Chapter III: The Beauty of Art, or the Ideal (8)

First in importance, then, is this permanent condition of true art, immediate intelligibility. It will be found an invariable truth that all nations have emphasized precisely that in this life which was most agreeable to their artistic sense, their desire being always to find what was most intimate to themselves, their life and existence in their art. It was this independent flavour of patriotism which Calderon worked into such characters as his Zenobia and Semiramis; and Shakespeare in the same way was able to imprint upon the most varied subject-matter the hall-mark of his English ancestry, although he knew how to preserve along with it the essential traits of historical characters belonging to nations foreign to his own, the Roman for example, in a far profounder degree than was possible to the Spanish poets. Even the Greek tragedians had their eyes constantly directed to the actual conditions of their times and the particular city in which they lived. The "Œdipus Colonus" in its local references is not merely in a peculiar way associated with Athens but, by virtue of the fact that Œdipus dies in this locality, at once indicates him as the future Preserver of that city. In somewhat other associations the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus is, owing to the decisive sentence of the Areopagus, marked by an interest of more vital interest to the Athenians[401]. On the other hand Greek mythology, despite all the varied and oft repeated use that has been made of it since the revival of the arts and learning, has never fully come home to the general sense of modern emotions and in various degrees in the plastic arts and still more in poetry, despite its very extensive influence here, has failed to arouse real enthusiasm. No one thinks now of writing an ode to Venus, Zeus, or Pallas[402]. Sculpture, it is true, can hardly get along even in modern times without the assistance of the Greek Pantheon, but for that very reason it is mainly only appreciated by and intelligible to a select circle of cultivated men who are either connoisseurs or critics. As one of these, Goethe spared no pains in his endeavour to arouse in contemporary artists an enthusiasm which should go so far as to imitate the pictures of Philostratus, but for the most part his pains were thrown away. Such examples of the work of antiquity, on account of the very flavour of past time and a life that has vanished, which clings to them, remain as strange to contemporary art as they do to the general public. As a contrary example of real success on the part of Goethe we may instance the far profounder insight he has shown us during the later period of his poetic activity in fusing by means of his "Westöstlicher Divan" the colour of the East with the poetry that really appeals to us to-day, giving to the Orient, in fact, its modern embodiment. In this process of assimilation he has clearly shown himself alive to the fact that he is a poet of the West and a German as well, and consequently while preserving the fundamental key-note of the Oriental spirit in his delineation of characters and situations to which it was appropriate, was able at the same time fully to satisfy the claims of the modern spirit and those of his own personality. Subject to such reservations it is undoubtedly in the province of a poet to borrow his material from remote regions, past centuries and foreign nations, maintaining in their broad and most characteristic outlines the historical form of ancient mythology, custom, and institution. At the same time he will take care to utilize such forms only as the external frame of his delineations, never permitting the essential content of such productions to fall into any disharmony with the profounder instincts of his own native world. As the most extraordinary example of this Goethe's "Iphigenia" still stands without a rival.

