Confronted with a material of such a wide range and multiplicity, it is above all of first importance that in respect to the mode of artistic treatment the Spirit that is now active in our present life should throughout declare itself as such. Our modern artist may no doubt join the company of ancients and elders. It is a fine thing to be one of the Homerides, though we stand last of the line; pictures, too, that reflect for us once again the atmosphere of romantic art in the Middle Ages will have a worth of their own. But this universal sufficiency, depth, and unique suitability of a given material such as we above described is another thing altogether, and equally so its mode of presentation. Neither Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Ariosto, nor Shakespeare can reappear in our times. What has been sung so greatly, what has been expressed with such freedom, has been sung and expressed once for all. Only the Present blows fresh; all else is faded and more faded. In the matter of history we must fain make it something of a reproach to the French, and we may add to it a criticism on the score of beauty, that they have presented on their stage Greek and Roman heroes, Chinese, and Peruvians as so many French princes and princesses, and moreover have given them the motives and views peculiar to the age of Louis XIV or Louis XV. Yet, after all, had these very motives and opinions only been intrinsically deeper and more beautiful than they are we should have had little fault to find in the fact that the Past is here translated into Art's present life. On the contrary all material whatsoever, it matters not from what age or nation it hails, only retains its truth for art as part of this vital and actual Present, in which it floods the human heart with the reflected image of its own life, and brings truth home to man's senses and mind. It is just this revelation and renewed activity of that humanity which is immortal in all its varied significance and infinite reconstruction, which, in this its receptacle of human situations and emotions, forms the possible no less than the absolute content of the art of our time.
If we now take a glance back, having established in a general way the content which distinguishes the subject-matter of this portion of our inquiry, at that which we finally considered to be the modes of romantic art's dissolution, we may recall the fact that we then defined them under a term applicable to all, as the falling to pieces of Art, a process which, in one of its aspects, was due to an imitation of the objects of Nature in all the detail of their contingent appearance, and in another was referable to humour, that unfettered activity of the individual soul in all its capricious mastery. In conclusion, we may still draw attention to a further way of fixing on our minds that terminus of romantic art without prejudice to our previous remarks upon it. In other words, just as in our advance from symbolism to classical art, we considered the transitional forms of image, simile, and epigram, we have also here in romantic art a form somewhat similar worthy of attention. In those previous modes of conception the important thing was the falling asunder of the spiritual significance and the external form, a severation which in part was cancelled by the activity of the artist's own mind, and in the exceptional case of the epigram could possibly be converted into complete identity. Romantic art was from the beginning the profounder disunion of that inmost soul-life which finds its satisfaction in its own wealth, which, moreover, for the reason that generally the objective world does not completely satisfy the demand of Spirit essentially as such, persisted in its discordance with or indifference to it. This opposition in the evolution of romantic art finally led us perforce to the point where we found that the interest was exclusively centered on the contingent aspects of externality, or the equally capricious activity of the soul. When, however, this exclusive attention to either side, whether it be the externality or purely personal presentment, agreeably to the main principle of romantic art, is carried so far that it becomes a real penetration of the soul within the object, and the aspect of humour in its relation to the object and its embodiment within the sphere of its own individual reaction[328] assumes a real importance, in that case we are face to face with what is a coalescence[329] with the object, and is nothing less than an objective humour. Such a coalescence, however, can only be of limited range, and find expression merely, say, within a lyric, or at most in but a portion of a larger composition. For if its boundaries widened, and it was carried throughout the object-matter in question, it would necessarily become identical with the action and event, become, in short, a completely objective representation. What we have to consider here is rather a sensitive self-abandonment of the artist's soul in his object, which no doubt is unfolded in some kind of process, but nevertheless remains a movement of the imagination and heart indicative rather of individual genius; a caprice in some sort, and yet not entirely capricious or intentional, but rather a sympathetic expansion of the artist's genius, which devotes itself solely to its subject-matter, and makes it exclusively its interest and content.
