they are hampered by particular hindrances. Of these there are, unfortunately, many, such as the striving for new forms of art, when the inherited forms have outlived their usefulness. If, however, everything is in order, both within and without, the great men produce with a marvellous, often quite feverish energy. Examples from the history of music and the plastic arts are patent to all; there is no reason why it should be otherwise in the realm of poetry, provided it finds suitable forms at hand. And Germany at least, if I make no mistake, knows one classic of the first rank who suffered no injury from his uninterrupted masterful creation, which endured until his latest breath. I refer to Schiller.
Æsthetic problems must be handled with a very delicate touch; catchwords and authorities simply kill them—evidently not a process of encouraging creation. Some forms of art are adapted for cold storage, working over, and retouching; others must be completed at one stroke. In some cases, the good things must be drawn out gently as with a butterfly's proboscis; in other cases, they must be hastily grubbed up, as a bull rips up the turf with his horns. One fruit differs from another in the degree of ripeness at which it may be enjoyed. Some cannot hang too long on the bough; others need merely a short exposure to a strong sun. It has (e.g.) long been recognised that works planned on a grand scale need not be handled with such meticulous care as an elegy or a lyric. No intelligent person has ever reproached a playwright for the regular intervals of his production, for the annual harvesting of his crop. This fact is in itself enough to controvert the theory against which I am fighting—that is, if a theory ever allowed itself to be convinced by facts. Along with the differences in the field of labour, we have to reckon with the differences of the individual creators. In the first rank of these come the differences in the kind of endowment and the differences in temperament. As to endowment, even when we confine ourselves to the highest kind of endowment, viz. genius, we find that nature furnishes varieties differing in elasticity and vitality. We find tiny intermittent springs that flow only after a thunderstorm; we find capricious devil brooks, which suddenly rise in swelling waves and a suddenly subside; and we find placid, deep, moor-ruled waters, alternating soberly in ebb and flood. But nature also produces geniuses of meadow and stream, which are so abundantly charged with sap and seed that every breath must create or choke in the attempt. Yet, forsooth, it seems to be expected that these should close their blessed mouths in deference to some fashionable dogma of the moment. Or must the Three Wise Virgins of the Night be forced to muzzle themselves with Papageno's padlock?[4] To tell the truth, I feel very suspicious of the sense of beauty in those who complain of a superfluity of beauty in art.
Turning our attention to temperament, we reach the important realm of personality,
There are contemplative, contented, esoteric visionaries who sit, smiling contentedly, under a blossoming willow, with their rod between their knees, and with half-closed lids wait patiently for days or even weeks, until the goldfish bite. Such men will come to the market with some choice specimens, but not very often. On the other hand, there are also fresh and hardy men of the imagination, who put out into the deep in a swift boat, sniffing the morning wind, driving shoals of small fish into the nets, and spearing larger fish, until all is spurt and foam. I quite understand that people love this sort; I love them myself, whatever others may say. But when they tell me that I can do so only by despising the other sort, I say "Stuff and nonsense".
If we have to decide which of the two temperaments is the nobler, the contemplative or the energetic (though it is better not to compare them), there is little question but that the preference must be given to the more vigorous temperament. This I shall prove by three examples, two logical and one zoological. It is open to the strong poet to resign himself to contemplation in his intervals of rest; but it is not so easy for the contemplative poet to jack himself up to a course of continuous energy. If you peep through the bedroom window of the poets who are envied for their thrice-blessed serenity, you will find them in the evening of their days, sighing over their unhappy indolence. Nature is not peopled by fish alone, but also by birds and quadrupeds. Some of these may be captured in snares and traps, but many must be shot on the wing, by the sportsman of sharp eye and ready hand; others again have to be untiringly pursued on horseback, until they finally surrender. "If you don't first feel it, you'll never capture it."[5] Please do not overlook this fact: he did not catch it himself, his spaniel retrieved it, and he patted the dog while removing the game from his mouth. And last, but not least. How are you going to capture the noblest quarry of all, such as the eagle, except by exerting the utmost energy? You may sit a long time in ambush, with your yearning poetic eyes, but the eagles will not come down to you; they won't even come within sight, much less within shot. For them you must bravely climb over snow and ice, sweating and panting, until at last the upper air bathes your body and the longed-for bird screams over your head.
