POETICAL COMPOSITION AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THAT OF PROSE
We find it difficult to recall a single writer among all who have written on the subject of poetry who has not evaded the attempt to describe what is poetical as such, let alone a clear definition. And in fact if any one begins a discussion upon poetry, regarded as an art, without previously having investigated the nature of the content and mode of conception appropriate to Art in its most general terms, he will find it an extremely difficult matter to determine where we must look for that in which the essential character of poetry consists. To an exceptional degree is this failure to tackle this problem visible in those cases where a writer takes as his point of departure the actual execution in particular works of art, and seeks to establish, by means of this connoisseurship, some general principle which he may apply as relevant to every sort and kind of composition. In this way works of the most heterogeneous character come to rank as genuine poetry. If we once start from such assumptions, and then proceed to the inquiry by virtue of what productions of this nature can be reasonably classed together as poems we are at once confronted with the difficulty I have above adverted to. Happily our own position here is not that of these inquirers. In the first place we have by no manner of means arrived at the general notion of our subject-matter through an examination of any particular examples of its display; we have on the contrary sought to evolve the actual constitution of the same by a reference to the fundamental notion.[1] Agreeably with this it is not part of our demand that everything in ordinary parlance regarded as poetry should in our present inquiry fall into the general notion we have accepted. At least this is certainly not so in so far as the decision whether any particular work is or is not poetical is only deducible from the notion itself. Furthermore it is unnecessary now to expound more fully what we understand by the notion of poetry. To do this we should simply have to repeat again the course of our inquiry into the nature of Beauty and the Ideal as developed in general terms in the first part of this work. The intrinsic character of what is poetical stands in general agreement with the generic notion of artistic beauty and the art-product. That is to say, the imagination of the poet is not, as is the case with the plastic arts and music by reason of the nature of the materia, through which they are reproductive, constrained in its creative activity in many directions, and forced to accept many others of a onesided or very partial completeness; it is on the contrary merely subservient to the essential requirements and general principle of an ideal and artistic presentation.
From the many different points of view applicable to our present purpose, I will attempt to emphasize merely those of most importance, as for example, firsts that which relates to the distinction between the mode of composition employed respectively by poetry and prose; secondly, that which contrasts a poetical work as completed with one of prose; and, finally, I propose to add a few observations relative to the subjective faculty which creates, or, shall we say, the poet himself.
I. THE COMPOSITION OF POETRY AND PROSE
(a) In so far as the content appropriate to poetical composition is concerned we may, relatively speaking at any rate, exclude the external world of natural fact. It is spiritual interests rather than the sun, mountains, landscape, or the bodily human form, and the like, which are its proper subject-matter. For, although it naturally embraces the element of sensuous impression and perception, it remains none the less, even in this respect, an activity of mind. Its main object is an intuition of ideality, to which it stands as spiritual activity in closer relation and affinity than is possible for external objects, as presented in their concrete substance to the senses. The world of Nature therefore only enters into the content of poetry in so far as mind discovers therein a stimulus or a material upon which to exercise its own energy; as, for example, where it is regarded as the environment of man, merely possessing essential worth in its relation to the ideality of conscious life, which moreover can put forward no claim to be itself the independent object of poetry. The object, in short, which fully corresponds to its appeal is the infinite realm of Spirit. For the medium of language, the most plastic medium possessed immediately by conscious life, and the one most competent to grasp its interests and movements in their ideal vitality, precisely as is the case with the material of the other arts, such as stone, colour, and tone, must necessarily and above all be employed to express that which it is most qualified to express. It is consequently the pre-eminent task of poetry to bring before our vision the energies of the life of Spirit, all that surges to and fro in human passion and emotion, or passes in tranquillity across the mind, that is the all-embracing realm of human idea, action, exploit, fatality, the affairs of this world and the divine Providence. It has been the most universal and cosmopolitan instructor of the human race and is so still. Instruction and learning are together the knowledge and experience of what is. Stars, animals and plants are ignorant of their law—it does not come into their experience; but man only then exists conformably to the principle of his being when he knows what he is and by what he is surrounded. He must recognize the powers by which he is driven or influenced; and it is just such a knowledge which poetry, in its original and vital[2] form, supplies.