We may usefully compare with such a spirit the last blooms of the ancient Greek epigram, in which this type appears in its first and simplest features. The mode we have here in our mind is in the first instance apparent when the reference to the object is not a mere statement of fact, is not merely an inscription or transcript which states what the object is, but is associated with a deeper emotion, a sleight of witticism, an ingenious fancy, or a real flash of imaginative power, any or all of which through their poetical grasp give life to and expand the minutest detail. Poems of this description, it matters little what their subject-matter may be, whether a tree, a mill-stream, spring, dead things or alive, are of infinite variety and may be found in the literature of all nations. They are, however, a subordinate grade of poetry, and very readily come off halting. For at least in a country of cultivated speech and reflection there are few objects and conditions, indeed, which will not offer some further link of association to every man. And just as the average man thinks himself qualified to write a letter he will rate his capacity to express such ideas. One is very easily tired of a universal spirit of sing-song such as this, even though a stray novelty of touch may be here and there thrown in. The importance of such a class of composition, therefore, depends almost entirely on the question how far the artist's soul, with its full intensity of life, and with a spiritual and intellectual wealth that is both profound and extensive, has without reserve entered vitally into such conditions, situations, and so forth; has made a home there, and from the object in question created something unseen before, something beautiful, something essentially worth our attention.
To this end the Persians and Arabians pre-eminently in the oriental splendour of their images, in the unfettered enjoyment of their imagination, which enters into the being of its subject-matter in the purest spirit of contemplation, offer, even for present times and our own intensity of spiritual penetration, a glorious exemplar. Both the Spaniards and Italians, too, have done excellent things in the same direction. It is true that Klopstock says of Petrarch:
—Laura besang Petrarca in Liedern,
Zwar dem Bewunderer schön, aber dem Liebenden nicht[330].
but Klopstock's own love-odes are themselves full of moral reflections, troubled yearning and passion that is for ever writhing after immortality of happiness. What we admire most in Petrarch is the free atmosphere of essentially noble emotion, which, however much it expresses the longing for the beloved, can none the less repose on its own heart. For this kind of longing, indeed sensual desire itself, is far from being absent in the range of the art we now are considering, when the subject is restricted to wine and love, the tavern and the glass; the excessive voluptuousness of the images of Persian writers themselves are in fact an illustration of this; but in this case the imagination, in the interest it possesses for the intelligence, removes the object entirely from the sphere of desire which has a practical aim. It possesses an interest merely in the realm of its own exuberant activity, finding its delight freely in its own countless freaks and fancies, and making joys and griefs alike the subject of its sport Among our modern poets the two who preeminently combine a similar buoyancy of genius with a more intimate and spiritually searching depth of imagination are Goethe in his "Westöstlicher Divan" and Rückert. The essential contrast between Goethe's poetry in the "Divan" and his more early efforts is quite remarkable. In his "Welcome and Farewell," for instance, the language and description are no doubt fine in their way, true feeling is there. In other respects the situation is commonplace, the climax is poor, and of imagination in the full and free sense there is no further trace. The poem in the "Divan" entitled "Recovery"[331] is composed in a totally different spirit. Love is here wholly absorbed in the imagination, and the movement, happiness, and bliss of the latter are throughout predominant. And, to speak generally of artistic productions of this class, we may affirm that we find in them no personal craving, no indications of enamourment, no mere desire, but a pure delight in the objects delineated, an inexhaustible self-absorption of imagination, an innocent play, a free surrender to the coquettish humours even of rhyme and ingenious versification; and withal an intense jubilation of the soul in its own free movement, a spirit, which, by means of this very exhilaration induced by artistic form[332] lifts the soul high above all its painful perplexity into the ordered limits of the real.
And here we must close our consideration of the particular types according to which the Ideal of art throughout its process is self-differentiated. We have made these several modes the subject of a more extensive inquiry, with a view to unfolding the content of the same, a content from which the proper modes of artistic presentment are themselves also deducible. For in Art, too, as in all other human production, it is the content which is finally decisive. In fact Art, if we consider the true notion of it, has one and only one supreme function. It has to set forth in adequate form, within the grasp of our actual senses, what is itself essential content; and the Philosophy of Art should consequently regard it as its main business to comprehend in Thought what this abundance of content and its beautiful mode of manifestation verily is.
[256] Subjektivität.
[257] Für andere, that is for other spiritual beings than the absolute Spirit as such.