The reading public of our day, is a far in the plastic arts, than for the most merimore promiscuous company than formerly, torious compositions, and know no other and what can be more natural that that poetry than that which jingles in verse. polite literature should spontaneously adapt In this they see and apprehend that skill itself in scope and matter to the propor- has effected something, of which they are tions, character, and demands or necessi- incapable, and which evidently can be acties of the reading world? With the ex-quired only by industry and practice; the tension of the reading public, the sphere of labor bestowed and the wit expended strikes those who not only receive bounty from the eye in looking at verse; but in prose the Muses, but who extort it, has been im- they see nothing but what they think themmensely enlarged. In like manner, and in selves able to produce, if the thoughts and the same sense as predicated of the plastic ideas were theirs, and as these go toll-free, arts, the brotherhood of Belles-Lettres has they are not disposed to attach any great become much vulgarized and drawn within value to such ware. In the former case the precincts of industry and handicraft, they overlook the matter on account of the and the spirit of the age has erected its vehicle, in the latter they forget the form factories and workshops on the manor soil for the sake of the matter, or, in this the of poetry itself, in the shape of literary form, and in that the matter, seem to them journals, magazines, and philological and something as quite selon la règle. translating institutes. He who draws a comparison between the present condition of literature and its recent palmy days, who begins to meditate on its probable or possible development, and leaves out of sight this point of culmination, this essential difference between then and now in the annals of human culture, he, to use a homely phrase, reckons without his host. The sudden swell and consequent disarrangement of the intellectual masses, which are operated upon by the literature of the age, and which again reacts in the multiplying and increased vaporing emptiness of authors, is evidently the main source of the prevailing dilettanteism in literature, which in most of its departments knows far less its own mind and object, than the plastic arts do. enormous Preoccupied by such notions, not only the rude hand of the serf, but even the delicate gloved and perfumed digits of the literary parvenû, grab into the conservatory of choice and elegant literature, to gather a nosegay suiting their taste. With views as these, reading is sedulously attended to, not only in the guard-house and the servants hall, but much oftener in the boudoir, since every body claims partnership with the beau-monde, who has his head furnished and done up by the peruquier. But so populous a beau-monde produces naturally authors innumerable. The bel-esprit-virus with which the world has become inoculated, breaks forth at a thousand points in the shape of poems, novels, romances, &c.; poetical vitality raised to an pitch! Nothing can therefore be more An ever increasing craving for instruc- natural than that very many entertaining the tion, is sated by an aimless, undue, miscel- same ideas of poetry as to its matter and laneous reading; but through all this wil- form, dash away at writing, with the same derness of words, the craving mind seizes nonchalance as the others do at reading; direct on any thing like fact or narrative; knowledge of every kind is now-a-days in the dress, the vehicle of conveyance, is of such a state of fluidity, all manner of inno consequence. With such a disposition, struction so wonderfully facilitated by the not merely the practical and relatively use- most effectual helps, the most ingeniously ful is absorbed, but also the ideal and fan- contrived literary funnels and injection ciful. The fiction, the drift, and meaning, pipes. The minds of youth are at once is then every thing. The majority of immersed in the immense vat of literature, readers imagine, that the conceptions of and instead of being suffered to form themthe poet are as easily embodied in form selves, are there operated upon according and language, as a newspaper paragraph or to circumstances; before they well know a popular tale; that to design, to create, how, they find themselves to their great and to commit that which is designed and delight in full and undisturbed possession created to paper, is but one and the same of the great tool of the poetical craft, lanoperation, or that as long as a man is pro-guage; and in a few years after the young lific and successful in inventing, it is of the lady has had her last exercise corrected smallest import how he acquits himself in by the gouvernante, she has with heroic the delivery. Hence it happens that igno- grief hatched and put forth her first novel; rant, half-educated people evince much and just about the same period, or when more veneration for the veriest mediocrity his little college-learning is about evapo rating, the young gentleman feels himself themselves at least so much of aesthetic called to be a poet or a critic. In the good culture (once the exclusive property of old pedantic times, the man who desired to certain classes,) as may be thought necesmarshal forth his genius into the upper sary in order to lay claim to some concircles of society, if not a bona fide genius, ventional distinction in society, is the that is, if he had not passed through the cause of the increasing clamor for literary schools with some degree of personal and distinction. We may observe that this earnest application, which was the indis- clamor and this desire extend just as far pensable groundwork of all superior cul- downwards and embraces as many classes, ture we say, he must have made some-as does that modern attire which is fast thing of himself by study-he must have crowding out the earlier national and solidity; though