SOURCE: Behler, Ernst. “Lyric Poetry in the Early Romantic Theory of the Schlegel Brothers.” In Romantic Poetry, edited by Angela Esterhammer, pp. 115-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002.

[In the following excerpt, Behler studies Schlegel's ideas regarding the mythic origins and the formal, metrical, and aesthetic features of lyric poetry.]

Considering the prominent rank of lyric poetry in European Romantic literature, we would expect an equally important position of the lyric genre in the thought of the Romantic critics about poetry. Indeed, this expectation is met by rich and diversified reflections on the nature of the lyric in essays, letters, fragments, and conversational pieces by the Romantics. These texts testify to their awareness of the revolution they accomplished in this genre perhaps more decisively than in any other. Yet these diversified reflections hardly congeal into anything like a theory of Romantic lyric poetry and cannot easily be synthesized through comparative analysis to a unified whole. The problem with these reflections on the lyric is that they reveal more in terms of mood than of genre and are so diversified according to national traditions and personal predilections that they resist articulation in a more general theory, a difficulty reflecting the particular nature of the genre. As one attempts to ascertain common features among the statements of the European Romantics on the nature of the lyric, even those limited to the period of early Romanticism, one emerges with very general results more indicative of a re-orientation of thinking about poetry than about any specific poetic genre.

This trend can also be traced within the confines of a national literature. Early English Romanticism was perhaps more lyrical in its first appearances, particularly with Wordsworth and Coleridge, but also Shelley and Keats, than any other form of European Romanticism. These early Romantics also expressed their feelings about the new poetry in a spontaneous lyric mode and their ideas about imagination, genius, and creativity with a lyric thrust. For Wordsworth, this is not particularly surprising, since his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, his major pronouncement on poetry, is meant as a “systematic defence of the theory, upon which the poems were written,” but also as an introduction to “Poems so materially different from those, upon which general approbation is at present bestowed” (Wordsworth [1974], 1: 120). All poetic concepts in this preface assume a lyric character and are related to lyric poetry. This applies to the idea of an interactive reconciliation of thought and emotion (“emotion recollected in tranquillity”), the poet's binding together “by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society,” as well as to the poet's “carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of … science itself” (Wordsworth [1974], 1: 148, 141). The discussion of broader, more philosophical issues, such as “What is a poet?” and the nature of genuine poetry, also takes a basically lyrical direction. This privileging of the lyric can best be illustrated by the dominant question of style in the preface, by its preoccupation with “poetic diction” and its strong opinions about rural language and rustic speech. Yet precisely because of the close interrelationship of the lyric and the generally poetic, one would be hard pressed to extract a theory of lyric poetry from this preface. Coleridge's views on the wholeness and totality of a work of art and the unifying power of the imagination similarly reveal a lyric thrust but, under the influence of August Wilhelm Schlegel, are of equal relevance to Shakespeare and eventually point to the generally poetic. Specific discussions about the particular nature of lyric poetry in English Romanticism usually focus more on the actual poetry written by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats than on theoretical statements, referring to them only to corroborate a particular point in the interpretation by authentic language (Abrams [1965], de Man [1983], Eaves and Fischer [1986]).

Madame de Staël vividly experienced a new style of lyric poetry when she came to Weimar in the winter of 1803-1804. Raised in the classical tradition of France, she saw in this kind of poetry mainly “the expression of amiable regret, the subject of which are the enjoyments of love and the pleasures of life” (Staël [1958-1960], 2: 177).¹ To break through the narrow confines of this type of poetry, she had already previously familiarized herself with the poetry of James Thomson, Thomas Gray, and Edward Young, as well as with Macpherson's Ossian poetry (Staël [1991], 54), but had focused her literary interests mostly on the novel. When she published De l'Allemagne (Of Germany) in 1813, her view of literature had expanded considerably and comprised a great variety of genres. Lyric poetry was now foremost and in its new German version, found nothing comparable in France. She observed with astonishment: “Lyric poetry does not relate anything, does not obey the succession of time or the limits of space; it flies across countries and ages; it gives permanence to that sublime moment in which the human being rises above the pains and pleasures of life” (Staël [1958-1960], 2: 119).² These remarks relate especially to Goethe, who incorporated the new “evocative” style of poetry most perfectly for Madame de Staël. Another poet, however, who represented innovative potentialities of the lyric genre in a different, more religious manner, was Novalis. He contemplated nature in a religious mood, and for him the human being was “elevated above time” and “posited between two eternities” (Staël [1958-1960], 5: 163). Madame de Staël's remarkable recognition of a new style in lyric poetry evaporates, however, into mere appreciative exclamations.