There is something to be said for the custom of publishing lyric poems in one common volume, containing as much as possible both in quantity and variety—songs, ballads, epigrams, anecdotes, riddles, occasional poems, exercises in metrical form, and so on. One advantage of the practice is that, as probably there will not be an over-supply of available matter, one has a chance to rummage every drawer for the reserves, so as to make a sizeable volume. Lyrics, at any rate good lyrics, occupy very little space. Some dead ballast must usually be added in order to provide the publisher with the requisite weight. This is the why and wherefore of the inevitable translations and travel-verses. By the way, every poet should bind himself by a blood-curdling oath never to write verses about a town or district (not even Venice), and not to admit any translations to his collection. The very fact that poems of this kind are apt to be described by the critics as "imperishable pearls of literature" should warn him that he is here on dangerous ground.
The custom, then, is practical. All the same, a collection of diversities is not a real combination. In such cases the book is bound together only by its binding. If you take away the cover or the title, the poems fall asunder and slink off, each into its own proper drawer. But even when the cover and title are still there, even when the binding holds out, it is impossible for the imagination of the reader to make a unity of them, to conceive of them as one large reminiscent picture. For a book of collections is not organically articulated, it is not obviously proportioned, it has no centre and no point of general observation. It is at first difficult to find one's way in it; it is hard to remember where such and such a passage occurred. Faute de mieux, we have to avail ourselves of pencil tickings in the index, just as Tourist Societies put up signs on the beech-trees to enable us to find our way in the woods.
This, however, is all by the way. The main point is this: twenty heterogeneous poems are twenty times a single poem, not twenty poems. It does not add up. Emotion can no more add together an enigma, a ballad, and a ghazal than the intellect can make an addition sum of clothes, vegetables, and domestic animals. They all belong to the same owner, and they must be duly accredited as his property; but taken together they seem just the contents of the lumber-room. Heterogeneous matter is more when it is separated, less when it is combined.
In contradistinction to this, I hold that the bringing together of more or less cognate and homogeneous products—making a chain, a garland, a cycle, or what you will—belongs to a higher principle of selection. From a cycle, i.e. the juxtaposition of like objects, is born a unity, a combination; a corporate unity, which creates a new value, transcending the value of the individual member—a collective value, which is not merely value but art value.
To explain. Every good poem or piece of music includes a whole world of allied potentialities of beauty, which all head in the same direction. A qualified reader or hearer, possessed of imagination, divines the indefinite outlines of these beauties and eagerly longs for them. If now these divine and desired outlines are filled in by the poet, if (in other words) he adds other allied works of art to the original, there ensues a marvellous feeling of content. First, there is the fulfilment of the desire. Then there is the feeling of rest, as the reader is not forced to change his point of view in passing from one enjoyment to another. Further, there is a sense of peace and homelike comfort, since the same world is repeatedly brought before us by the same artistic methods. Lastly, there is the impression of richness, for like may be summed up with like and remains in the memory as a unified picture. Here the situation is the very reverse of that in a motley collection. Twenty ballads are more than twenty ballads, they form a world of ballads.
It will be an additional advantage, if the unity extends also to the outer form. The effort of the poet to test himself in the most diverse forms of metre is intelligible, and in some cases praiseworthy; but it does not correspond to any need of the reader. The same or a similar form allows us to concentrate our attention on the subject, and foments the homelike satisfaction already referred to. Too frequent change or too eccentric variety is unsettling. He, therefore, who exaggerates the correspondence between form and content, pursuing the one with the other at every step, becomes unrestful. Just as the epic remains faithful to its chosen metre, just as poetic narrative is best when it sticks to the ironclad strophe, so will it be to the advantage of cyclic unity if it uses the same, or at least cognate, forms for each individual poem.
The smaller and the smallest lyrics are absolutely dependent on the cycle to save them from sinking into oblivion through a fissure in the memory. There are some things which can be dished up alone, others only in quantity. We may offer one melon or one drama, but not one cherry or one song. One cherry is an insult; one song is a confession of poverty. Here once is really less than not at all. If a blind hen finds a grain of corn, the wiser course would be to keep that wonderful event to herself. In all seriousness I am of the opinion that he who has only two ballads or six songs to offer should keep this beggarly treasure for himself, even if the two ballads and six songs are of a high degree of perfection.
In a good poetical garden songs and ballads grow like grapes, twenty on one stalk, Berries picked singly are altogether too thin and too miserly.
Experience will confirm what we have here found by a logical process.
