The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4) / Hegel's Aesthetik

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The Lyric is not called upon to produce Bibles such as we have discovered in Epic poetry. It does, however, enjoy the advantage of being able to touch upon every conceivable aspect of national development; whereas the true Epos is limited to distinct epochs of a primitive age, and its success in our more recent times of prosaic culture is very jejune.

(α) Within this field of particularization we have, to start with, the universal as such—the supreme height and depth of human belief, imagination, and knowledge—the essential content of religion, art, ay, even of scientific thought, in so far as the same is adaptable to the form of imagination and creation, and can enter the sphere of emotions. Consequently general opinions, what is of permanent substance in a view of the world, the profounder grasp of far-reaching social conditions are all not excluded from the Lyric; and a considerable part of the material I have referred to[4] when discussing the more incomplete types of the Epic falls rightly, and with pertinency into the sphere now under review.

(β) And along with such essentially universal topics we have associated the aspect of particularity, which can be so interwoven with what is thus substantive that any specific situation, feeling, or idea is thereby seized in its profounder significance and expressed in a way wholly accordant thereto. This is, for example, almost always the case in Schiller's lyrical work, as also in his ballads; in this connection I will merely recall the superb description of the Eumenides chorus in the Cranes of Ibicus, which is neither dramatic nor epic, but lyrical. From a further point of view we may have this combination so asserted that a variety of particular traits, moods, occurrences are introduced by way of testimony to comprehensive views and maxims, interlaced in vital coalescence by virtue of the general principle. This style of writing is frequently employed in the elegy and epistle, and generally in reflections upon life of a comprehensive character.

(γ) In conclusion, inasmuch as in lyrical composition what is self-expressed is the individual person, a content, which is extremely slight, will primarily suffice for this purpose. It is, in other words, the soul itself, subjective life simply, which is the true content. The emphasis is therefore throughout upon the animation of feeling, rather than upon the more immediate object. The most fleeting moods of the moment, the overjoyment of the heart, the swiftly passing gleams or clouds of careless merriment and jest, sorrow, melancholy, and complaint, in a word, all and every phase of emotion are here seized in their momentary movement or isolated occurrence, and rendered permanent in their expression. What we find here in the domain of poetry may be paralleled with what I previously referred to when describing genre paintings. The content, the subject-matter, is here the wholly contingent, and what is over and above this important is exclusively the character of the individual conception and mode of presentment, the charm of which in the Lyric will either consist in the aroma of exquisite feeling, or in the novelty of arresting points of view, and the genial suggestion of literary phrases and turns which surprise.

(b) In the second place we may observe in general with respect to the form, wherein the Lyric is composed, that here too it is the individual person, in the intimacy of his ideas or emotion that constitutes the focal centre. The growth of the whole is rooted in the heart and temperament; it starts, to be more precise, from a particular mood and situation of the poet. By virtue of this fact the content and conjunction of the particular aspects of its growth are not inferred from it objectively as a substantively independent content, or from its external manifestation as some really self-exclusive event, but are borrowed from the individual subject as such. But for this reason it is essential that the individual in question should himself appear poetical, rich in fancy and feeling, or imposing and profound in his views and reflections, and above all should be essentially independent, the possessor of a unique ideal world, from which the servility and caprice of a prosaic nature is excluded.

The lyric poem, then, retains a mode of unity wholly different from that of the Epos, in other words, the mysterious intimacy of the mood or reflection, which expatiates upon itself, mirrors itself in the objective world, describes itself, or concerns itself as it wills with any other matter, always, however, retaining the right in the pursuit of such an interest to begin and break off very much as it pleases. Horace, for instance, very frequently comes to a stop at the very point, where, in the commonplace view of its literary treatment, we might suppose he had only just started with his subject. In other words, what he describes is simply his feelings, commands or arrangements for a banquet, say, without giving us further information as to how it went off. In the same way we have every conceivable mode of progression and combination supplied by the nature of the mood, the actual condition of the individual soul-life, the degree of passion, its excitement or rapid transition of conflicting emotion, or the tranquillity of the heart or the mind in some long-drawn process of contemplation. As a rule, in respect to all such subject-matter, we are able to determine very little that is fixed, owing to the repeated changes in the ever varied facets of the soul. I will therefore restrict myself to a few salient points of distinction.

(α) Just as we met with several specific kinds of epic poetry which showed a tendency to adopt a lyric vein of expression, so, too, the Lyric may accept as its subject-matter and its form an occurrence, which, so far as content and external appearance are concerned, are epic, and to this extent it will approximate to the latter type. Heroic songs, romances, and ballads belong to such a class. The form of the whole is in such examples narrative, inasmuch as it is the progressive advance of a situation or event, as among other instances, a particular direction in the fate of a nation, which is communicated. And yet at the same time the fundamental temper is wholly lyric, inasmuch as the main object is not to give us a description and representation of the actual fact apart from all relation to the narrator, but rather to disclose his personal attitude to it in the way he conceives and feels it, whether with delight or complaint, whether as a stimulus to good or depressed spirits, the mood in short that rings throughout it. And similarly the nature of the impression which the poet endeavours to produce thereby is entirely that of the province of the lyric. In other words, what the poet seeks to effect in his audience is precisely that state of emotion, which the recounted event has produced in himself, and which he therefore has attached to his composition. He expresses his dejection, mourning, merriment, his fire of patriotism, and so forth, in an appropriate occurrence in such a way that it is not this fact so much which contributes, as it were, the focus, but rather the state of his emotional life we find reflected therein. And for this reason he, above all emphasizes those traits, and depicts the same with feeling, which are in accord with his own personal impulses; and in the degree of vivacity with which these are expressed by them the same feelings are likely to be excited in his audience. And thus, though the content may be epic, the treatment is lyrical.

(αα) To come yet more directly to detail there is, first, the example of the epigram, in such a case where it is not merely an inscription which states concisely the bald nature of some fact, but further associates with this an emotional state; where, in short, the content, regarded as the bare statement of external fact, is merged in a condition of the soul. In other words, the writer here ceases to surrender himself wholly to the object: rather he makes his own personality expressive in it; he records his desires with regard to it; he attaches to it his own sportive fancies, his acute or unexpected suggestions and associations. The Greek Anthology contains many such witty epigrams which have lost the epic manner. In more recent times we find similar examples in the piquante couplets of the French, abundantly illustrated in their Vaudevilles. We Germans have much the same thing in our didactic distiches, Xenien, and the like. Even tomb inscriptions frequently approximate to this lyrical character in virtue of the strong emotions expressed.

(ββ) In much the same way the Lyric accepts a wider range in descriptive narrative. I will merely mention, as a composition of this class, the romance. It is the most obvious and simple form of it, in so far that is as it isolates the different scenes of an event, and then depicts rapidly and with the full force of their most important characteristics each on its own account, in descriptions marked throughout by sympathetic feeling. Such a consistent and well-defined grasp of the characteristic features of a situation, together with an emphatic assertion of the writer's absolute sympathy with his subject, is above all nobly represented in Spanish literature and makes such romances strikingly impressive. A peculiar clarity of atmosphere surrounds these lyrical representations which rather identifies them with the clear-cut definition of objective vision, than with the ideal world of the imagination.

(γγ) The class of the ballad, in contrast to the above, includes for the most part, if in less degree than the truly epic poem, the completeness of an independent event, whose reflection, of course, it merely embodies in the most conspicuous of its phases, while it seeks at the same time to give full, if concentrated and ideal emphasis, to the depth of the sentiment with which it is throughout interwoven, and therein the plaint, dejection, joy, and so forth, of the soul. English literature above all contains many such poetic compositions in the early and more primitive epoch of its history; and, generally, popular poetry delights in the narration of such histories and collisions, usually unfortunate, with a true and emotional emphasis calculated to make both heart and voice thrill and falter with anguish. But in more recent times also among ourselves Bürger and, most famous of all, Goethe and Schiller, have composed masterpieces in this field; Bürger in virtue of his sombre tone of naïveté; Goethe through the impeccable clarity of his emotional, no less than imaginative vision, which forms the lyrical thread throughout; and Schiller, on account of his superb emotional emphasis on the fundamental thought which he seeks, in a wholly lyrical manner, to express under the form of an event, in order thereby to affect the hearts of his readers with a similar lyric movement of feeling and contemplation.