In this respect, too, the Lyric occupies a position which is to be contrasted with Epic poetry. In other words, while we regarded as necessary for the full bloom of the true Epos a phase in the nation's growth which was, speaking generally, undeveloped, at least in the sense that it had not ripened in the prosaic acceptance of its actual life, the times which favour most of all lyrical composition are those which already are in possession of a more or less fixed organization of social condition. It is in such a period that the individual seeks a reflection of his intimate personal life in contrast to this outer world, creating from it and within its limits an independent whole of emotion and idea. For in the Lyric it is not, we repeat, the objective solidarity and individual action, but the individual person as self-conscious life which supplies both content and form. This, however, must not be understood in such a way as though the individual, in order to express himself in lyrical form, must perforce disjoin himself from every connection with national interests and the opinions, and with rigid and exclusive severity remain as he stands.
On the contrary, with such an abstract self-subsistency we should only have left us for content the wholly contingent and particular passion, the mere caprice of concupiscence and affection, false idiosyncrasies and distorted originality would have unlimited opportunities. Genuine lyrical poetry, like all other poetry, has no doubt to express the content of the human heart in its truth. Yet none the less, regarded as the content of the Lyric, what is most a matter of fact and substantial must appear absorbed in personal feeling, vision, imagination, and thought. And, in the second place, the question here is not so much simply expression of the personal inner life, is not so much concerned with a primary and direct statement in the epic fashion, what the facts are, as with an expression of the poetical nature in a manner both artistically fruitful and wholly different from chance and ordinary modes. It follows that the Lyric requires, precisely on account of the fact that the concentrated life of the heart unfolds itself in manifold feelings and comprehensive views, and the individual is conscious of the poetry of his most intimate life as nested in a world that is already more prosaically organized—an artistic culture already secured, which must assert itself as the flower and independent product of the individual's natural endowment thus trained to a perfect result. For these reasons the Lyric is not limited to particular epochs of the spiritual development of a people, but is the rich blossom of the most varied. To an exceptional degree is it favoured in more recent times, in which everybody is entitled to have and express his own views and emotions.
I will, however, draw attention, in the interest of really important distinction, to the following general considerations.
(a) In the first place, we have the type of lyrical expression peculiar to folk-songs.
(αα) In these above all we have witness to the varied and distinct qualities of national character. It is on account of this, and consonant with the widely-prevailing curiosity of our generation, that great efforts are made to collect folk-songs of every kind, in order to increase our acquaintance with the peculiarities of every national spirit, and therewith our sympathies and vital contact with such. Already Herder has done much in this direction. Goethe, too, with the help of his own more independent imitations, has materially assisted an approach to very different examples of this style of poetry. Complete sympathy is, however, only possible for the songs of one's own people; and however much we Germans are able to make ourselves at home in the work of foreign lands, the fact remains that the ultimate aroma in song[5] of the intimate life of another folk can only appear as alien, that we shall only catch the echo of the tone of feeling that truly belongs to it, with the assistance of a more native reflection of its content.[6] This Goethe has imported into his songs of a foreign subject-matter, stamped as they are with the finest sympathy and beauty. We may take as an example the lament of the noble spouse of Asan Aga, imitated from the Icelandic—only so far as to retain throughout the unique spirit of such poems unimpaired.
(ββ) The general character of the lyrical folk-song is comparable to the primitive Epos in virtue of the fact that here too the poet does not make himself his subject-matter, but is absorbed in his selected material. Although, therefore, intensity of soul in its extreme concentration may express itself in the folk-song, it is nevertheless not a single person with the artistic expression of whose private experience we are made acquainted. It is rather a national state of feeling, which the author completely assimilates, in so far as it possesses, when taken by itself, no intimate form of idea or feeling wholly independent of the nation's existence and interests. And a condition is necessary, as the presupposition for such an inseparable union, in which independent personal reflection and culture is not yet awakened, so that the poet is simply in his creative capacity merely the vehicle in the background, by means of whom the national life is expressed in its lyrical emotion and general outlook. This directly primitive character no doubt communicates to the folk-song an unconscious freshness of downright grasp and striking veracity, which is often very effective; but it receives thereby along with it very readily a fragmentary appearance; it is defective in the continuity of its exposition, which may amount to actual obscurity. The feeling dives into depth, but cannot and will not attain to full utterance. Moreover, as before observed, what is absent from such a point of view throughout, however much the form in general is wholly lyric, in other words subjective, is just the lyrical individuality, which expresses this form and its content as the possession of its own heart and mind, and the creation of its own artistic resources.
(γγ) Peoples, therefore, which confine themselves to poetry of this type, and do not combine such composition with that of the further stages of lyrical, epic, or dramatic work, are as a rule in great measure barbarous nations, uncultured, characterized by transitory feud and catastrophes. If they themselves, in such heroic ages, really combined to form a truly pregnant whole, whose particular aspects were already fused together in an independent and withal harmonious objective union, which could supply the ground for essentially concrete and individually distinct exploits, we should find in them, along with such primitive poetry, epic poets as well. The condition, out of which such songs assert themselves as the single and ultimate mode of poetic expression, is therefore rather limited to the field of family life and the association of clans, without any further organization such as belongs already to the riper perfection of the heroic community. If we are reminded here and there of national exploits, such are for the most part conflicts waged against foreign aggressors, expeditions of pillage, reprisals of savagery with savagery, or deeds of one individual against another in the same people, in the narration of which lament and dejection or ecstatic jubilation over one conqueror after another, are the moods throughout prevailing. The national life as it actually is, as yet unfolded in its wholly free development, is relegated to the background in contrast with the world of more personal feeling, which also, on its own account, betrays an immaturity; and, however much thereby we gain in concentration of effect, the result only too frequently remains, so far as content is concerned, rude and barbarous. The question then, whether folk-songs should possess for us a poetic interest, or on the contrary repel us to some extent, depends on the kind of situation and emotion they portray. That which appears admirable to the imagination of one people, will readily strike another as wanting in taste, horrible, and offensive. There is, for example, a folk-song which tells us the story of a wife who was immured at the command of her husband, and all that her plea for mercy could effect was that apertures should be left open for her breasts, in order that she might suckle her child; we are told that she remained alive until her child was weaned. This is a barbarous and frightful situation. And in the same way tales of robbery, exploits of the bluster or sheer savagery of individuals, possess nothing in them in which alien peoples of a higher culture can sympathize. Folksongs, consequently, very often run into great detail as to the quality of which there is no fixed standard of comparison, because such is too far removed from our common humanity. When we consequently, in more recent times, are made acquainted with the songs of the Iroquois, the Esquimaux, and other wild nationalities, the circle of a true poetic enjoyment is in no wise thereby enlarged.
(β) Further, inasmuch as the Lyric is the entire expression of the inward life of Spirit, it can neither restrict itself to the mode of expression nor the content of the genuine folksong, or of later poems composed in a similar spirit.
(αα) In other words, on the one hand, it is of essential importance, as already remarked, that the wholly self-absorbed soul should detach itself from this absolute concentration and its direct introspection, and should pass on instead to the free grasp of itself which, in the conditions above described, is only incompletely the case. On the other, it is necessary that it should expand in a world abundant in ideas, passions, varied conditions, and conflicts, in order to endow with ideal expression everything that the human heart is essentially able to apprehend, and then communicate as the birth of its own spirit. For the collective wealth of lyrical poetry should express in poetic form all that the inner life comprises, so far as the same can pass into poetry, and therefore finds itself at home alike in all phases of spiritual culture.