In their relation to such a transformation the several arts dispose of their material very differently. In the love-poems of lyrical poetry very little use is made of local associations depicted with historical accuracy. The emotional situation and the movement of sentiment is here the main thing. We receive, for example, in the sonnets of Petrarch a very small substratum of natural fact relatively to Laura, hardly anything more than her name, which might just as well have been another. Of local interest we get the barest scraps, and that entirely of general significance, such as the existence of the fountain of Vaucluse and things of that kind. Epical poetry, on the contrary, requires the greatest detail in its natural descriptions, and we are most readily pleased with their historical truth, provided always that the picture is both clear and intelligible. The use of the external truth of historical facts presents the greatest pitfalls to dramatic art, more particularly in reference to its theatrical presentation, where everything is directly addressed to an audience, or purports to strike upon sense with the vividness of life, so that we are willing to recognize and entrust ourselves therein with equal directness. Here the delineation of historical truth in its external aspects must for the most part be of subsidiary importance, in fact retain little more than the framework of it. It must, in short, remain true to that natural relation we find in love-poetry, in which at the same time that we are able completely to sympathize with the feelings expressed in every way another name is given to the beloved than that of the lady most loved by ourselves[403]. It does not here in the least signify whether or no our critics fail to discover absolute precision in the picture presented of the particular manners, culture, and emotional expression of the time. In Shakespeare's historical dramas we find a great deal that remains strange to us and of no considerable interest. We are contented enough on a mere reading, but in the theatre our enjoyment ceases. Critics and men of learning no doubt stick fast to their idea that such exquisite scraps of genuine history should be presented on the stage on their own merits and come down severely upon the wretched taste of the public, when it lets us see how bored it is over such things. Unfortunately a work of art and the direct enjoyment we receive from it is in no sense particularly for critics or savants, but for this very public. Critics have really no reason to give themselves such airs. They are after all but units of this public, and the mere attention to historical detail can be of as little serious interest to them as any other members of it. For this reason the English nowadays in their theatrical performances only include such scenes from the Shakespearean drama which require nothing further to make them clear and intelligible, being happily free from the pedantry of our aesthetic professors who held that all that is most remote in historical incident from the apprehension of an average audience should be thrust before their eyes. It follows also from our view of the matter that when foreign dramas are reproduced on the stage the public is clearly entitled to have them considerably remodelled[404]. Even that which is excellent in itself may require some alteration. No doubt it will be contended that what is essentially first-rate art retains its excellence for all times; but a work of art has also an aspect of transitory worth, which yields to the years, and it is this of course which requires remodelling. As people change so too the sense of beauty alters; and it is important that the particular public, before whom any work is represented, should feel themselves quite at home in the whole of such a work including that aspect which derives all its significance from external history.

It is this conditional acceptance of historical truth which at once explains and justifies that which is generally known in Art as _anachronism_, and which is usually attributed to artists as a serious defect. Primarily such examples of anachronism will be found to attach to matters of purely external interest. That a Falstaff should talk about pistols is no matter of consequence whatever. The case is more serious when we have a violin placed in the hands of Orpheus, for here the association of such prehistorical times with an instrument so essentially modern as the violin, one which everybody knows was not invented in those days, presents too glaring a violation of truth. For this reason it is now the fashion in theatrical circles to bestow incredible pains and care upon the historical accuracy of details in the matter of costume and the getting up of a piece, as, for example, the infinite trouble lavished upon the historical procession in the "Maid of Orleans."[405] Such efforts are in the majority of eases lost labour, for the simple reason that they only concern matters of relative interest or points that might be wholly passed over. The more important type of anachronisms has nothing whatever to do with stage costume and all that with which stage business is concerned, but consists in making characters express their emotions and ideas, venture upon soliloquies and actions in a form or of a substance which absolutely contradicts the conditions of their times and culture, their religious and general preconceptions. It is common to apply the conception of natural truth to such examples of anachronism, in other words, to say that it is unnatural for characters to speak or act otherwise than they would have spoken and acted in their own days. If we stick, however, too closely to the logic of this naturalism we shall only land ourselves in further complications[406]. For an artist, in depicting the emotional life with all that results from it, and the fundamental passions that belong to it, being mainly interested in the affirmation of individuality, ought not merely to repeat that life under its ordinary daily dress; it is rather his business to show every true manifestation of pathos in the particular light which best reveals its real quality. The whole object of his attainment as an artist is not merely to understand what is of vital significance in the truth he faces, but to be able to give it the precise form which will best direct our own eyes and ears and heart to his own discovery. To attain this it is obvious that he must keep in view the particular culture of his own time no less than all its various powers of expression. In the time of the Trojan war the kind of speech in general use, and indeed the whole fabric of social life, was as far removed from the type of culture which is reflected on us from the pages of the "Iliad" as the mass of the nation and the pre-eminent worthies of the royal houses then reigning in Greece were separated from the fully developed form of ideas and expression such as arouse our wonder when we read our Aeschylus, or behold the perfected beauty of the style of Sophocles. A violation of the so-called "path of Nature" of this kind is in art an anachronism implied in her laws. The inward kernel of that which she reveals remains unaffected, but the more developed power at the artist's command, in revealing and disclosing this essential core of his subject, renders some change in the mode of its expression inevitable. It is a wholly different matter when a modification of this kind proceeds so far as to impose ideas and conceptions of a later form of the religious and moral consciousness on a century or a nation whose entire spiritual outlook is opposed to such more recent conceptions. The Christian religion has gathered in its train forms of the moral life, which were entirely foreign to the moral consciousness of ancient Greece. That inward introspection of conscience, for example, ever on the alert to decide the ethical significance of action, with its accompanying remorse and repentance, first appears in the moral culture of a more modern date. The heroic character knows nothing of a repentance which sets itself in hostility to its past. What it has done it abides by. Orestes does not repent of his mother's murder. The Furies that rise out of the shadow of his action pursue him, no doubt; but the Eumenides are, at the same time, represented as universal powers, and not as voices that cry out to him from his own conscience simply. This very heart and substance of a given period of man's history a poet must master, and only when we find him interfusing with this central core of reality matter that directly contradicts it is he guilty of any truly grave anachronism. In conclusion, then, we may say that it is indeed part of the poet's function to live into the spirit of past times and foreign peoples, for this substance of their life, if it be truly such, remains a possession for all time; but to attempt to reflect with every accuracy of detail all the definition of that external show now buried beneath the rust of antiquity is merely the effort of a learning essentially childish, intent on preserving what is itself shadow rather than substance. No doubt even in this direction, the truth of general outlines should be carefully respected, but never to such lengths as would compel art to forfeit her claim of drawing upon the fiction of her invention, and the truth of fact with equal impartiality.