perhaps not fashioned out grade-indicating costume; both are equalof the finest and best materials, yet he had ly significant signs of a social conformaa sound and solid one, but it must be purg- tion, where there are enough of gradations, ed and gilded in the schools. But in these heights, and depths in external as well as times of ours, people are very quickly and intellectual respects, but nowhere a defivery thinly varnished over with the pro- nite demarcation, no legitimate guage and fessional compound; they extemporize their standard of pretensions. In this world poetical effusions, and we think indeed that people judge and estimate one another with the galvano-plastic mode of gilding was wonderful instinctive accuracy. With one discovered earlier, and more for the benefit glance, the most ignorant servant-wench of poetasters, than for the beautifying of discovers not only the difference between house-furniture and kitchen utensils. The the dress of the real and the would-be lady, most empty heads, the most shallow brains, even when stuff and cut are the same, but plunged into the castalian fount, soon be- seizes upon much smaller discrepancies in come coated over with a thin crust of the attire, though perfectly similar in base gold-wash, and incontinently pop aloft make; the most common eye is difficult as matriculated and all promising sons of to deceive as to the standing and quality the muses. There is no lack, in these of persons, by a dress contradicting days, of very clever heads, but most all of them become very early infected with the æsthetic atmosphere of the age, and ad priori accustomed to over-rate themselves, to mistake the dominant idea of the day for originality, to eschew and contemn serious study and honest labor, and to plunge into a path on which no talent can eventually arrive at any thing, or produce any thing worth speaking of. But is it worth one's while, to encounter all the grievous ills to which, by the confessions of the best men in all ages, all true poetry, yea, every superior work, is destined? It is more convenient to trifle about these ills. The art of making false jewelry in the cheapest and most plausible imitation of real gold-ornaments, has been carried to such perfection, that only the very smallest portion of gold trinkets have the credit of being solid and genuine, and consequently but very few wear such. In like manner, a technical routine cheaply got, and as it were thrown at one's head, produces a modern literature of plated and gilt hollow ware, by which the multitude garnish their intellectual premises. Small demand there is for the massive, finely wrought, and chiseled article. Who, that works for a market, would think of taking the thankless pains of producing such? With many the desire to appropriate to that quality. Much natural and acquir much curtailed; and thus the voice and in the most grotesque shapes. Thus one taste of the majority, who hold true learn-in his travelling-sketches abandons himself ing so cheaply, prevail in most of the to his "eligaic" mood, and speaks of the various departments of letters. That," triumvirate" of the creative arts, music while thus speaking, we in nowise are so foolish, to wish again for the "good old time" of privileged caste-that we do not anticipate the future glory of poetry from a revival of the old aristocracy of Savans, we need not, it is presumed, expressly The conclusion of these reflections wil make it apparent, that we entertain quite different views of the future. and poetry; another complains, laughably enough, of the "hydrogene" elements of a certain literary association-this is printed; only he meant to say, "heterogene" elements; another promises in his prospectus of a new gazette a "Reblique" of the latest literature; evidently a learned transformation of revue or retrospect. How far the general thirst for knowBut it is not to be wondered at, that with ledge, the spirit of speculating and sifting the prevalence of such æsthetical habits, so prevails in poetry, as well as in every spemany writers and readers lose sight more cies of art, is especially apparent from the and more of the difference between literary circumstance that literature is itself aware solidity and mere tinsel, that the difference of her weakness, and of its cause. Literabecomes more and more unnecessary. "Lu-ture storms bravely about herself, just as dentis speciem dabit et torquebitur." How ma- we grumble over our own citizen's dress. ny valiant in producing or criticising poet-Through the labors of antiquarians, theatrery, have not understood this saying, even if directors, and merchant-tailors, the costhe literal meaning were plain! They may tumes of past ages have become as familiar have heard of it, but do not believe, that a to us as their poetry, and we have arrived poetical fashionably popular work, whether at a critical conviction, that at no time great or small, must appear light and destined to oblivion. If it has been so easy for the author to indite, it must be a light matter, and the opposite of all ideas of true art, and if to be thrown aside into oblivion, it is certainly not worth preserving. As the French say of the drama: "Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante;" so we may say of a great portion of our belles lettres; that which had better never been thought, is printed. All systems of science, from chemistry to æsthetics, are crammed with strange, outlandish, and, for an unlearned tongue, often desperate words and phrases, mostly Greek. This still flourishing custom, of baptizing new objects and ideas by hellenistic and barbarian names, is at least excusable when used in a purely scientific connection, with reference to interchange of thought with antiquity; but stands in the absurdest disproportion with the growing flippancy and superficiality of the present humanistic school-education. One would suppose, that this thorny nomenclature would repel many