The final result, then, of our inquiry on this head is that true originality does not consist in merely conforming to the paramount conditions of style, but in a kind of inspired state[434] personal to the artist which, instead of committing itself wholly to a mere external manner of composition, seizes hold of a particular subject-matter that is essentially rational, and by virtue of its own resources and quality, re-clothes the same as from within the artist himself and not merely in a way conformable to the essential notion of the art adopted, but also in a form adequate to the universal notion of the Ideal.
(α) True originality is consequently identical with true objectivity, and combines that which is due to the personality of the artist and the actual subject-matter of his work in such a way that both aspects of his artistic product are held together in complete accord. Looked at in one way, such a work appears to reveal to us the very essence of the artist's personality, while regarded from another we only find there the essence of the subject-matter artistically treated, so that this very uniqueness of expression appears to arise from the unique characteristics of the material to which it is applied; and we may say with equal truth either that the expressed form is due to those characteristics, or that this unique impression we obtain from them proceeds from the creative unity of the artist.
(β) True originality must be entirely kept distinct from individual caprice and every kind of personal expression that is due to fortuitous causes. A common idea of originality is simply the stringing together of so many curiosities, things which this particular individual and no other could perpetuate or even faintly imagine. That is, however, merely idiosyncracy gone mad. No people on earth are more original in this meaning of the term than Englishmen, a country where every one prides himself on committing some folly or other, which no man in his senses is likely to repeat, and then fondly imagines his performance to be original.
We may in this connection briefly refer to what has been so extolled, and never more than in our own days as the originality of wit and humour. An artist of this type of humour starts off from a point of view or an experience wholly personal to himself, and constantly recurs to the same so that the real object of his artistic production is merely treated as the peg on which he may hang, or the field in which he may give full play to, whatever wittiness, jest, quirks, and sallies his mood may chance to light upon. In this way the real object of his art and that which should render it vital in himself fall entirely apart, and we have a capricious mode of artistic production, in which the idiosyncrasy of the artist is made to appear as of first importance. A humour of this kind is often replete with intellectual brilliance and deep feeling, and in its general result is very apt to impose on us; yet for all that it is not generally such a difficult matter as is commonly believed. To constantly interrupt the rational content of that which we are really dealing with, interrupting all steady progress with a stream of capricious fresh starts and conclusions, a sort of patchwork of whims and emotional excursions, and thereby to create a caricature of imaginative vigour is far easier than to develop and round off with completeness an artistic whole of sterling quality throughout such as will testify to the real Ideal. Moreover, our humour nowadays is only too ready to give us the repulsive features of a talent for wit essentially crude, and is constantly degenerating into coarse buffoonery and emptiness. We do not often get from it real humour at all. The stalest trivialities are wont to pass now for brilliancy and depth of soul provided they only rig themselves out in the pretentious motley of humour. Shakespeare, on the contrary, possessed a grand and profound sense of humour, but even his works are by no means destitute of shallows. The humour of Jean Paul too often surprises us with the depth of its wit and the beauty of its sentiment, but we are quite as often repelled by the absurdly eccentric way in which he hitches together his subjects, or rather leaves them with the bare jointure to lie apart, and then floods all he has to say with a kind of humour that leaves it almost impossible to make head or tail of. No humourist, however great he may be, is likely to find anything resembling it in his memory; and our main impression is frequently, even in the case of Jean Paul's kaleidoscopic effects, that they are rather the result of mechanical pasting together than a spontaneous product from the crucible of genius. For this reason Jean Paul finds it necessary, in order continually to present new effects, to drag into books differing wholly in kind, botanical, legal and philosophical disquisitions, no less than descriptions of travel; whatever whim in fact may strike his fancy at the time is promptly inserted. Even when his subject relates to scientific discovery he will run together the most heterogeneous material such as a collection of Brazilian plants and observations upon the old imperial chamber[435]. There are people who will praise a motley of this kind as original. But it is really precisely the kind of caprice which originality of the genuine stamp excludes.
While we are on this topic it will not be out of place to add some further remarks upon irony, which particularly prides itself upon presenting us with the very flower of originality on just those occasions when it has ceased to treat any artistic material with seriousness and converts the whole affair into a subject of witticism, only worth notice for the sake of the wit it suggests. Looked at from another point of view this irony rakes together a lot of things which are quite foreign to the essence of the matter in hand, things the deeper significance of which the poet keeps to himself, and his notion seems to be that by this subtle exercise of his powers the imagination will be enlarged. And it is just in external associations of this sort that we get what we have already described as the poetry of a poetry, wherein everything that is deepest and most excellent is concealed from us for no other reason than this, that we must not be allowed to look at it because it is so profound. And we really find in Friedrich von Schlegel's poetry, more particularly when he became vain over his title to the rank of poet, that which clearly is set forth as the aroma of all is just that which is never expressed: no wonder this poetry of poetry turns out to be the flattest prose.