(_γγ_) We are now in a better condition to understand all that is really implied in the assimilation by art of that which is strange in the external features of remote history, and the true conception of the _objective_ life of her creations. A work of art must primarily enclose for us within its embrace the higher interests of spirit and volitional power, all that is essentially human, and possesses real weight, the depths, that is to say, of man's emotional life. The main thing of all is that this embodied content[407] should transpierce all purely external conditions of manifestation, should ring, as it were, through all that is less vital in its significance[408] this fundamental chord of truth. The real objectivity, therefore, unfolds as from a sheath, the _pathos_, that is the substantive content of a situation, unfolds, moreover, the rich and powerful personality in which the essential phases of spirit are alive, and find their realization and expression. For such embodiment all that is absolutely indispensable is a definition and determination of the real, which is generally suitable to the object thus defined, and which requires nothing further to explain it. If we have once got hold of such a form unfolded in strict accordance with our Ideal principle, then we have a work of art essentially objective in the true sense, and the question whether each and every historical detail is justified is of no further importance. We have before us a work of art which appeals directly to our inner life, and one which is our own possession. Once possessed of that, and we may take as much as we please of that element of the form which lay more closely to periods of life which have passed; but the eternal foundation is that which appeals to all men in all places, which is carried forward with a power that never wanes or fails to influence us, and it does so because the objective life it reveals is the same that abounds in and overflows our own souls. That which is merely historical in the appearance is, on the contrary, the element that vanishes; and, in dealing with works of art created in days remote from our own, we must do our best to resolve the discordance, and, indeed, must be fully prepared to blot out from our vision similar defects in works that spring from our own times. Thus it is that the Psalms of David, with their immortal celebration of the Lord in His goodness, and the wrath of His almightiness, no less than the profound sorrows of the Hebrew prophets as they face Babylon and Zion, touch men with the same force to-day as they did of old time: nay, even a moral diatribe, such as is sung by Sarastro in the "Zauberflöte," may come home to the hearts of us all, including the sons of Egypt[409], owing to the soul and vitality which rings through its melodies.

And we may add that every individual to whom a work of art objective in this, the true sense, is presented, must on his part discard his own false prepossessions, wherein he merely wishes to find his own idiosyncrasies repeated. On the first reproduction of "William Tell," it appears, not a single Swiss among the audience was satisfied. In much the same way, when the most beautiful love-songs have been sung, many another, failing to find therein his own passions reflected, has presumed to think the beauty untrue to life; just as so many more, whose knowledge of love is confined to the perusal of romances, have imagined that the love-god would only then be their immortal possession when they found themselves face to face with precisely the same emotions and situations their favourite studies had propounded.