authorlings and adepts in book-making, who never were burdened with much knowledge, and who forget nothing only because they have so little to be forgotten, from certain matters and things, just as rabbits and worms are kept aloof from the fruit-tree by haw-thorn hedges and ramparts of pitch. But the literary caterpillar finds everywhere his way to leaf and bark, and devours every thing, even to the knots and prickles, which he often re-delivers people dressed more shabbily and absurdly, at no time was poetry more shamefully misused than at the present. One would think that nothing would be more easily changed, more easily and entirely revolutionized on coming to an unbiassed resolution, than the diurnal modes of dress; but not so-in this department, too, next to nothing is invented in this too we apply only scientific criticism, recur to the ways of our grandmothers, and patch them up, and particularly with regard to female costume, any variation depends chiefly on the fecundity of antiquarian talent. Our tailors and mantuamakers are as sterile in creative and progressive invention as our poets, and we can as little get rid of our clothes as of our literature. Thus the fateabandoned field of tailoring proves most strikingly, first, that all developments in the same age, the highest as well as the lowest, necessarily proceed from the same root; and next, that the problem and characteristic of our time is not invention, but discovery. A presumptuous chasing after scientific discovery, finding out, and appliance, keeps down inventive and creative art, drawing it into the same unfruitful path, so that a self-confident activity and thoughtfulness pervade the arts; but not that sort of thoughtfulness and study which in the genuine work follows inspiration-a sort which must serve as substitute for inspiration. We would indeed be led to entertain very serious apprehensions respecting the future destinies of literature, if we were to in the soul of the prince as in the soul of judge of the present character of poetical the galley-slave; whereas in the later relatalent, from inferences drawn from our es- tive positions of men who must pursue vatimate of intellectual culture of earlier rious paths through life, they have become times, as exhibited in their standard works, much more diversified by occult and indid we not look beyond our day. Every ward, intellectual qualities, than in civil one is aware that poetry, by being spread and political respects, or outward condiout before so many classes, with which it tion. In former times, the leech, the adept, formerly hardly came in contact, has indeed the astrologer, or the heretic, stood out become more common, but not, therefore, isolated and in bold relief from the equally in a good sense, more popular; that among tempered mass, as the representatives and the nauseating trash which daily falls from purveyors of learning. The spirit of investhe press, as well as in those of her off- tigation and acquisition was fettered, despring for which we have no need of blush- scribing narrow circles around scattered ing before posterity, we may search long and migratory centres; but art grew up in and wearily to find any thing resembling a joyful luxuriance on the broad and deep germ, a grain of fresh and genuine poetic soil of faith, and the artist was no virtuoso, nationality, (Volks-poesie.) But yet such no dilettante, who with unwonted strength germs and grains do already exist; we dis- of genius ushers something overwhelming cern (as we think) the first faint auguries into day; he was what Thomas Carlyle and beginnings of a development, in the calls, a worker, who by his personifications progress of which the people gradually will gave tone and expression to the common. become susceptible of poetie feeling, and feeling, and never delivered a text to which once more the foundation be laid for cre- every soul had not a response and a comative art, not from above, from the gentry mentary at hand. downwards, but from beneath, out of the heart and quarry of the nation. Such a blessing can never spring from mere bellelettreism and artificial dilettanteism; it seems rather to be hoped for from a certain tone among the people which has little affinity with literature. We allude to those marks of a revived nationality, which are traceable in the awakening of patriotic sentiments, and in an impulse towards free associations. It is of much significance to our nation and to our period, that this disposition reveals itself in its poetical tendency, by music; in the numerous musical and vocal societies, which, steadily spreading, embrace social unions of quite distinct classes. It is a matter of congratulation that the poetical electrometre has hitherto elicited so faint sparks of genuine original poetry; all healthy growth is remarkably slow. This remark leads us to the last idea, which we here wish to record. Culture, in its universal sense, before the discovery of the art of printing, had an aspect widely differing from that which it subsequently assumed. We see education in the middle ages, notwithstanding the rigid separation of classes and ranks, far more uniform than now, when so many of these barriers of caste have been done away with. The gulf between the suzeraine and the vassal was more of a civil and external nature than an intellectual. The ideas of Deity, of the world, and of nature, were, if we so may speak, bounded and fixed pretty much within the same figure This revival of art threw its last vibrations pretty far within the domains of the press, and in an age where, through the reformation, the might of that press had already been sensibly felt, art once more stood up in glorious strength. The paintings of the sixteeth century are the delicious fruit, and also the sere and yellow leaf of a rapidly consummating year of the universe. A new era commences from the hour in which the idea of printing became reality, and at the time, when the antiquarian no longer invoked his old books and parchments as Incunables; the genius or demon of a new cycle of the world, leaped out of his cradle accoutred in complete armor. From that hour, the fetters which had until then held nearly all, high and low, great and small, in the bondage of simplicity, begin to be loosened; differences and controversies in thinking and feeling come to be identified and expressed in words; the warfare between spirit and mind, the upper and lower powers, begins; the understanding quenches and conquers sentiment, and the watch-word of an ever increasing, rapid development, is knowledge. In this process, the ancient spiritual level of society was necessarily destroyed; here it rose into eminences, while there again it sank into declivities; the ideas and standards of individuals and of classes tallied less and less, distinct circles and platforms formed themselves separately, which took very unequal interest in the solution of the master-problem of the age, research, and were analysis and classification in the outward world, the creative spirit of the inner world. shall again be emancipated; in which art shall fully perfect and ennoble that which science has so gloriously achieved during the last centuries, making it by a touch of her magic wand the legitimate spiritual capital of the people. Such a view can give umbrage only when not rightly understood; it will, however, only be pointed out in this place. At another time we may take a nearer view from this point, of the present course of history. very unequally affected by its results. A spiritual aristocracy stood over against the mass of the people, as pioneers in the movement towards enlightening reason, which not only ruled them politically, but kept them morally muzzled. But the deeper the mind penetrated into nature and history, the more the horizon cleared up at those points, the darker and denser and more confused became the shadows resting on the intellectual world; the more divided, essentially differing, men became among themselves touching the most momentous questions and interests. Science bounded Culture has evidently struck into another up to the clouds, but the church languish- path, leading to quite a different goal from ed, and with her that art which springs that which she seemed to follow fifty years from a common and paramount spirit. The ago, and many are the phenomena of our foundations of this common paramount time which may be construed in consofeeling were demolished, and thus art and nance with our views. State, legislation, poetry became the property and preroga-arranging and intercourse of classes, motive of the higher, knowing, enlightened rals, customs, dress, in short, the whole classes, and the offspring and impress of social system as it at present exists, and in their taste and spirit. The arts were no its present state of progress already indilonger the common spiritual bread of life; cate, on close observation, where the new they became seasoned dishes for refined movement has taken its beginning-where palates, for those who know how to enjoy it betrays more affinity to a state of things scientifically; but utterly insipid, indi- as they existed before the discovery of the gestible, incomprehensible to those who art of printing, than to that of the past cenbrought nothing but nature's common un-tury. In many respects present circumsophisticated appetite to the banquet. stances appear altogether the reverse of While culture thus rapidly advanced to- what they were in the middle ages; but in ward the aristocratic pole of the social this complete transformation, the new is world, light, spurious as well as true, pene-far nearer to the old than merely on the trated yet slowly the masses toward the way to it. Whether reading and writing democratical. This descending tendency of shall form the rule or the exception-wheculture, has become wonderfully accele- ther very many do not think, because they rated since the latest important changes in read nothing or have read too much; whepolitics, in science, and in trade, and the ther men obey, because they must, and conviction is forced upon this generation, know no better, or whether the idea of a that culture and education will assume an just government shall pervade the commuentirely new aspect. The press, that very nity; whether a certain category of the instrument which yet in its imperfection, laws of nature, or a certain amount of auat the close of the middle ages, exploded thenticated facts, shall be known by the the unity of feelings and ideas, appears many or the few; whether every person now in its mature strength, to labor for the shall be able to propel himself forty miles restoration of this very unity. It looks as in the hour, or whether high and low must if History were intent upon reconducting travel on foot or on horseback:-all this is mankind by some spiral windings to the of no consideration, when treating of the same point which they occupied half a main-springs, of the stamina of social develthousand years ago; as if out of the pre-opment; and every one, who is not an entire sent commotion, a middle age is to emerge stranger in the history of the middle ages, on a more splendid and exalted scale; that is able to extend these parallelisms into is a state in which the entire people shall, every direction and department of life. in spiritual and moral respects, again form It must not be forgotten, that even the a phalanx more unbroken than ever; an highest and most sublimated views of naage in which the common mind, in its nature, as they strike ever deeper, have broken ture essentially one and unchangeable, away from the materialism of mere ratioshall again find its equipoise in connection cination, and manifest a leaning, a returnwith the isolated aristocratic mind; in ing towards the mystical point d'appui of which, after a final momentary satisfying of the spirit of research and inquiry, of Verstandesaufklärung. |