Which collections of poems and musical compositions are the most grateful, the most famous, the most popular? Always the most homogeneous. Such are Schiller's Ballads, Schubert's Songs, Bach's Preludes and Fugues, Beethoven's Sonatas, Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, Chopin's Nocturnes and Mazurkas. Supposing Beethoven had written only the first four of his sonatas or Bach only the first four of his preludes, would these four, without their companions, have the same value for the world that they have as members of a cycle? Certainly not. In the first place they would not have fastened themselves on the imagination of men, and, moreover, they would lack the lines of communication that lead over from them to their sisters. In a cycle, number has not only arithmetical, but also unifying value.
One more superfluous example may be adduced to prove this. Have "Pieces for the Piano" or "Selected Compositions" ever succeeded in reaching an importance like that of the sonata cycle? Why do Weber's brilliant compositions for the piano fill so little room in the consciousness of the people? Simply because they appear separately, as sparse examples of each category. Why are compositions of the very first order, like Mozart's Fantasies for the Piano, almost unknown? Because there are too few of them. If there were twenty instead of four, all the world would be playing them.
Rossini's jubilee has faded away, and newspaper articles in his praise or blame are no longer seen. What gave me most to think in the critical articles about him was the light-hearted way in which they dealt with the isolated beauties of the master, with the elementary revelations of his music. The only question that interested them was a verdict on his conception, characteristic style, dramatic force, and "depth". Not a word about the fire of Rossini's tempo, or of the soaring flight of his allegri, or of the magical decrescendo at the end of his introductions to the overture (e.g. in Tancred and Semiramis), or of the golden melody of his a capella passages (e.g. the A sharp intermezzi in the Barber of Seville and Othello), or of the wonderful harmonic progression of his modulations, or of the swelling accents of his melodies (forcing the soul to jubilation by purely psycho-mechanic devices), or of his skill in incidentally forming cavatinas and refrains out of the simplest series of intervals within the triad. These and a thousand other marks of genius are treated as if they were of merely secondary importance.
I maintain, however, in defiance of general opinion, that these points are the things that matter, the others are the unimportant. And I take this opportunity of uttering a warning word in favour of elementary beauty, working direct without regard to combination, as against the excessive over-valuation of art or (rather) of technical and relative skill. Not only are there immortal works; there are also immortal motifs, and even immortal bars. Even if the form of the whole composition be defective, even if the supreme end (to which the details should minister) be incongruous and evanescent, even if the expression be inappropriate to the effect aimed at, yet melodies, motifs, and harmonic progressions of the first order, though they may be dust-covered and forgotten, can never lose their intrinsic value. A change in the fashion, or even a naïve ear and attitude—and at once they shine again, with the brilliancy of a hundred years ago.
On the other hand, the risk of falling out of fashion and then of total oblivion always hangs over the most self-contained and compact compositions, unless they ransom themselves by single beauties in their subordinate parts. Posterity will respectfully mention the conformity of the composition to its plan, purpose, and definite rules as evidence of the composer's strength of will. But it will relegate the works to the history of barbaric industry; it will consign them to the same limbo which already harbours Hindoo cosmogony and symbolism, speculative philosophy, scholastic theology, and numerous other artistic subtleties spun by the human mind when divorced from the basis of fact. An art without isolated beauties, which charm in and for themselves, is a mark of barbaric peoples or eras. My definite—but not very exact—name for it is Vishnuism.
Those who rebel against these views should note the following points.
Experience teaches us that the creative artist is generally charmed by the individual beauties of a painting, while the layman, the art-critic, and the æsthete keep exclusively in view the purpose and technical perfection of the whole. No one, however, can doubt which of the two judgments is the more authoritative. Moreover, the greatest masters of the self-contained form, such as Shakespeare, Schiller, and Dante, have at the same time devoted so much care to the sporadic beauties, that page after page, even sentence after sentence, brims over with them. I wonder whether anyone can give the names of past masterpieces which owe their continued existence solely to the perfection of their dramatic or other plan. On the other hand, there are many works in the most exalted ranks of the élite, which are defective in form or conclusion, such as the Iliad, the Orlando Furioso, Don Quixote, and (most striking of all) the Divine Comedy. As complete works of art they are for us Vishnu; for their sporadic beauties they are eternally enjoyable.
