(b) We next propose to examine a mode of presentation the reverse of the above, one which endeavours to restore us the characters and events of the past so far as may be with every local detail of their former environment no less than any and every ethical or other particular characteristic which formerly distinguished them. We Germans have particularly come to the front in this class of work. As a rule we are, in striking contrast to the French, the most painstaking recorders of all that is peculiar in nations other than our own, and consequently make fidelity to the characteristic usages, dress, weapons, and all such antiquarian detail appropriate to particular epochs and localities a first requisite of our art. Add to this we have the necessary patience to put ourselves to no end of trouble in the way of hard study in order that we may thoroughly enter into the modes of thought and perception which belong to foreign nations and centuries distant from our own, and make ourselves thoroughly conversant with all their peculiarities. This power of looking at facts from many and diverse points of view in order to both apprehend and comprehend the spirit of every kind of national existence makes us not merely tolerant in our art towards all that strikes us as exceptionally strange in foreign customs, but clamorous even to a painful degree in our insistence that we have before us accurate correspondence with objective truth down to the most insignificant detail. The French are, no doubt, full of resource and energetic, but, however highly educated and practical men they may be, such qualities do not increase, but rather diminish the patience which they possess for quiet and exhaustive study. Criticism is always of first importance with them. We Germans, on the contrary, are by nature inclined to accept any picture of real truth for what it is, and particularly this is so with foreign works of art. From whatever part of Nature's storehouse such may come, whether it is plants or other creations of foreign growth, implements of any kind or form, dogs and cats, even absurdities, we accept them all genially; and the result of this is we are able to be on excellent terms with modes of thought the most removed from our own, ay, sacrificial customs, legends of the saints and all the extraordinary follies that go with them, to say nothing of a host of other marvels equally surprising. And for the same reasons it only appears essentially rational that in attempting to represent characters in action we should make their conversation and pursuits conformable to their own substance, that is to say, in strict accord with the times when they lived and their own national characteristics, whether regarded individually or in association with each other.
This fundamental idea that the objective truth of a work of art is established by virtue of the type of historical accuracy above described has obtained currency in comparatively recent times, mainly, that is to say, since the literary work of Frederick von Schlegel. From that time the importance of a first principle in literary criticism has attached to it; and further than this, it is asserted that our purely personal interest should above all restrict itself to the enjoyment we may derive from historical accuracy of this kind and the life it thus reproduces. Once accept these hard and fast rules and the conclusion is obvious that we are allowed no additional interest of any superior quality which an enquiry into the essential significance of any artistic content may or may not provide for us any more than we are permitted to derive any interest more vital to ourselves from aspects of such a work directly associated with the culture and aims of our own times. It is much on these lines that we find also in Germany, where the enthusiasm of Herder in this direction started a closer attention on all sides to the "Volkslied," a poetic inundation of national folk-songs imitating native tones of every sort of nationality whether it be the Iroquois, latter-day Greek, Lap, Turk, Tartar, Mongol, and many another; and, of course, it is assumed to be indicative of nothing less than first-rate genius[396] to possess the power of thus diving into the ways and ideas of other folk, and converting all we discover into poetry. At the same time it is clear that however completely your poet may work his way into and emotionally realize all this strange kind of world, it remains and must continue to remain for that public to whose enjoyment these songs are addressed as something very much aloof from it.
The truth is that such a theory, if pressed to its abstract logical conclusion, limits its boundaries solely to the truth of history in its formal accuracy, and by doing so neglects all consideration of the nature of Art's content and questions relative to its essential significance, just as it disregards every aspect of it in which the culture and resources of modern thought and contemporary life are asserted. But it is as impossible to detach ourselves from the truth implied in this theory as it is from equally important truths which it neglects; all equally claim satisfaction, and imperatively force upon us the necessity of finding a further solution in which the claims of historical truth may be reconciled with these rival aspects of truth in a very different way to that just examined. And this brings us to the third question we proposed as to the nature of that objectivity and subjectivity which can be fully sustained together as the reality to which a genuine work of art conforms.
(c) The point of essential importance which we should before all others wish to emphasize here is this, that no one of those various aspects of truth we have above indicated should be allowed a predominant significance such as would impair the relative force of the others; and, further, or rather notwithstanding this, historical accuracy pure and simple in external matters, such as local conditions, customs, usages, and social institutions generally, must receive in a work of art their due place, if a subordinate one, it being only right that the interest of mere historical truth should give way before that of a vitally true and imperishable content for the present no less than the past.