C. THE ARTIST

We have, in this first part of our aesthetical philosophy, examined as a first step the universal Idea of beauty; we then proceeded to inquire in what respects it was defective in its existence as the beauty of Nature, and after thus clearing the way we were in a position to grasp the complete notion of the Ideal as the adequate realization of beauty. We developed the Ideal, _first_, as conceived abstractly according to the _general_ notion of it, and having determined that were assisted thereby to elucidate the modes of its _particular_ manifestations. Inasmuch, however, as a work of art has its origin in the human spirit it requires the pregnant activity of an individual life from which it proceeds, and as the creation of the same exists for others, that is, a Public which is emotionally receptive. This spiritual and informing activity is the imagination of the _artist_. We have consequently now, and this is the _third_ and last aspect of the Ideal to which we shall refer, to raise the question how it comes about that this product of men's inner world is not the direct and native growth[410] of that world, but receives its due form through the _creative impulse_ of particular men, in other words, by virtue of the genius and talent of the artist. At the same time we must admit that the question is only raised that we may be able to add the statement that it really is excluded from the sphere of scientific investigation, or, at the most, we can only furnish a few general remarks towards its solution. Yet it is undoubtedly a question frequently raised this, namely, from what source an artist receives the gift and faculty of conception and execution with which he creates his work. We should all of us like, no doubt, to have a ready prescription, a recipe of what we must exactly do, what conditions we must impose on ourselves to produce something as wonderful. We would emulate Cardinal von Este when he asked Ariosto, with reference to his raging Roland: "But, Master Louis, where in the world did you get all this damned stuff from?" Raphael replied to a similar question in a letter we still possess, that he was hunting after a certain idea.

The more obvious aspects of artistic activity we propose to examine under the following heads of discussion:

_First_, we will give our definition of the general conception of artistic _genius_ and the inspiration it implies.

_Secondly_, we will make a few observations on the _objective_ character of this creative activity.

_Thirdly_, we will endeavour to ascertain in virtue of what real artistic _originality_ consists.

1. IMAGINATION, GENIUS, AND INSPIRATION

Before inquiring more closely into the meaning of the term "genius" we must obviously limit the field within which we propose to discuss it. Genius is an expression of very wide connotation, and is used not merely in its application to artists, but equally when we refer to great generals and kings, as also to the heroic captains of scientific discovery. For the sake of simplification we would once more discuss the distinctions involved under a triple division of our subject-matter.

_(a) The Imagination_[411]

The most conspicuous faculty of an artist which arrests our attention when we direct it expressly upon the capacities implied in artistic productivity is the _imagination._ And we must be careful here not to confuse it with a _visionary fancy_ which is wholly passive. The imagination creates.

(_α_) And, in the first place, we shall find that this creative activity carries with it in possession and endowment a peculiar power of _grasping reality_ and the forms it presents, all that through the channels of alert eyes and ears imprints pictures of infinite variety caught from the external world upon the mind, and further implies an exceptionally retentive _memory_ wherein to store up this varied world of innumerable reflections. The artist, therefore, in this initial stage of our analysis is not merely thrown back upon images of his own creation, but is rather compelled to turn aside from the dull level of ideals falsely so called and to boldly enter the fields of Nature and Life. To attempt art or poetry merely with fanciful ideas of our own is always a suspicious way of starting on our journey; for the artist must mould his creations from the abundance of his life and by no means from the overplus of abstract generalities. It is not, as in philosophy, thoughts, but the real external forms of what actually exists which furnishes the material for artistic production. In contact with this raw material to work upon the artist must feel thoroughly at home. He must have seen much, heard much, and stored away a great deal as well; and in illustration of this we almost invariably find that a great personality is distinguished by a capacious memory. All that interests mankind he will lay hold of, and the more profound his spirit the more it will enlarge the field of its interests in countless directions. This was the way in which we find the genius of Goethe first opened its wings, and throughout his life the circle of his spirit's restless horizon broadened and broadened. This peculiar gift of receptiveness, this interest in the comprehension of facts after their true definitions and colour, their steadfast adherence to the truth of experience is the first thing we look for in a great artist. And this accurate knowledge of the truth of form must be accompanied in equal measure by a proved acquaintance with the souls of men, the passions that rise in the heart, and everything that it yearns and strives for. And, in addition to this twofold armory of knowledge, he must understand yet further all the various ways that this world of the human soul expresses itself on the face of the reality which confronts his senses, transpiercing thus the outer veil.