Those who have noticed the fickleness of taste, the variations of judgment, the uncertainty of the most trustworthy æsthetic foundations, must often have anxiously asked themselves whether there are no common marks, in spite of the rotation of changing views, that will enable us to discriminate real greatness, of every kind and at every time, from the mediocre and the plausible. Pregnancy seems to me such a mark (though not the only one)—the urgent necessity of plain and concise expression. On the negative side this may be described as a dislike of long-drawn-out, secondary, transitional passages, a hatred of distension, the horror vacui. Every great man, whoever he may be and whenever he lives, gives much in small space, whether the treasure overflows its banks only in this manner or whether he is economically husbanding his resources. Take Homer, or Schiller, or any other recognised genius, and turn to any page of them. Every page repays you with gold, everywhere your attention is fixed, everywhere you breathe the upper air, everywhere you find beauty. In the case of the truly great, there is no need to burrow through heaps of sand to find the grains of gold. There are no long passages that derive their significance from the context, that possess merely a transitional or composition value.
"Just read on, and you will soon find out." No, I will not read on. For a great writer does not hide beauty in a sausage of meal and chaff. Our touchstone works equally well for poetry and music. Whoever asks you to swallow thick masses of tone, before he gives you anything really nourishing, is not a great musician, whatever be his name. Take, on the other hand, Beethoven, Mozart, or Haydn. One, two, three; in the very first bars you have form, clearness, energy, and (generally) also beauty.
This comes from the fact that a great man, while he is creating, lives in eternity, where time is precious. For in eternity a second counts for more than an hour does in transitory life.
It has been a great mistake to include the ballad among the forms of epic poetry. For the shaping of even the shortest epic demands quite other competencies and moods than the ballad. In its embarrassment, poetics took refuge in the formula: neither epical nor lyrical, but "lyrical-epic" or "epical-Iyric". The logic of this seems to me doubtful. An animal that seems to be neither a dog nor a cat is not, on that account, a "cat-dog".
I ask simply, who writes and who wrote our ballads? Literary history answers, the lyricists. From this I draw the conclusion that the ballad must belong to lyric poetry. It is indirect lyric; lyric with a mask before its face.
Much more important than the definition of the ballad (in which, by the way, no one has been successful) is the discrimination between its varieties. For this discrimination increases the delicacy of our feeling for style and leads to new problems. First and foremost we have to distinguish between the naïve popular ballad and the conscious and technically elaborated ballad of art. Two huge halves, each of which contains a number of sub-sections.
I begin with the popular ballad. This has either a mythological background or (as a substitute for this) an idealisation of human power, typified especially in the kingly crown. I divide the subject of this section, then, into mythological ballads and royal ballads.
The mythological ballad is concerned with the old, degenerate pagan gods, who have been banished from Christendom by religion and new views of life, but still "walk" in the realm of popular superstition, and even more eagerly with nixies and elves. These gods still take an active share in the fate of humanity. They were originally conceived as a hostile element; contact with them brings disaster. For this reason the genuine naïve popular ballad has generally a tragic end and a gruesome atmosphere.
This still shows in Bürger's ballads.
The ghastly ballad and the blood-curdling ballad are sub-varieties, or rather distortions and abortions, of the mythological ballad. It is extraordinary how identical the mythological characters of popular poetry are in different countries. The nixies and elves, under one name or another, are almost always present.
When we proceed to examine the second class of popular ballads—viz. the King ballads, we must remember that in the Middle Ages the crown was invested with something of a superhuman element. In the popular fairy tale the king's son might almost be described as a brevet fairy. The royal family appears as a kind of superhumans, the very name of whom has an idealistic connotation, and whose existence and demeanour are veiled in a golden shimmer. Thus there is no more trace of character-drawing than if the imagination were depicting angels. Whenever I meet a king in a ballad or fairy tale, I long to play cribbage with him. They are playing-card sovereigns.
The kingly dignity, however, is not absolutely necessary for the hero of the royal ballad. Other ranks may play his rôle vicariously, provided only that the rank is idealistic enough to create a lordly glamour in the popular imagination. I regard the heroic ballad, the knightly ballad, the minstrel ballad, and the love ballad as all sub-varieties of the kingly ballad.
It is well known, though rather strange, that the popular fancy has the knack of surrounding famous criminals with an idealistic nimbus. This, however, involves the presupposition either that the hero commits his crimes at a healthy distance, or that he is regularly rendered harmless by condign punishment.
There is also the picaresque ballad or ballad of rascality, present in a very rich assortment. In the Near East the Heiduck and the Cossack, both originally robbing and murdering freebooters, are enveloped in a romantic haze; in West Europe it is the bandit and highwayman, like Rinaldo Rinaldini and Fra Diavolo. The corsair is a favourite even with a poet of Byron's rank. And even to-day no one who receives the attentions of the hangman can escape the fate of celebration in song. The doggerel broadsheets in honour of murderers, hawked about at fairs, are a lineal descendant of the old popular ballad.