The Schlegel brothers come perhaps closest to what one might call a Romantic genre theory of the lyric, especially in their early writings, and have therefore been chosen to illustrate the new Romantic conception of lyric poetry at the turn from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Their theories of the lyric are by no means concerted efforts or collaborative enterprises, but rather approaches from different and even opposite points of view. Yet we soon notice the complementary character of these differing approaches, which seems to permit us to speak of an early Romantic theory of lyric poetry, although the Schlegels never attempted such a neatly circumscribed task. Their pronouncements on the lyric occurred in the larger context of lectures on literature and its history, in essays on more general themes, or simply in their correspondence. If we speak of a theory of lyric poetry here, this theory is pieced together from various sources and is problematic with regard to “theory” in the usual sense. This is perhaps why their efforts in the realm of the lyric have never before been made the subject of a critical and comparative study. (The two most important treatments of this theme are Kayser [1960] and Rey [1978]).

The designation “theory,” however, does not imply that these Schlegelian views in any way constituted the basis or the starting point for the production of lyric poetry by Novalis, Tieck, Brentano, Eichendorff, or any other author. Nor have these lyric poets in turn influenced the theoretical thoughts of the Schlegels. Theory and practice of lyric poetry proceeded rather autonomously during the Romantic age and reveal in independent fashion new potentialities of the lyric as they were discovered by these authors in the realms of poetizing and theorizing. This removes the epithet “Romantic” from the thoughts of the Schlegels on this subject and gives them rather the character of a fundamental reflection upon poetry and its potentialities.

After having completed his study of literature at Göttingen University in May 1791, August Wilhelm Schlegel accepted the position of tutor in the house of the Amsterdam banker Henry Muilmans, where he lived until July 1795. Here originated his early translations of Dante and Shakespeare, which appeared in Schiller's newly founded periodical Die Horen in 1795. Schlegel also wrote his first theoretical text on poetry in Amsterdam, the “Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache” (Letters on poetry, meter, and language), which he published in the same periodical in 1795. By this time, Schlegel was already a recognized poet in Germany, as the dedication of one of Novalis's earliest poems indicates:

An Herrn Schlegel
Auch ich bin in Arkadien geboren;
Auch mir hat ja ein heißes volles Herz
Die Mutter an der Wiege zugeschworen
Und Maß und Zahl in Freude und in Schmerz.

(Novalis [1960], 1: 512)

[To Herr Schlegel
I, too, was born in Arcadia;
For me, too, my mother vowed in my cradle
A full, burning heart
And measure and number in joy and in pain.]

However, when Schiller had asked Schlegel a few years earlier, in August 1791, to become a collaborator in his Neue Thalia (New Thalia), the memory of Schiller's devastating review of Schlegel's friend Gottfried August Bürger of that year was still too fresh in his mind for him to accept. One can safely say that this review and the notion of poetry that guided it kindled Schlegel's life-long animosity toward Schiller and his aesthetic doctrines. His subsequent collaboration with Die Horen and Schiller's Musenalmanach (Muses' almanac) was mainly motivated by his desire to participate in the poetic and critical life of Germany, if only from afar, and to facilitate his return from Amsterdam. When on 31 May 1797, however, stung by Friedrich Schlegel's polemics against him, Schiller canceled all further collaboration with A. W. Schlegel, their entire relationship collapsed, and from then on, the Schlegel brothers decided to ignore Schiller in their own writings.

This controversy about Bürger and Schiller's review influenced not only these biographical relationships, but also A. W. Schlegel's concept of lyric poetry. Bürger is without a doubt one of Germany's greatest lyric poets, and his ballad “Lenore” of 1774 found recognition far beyond his own country. One of the reasons for Bürger's popularity was the strong personal and emotional character of his poetry, his so-called “natural poetry” and “folk poetry,” which made him appear as a poet of the people. This image was furthered by certain “bohemian” features, especially in his marital life. He fell in love with his wife's sister, whom he celebrated in his poems as Molly, and lived with the two women in a sort of a dual marriage. After his wife's death he married “Molly,” but when she then died, he took a third wife, whose licentious behavior brought about a divorce within only a few months. As A. W. Schlegel saw it, however, the general disrespect and even disdain for Bürger in the university town of Göttingen pertained less to these unhappy aspects of his life than to the fact that Bürger pursued the unprofitable art of poetry, that he was a poet of the people, and in spite of his appointment at the university as a professor of poetics, did not write manuals. Schlegel reports that Bürger was treated not only with great disdain, but as a real outcast of bourgeois society (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 68). In this situation, Schlegel became a close friend of the aging and unhappy poet, spending entire afternoons with him to discuss poetry and compete in executing difficult and playful tasks of versification. As far as Bürger's poetry was concerned, Schlegel realized that its enormous success among the people and its appreciation as true folk poetry gave Bürger the impression of being the “liberator of nature from the coercion of arbitrary rules,”³ although he never shared the hope of those “who wanted to seize the highest in poetry not only without theory and criticism, but without any thorough study of art at all, through an essentially free effusion of autonomous originality” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 65).⁴