(_β_) But, in the second place, this imaginative power is not exhausted with merely receiving that which is presented to the senses, or is inferred as the content of the human soul. The ideal work of art does not merely embrace the outward semblance of the inward spirit as clothed in the forms of its actual existence, but should rather succeed in manifesting the essential truth and reason of the real itself. This _element of reason_, as determined in the particular object the artist has selected, must not merely be pressed in his own consciousness, as an active influence, but must already have been reflected upon in that essential and rich significance which brings it into relation with the entire breadth and depth of reality. Without reflection no man can grasp fully the wealth that is in him, and it is consequently an inseparable feature of any great work of art that everything which attaches to it both as a whole and in its detail has been long and deeply weighed and thought out. No artistic work of real sterling value can be thrown off with any mere imaginative _tour de force._[412] We do not, of course, suggest that the artist must therefore comprehend in the form of _philosophical_ thought this essential core of reason in his experience; albeit such is the fundamental rock upon which religion no less than philosophy and art is based. Philosophy is by no means essential to his outfit; and, in fact, if he once begins to think about things as a philosopher, he busies himself with modes of thought which are diametrically opposed to that which should engage an artist's attention. For what the imagination undertakes to do and only to do is not to bring to consciousness this inner core of reason in the form of general propositions and conceptions, but to apprehend it clothed in the concrete form of actual existence and individuality. All that ferments within his life the artist must reproduce in the body and envisagement, whose connected picture and general outlines he has already assimilated from the world outside, making such so far subservient to his creative effort that they in their turn may participate in the truth of his own substance and enable him to crown it with complete expression. In this interfusion of an intelligible content with an embodiment received from actual existence the artist will avail himself of the ever wakeful circumspection of his reflective faculties no less than the deep resources of emotional life which leave the stamp of vitality on his work. It is consequently but one more sample of critical aberration to imagine that poems such as the Homeric were introduced to our poet in his sleep. Without intelligent alertness, division, and distinctions of each part as related to the whole, an artist will be unable to assert his mastery over any form whatsoever that he may wish for; only fools are of the opinion that the genuine artist does not in the least know what his hands and senses are about.

Moreover, the concentration of the artist's emotional life on each aspect of his work is also as necessary to its success as the concentration of his mind. For it is mainly through the impression of emotion, which permeates and gives a vital colour to the entire work, that the artist asserts his claim to the substance and embodiment of his creation as a part of his own spiritual substance, as something he, a given personality, may peculiarly call his own. For the external aspect of his work, the mere picture of it as we may say, tends rather to place us outside it and apart; it is the emotional energy it expresses which primarily unites it with affinity to our very souls. Only when thus understood shall we be able to realize the truth that an artist must not merely have much looked about him in the world and assimilated a rich knowledge both of its outward show and the very substance of its life, but, further, must himself have experienced many things and great things, things that have moved him to the quick and left their life-roots in his own heart and spirit--he must, as we say, have "gone through much" and "lived abundantly"--before he will find himself able to build from his stores in the concrete types of his art something approaching Life's unsounded repletion. And this will at once explain and justify the bluster and ferment of genius in its youth, as amply reflected in the lives of Goethe and Schiller. But only the age of maturity and gray hairs will bring us the perfect work of art in all its rounded ripeness[413].

_(b) Talent and Genius_

This productive activity of the imagination by means of which the artist gives, by a process of elaboration to that which is essentially rational in its nature, a real embodiment, a creation more his own than anything else--this is what is usually summarized as genius and talent.

(_α_) We have already drawn attention to those characteristics which are most obviously referable to genius. Genius is the general capacity of creating a genuine example of fine art no less than the energy implied in the execution and elaboration of the same. Moreover, this capability and the power which goes with it is essentially the property of a human soul; that is to say, self-conscious individuality alone is able to create in this sense that a spiritual creation of this quality is just what it sets before itself to produce. Critics, intent on closer definition, are wont to distinguish sharply between genius and talent. And, in fact, they are not absolutely the same things, although it is necessary to find them united in the artist who would give us artistic work of the highest class. To be more exact, Art, in so far as it generally becomes a _particular_ art, and is exemplified for us in the real and definite appearance of its products, requires various accomplishments appropriate to the peculiar modes of its realization. Such forms of executive versatility we may call with propriety talent, as we may say that anyone possesses a talent for perfect playing on the violin, or anyone else for singing. But a mere talent for this or that can only effect for us anything really good in the, so to speak, insulated nooks and corners of art[414]; it moreover itself requires for its true perfection something of more universal art-capacity as also that soul-animation, something more which is essentially the hall-mark of genius. Talent, in short, without the vital spark of genius, never gets much beyond a purely mechanical facility.