We cannot, perhaps, do better by way of explaining what we consider to be the true form of artistic representation than by setting up in contrast a few examples of some we take to be defective.
(α) Now, to start with, the presentation of the characteristic features of a given period may be entirely just, accurate, and impregnated with life, nay more, wholly intelligible to a modern audience, and notwithstanding fail to escape the ordinary atmosphere of prose, and present us with the real substance of poetry. Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen" will alone furnish us with notable illustrations of this defect. It is only necessary to open the book at the first scene, which introduces us to an inn near Schwarzenberg in Franconia; the dramatis personae are Metzler, and Sievers sitting at a table, two grooms by the fire, also the landlord.
Sievers. Another glass of brandy, Hans, my boy, and good Christian measure.
Landlord. You carry a glass that is never full.
Metzler. [Aside to Sievers.] Tell us that once again about Berlichingen; the Bambergers are in a pretty fume out there; ay, black as thunder (etc.).
The same kind of thing we find in the third Act.
George. [Enters with a gutter-spout.] There you have lead and to spare; spot the target with but one half of it, and devil a soul shall get off, who is like to say to your Majesty, that's a miss this time[397].
Lerse. [Aloud.] A fine piece of metal.
George. The rain may take another road for all I care; a brave knight and a real good rain get through most things.
Lerse. [Pours into glass.] Hold the spoon. [Goes to the window.] There's one of those imperial cockades prowling about with his musket; they believe we have aimed a point too far. He shall have a taste of my bullet, hot too and fresh from the pan. [Loads.]
George. [Drops the spoon.] Let me have a look.
Lerse. [Fires.] There lies the fool (etc.).
All this is exceedingly vivid, intelligible, depicted in perfect keeping with the situation and the characters portrayed. Yet for all that these scenes are both trivial to a degree and essentially prosaic. All we get from either the matter or the form is just the ordinary man's way of seeing things and reality as it appears to him or rather all of us to some extent. We find the same tendency in many another of Goethe's youthful productions, which no doubt were deliberately directed against everything which previously had passed for the rule of the guild, and which sought for their most impressive effect by means of the nearness made clear to ourselves, an impression gained by the extraordinary grasp with which the poet's imagination and feeling seized upon everything. But the nearness was itself too near, and the vital content in part so petty, that such compositions ran constantly into mere triviality. We are most conscious of this kind of triviality in dramatic works when we see them on the stage; it is then that after being worked up to some excitement by all the concomitants of a theatrical performance, lights, well-dressed folk, and the rest of it, we expect to see something more than a couple of peasants, and troopers and a glass of schnapps thrown in[398]. This phase has mainly found its admirers in readers; it never had a long run on the stage.
(β) If we now consider our subject from an opposite point of view it may be admitted that we can sufficiently make ourselves acquainted with and assimilate the historical content of a former mythology and all that is most strange to ourselves in earlier conditions of state-life and national custom to secure through such an intimacy with, the general culture then prevailing a varied knowledge of the past. In fact, this acquaintance with the art, mythology, literature, cultus, and usages of antiquity is the starting point of our present system of education. Every schoolboy knows something about the gods and heroes of Greece and the prominent characters in ancient history. It is therefore quite possible, in so far as they really enter into the imaginative life of our own times, that we may find enjoyment in the imaginative representation of such characters and interests. It is further impossible to predict whether or no such an intimacy may not be eventually carried equally as far in the case of the Indian, Egyptian, and Scandinavian mythologies. We may further observe that in the religious conceptions of all these peoples the Universal God is presented. The determinate form, however, of such conceptions, that is to say, the particular gods of Greece or India, are no longer true for us as so personified. We do not believe in their existence, and the pleasure we take in them is derived from their appeal to our imagination. For this reason they stand entirely apart from our deepest emotional life, and we can imagine nothing more empty and cold than such exclamations we hear only too often in opera: "O ye gods!" or "O Jupiter!" or even "O Isis and Osiris!" And the folly of it all reaches its height when we have the wretched saws of oracular wisdom thrown in—and the opera can seldom get along without them—a position of dignity which nowadays for the first time in tragic drama is occupied by pure folly and clairvoyance.