Chapter XI: Introduction: I (10)

In this respect, too, the Lyric occupies a position which is to be contrasted with Epic poetry. In other words, while we regarded as necessary for the full bloom of the true Epos a phase in the nation's growth which was, speaking generally, undeveloped, at least in the sense that it had not ripened in the prosaic acceptance of its actual life, the times which favour most of all lyrical composition are those which already are in possession of a more or less fixed organization of social condition. It is in such a period that the individual seeks a reflection of his intimate personal life in contrast to this outer world, creating from it and within its limits an independent whole of emotion and idea. For in the Lyric it is not, we repeat, the objective solidarity and individual action, but the individual person as self-conscious life which supplies both content and form. This, however, must not be understood in such a way as though the individual, in order to express himself in lyrical form, must perforce disjoin himself from every connection with national interests and the opinions, and with rigid and exclusive severity remain as he stands.

On the contrary, with such an abstract self-subsistency we should only have left us for content the wholly contingent and particular passion, the mere caprice of concupiscence and affection, false idiosyncrasies and distorted originality would have unlimited opportunities. Genuine lyrical poetry, like all other poetry, has no doubt to express the content of the human heart in its truth. Yet none the less, regarded as the content of the Lyric, what is most a matter of fact and substantial must appear absorbed in personal feeling, vision, imagination, and thought. And, in the _second_ place, the question here is not so much simply expression of the personal inner life, is not so much concerned with a primary and direct statement in the epic fashion, what the facts are, as with an expression of the poetical nature in a manner both artistically fruitful and wholly different from chance and ordinary modes. It follows that the Lyric requires, precisely on account of the fact that the concentrated life of the heart unfolds itself in manifold feelings and comprehensive views, and the individual is conscious of the poetry of his most intimate life as nested in a world that is already more prosaically organized--an artistic culture already secured, which must assert itself as the flower and independent product of the individual's natural endowment thus trained to a perfect result. For these reasons the Lyric is not limited to particular epochs of the spiritual development of a people, but is the rich blossom of the most varied. To an exceptional degree is it favoured in more recent times, in which everybody is entitled to have and express his own views and emotions.

I will, however, draw attention, in the interest of really important distinction, to the following general considerations.

(_a_) In the _first_ place, we have the type of lyrical expression peculiar to _folk-songs._

(_αα_) In these above all we have witness to the varied and distinct qualities of national character. It is on account of this, and consonant with the widely-prevailing curiosity of our generation, that great efforts are made to collect folk-songs of every kind, in order to increase our acquaintance with the peculiarities of every national spirit, and therewith our sympathies and vital contact with such. Already Herder has done much in this direction. Goethe, too, with the help of his own more independent imitations, has materially assisted an approach to very different examples of this style of poetry. Complete sympathy is, however, only possible for the songs of one's own people; and however much we Germans are able to make ourselves at home in the work of foreign lands, the fact remains that the ultimate aroma in song[5] of the intimate life of another folk can only appear as alien, that we shall only catch the echo of the tone of feeling that truly belongs to it, with the assistance of a more native reflection of its content.[6] This Goethe has imported into his songs of a foreign subject-matter, stamped as they are with the finest sympathy and beauty. We may take as an example the lament of the noble spouse of Asan Aga, imitated from the Icelandic--only so far as to retain throughout the unique spirit of such poems unimpaired.

(_ββ_) The general character of the lyrical folk-song is comparable to the primitive Epos in virtue of the fact that here too the poet does not make himself his subject-matter, but is absorbed in his selected material. Although, therefore, intensity of soul in its extreme concentration may express itself in the folk-song, it is nevertheless not a single person with the artistic expression of whose private experience we are made acquainted. It is rather a national state of feeling, which the author completely assimilates, in so far as it possesses, when taken by itself, no intimate form of idea or feeling wholly independent of the nation's existence and interests. And a condition is necessary, as the presupposition for such an inseparable union, in which independent personal reflection and culture is not yet awakened, so that the poet is simply in his creative capacity merely the vehicle in the background, by means of whom the national life is expressed in its lyrical emotion and general outlook. This directly primitive character no doubt communicates to the folk-song an unconscious freshness of downright grasp and striking veracity, which is often very effective; but it receives thereby along with it very readily a fragmentary appearance; it is defective in the continuity of its exposition, which may amount to actual obscurity. The feeling dives into depth, but cannot and will not attain to full utterance. Moreover, as before observed, what is absent from such a point of view throughout, however much the form in general is wholly lyric, in other words subjective, is just the lyrical individuality, which expresses this form and its content as the possession of its _own_ heart and mind, and the creation of its _own_ artistic resources.