On the other hand, the popular fancy has never been able to find a poetic side in the magistrate, the constable, the rate-collector, or the bailiff. There are no police ballads.
We now come to the second department of ballad poetry, viz. the artistic or literary ballad.
It is not enough for the literary artist to turn his attention to the ballad in order to produce a literary ballad. For the artist can deliberately ignore his own personality and culture in order to imitate the naïveté of popular poetry. This was the case (e.g.) with Bürger and Uhland. The result then is an archaistic work of art—i.e. one composed intentionally in the spirit of a bygone age and with the use of bygone symbols and forms. When Mendelssohn composed fugues and oratorios in the manner of Bach, he was working archaistically; when our architects build rococo or Gothic houses, they are building archaistically.
The literary ballad came into existence when a poet devoted himself heart and soul to the production of a ballad, without renouncing his own culture and skill. And this poet was, as you know, Goethe. He was the creator of the literary ballad. The Goethe Literary Ballad shows radical (though not ostentatious) variation from the popular form. And the differences occur both in the essential spirit and in the outer form.
In the literary ballad the original mythological content is allegorically indicated and rationalistically interpreted. The old gods are now artistically handled personifications of natural forces. The tragic and gruesome atmosphere disappears; in its place comes a higher form of thought, which spiritualises the whole treatment. Repose and charm, clearness and beauty in the pictures, the tones, and the language bathe the Goethe ballad in sunshine. Thus, even when the end is tragic, no poignant emotion, much less a violent shock, is produced. The satisfaction of the aæsthetic sense is so keen, that even tidings of death do not disturb its harmony. Wit and humour, and even a little instruction, come to light in the Goethe ballad.
The Goethe literary ballad is not, however, in every case superior to the popular ballad. Thus I cannot recognise the Erl-König, with its somewhat insistent rationalism, as the equal of its naïver models; and I am not the only poet to hold this opinion. But on the whole, the Goethe ballad is not only an advance, but a very great advance, on its prototypes.
If you want a test to discover whether a ballad does or does not belong to the category of popular ballad or its imitation, the archaistic ballad, ask yourself this simple question: "Has the ballad a consecutive train of ideas, or (what amounts to the same thing) has it an intelligible symbolism?" If it has, then it is a literary ballad. The popular ballad depends upon emotion, the literary ballad upon thought.
Schiller's ballads are wholly different from any of those already mentioned. They have not been grafted on the stock of the popular ballad, and do not even lean on it in any way. They form an independent plant, with its own roots. With the ballad they have nothing in common except the name; and the very name is deceptive, like a label pasted on the wrong bottle.
Must we, then, regret the arbitrariness of the name? I think not; for the idea of the ballad is thereby expanded, though (I admit) with some violence. The art of poetry gains a superscription for narrative lyric in general, and such a title is desirable, if not necessary, no matter in what form. Only we must come to a clear understanding and agreement. If we were (e.g.) to try to study the general character of the ballad in the ballads of Schiller, as we might in those of Bürger, Uhland, and (to a lesser extent) Goethe, we should fall into some strange errors.
What are the ballads of Schiller? Perhaps they are historical ballads? Apparently yes, but really no, because we can call historical only that of which the theme belongs to world history. Now, it is not enough that something is past, or that someone is dead or has never lived, to make them a part of world-history!
What are the names of the heroes of Schiller's ballads? What do they do? When did they live? Did they ever live in the flesh? If you ask yourself these questions, with Schiller's poems in your hand, you will find the answer to the question about Schiller's ballads. They are anecdote ballads.
The profound student of history, the incomparable historical dramatist, has, in his ballads, deserted serious history and diligently ransacked the dustiest corners of the most forgotten collections of anecdotes. Why did he do this? Because he had need of insignificant themes to give free play to his gigantic force and delight in mastery. The given material, the historiette, is nothing. Indeed, it is often less than nothing, because intolerable. But there is nothing that Schiller cannot make immortal and add to the common property of all nations. He need only touch a thing to leave on it the stamp of his master-hand. Schiller is never guilty of a failure.
Goethe, Schiller, and their successors have by no means exhausted the realm of the ballad. Art is, indeed, inexhaustible.
Before me lie half a dozen volumes by different authors, all of which were published last year and are furnished with a dedication "To my Mother". This is, therefore, a suitable moment to say a word, which, as I suppose and hope, has often been said already.
