On the Aesthetics of Poetry

I would like to set this down as the simplest and most accurate definition of poetry: that it is the art of bringing the power of imaginationi into play through words. How it brings this about I have stated in § 51 of the first volume. The following passage from a letter of Wieland to Merck, since then published, provides what was said there with a specific confirmation: “I have spent two and a half days on a single stanza, where the whole thing fundamentally rested on a single word that I needed and could not find. I turned and twisted the thing and my brain in all directions; for where it concerns a picture, I would naturally like to bring the same determinate vision that floated before my mind, also before the mind of my readers, and for this, ut nosti,ii everything often depends on a single feature, or relief, or reflection.” (Letters to Merck, edited by Wagner, 1835, p. 193.)iii Since the reader’s imagination is the material in which poetry displays its images, it has the advantage that more detailed elaboration and finer touches take place in each one’s imagination, precisely according to how it most closely fits with his individuality, his sphere of cognizance, and his fancy, and therefore how it stimulates him in the most lively manner. By contrast, the plastic and pictorial arts are not so accommodating, but rather here one picture or one form is to satisfy all; but it will always in some respect bear the stamp of the individuality of the artist, or his model, as a subjective, or contingent, ineffectual adjunct, although all the less, so the more objective, i.e., the more of a genius the artist is. Just from this it is partly explicable why the works of poetry exercise a much stronger, deeper, and more general effect than pictures and statues: these often leave ordinary people quite cold, and in general the plastic and pictorial arts the most weakly effectual. A particular proof of this is afforded by the so frequent discovery of pictures by great masters in private homes and in all sorts of places where, not quite buried and concealed, but merely unheeded, and so without effect, they have been hanging for several generations. During my time in Florence (1823), even a Madonna by Raphael was discovered, which had hung throughout a long series of years on the wall of the servants’ room of a palace (in the S. Spirito quarter): and this happens among Italians, this nation gifted above all others with a sense of beauty. It proves how little direct and unmediated an effect is had by the works of the plastic and pictorial arts and that an appreciation of them requires far more education and knowledge than all the others. How infallibly by contrast a beautiful, heart-touching melody makes its journey round the world, and a superb poem travels from people to people.42 That the great and wealthy devote their strongest support precisely to the plastic and pictorial arts and spend considerable sums only on works of those arts-indeed a kind of idolatry, in the proper sense, nowadays pays the value of a large country estate for a picture by a famous old master43-rests mainly on the rarity of the masterpieces, the possession of which therefore appeals to pride, but also on the fact that their enjoyment requires very little time and effort and is ready at any moment, for a moment, whereas poetry and even music set incomparably more onerous conditions. Accordingly, one can even do without the plastic and pictorial arts: entire peoples, e.g., the Mohammedans, lack them, but none lacks music and poetry.