(_γγ_) Peoples, therefore, which confine themselves to poetry of this type, and do not combine such composition with that of the further stages of lyrical, epic, or dramatic work, are as a rule in great measure barbarous nations, uncultured, characterized by transitory feud and catastrophes. If they themselves, in such heroic ages, really combined to form a truly pregnant whole, whose particular aspects were already fused together in an independent and withal harmonious objective union, which could supply the ground for essentially concrete and individually distinct exploits, we should find in them, along with such primitive poetry, epic poets as well. The condition, out of which such songs assert themselves as the single and ultimate mode of poetic expression, is therefore rather limited to the field of family life and the association of clans, without any further organization such as belongs already to the riper perfection of the heroic community. If we are reminded here and there of national exploits, such are for the most part conflicts waged against foreign aggressors, expeditions of pillage, reprisals of savagery with savagery, or deeds of one individual against another in the same people, in the narration of which lament and dejection or ecstatic jubilation over one conqueror after another, are the moods throughout prevailing. The national life as it actually is, as yet unfolded in its wholly free development, is relegated to the background in contrast with the world of more personal feeling, which also, on its own account, betrays an immaturity; and, however much thereby we gain in concentration of effect, the result only too frequently remains, so far as content is concerned, rude and barbarous. The question then, whether folk-songs should possess for us a poetic interest, or on the contrary repel us to some extent, depends on the kind of situation and emotion they portray. That which appears admirable to the imagination of one people, will readily strike another as wanting in taste, horrible, and offensive. There is, for example, a folk-song which tells us the story of a wife who was immured at the command of her husband, and all that her plea for mercy could effect was that apertures should be left open for her breasts, in order that she might suckle her child; we are told that she remained alive until her child was weaned. This is a barbarous and frightful situation. And in the same way tales of robbery, exploits of the bluster or sheer savagery of individuals, possess nothing in them in which alien peoples of a higher culture can sympathize. Folksongs, consequently, very often run into great detail as to the quality of which there is no fixed standard of comparison, because such is too far removed from our common humanity. When we consequently, in more recent times, are made acquainted with the songs of the Iroquois, the Esquimaux, and other wild nationalities, the circle of a true poetic enjoyment is in no wise thereby enlarged.

(_β_) Further, inasmuch as the Lyric is the entire expression of the inward life of Spirit, it can neither restrict itself to the mode of expression nor the content of the genuine folksong, or of later poems composed in a similar spirit.

(_αα_) In other words, on the one hand, it is of essential importance, as already remarked, that the wholly self-absorbed soul should detach itself from this absolute concentration and its direct introspection, and should pass on instead to the free grasp of itself which, in the conditions above described, is only incompletely the case. On the other, it is necessary that it should expand in a world abundant in ideas, passions, varied conditions, and conflicts, in order to endow with ideal expression everything that the human heart is essentially able to apprehend, and then communicate as the birth of its own spirit. For the collective wealth of lyrical poetry should express in poetic form all that the inner life comprises, so far as the same can pass into poetry, and therefore finds itself at home alike in all phases of spiritual culture.

(_ββ_) And, _secondly_, with the advent of a free self-consciousness is bound up the freedom of an assured _art_ of its own. The folk-song sings forth, just as any natural song, straight from the heart. A free art, however, is aware of itself; it requires a knowledge and desire of that which it produces; and requires culture to promote this knowledge, as also an executive power, which is expert in the finest composition. When, consequently, genuine epic poetry has to conceal the individual creative power of the poet, or rather it lies with the entire character of the age of its origin that such should not yet be visible, this result is merely because of the fact that the Epos deals with the nation's positive existence rather than that which issues from the personal life of the poet himself, and that it is not present in poetry in such a close personal relation, but rather appears as a self-evolved product essentially independent. In lyrical poetry, on the contrary, the creative activity no less than the content are inseparable from the inner life, and are bound to declare themselves as such in actual fact.

(_γγ_) In this respect, later forms of lyric art are expressly distinguishable from the folk-song. There are, no doubt, folk-songs which originate contemporaneously with the works of a genuine lyrical _art._ These latter, however, belong to a range and type of individuals such as--far from participating in more modern stages of artistic culture--are, in the entire nature of their general outlook, not yet liberated from the immediate popular sense. We must, however, not regard this distinction between the Lyric of the folk-song and the artistic poem as though it was only when reflection and the artistic consciousness, in union with deliberate executive ability, appear with all the elegance of such a union, that the Lyric attains to its perfection. Such a notion would really amount to this--that a Horace, for instance, and the Roman lyric poets generally, were to be reckoned among the finest writers of this type, or even in their own range that the Master Singers were preferable to the preceding epoch of the genuine Minnesong. Such an extreme deduction from our previous statement is not justified. What we ought to conclude is this, that individual imagination and art directed to the service of this very self-consistent personal life, which in fact constitutes its principle, presupposes also, for the basis of their true perfection, a free and self-trained recognition of imaginative idea no less than artistic activity.

(_γ_) We have our _final_ phase of composition to distinguish from those already discussed. The folk-song appears before the true elaboration of a prosaically organized condition of actual conscious life. Lyric poetry of the truly artistic type, on the other hand, wrests itself away from the prosaic coordination which surrounds it, and creates from the poet's imagination, in its acquired independence, a new poetic world of inward observation and emotion, by means of which, for the first time, the true content and type of expression truly adequate to the human soul, as seen from within, becomes the object of vital art. There is, however, over and above this, a form of intelligence which, from this point of view, stands in a more exalted position than the imagination of the emotional or conceptive life, inasmuch as it is able, with more penetrative universality and more necessary coalescence to bring its content before our free cognition than is ever possible to art. This is _philosophical thought._ Conversely, however, this form is attached to the abstract condition of being exclusively evolved in the medium of thought, posited as wholly ideal universality; and, in consequence, the concrete man may find himself also constrained to express the content and the results of his philosophical consciousness in a concrete way, that is, as permeated by his temperament and sensuous perception, his imagination and feeling, in order thereby to possess and exhaust the absolute expression of all that engages either soul or intellect.