(γ) A genuine work of art must consequently be held intact from all originality of this perverse type. True originality will be asserted throughout by this and this alone, that the work has the appearance of being the unique creation of one individual mind, which does not go about picking up scraps from around it and then make thereof a patchwork, but permits the material of that work, in complete accordance with the unity most congenial to its own substance, to bind itself together in a whole all parts of which are strictly related, as truly stamped with one mint as the founder's cast. When we find scenes and motives introduced upon grounds that are foreign to the real artistic purpose, that is to say, which do not directly grow out of the true subject, we must inevitably lose that subtle and necessary connection of all the parts which create this unity, and what we thus interpolate will unavoidably impress us as something fortuitously attached by personal caprice. Much in this way it has been the fashion to give exceptional praise to the "Götz von Berlichingen" of Goethe on the grounds of its great originality. No doubt it is true enough, as we have above remarked, that in this drama Goethe has with much intrepidity given the lie direct to and turned his back upon all that had been taken as the established principles of the aesthetic science of his age; the execution of this work, however, does not bear the stamp of genuine originality. One finds, on the contrary, in this youthful production indications of the poverty of the material upon which it is founded, so that many traits and entire scenes appear to have been raked together and united by connections foreign to the subject from material of an interest contemporary with that of the artist's life instead of being the genuine elaboration of the fundamental subject-matter. The scene, for example, between Götz and brother Martin, where Martin Luther is clearly suggested, contains ideas which Goethe could only have borrowed from a time such as his own when people began once more to wail over the conditions of monastic life, how they durst not drink wine, could only sleep off their meals, were at the mercy of evil desires and generally must submit to the three intolerable vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Brother Martin, on the other hand, grows enthusiastic over the knightly life of Götz, how he recalled to memory the load of booty he took from his foe, whom he ran through with lance on horseback before he could shoot, then tumbled over, horse and all, and finally returned to his castle and wife. Whereupon the good monk drinks the health of the dame Elizabeth, wiping his eyes the while. With mundane reflections of this sort Luther never started on his journey, but rather as a pious monk who had penetrated to their depths the religious conceptions and convictions of Augustine, another source altogether. Subject to precisely similar defects are the pedagogical references to that period which occur in the following scene and for which Vasedow is mainly responsible. We are informed that children of that age are taught much that is unintelligible, that the true method of instruction should rather educate their minds through the senses and experience. Karl, for example, repeats phrases to his father by heart precisely similar to those current in Goethe's own younger days: "Junthausen is a village and castle on the Junt and for two hundred years has been the ancestral property of the lords of Berlichingen." When Götz asks him if he knows any lord of Berlichingen personally the lad stares blankly at him and through sheer over-teaching does not know his own father. Götz declares that he knew every path and road in the country before he knew the names of a single river, village, or mountain. All this kind of thing is mere literary stucco which has nothing to do with the actual subject at all. And when an occasion does arise in which we ought to find some really characteristic grip of the very marrow of the subject, as in the conversations between Götz and Weisslingen, we get nothing more than cold reflections upon the times.
We find much the same association of irrelevant matter in the same poet's "Wahlverwandschaften."[436] The laying out of pleasure grounds, the living pictures, the observations upon pendulum oscillations, the testing of metals, the headaches, the entire description of elective affinities, which is borrowed straight from chemical science, are all of this category. It may, of course, be freely admitted that in a romance, referring to an essentially prosaic age, such things areprima facie admissible, and more particularly so when we have a Goethe to introduce them so cleverly and apply them so charmingly; moreover no work of art of any kind can be kept wholly unaffected by the culture of the artist's own age. It is one thing to allow the reflection of contemporary culture to appear as part of the artistic whole, quite another to bring together such material of research in a way that places it as something wholly outside and independent of the genuine substance of the composition. For the true originality of the artist no less than that of his work consists exclusively in their being vitally bound up with that which is only intelligible as part of the real subject-matter treated. When the artist has fully Appropriated this objective reason, without mixing up with it, to the detriment of its clarity, details he may have borrowed from his personal experience or other sources which do not strictly belong to it; in that case alone will he stamp the material with the genuine mark of his own artistic mintage. This personal effect upon his work merely serves him as a bridge of Life over which he passes to secure a work of art wholly complete in itself, just as in all genuine thought and action true freedom consists in allowing that which is of essential significance to assert itself without restraint, so that it becomes itself the force which dominates both the particular thought and volition of the man who thus appropriates it, and by so doing reconciles every vestige of opposition. In this way the originality of art absorbs every accidental trait peculiar to a given personality; but it only absorbs it that the artist may follow without reserve the impulse and bent of his genius as inspired through every fibre of the material he moulds, and instead of reflecting a purely barren wilfulness and caprice of his own may give an objective form to his true artistic individuality conjoined with consummate accomplishment. To have no "manner" was ever the one great "manner," and in this sense alone can we ascribe originality to Homer, Sophocles, Rafael, and Shakespeare.
[271] Einer specifischen Seele. We certainly should not in ordinary speech say that inorganic objects possessed a soul. The phrase indeed is difficult to follow, except as explained by the previous technical discussion of Einzelheit.
[272] The expression in dieser der Allgemeinheit entgegengehobenen Äusserlichkeit refers to the manifold in opposition to which the principle of universality is posited as a test for the selection of those aspects which manifest it as vital individuality.