Books, which one prints and scatters far and wide over an unknown world with the help of the bookseller, are a matter of publicity, not of private life. Neither the mother, nor the wife, nor the aunt of the author has anything to do with it. That an adult man, if he has the extreme good fortune to number his mother still among the living, should dedicate to her his deepest feelings of affection, veneration, and gratitude, is a matter of course and is not a secret of the poet. An eloquent member of parliament does not yield to an author in domestic piety; but it never occurs to him to preface his speech on the sugar duty with a flowery expression of his attachment to his best-loved kinsmen. I understand and revere the sentiment; I feel it myself; I am quite ready to be moved by it and to be convinced by the dedication of the good nature and loveableness of both parties, the author and his mother. But a similar manifestation of filial piety in the mouth of a parliamentary orator would move me just as much. Why, then, does not the orator indulge in it? Why does he renounce his privilege? Just because he has a finer feeling of tact, because he realises that he owes the public not confidentiality but respect. A nation is of too exalted a value to serve as the stamp of a family gift, and the public is too big a personage for us to assume that we can incline the whole body, in an indefinite direction, towards an unknown lady, however worthy of its regard she may be. I don't know how it is with others; but I feel a slight itch, in such cases, to send the book back to the publisher unread, with the excuse that, as it happens, I have not the honour to be the mother of the author. Of course, my sympathy always gains the upper hand in the end; but I have already had to pardon the author for something, before he has had time to exhibit his metrical sins—and that is a little too early.
This abuse is due to, and in some cases palliated by, its ancient descent. Indeed, the history of literature is forced to justify it in the eyes of those to whom exalted example is of itself a law. Poets and artists used to pay, in their titles or within the work itself, tributes of courtesy and attachment to casual ladies and gentlemen of no interest whatever to us. Painters of noble madonnas presented us with cloth merchants and syndics into the bargain; composers intertwined the titles of their immortal works with aristocratic names three feet long. But I ask any impartial person whether or not this usage has an elevating effect on us? Moreover, the duty of homage belongs to the past; the artist or author of to-day has, greatly to the dignity of his profession, emancipated himself from it. Is it legitimate for him to try arbitrarily to persuade the world to help him to pay the tribute which he feels he owes to a private person? No; the mother of the author is entitled to the first copy of the book; the book itself belongs to another lady. Formerly she used to be called the Muse, now she is called Art. To her alone should a work of art be dedicated. As, moreover, this dedication goes without saying, it remains true that the most seemly of all dedications is no dedication at all.
In German-speaking countries quotations from Goethe occupy a peculiar position, just as quotations from Shakespeare do in England. They cannot be compared with other quotations. We quote other great authors on account of the intrinsic value of the citation; we quote Goethe out of loyal veneration, just as we hang the portrait of the reigning sovereign on our walls. For Goethe is the reigning poet-prince and commander-in-chief of all German metres, with the laurel of the first class. Just as it would be conspicuous if there were no portrait of His Majesty the Kaiser in a German home, so would it seem unnatural and unseemly if there were not at least one citation from Goethe in any German book, no matter what its subject may be. Our instinct alone assures us of this. The absence of portrait or quotation would indicate an ostentatious intention. No one could get out of it by saying that he was writing on earthworms and that Goethe had composed no poem or paragraph in their honour. If he were really in earnest, a way could be found. As an excellent model and example of how Goethe can be made available even in what seem to be the most desperate cases, I recommend the course followed by an authority on locusts in the Zoological Journal.
This worthy zoologist had to make a report on the American locust. Let us note carefully how he managed to bring Goethe into the memorial, so that we may learn how to do likewise. In the first place the author describes the devastation wrought by locusts in former times. He then goes on to point out how the continuous spread of human settlements and the economical and political progress of the area in question had practically wiped out the pest. He concludes his report as follows: "Thus the locusts learned the truth of Goethe's maxim that 'nothing on earth is so difficult to bear as a series of fine days.'"
I suggest that this kind of logic should be termed zoologic.
- ↑ I The Barrisons were a group of charming and highly accomplished English dancers, whose elaborate evolutions were much admired about the time this essay was written (i.e. forty years ago).
- ↑ The word used here by Spitteler is "Schwabenstreich", lit. "Swabian action", just as we might say "an action worthy of the Wise Men of Gotham".
- ↑ Niemayer was a German physician, whose health exercises were once in vogue.
- ↑ The reference is to Mozart's Zauberflöte.
- ↑ Faust, Part I, line 554.