From such a standpoint we may distinguish between two principal types of conceptive activity. It may, in short, either be the imagination which, straining beyond its own domain, struggles with the movement of pure thinking, without successfully attaining the clarity and secured exactness of philosophical exposition. In this case the Lyric is for the most part the ebullition of a soul engaged in strife and contention, which in its fermentation does violence both to art and abstract thought. It transgresses one province without the ability to make itself at home in another. Or we may find that it is rather the tranquil movement of philosophical thought in its essential medium, which may seek to animate its clearly grasped and systematically developed thoughts with emotion, to make them perceptible to sensuous apprehension, and to exchange the explicit scientific process and sequence in its causal necessity for that free play of particular aspects, beneath the apparently loose connection of which art is the more compelled to conceal their ideal bonds of association in proportion as it is disinclined to narrow itself to the jejune style of purely didactic exposition. As an illustration of this latter tendency, we may point to many of Schiller's poems.

2. PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF LYRICAL POETRY

Having thus considered the general character of the content of lyric poetry, and the mode of its expression, as also the varied grades of culture which are more or less consonant with its fundamental principle, it will be our further task to examine these general points of view more nearly in the _detail_ of their more important features and relations.

Here, too, I ought at starting once again to emphasize the distinction which obtains between epic and lyrical poetry. In our consideration of the former we directed our attention above all to the primitive national Epos, and merely referred incidentally to the inadequate collateral branches, as also to the poet in his creative capacity. This we are unable to do in the case of the type under discussion. On the contrary, we shall find that subjects of the greatest importance invite our review as respects the individual creative power; and, on the other hand, in respect to the classification of the several types in which lyrical poetry, whose general principle it is to disintegrate and isolate the content and its configurations, is respectively differentiated. We may define the subsequent course of our investigation as follows:

_First,_ our attention will be directed to the lyrical poet himself.

_Secondly_, we propose to examine the lyrical work of art as the creation of the individual poet's imagination.

_Thirdly_, we shall classify the types which are deducible from the general notion of lyrical composition.

(_a_) _The Lyric Poet_

(_α_) Now the content of the Lyric embraces, as we have seen, first, a type of contemplation, which connects the universal quality of determinate being with its conditions, and, secondly, the manifold character of its detailed aspects. Regarded, however, as pure generalizations and particular points of view of emotional condition these constituents, both of them, are nothing more than abstractions. In order that these may acquire a vital lyrical individuality, a principle of combination is necessary which can only be of an ideal, in other words really personal[7] character. Consequently the creatively concrete person, the _poet_ himself, must be further presupposed as the focus and in fact realized content of lyrical poetry. He must be there, however, in a form which is not carried to the point of definitive act and deed, or to that of the evolved movement of dramatic conflicts. His exclusive expression and activity is on the contrary restricted to the fact that he endows his inner experience with an articulate speech such as portrays the spiritual significance of himself as subject in his self-expression, whatever the material selected may be, and endeavours to arouse in and keep the hearer alive to the like meaning and spirit, the same soul-state, the similar course of reflection.

(_β_) But, furthermore, the expression cannot rest alone in this result, however successful, in so far as it is for others a free overflooding of buoyant delight, or the resolution and reconciliation of grief in song and lyric, or the yet profounder impulse, which issues in the most serious emotions of heart and the most far-reaching views of intelligence. The man who sings and can write poetry has a necessary vocation thereto. He composes because he _cannot do otherwise._ At the same time the external incentive, the direct invitation and the like are by no means excluded. The great lyric poet, however, in such a case soon swerves aside from such an external stimulus. His supreme object is himself. To take the example once more to which we have constantly recurred, Pindar was frequently invited to celebrate this or that laurel-crowned victor, nay, he frequently accepted payment therefor; and yet, for all that, it is he himself, the minstrel, who changes places with his hero. He combines freely his own unfettered imagination with his praise of the exploits of ancestors, or it maybe his memory of myths; or, when he gives voice to his profound views of life, of wealth, of mastery, of all that is great and deserving, of the supremacy and loveliness of the Muses, and above all of the high vocation of the singer. It is not so much the hero in the renown that he spreads far and wide, that he honours in his poems. We are invited to listen to him, the poet. The honour is not to him in that he celebrates the victor, but rather to the victor that he is celebrated by Pindar. And it is this emphatic personal sense of greatness which constitutes the nobility of the lyric poet. Homer, as an individual person, is in his Epos so entirely sacrificed that people nowadays are loth to admit that he ever existed at all. His heroes live on for ever. Pindar's heroes are for us little better than empty names. He himself, however, the self-celebrated and self-honoured, remains before us immortal as the poet. The fame which his heroes claim is merely an appanage to that of the lyric singer. Even among the Romans the lyric poet to some extent aspires to such an independent position. Suetonius tells us, for instance, that Augustus wrote these works to Horace; _an vereris, ne apud posteros tibi infame sit, quod videaris familiaris nobis esse._ Horace, however, with the exception of those times, easily demonstrable, where he writes in an _ex officio_ manner of Augustus, betrays for the most part a precisely similar proud self-consciousness. His fourteenth ode of the third book, for example, opens with a reference to the return of Augustus from Spain after his victory over the Cantabrians. But the poet goes on to celebrate the fact, that on account of the tranquillity, which the emperor has given the world, he himself as poet is able quietly to enjoy his easy-going leisure and his muse; he calls for garlands, unguents, and venerable wine to celebrate the occasion, and invites in all haste his mistress--in a word, he is simply preoccupied with the arrangements for his own banquet. We hear, however, at this time less of his love difficulties than in his youth, when Plaucus was consul, an occasion where he expressly says to the messenger he despatches:

