Page images
PDF
EPUB

it was another charmer, Minna Herzlieb, who sat for the heroine, "Ottilie." A modern reader will be most interested in its beautiful descriptions of nature, which justify the claim that has been made for Göthe, that he is the greatest of literary landscape painters. The "Fairy Stories" (Mährchen) possess no merits which are not seen to better advantage in the more extended works. The most famous is that of "The Serpent," which has been much praised for its deep sense. It must be said, however, that what sense it contains has never been satisfactorily reached, because every interpreter gives it a different explanation. It has served a bad purpose, with much else that Göthe has written, in leading to waste of time and brains in symbolical criticism, a point which will be touched upon again.

CHAPTER XIII.

GÖTHE, THE POET.

Göthe as a poet! I do not know how to introduce my consideration better than by a sketch of a famous treatise of Schiller, entitled "Upon Naive and Sentimental Poetry," in which he desired, as it were, to take account of the peculiarity of his own poetic talent in contrast with that of Göthe, and, side by side with the recognition which he paid the latter, to justify also his own way of writing. The poet, he says, can proceed in a twofold way; he can, in his soul, embrace the world outside of himself immediately, quite unconscious of any idea within himself; or, on the other hand, he can take some idea within his soul as a starting-point, and seek to blend this, by a second step, with the world of outside phenomena. The first way is that of the ancients, of whom we may consider Homer the typical poet ; wherefore Schiller calls that way of writing poetry the antique. He calls it näive, or artless, because the poet, living in and with nature, creates his work, as it were, unconsciously. Still another name for this class of poets, and the most convenient, perhaps, is objective; absorbed in the object contem

1 Ueber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung.

plated, the subject-the contemplator-forgets itself and sinks out of sight. The second way is called sentimental, because the poet proceeds not immediately from the contemplation of nature, but from himself, as a starting-point, taking some sentiment or idea of his spirit. In a world which has to some extent forgotten nature and become artificial, the modern world, -Schiller believed that poets of the second kind would be most likely to abound. He therefore calls this kind of poetry modern. Still another name for the second kindthe most convenient again -is subjective; because the idea gained from the soul, or subject contemplating, is first in the poet's elaboration. Though poets of the first kind-the näive or objectiveappear principally in antiquity, they can still appear in modern times. We may take Shakespeare to be such a poet. He "holds the mirror up to nature.' The nature the object-we perceive with perfect distinctness; but of the subject-the thing perceiving—we know nothing. Who knows what were Shakespeare's ideas? He produces for us the world, in abundant, wonderful presentation; he himself is a sphinx of whom no man can do more than guess. "Who can figure," says Carlyle, "what the man Shakespeare was, by the first, by the twentieth perusal of his works? He is a voice coming to us from the land of melody; his old brick dwelling-place, in the mere earthly burgh of Stratford-upon-Avon, offers us a most inexplicable enigma. And what is Homer in the Iliad? He is the witness; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but do

-

not behold him. Now compare with these two poets any other two,-not of equal genius, for there are none such, but of equal sincerity, — who wrote as earnestly as they. Take, for instance, Jean Paul and Byron. The good Richter begins to show himself in his broad, massive, kindly, quaint significance, before we have read many pages of even his slightest work; and to the last he paints himself much better than his subject. Byron may also be said to have painted nothing but himself, be his subject what it might." "As a test for the culture of the poet, in his poetical capacity, for his pretensions to mastery and completeness in his art, we cannot but reckon this (the power of objective presentment, while the subject is out of sight) among the surest. Tried by this, there is no writer of our time who approaches within many degrees of Göthe."1

*

I have found a consideration of Göthe's poetic character which seems to me still more delicate and keen than that of Carlyle. The critic insists, like Carlyle, upon the objective quality of the genius of Göthe, but finds it subjective also. "In all his poems there is a vague, indefinite self, — reflecting a definite and clearly-outlined influence which impresses that self. His own mind is the sheet of water which reflects the image, and you see only that it stretches vaguely away beyond and beneath the image it is reflecting; but what catches the eye is the clear outline of the reflected object in the

1 Essay on Göthe.

water. His imagination was passive and not active; it reflected back with faithful minuteness the influence which produced the results. The best part of his poems is that in which external objects and social impulses are rendered again, but you always find the vague mental reflecting surface by which they are thus given back; you always have both the deep, dim, Götheish mirror, and the finely outlined object which skims over it. The two never coalesce, as in Shakespeare." 1 If we accept the emendation of Carlyle's view, proposed in the passage just quoted, we shall still regard Göthe as in the main an objective poet, though less definitely so than the great bards with whom he is associated. Of the second kind of poets, the subjective, – of whom Carlyle takes Jean Paul and Byron as types, I believe we may hold Schiller himself to be a still nobler representative. It will be seen when he is treated more particularly, how, instead of beginning with the external, he proceeds from certain ideas in his soul; we see how these ideas fill his soul; how he pours them into his poems, his main design being to obtain expression for them, while the picturing of the object is a secondary matter. Schiller addresses Göthe in a noble stanza :

Both of us seek the truth; thou outward in life, but I inward;
I in the heart; and so each shall the truth certainly find.
If the eye has health, in the outer 'twill meet the Creator.
If the heart is sound, it will meet the Creator within.

[ocr errors]

Göthe, as has been considered in the sketch of

1 Richard Holt Hutton: Essay on Götho.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »