[32] Substantive as contrasted with phenomenal.
[33] That is the Iliad and Odyssey.
[34] What Hegel means to say by this and the following paragraph is by no means clear. He first seems to state as a fact that a rivalry may be asserted, or at least has been asserted by others, between the Spanish romances and the finest Greek and Latin epic literature, and then immediately afterwards denies the fact so far as the Iliad and Odyssey is concerned. The confusion and indeed uncertainty seems to be due to the fact that while explaining the disadvantage in which the German work is placed as compared with the Spanish romances, he merely contrasts the Homeric poems with the former. What he apparently means us to infer is that the latter are as superior as the German work is, at least as an Epos, inferior. The words "we moderns" are apparently ironical. In any case the entire passage is, I think, clearly one which needed revision, and it is possible that the two paragraphs have been tacked together by Hegel's editors from different connections.
[35] As we find it, presumably, in Genesis.
[ (B.) LYRIC POETRY]
The poetic imagination does not, as the plastic arts do, present the objects of its creation before our vision in an objective shape, but only envisages them to the inward vision and emotions. No doubt from the first, relatively to certain aspects of this universal type of composition, it is the personal quality of ideal creation and construction which pre-eminently asserts itself in the presented work, and as such is to be contrasted with plastic construction. But when epic poetry offers to our contemplation its object either in its substantive universality, or under a mode comparable with that of sculptor and painter—in other words, in its living presence—in that case, at least where the art is most consummate, the individual mind and soul of the creator involved in the creation disappears before the objective result created. The above personal or subjective aspect of mind can only completely be discarded in so far as, in the first place, the entire world of objects and relations are essentially absorbed by it and then permitted to stand forth freely from the veiled presence of the individual consciousness, and, further, in so far as the self-centred soul unbars its doors, opens wide its ears and eyes, extends the purely unenlightened feeling to vision and idea, and attaches to this wealth of hidden content word and speech as the vehicle of its intimate self-expression. And just in proportion as this kind of communication persists in shutting itself away from the objective manifestation of epic art, to that extent, and precisely for that reason, the subjective type of poetry is bound to find its own forms, in a province of its own, wholly independent of the Epos. In other words, the human spirit descends from the objectivity of the object into its own private domain; it peers into its particular conscious life; it endeavours to satisfy the desire to reproduce the presence and reality of that, as displayed in soul, in the experience of heart and reflected idea, and in doing so to unfold the content and activity of the personal life rather than the actual presence of the external fact. But, again, inasmuch as this expression, if it is not simply to remain the chance expression of mere individuality[1] in its immediate feeling and conception, must assert itself in speech as the reflection of an inner life that is poetic, all that is thus envisaged of feeling or otherwise—and however much, too, it may be a part of the poet's unique personality, and be presented by him as such—must nevertheless possess a universal validity, in other words, it must essentially include feelings and reflections for which the art of poetry is able to discover the vital and adequate means of expression. And although, apart from this, pain and desire, as conceived, described, and expressed in speech, may lighten the heart, and poetic ebullition is unquestionably permissible for such a purpose, yet its function is not restricted to such domestic service. Rather it has a nobler vocation, which is not so much to liberate the human spirit from emotion, but in the medium of the same. The blind tumult of passion surges on in a union with the entire soul-life unenlightened, unawakened to the grasp of mind. In such a state the soul cannot assert itself in idea and expression. It is the function of poetry no doubt to free the heart from such a prison house, in so far as it presents that life as an object to it. But it does more than this mere translation of content from the immediacy of emotional experience; it creates therefrom an object which is purified from all mere contingency of the passing mood; an object in which the soul-life in this deliverance returns once more to itself freely and with self-conscious satisfaction, and remains there at home. Conversely, however, this primary objectivisation ought not to be carried to the point of a reflection that actually discloses the individual activity of the soul-life and its passions as it is carried forward in practical impulse and action; in other words, in the self-return of the individual upon himself in veritable deed. For the most pertinent reality of our inner life is still itself an inward something, and consequently this passage from itself can only give us the sense of deliverance from the immediate concentration of heart in its blind and formless presence, which now unbars itself in self-expression, and in doing so grasps and expresses what was previously merely felt in the form of a self-conscious vision and ideas. And with these remarks I think we have determined in their essential features both the sphere and function of lyric poetry as contrasted with the epic and dramatic types.
As regards the more detailed examination and classification of our new subject-matter, we cannot do better than follow the course previously adopted in our examination of epic poetry.
First, we have to discuss the general character of lyric composition.