_Si per invisum mora janitorem_
_Fiet, abito_.

We may regard it as an even more honourable trait of Klopstock, that he felt in his day the independent worth of the singer, and by his free expression of this and his regulation of his behaviour consonantly thereto, disengaged the poet from his subservience to a court and any or every patron,[8] as also from a tedious and useless toying with trifles, which is the ruin of a man. However, the fact remains that it was no other than this very Klopstock whom, in the first instance, the bookseller regarded as his poet. It was Klopstock's publisher in Halle who paid him one or two thaler, it appears, for the manuscript of his Messias, adding over and above this, however, an order for a waistcoat and breeches, and introduced him thus set up into society, letting it clearly be seen from the nature of such a get up that he was responsible therefor. In some contrast to this, so at least we are informed at a later date on evidence, however, that is not irreproachable,[9] the Athenians erected a statue to Pindar, because he had celebrated them in one of his poems, and sent him, moreover, twice the amount of the fine[10] the Thebans refused to exempt him from on account of the inordinate praise he had lavished on an alien city. Indeed we have the statement that Apollo himself declared through the mouth of the Pythian prophetess that Pindar was worthy of receiving half of all the gifts which the whole of Hellas, as in custom bound, brought to the Pythian games.

(_γ_) Throughout the entire compass of lyric poetry the synthetic unity of a single personality asserts its presence in virtue of its poetic soul-movement. The lyric poet is, in fact, moved to express everything that assumes a poetic form either in his emotional or intelligent life in the song. In this type of composition Goethe is pre-eminently noteworthy, who in all the variety of his full life was thus continuously creative. He was unquestionably in this respect a quite exceptional model. It is rarely that we find an artistic personality, who, while retaining as Goethe's did, an interest so active on all sides and is able to live a life, despite all such self-expansion, so entirely self-possessed, so ready to transmute everything it touches into the poetic vision. His life in its public relations, the peculiar nature of his heart, which rather impressed with its reserve than the ease of its approach, the indefatigable effort of his scientific pursuits and enquiry, the general conclusions of his trained and practical experience, his ethical maxims, the impressions, which the varied and conflicting facts of his times made upon him, the inferences he deduced from such, the effervescent joy of life and courage of his youth, the well-organized force and ideal beauty of his manhood, the comprehensive genial wisdom of his old age--all this passed into the magic crucible of his lyrics, where the most delicate play of emotion, no less than the most severe and painful conflicts of spirit, alike find their expression and by this means their deliverance.

(_b_) _The Lyric Work of Art_

_Secondly_, in respect to the lyric poem as a poetic work of art, we are no doubt in general not able to advance much. The fortuitous character of the abundance of its many modes of expression, and the forms of its equally varied and incalculable content make this inevitable. The peculiarly personal nature of this class of work, however much the same is imperatively subject to the general principles of beauty and art, none the less brings with it the necessary result, that the range of the formal and melodious possibilities of its exposition admit of no theoretic definition. For our purpose, therefore, the only question of importance is the nature of the distinction of artistic type that obtains between the lyric and the epic product.

Upon this I will briefly draw attention to the following points of importance:

_First_, the unity of the lyric composition.

_Secondly,_ the nature of its progressive disclosure.

_Thirdly_, the external aspect of its verse-measure and general exhibition.

(_α_) The importance, which the Epos possesses for art lies, as already observed, and pre-eminently so, in the case of the primitive Epopaea, in the consummate elaboration of the perfected artistic form, which as from the repository of the full embrace of the national spirit, places before our vision one and the same composition in all the wealth of a completely evolved content.

(_αα_) The true lyric work of art will not undertake to present thus before us a synthesized whole of such extension. The principle of personality can no doubt proceed to a comprehension of subject-matter of universal pretensions. To be able truly to enforce itself, however, in its individual independence, it necessarily implies the collateral principle of disintegration and isolation. At the same time a variety of truth, phenomenal or ideal, derived from natural environment, the memory of one's own or another's experience, from mythical and historical events, and the like, is not therefore excluded: but such an extension of view must not be permitted, as with the Epos, on the ground that it belongs to the unified _complexus_ of a given sphere of reality, but is rather solely justifiable for the reason that it springs to renewed life in the memory of the poet, and in his impulse and gift of vivid association.