(b) It is, however, also a content of the same character which belongs to man's ordinary conscious life. This too instructs him in general laws, as such at least are interpreted by the motley crowd of human life, in their distinction, coordination, and significance. The question therefore arises, as previously observed, as to the nature of the distinction between the mode of conception severally adopted by prose and poetry, a similarity in the content of each being assumed as possible.
(α) Poetry is of greater antiquity than speech modelled in the artistic form of elaborate prose. It is the original imaginative grasp of truths a form of knowledge, which fails as yet to separate the universal from its living existence in the particular object, which does not as yet contrast law land phenomena, object and means, or relate the one to the other in subordination to the process of human reason, but comprehends the one exclusively in the other and by virtue of the other. For this reason it does not merely, under the mode of imagery, express a content already essentially apprehended in its universality; on the contrary it lingers, conformably to its unmediated notion, in the unity of concrete life itself, which has not as yet effected such a separation or such an association of mere relationship.
(αα) Under the above forms of envisualization, poetry posits all that it comprehends as an exclusive and consequently independent totality, which, despite its capacity for a rich content and an extensive range of condition, individuals, actions, events, emotions and ideas of every kind, nevertheless is forced to exhibit the same in all their wide complexity as an essentially self-determined whole, as displayed and motived by the unity, whose individual expression this or that fact in its singularity actually is. And consequently the universal or rational principle is not expressed in poetry in its abstract universality, or in the complexus which lies open to philosophical exposition or under the relation of its varied aspects apprehended by science, but on the contrary as a vital union, in its phenomenal presence, possessed with soul and self-determined throughout; and it is further expressed in such a way that the all-embracing unity, the real soul of its vitality, is only suffered to be operative in mysterious guise from within outwards.
(ββ) The character of this mode of apprehending, reclothing and expressing fact is throughout one of construction. It is not the fact itself and its contemplative[3] existence, but reconstruction and speech which are the object of poetry. Its entrance on the scene dates from the first efforts of man at self-expression. What is expressed is simply made use of to satisfy this desire. The instant man, in the midst of his practical activities and imperative duties, seeks to summarize this effect for mind and to communicate himself to others, then we have some kind of artistic expression, some accord with what is poetical. To mention one from a host of examples, there is that distich which we read in Herodotus referring to the slain heroes of Thermopylae. As for its content it is simply the fact, the bare announcement that four thousand Peloponesians on a certain spot fought the battle with three hundred myriads. The main interest is, however, the composition of an inscription which communicates to contemporary life and posterity the historical fact, and is there exclusively to do so. In other words, the expression of this fact is poetical; it testifies to itself as a deed (εἱν ποιείν) which leaves the content in its simplicity, but expresses the same with a definite purpose. The language, in which the idea is embodied, is to that extent of such increased value that an attempt is made to distinguish it from ordinary speech; we have a distich in lieu of a sentence.
(γγ) For this reason, even from the point of view of language, poetry makes an effort to keep its domain singular and distinct from ordinary parlance, and to accomplish this elevates its expression to a higher virtue than that of merely articulate expression. We must, however, not only in this particular respect, but for the purposes of our present inquiry generally, make an essential distinction between a primitive poetry, which arises previous to the creation of ordinary artificial prose, and that mode of poetical composition and speech the development of which is effected where already the conditions of our everyday life and prosaic expression exist. The first is poetical without intention, in idea no less than speech; the latter, on the contrary, is fully conscious of the sphere, from which its task is to detach itself, in order that it may establish itself on the free basis of art. It is consequently quite aware of the distinction and contrast implied in its self-creation to the world of prose.