(_β_) It is also an opinion very commonly held that superior talent and genius are _inborn._ Here again we must distinguish; for if there is a sense in which this is true, from another point of view it is equally mistaken. No doubt every man, by virtue of his humanity, receives at his birth the potential gifts of religion, thought, and science. In other words he would not strictly be a man if he did not already possess a capacity to grasp the idea of a Supreme Being, and generally to become the subject of a thinking consciousness. All that he requires to gain these things, in addition to the fact of his human birth, are education, culture, and perseverance. With art, however, the matter stands differently. Art requires _specific_ aptitude[415], in which unquestionably natural endowment plays an essential part. As, that is to say, beauty is itself the Idea realized in that which is apprehended as real by the senses, and a work of art embodies the workings of Spirit in a form of existence immediately cognized by the eye and the ear, in the same way the artist must discover and embody the content of his art not in the exclusively spiritual form of thought, but within the sphere of sensuous perception and feeling, and indeed as creator in actual relation to a given sensuous material and within the limits of the same. This artistic creativeness consequently encloses within itself, as art does throughout, the aspect of immediacy envisaged with the directness of Nature's own creations, and it is this appearance, which the individual is unable to evolve from himself, but has to find it, if he finds it at all, as immediately presented to him. Herein lies the significance of the statement, and herein alone, that genius and talent are innate.

In much the same way the several arts adapt themselves as by a kind of natural affinity to particular nations. Song and melody are, we may almost say, the birth-gift of an Italian; with our northern peoples, on the contrary, music[416] and the opera, though seriously cultivated and with great success, are as far from being a real home growth as the orange trees. The Greeks are conspicuous for the native and elaborate beauty of their epic poetry, and most of all for the unique perfection of their sculpture. The Romans never possessed an art that was in any strict sense exclusively their own. All that grew into blossom on their soil was transplanted from the gardens of Greece. The art whose growth has the widest natural range is that of poetry; and the reason of this is that in it we require least to draw upon a sensuous vehicle for its expressed presentment. Within the province of poetry the folk-song is most of all native to a people and inseparably yoked with their natural conditions. For this very reason the folk-song breaks into blossom even in times of the rudest culture and for the most part retains the unconscious simplicity of Nature herself. Of this Goethe himself is an example. Though he produced works in every type of poetical expression his first songs still go deepest and carry least dust from the study. In them, too, there is least the flavour of culture. The latter-day Greek is still a living witness to a people whose native gift it is both to write poetry and sing. Fauriel has published a collection of modern Greek songs, taken for the most part just as women, nurses, and school-girls were heard singing them, who could not for the world understand what he found so wonderful in them. And this is a good illustration of the way that we find Art and its specific appearance associate itself with a particular national type. In the same way the art of improvization is more than anywhere else the native growth of Italy and exemplified there with quite extraordinary talent. An Italian will even to-day improvize for you a five-act drama, and not a word of it is committed to memory; all grows up out of his experience of human passions and situations and the deeply-excited inspiration of the moment. As an example we mention the fact that a certain poor improvizer after rhapsodizing in this way for a considerable time, and then finally trudging off on his round to collect his pence from the bystanders in a battered hat, was still in such a fume of poetic frenzy that he could not bring his declamations to a stop, waved about in fact so lustily with his arms and hands that in the end all the money he had begged was shaken to the winds.

(_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 lust of work _born in him_ and 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.

_(c) Inspiration_

The activity of the imagination, then, and the power of technical execution, taking both together as the inseparable antecedents of a real artist, are commonly understood as _inspiration._[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 as yet 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 the appearance 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 sufficiently elaborate 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 gebücket
Und 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 the same time the work of _his_ inspiration; 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 his _own_ emotional 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 artistic _originality._ 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 "subjective _manner_"[427] and _style_.

_(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 the _specific_ and consequently _accidental idiosyncrasies_ of 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.