(_ββ_) We must consequently regard the intimate personal life as the true integrating principle of the lyric poem. This inward life, taken simply, is in part the wholly formal unity of the self-conscious self; in part also it is split up and dispersed in the most varied particularity, and the most diverse content of ideas, feelings, impressions, and perceptions, whose power of combination is solely due to the fact that it is one and the selfsame personal identity which serves essentially as their vehicle. In order therefore that this selfidentical subject may form the focal centre of the work of art, it must, on the one hand, have reached the point where the mood or situation is _defined_ in its _concreteness_, and on the other it must _affiliate_ itself with this isolation of its own possessions as with itself to the extent that it feels and pictures itself in the same. It is only by this means that it becomes an essentially defined whole of such a personal character, and exclusively expresses that which is emphasized by reason of such definition, and is yet coalescent with it.

(_γγ_) Lyrical in the most pertinent sense is in this connection the emotional mood or colour as concentrated in a concrete condition, inasmuch as the sensitive heart is that which is the most vital and personal factor of the subjective lips. Reflection and a contemplation which is mainly absorbed in generalization very readily tend to the didactic, or are likely to assert what is substantive and positive in the content under an epic mode.

(_β_) With respect to our _second_ point, viz., the progressive disclosure of the lyric subject-matter, speaking generally, exact definition is here too out of the question. I shall, therefore, restrict myself to a few searching observations.

(_αα_) The progressive exposition of the Epos is of a dilatory description, and it expands throughout in the display of an actual world of diversified character. In the Epos the poet projects himself into the _objective_ world, which is set before us in the independent form and movement of its own reality. In contrast thereto it is the emotions and reflection which in the lyric composition absorb the given world into themselves, animate the same within this ideal element, and, only after it is itself converted into a constituent of this personal life, give form and expression to it in language. In contrast to the epic principle of extension we have therefore in the Lyric that of _assimilation_,[11] and have above all to seek for our effect by means of the implied ideal depth of expression rather than the diffuseness of descriptive or explanatory detail. None the less, however, between the extremes of an almost speechless conciseness and the idea worked out into absolute lucidity of speech every conceivable sort of nuance and degree of clarity is still possible. To as little extent is it necessary that a ban be placed on all reflection of external objects. On the contrary genuinely concrete lyric compositions disclose the individual in his external conditions; they accept, therefore, as an essential feature of their content, natural and local environment. In fact there are poems entirely limited to such descriptions. In such cases, however, it is not so much the reality in its objective presence and its plastic presentment, as the accord with which such objects affect the soul, the mood excited by them, the feelings of the heart under such positive conditions, which are, in fact, the lyric result. It is in short not this or that object as presented to our eyes, in its several features, which ought mainly to impress our inward vision, but the emotional forces which are made vital in the same, and which have for their aim a similar state of feeling and contemplation in ourselves. Romances and ballads are perhaps the most obvious illustration of this, which, as I have previously maintained, approach the lyrical type in proportion as they exclusively emphasize those characteristics of a given event which are consistent with the state of the inner life, in which the poet writes, and disclose the course of his narrative in such a way, that we receive a distinct and life-like echo back again of this personal temper. For such reasons all out and out reproduction of material objects, even though stamped with considerable emotion, nay, even the diffuse characterization of emotional states, can only be of subordinate effect in lyrical effort, if compared with concise concentration of effect and the vivid and significant expression.

(_ββ_) We may add that _episodes_ are permissible as well to the lyric poet; but he ought to employ them on other grounds than those which justify their epic use. In the latter case they are implied in the notion of the externally independent collocation of the different aspects contained; and, in respect to the advance of the epic action, they also are significant as points of retardation and hindrance. Their lyrical justification is rather subjective in its character. The living personality in short surveys his private world more rapidly; his memory recurs to the most varied subjects on equally various occasions; he combines material of the most divergent nature; and, without departing from his true and fundamental emotional state, or the object of his thought, gives free play on all sides to his imagination and contemplation. An animating spirit of the same kind pervades the inner poetical life, although for the most part it is impossible to say whether this or that feature in a lyric poem is to be understood as episodical or not. As a general rule, however, digressions, so long as they do not violate the unity, and above all unexpected changes, witty combinations and sudden, or even violent transitions are peculiarly appropriate to the Lyric.

(_γγ_) On account of this the nature of the forward movement and bond of connection in this domain of poetry may be various, and in some measure marked by excessive contrast. Generally no doubt the Lyric, quite as little as the Epos, adopts the caprices of ordinary conscious life, or the purely scientific consequences, or the speculative process of philosophical thought in its necessary development. It requires indeed a freedom and self-subsistency in its single features. But whereas, in the case of the Epos, this relative isolation is referable to the form of the phenomenal reality, in the type of which its realization is centered, the lyric poet, on the contrary, communicates to the particular emotions and ideas, in which he is himself expressed, the character of a free self-assertion. Each and all, although equally distrained from similar modes of feeling and observation, nevertheless, as viewed separately, absorb his spirit, which remains concentrated upon each severally, until it is diverted to other points of view or other emotional states. The movement of the whole may therefore have little to arrest its tranquil flow, but with equal right we may find it pass without any mediation, and in one bound to material of a totally different character. The poet, instead of following the logical current of his thought, becomes, it would seem, in this sudden flight of ecstatic intoxication mastered by a force, the pathos of which rules and carries him away in spite of himself. The impulse and conflict of such passionate intensity is so characteristic a feature of certain forms of lyric composition, that, for example, Horace in many of his poems is at pains to harmonize with deliberate artistic means such apparently dislocating breaks in the poem's connection. For the rest I must entirely pass over the various intermediate phases of treatment, which fall between the extremes of the most lucid connection and most even flow on the one side, and that of the unrestrained impetuosity of passion and enthusiasm on the other.

(_γ_) _Finally_, of our above three divisions of the immediate subject, we have left us to discuss the _external form_ and actual presentment of the lyric composition. Above all we shall have to deal with _metre_ and the _musical accompaniment._

(_αα_) It is obvious enough that the hexameter in its even, sustained and none the less life-like forward movement is most exceptionally fitted as the measure of the Epic. The demand of the Lyric is rather for an extreme _variety_ of metres with every kind of co-ordination in their form. The material of the lyric poem in short is not the object in the form wherein it unveils itself in Nature, but the movement of the poet's own soul, the regularity or change of which, its perturbation or repose, its peaceful flow or tumultuous wave and leap, must find expression in the time-movement of the word-length, in which such inward life is asserted. The nature of the prevailing mood and the mode of imaginative conception throughout ought to meet with an echo in the verse-measure itself. The lyric effusion indeed is placed in a far more intimate relation to time, regarded as the external medium of its communication, than the epic narrative, which consigns its phenomenal facts to the past, and associates or interweaves them under a mode of extension more analogous to that of spatial condition. The Lyric, in contrast to this, displays the momentary emergence of emotion and idea in the temporal juxta-position of their origin and elaboration. It has therefore to clothe in artistic form the varied temporal movement itself. To this distinctive character belongs, in the _first_ place, the more diverse sequence of long and short syllables in a more strongly emphasized inequality of rhythmical feet; and, _secondly_, the more varied use of the caesura verse--and _thirdly_ the rounding off of the strophes, which not only admit of abundant alternation in respect to the comparative length of particular lines, but also relatively to the rhythmic configuration of these on their own account and in their immediate sequence to each other.

(_ββ_) Yet more lyrical in its effect--a second feature this--is the musical sound of words and syllables simply. The most important examples of this are alliteration, rhyme and assonance. In the system of versification under discussion what is predominant, as I have already explained in a previous passage, is, on the one hand, the ideal significance of syllables, the accent of the meaning, which disjoins itself from the purely natural element, as taken by itself, of their assured quantity, and then defines under the direction of the mind their duration, emphasis and subordination; which, from a further point of view, asserts itself in isolation as the expressly concentrated sound of definite letters, syllables, and words. The Lyric is pre-eminently associated with this spiritualizing process effected by ideal significance, no less than this emphatic insistence of sound. It in fact not merely restricts its acceptance and expression of all that positively is or appears to the meaning which such possesses for the inward life, but also lays hold of sound and musical tone as the significant medium of its communication. No doubt in this sphere, too, the element of rhythm may associate with rhyme; but even here this is effected in a manner which is closely related to the time-beat of music. Strictly speaking, therefore, the poetic use of assonance, alliteration and rhyme is limited to the province of the Lyric. For although the Epos of the Middle Ages is, in accordance with the nature of more modern languages, unable to keep itself aloof from these forms, this is mainly permitted for the reason that here, too, the lyrical element is throughout more insistently active within the domain of epic poetry itself, and effects a more forceful entrance where the subject-matter consists of heroic songs, romances, ballads, tales, and the like. And we find the same thing in dramatic poetry. What, however, is the peculiar possession of the Lyric, is the diversified configuration of rhyme, which is elaborated and perfected by means of the recurrence of similar or the alternation of different letters, syllables and verbal quantity in variously organized and alternated strophes of rhyme. Such differentiation is also of undoubted service both to epic and dramatic poetry, but only on the same ground that rhyme itself is not excluded altogether. The Spaniards, for instance, in the most cultured epoch of their dramatic development, gave the freest play to such craft in the expression of passion by no means appropriate to the genuine drama, interweaving octave rhymes, sonnets and the like with more usual verse-measures. By so doing they at least testify, in the continuity of such assonances and rhymes, their predilection for the musical element in language.

(_γγ_) _Finally_, lyric poetry, to a far more considerable extent than is possible with the unassisted aid of rhyme, avails itself of _music_, by means of which the uttered word becomes veritable melody and song. Such a leaning may, moreover, be completely justified. Or, in other words, the less lyric subject-matter and content possess on their own account independence and objective stability, but are rather, above all, of an ideal character, rooted exclusively in the personal life, while at the same time an external medium of articulate arrest is essential, to that extent is the demand for a decisive medium of communication more insistent. Precisely for the reason that it remains of ideal intention, the means it employs as a stimulus to others must be the more effective. Such an excitant of our emotional life can only be music.

We find consequently, even in respect to external execution, that lyric poetry is almost invariably associated with musical accompaniment. At the same time we should note an essential gradation in this power of combination. The romantic and above all the modern lyric, no doubt more exceptionally so in such songs, in which the temper, the emotional mood is predominant, and the function of music is to emphasize and expand this inner beat of soul-life in actual melody--are no doubt most readily adapted to such melodic fusion. The folk-song is an obvious example which both delights in and demands a musical accompaniment. We shall find in modern times more rarely a composer for the canzonet, elegy, epistle, or even the sonnet. The reason of this is that in cases where idea, reflection, nay, even emotion are made completely explicit in the poetry, and increasingly liberated from the bare point of spiritual selfconcentration, and, further, from the sensuous medium of the art, the Lyric already secures, in its deliverance as speech, a greater self-stability, and lends itself less simply to a free association with the vague definition of music. On the other hand in proportion as the inner life expressed is not made explicit to that extent the aid of melody is required. How it came about, however, that the ancients, despite the pellucid clarity of their diction, availed themselves of music in its actual delivery, and the measure in which they did thus make use of it, I shall have occasion to deal with subsequently.

(_c_) _Types of the Genuine Lyric_

With regard to specific types, in which we may classify lyrical composition, I have already referred with more detail to some which form the transition step from the narrative form of the Epos to the more subjective mode of exposition. From a contrary point of view it might seem desirable in the same way to demonstrate the beginnings of the dramatic. This inclination, however, of passage to the animation of the drama is exclusively and in essentials restricted to the circumstance that the lyric poem too as conversation, without, however, carrying the movement of action to the point of actual conflict, may itself accept the external form of dialogue. We shall nevertheless omit further allusion to these intermediate and hybrid stages, and restrict our cursory examination to those forms in which the real principle of the Lyric fully asserts itself. The main cause of this distinction is to be found in the attitude, which the artistic consciousness assumes relatively to its object.

(_α_) To be more definite the poet--this at least is one direction--annuls the particularity of his emotion and idea, and is absorbed in the general contemplation of God or gods, whose greatness and might permeates the whole of the personal life, and causes the poet as an individual person to vanish. Hymns, dithyrambs, paeans, psalms, all belong to this class, which are moreover quite differently treated by different peoples. I propose merely to draw general attention to the following characteristic of such poetry.

(_αα_) The poet, who is raised above the narrow limitation of his own purely personal life and external conditions, or the ideas which are therewith associated, replacing these with that which appears to him and his people as absolute and divine, may, in the _first_ instance, completely depict the divine in an objective presentment, and set forth this, as thus projected and executed for the spiritual vision of others, to the honour and power of the glorified god. The hymns which are ascribed to Homer are of this character. They contain above all mythological situations and histories of the divine Being, in whose celebration they are composed, which are not merely conceived in the ideas of symbolism, but are clothed in the downright objectivity of the Epos.

(_ββ_) In contrast to this, _secondly_, the dithyrambic impulse, in its more _personal_ aspect of an exalted divine service--overwhelmed, as it is, by the power of its object, shattered and stunned to its soul-foundations--cannot, by reason of the general diffusion of its emotional state, go so far as to present an objective image and form. It is more akin to the lyrical absorbtion. We have here simply ecstatic rapture of soul. The singer breaks out and forth from himself; he is so exalted directly into the Absolute, steeped in the being and might of whom he exultantly sings his praise of the Infinite, into the depth whereof he plunges, or that of the natural world, in whose splendour the profound wealth of the Godhead is declared.

The Greeks, in the solemnities of their worship, have not limited themselves for long to such mere outcries and appeals. They have sought to intermingle with such ecstasies the narrative of, definite mythical situations and actions. Such expositions interposed between the effusion of lyric poetry, became gradually of most importance, and created the drama, such narratives being asserted as action in its lifelike form, and independently on its own account, a drama, which again in its turn received as a constituent feature the lyrics of its choruses.

Even more searching in its utterance is this impulse of exultation, this adoration, jubel and outcry of soul to the One, wherein the individual discovers the end of conscious life and the true object of all might and truth, no less than glory and praise, as we meet it in many of the sublime psalms of the Old Testament. Take the words of the thirty-third psalm, for example:

"Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely
for the upright.

"Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with psaltery and
an instrument of ten strings.

"Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.

"For the word of the Lord is right; and all his works are
done in truth.

"He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of
the goodness of the Lord.

"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the
host of them by the breath of his mouth."[12]

Or take the twenty-ninth psalm: "Give unto the Lord, O ye
mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.

"Give unto the Lord the honour due unto his name: worship
the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory
thundereth: the Lord is upon great waters.

"The voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is
full of majesty.

"The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord
breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

"He maketh them to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like
a young unicorn.

"The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire.

"The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord
shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh," etc.

An exaltation and lyric sublimity such as the above contain a power of personal detachment,[13] and is consequently less adapted to self-absorbtion in the concrete content, wherein the imagination can lay hold of the fact in tranquil satisfaction. It is rather inclined to soar up in an indefinite enthusiasm, which strains to make present to feeling and perception what is unutterable for the intelligence. In this atmosphere of indeterminacy the individual soul is unable to envisage its unreachable object in quiescent beauty, or enjoy its self-expression in a work of art. Instead of a tranquil picture the imagination sets forth external phenomena without co-ordination and in fragments; and, inasmuch as it does not succeed with emotional effort in any consistent articulation of its separate ideas, in its positive artistic form, too, it employs a somewhat arbitrary and insurgent rhythm.

The _prophets_, who oppose the mass of the community, partly in the fundamental tones of grief and lamentation over the condition of their people, partly, too, in this feeling of alienation and decadence, carry to yet a further extreme this type of paranetic lyric in the sublime flame of their emotion and political indignation.

In a more modern age of imitation this sublime passion, however, is exchanged for a more artificial warmth, which easily cools and becomes abstract. Thus, for example, we have much hymn and psalm-writing of Klopstock, which possesses neither depth of thought, nor the tranquil development of any religious content whatever. What is expressed is, above all, an effort of this exaltation to the Infinite, which, agreeably with modern scientific ideas, merely discloses the empty incommeasurability and inconceivable might, greatness, and splendour of God, in its contrast to the very intelligible impotence and finitude of the poet.

(_β_) From a second point of view, we have those types of lyric poetry which may be described generally as odes, in the more modern meaning of the term. In these, as distinguished from the type above described, it is the _personal life_ of the poet, in its independence, which asserts itself as a fundamental feature. It is, indeed, the culmination, which may be enforced in a twofold manner.

(_αα_) From one point of view the poet may, within this new mode of expression, select, as he previously did, a subjective matter itself of essential importance, such as the glory and celebration of gods, heroes, princes, love, beauty, art, friendship, and the like, while he displays his inner life as so completely steeped and carried away by this content and its concreteness, that it appears as though, in this impulse of enthusiasm, the subject has wholly mastered his soul, and is present in it now, as the one predominant power. If this was entirely so the facts which master him might secure, in their independence, the plastic form, motion, and stability of an epic sculpturesque image.

Or, as a converse case, it is just the personal life of the poet himself and its greatness which he seeks to express and make real on its own account. As for the object itself, it is that whereof he makes himself master; he assimilates this in his own life, expresses himself in and through this. By so doing he freely and without reserve breaks up the more positive course of his subject with his own emotion or reflection; he illuminates it from within; he changes it; and the final result is that it is not so much the subject, but rather the _personal enthusiasm_ in which it has steeped him, which is most effective. In this connection, however, we have two distinct aspects to consider. First, there is the compelling force of the subject-matter; secondly, we have that independent freedom of the poet which flashes into view in its conflict with that which would otherwise master it. It is above all the stress of this opposition, which renders inevitable the swing and the boldness of utterance and image, the apparent absence of order in the ideal construction and course of the poem, its digressions, _lacunae_, and sudden transitions, and which preserves the ideal elevation of the poet, by means of the mastery with which he is enabled, through the artistic perfection of his work, to overcome this disunion, and to produce an' essentially harmonious whole, which places him, as _his_ work, in relief above the greatness of his subject.

It is to such a type of lyric enthusiasm that many of the Pindaric odes are referable, whose triumphant, albeit personal glory is disclosed in a mode of rhythm equally conspicuous for its varied movement, and yet for all that stringently regulated measure. Horace, on the contrary, more especially where he aims most at self-assertion, is rather lacking in warmth and insipid. We detect here an imitative artificiality, which vainly endeavours to conceal the purely technical preciosity of his composition. The enthusiasm of Klopstock in the same way is never entirely genuine. It too frequently gives the impression of laboured artifice, despite the fact that many of his odes are rich in true and genuine emotion, and stamped with an engaging masculine worth and force of expression.

(_ββ_) From another point of view, however, it is not at all necessary that the content itself should be substantial or important. The poet is himself, in his own personality, of such weight that he can attach to even the more trifling objects worth, nobility, or at least in a general way a more exalted interest owing to the fact that they are embodied in his poetic work. Many of the Odes of Horace are of this type. Klopstock, too, with many another, may be included in such a category. In such cases it is not the importance of the material itself, which engages the poet's effort, but on the contrary that of the process in virtue of which he exalts what is on its own account insignificant, either in external facts or petty occurrences, to the height of the emotion and idea they excite in himself.

(_γ_) In conclusion, the entire infinite multiplicity of lyrical mood and reflection reaches its fullest compass in the sphere of the _song_, in which consequently differences of national custom and creative individuality have their freest play. Characteristics of every extreme of diversity meet together here, and the task of adequate classification is beset with difficulty. We will restrict ourselves to pointing out a few of the most general character.