Schiller's review of 1791 focuses on this particular character of Bürger's poetry and criticizes its personal, emotional attitude from the point of view of a classical, idealized conception of poetry. He regrets the “decay of lyrical poetry” caused by the “indifference with which our philosophizing age begins to look down on the plays of the muses” (Schiller [1943-], 22: 245).⁵ Poetry is for Schiller the only realm capable of “reuniting the separated forces of the soul, of engaging head and heart, sagacity and wit, reason and imagination in a harmonious union, and reconstituting in us, so to speak, the entire human being” (Schiller [1943-], 22: 245).⁶ What the poet can offer for this task is his “individuality,” and here is where Schiller applied his own premises to Bürger. He reproaches him for considering himself a “folk singer” and making “popularity” his highest law. It is Schiller's judgment “that the spirit presenting itself in these poems is not a mature, not an accomplished spirit; that his products may lack the finishing touch because this is lacking in himself” (Schiller [1943-], 22: 251).⁷ According to Schiller, “one of the first requirements of the poet is idealization,” ennobling, the extraction of the “excellence of the subject,” and the result is that “of an inner ideal of perfection that dwells in the poet's soul” (Schiller [1943-], 22: 253).⁸ In his review he is saying: “We miss this art of idealization in Bürger” (Schiller [1943-], 22: 253).⁹ His poems are “images of this peculiar (and most unpoetic) condition of his soul,” even “sins against good taste,” and his mood of mind is “by no means that salutary, harmonious mood into which we want to be transposed by the poet” (Schiller [1943-], 22: 255-6).¹⁰

The effect of this review was disastrous for Bürger, but as Schiller hid behind anonymity, Schlegel could do little more than publish a poem “An einen Kunstrichter” (To a judge of art), i.e., Schiller, in Bürger's Musenalmanach, concluding with the lines:

Wer tiefes, eignes Leben in sich trägt,
Der athm' es aus, und frage keinen Richter,
Und wisse dann, er sei's, nicht der sei Dichter,
Des weiser Kopf Gefühle mißt und wägt.

(A. W. Schlegel [1846], 1: 9)

[Whoever carries within him deep and unique life,
Let him breathe it forth, without asking any judge,
And let him know that he himself is the poet,
Not that one whose wise head weighs and measures feeling.]

Later, in the 1828 edition of his essay on Bürger of 1800, Schlegel no longer felt obliged to guard Schiller's anonymity and mentioned that the review was composed in that style of a “cold, punctilious elegance that was characteristic of Schiller's prosaic writings and that passed into an utmost paralysis in his letters on aesthetic education” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 68).¹¹ Now, after the two antagonists had long since left the world, he felt free to call Schiller's review a deed “that could hardly be justified according to literary morality”: “How could Schiller pass judgment like a Rhadamanthus on some of the healthy crudities left in Bürger's poems? The author of The Robbers, whose early poems and dramas offend every delicate feeling by many features, must have known how easily genial impetuousness is carried away to wild excesses” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 71).¹² Schlegel's main point, however, was that Schiller's judgment gave evidence of a “weakness in his expertise” in matters of poetry. He should have praised what he blamed. Whereas Bürger was occasionally a true master of the ballad, Schiller labored in this genre “against the will of Minerva.”

Schlegel also thought that a nemesis had been at work in this feud, in that Bürger's ballads now compared most favorably with Schiller's own achievements in this genre, especially if one considered such products as Schiller's “Fridolin,” “Der Taucher” (The diver), and “Der Ritter von Rhodus” (The knight of Rhodes), and held them up against Bürger's “Tochter des Pfarrers von Taubenhain” (The pastor of Taubenhein's daughter) or “Die Weiber von Weinsberg” (The women of Weinsberg) (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 72). In his later review, Schlegel also took issue with some of Schiller's theoretical premises and especially criticized his establishment of an inner relationship between the poetry and its author, according to which whatever is lacking in a person will also be absent in his poetic product. Poems are “products of freedom, even of arbitrariness” for Schlegel and therefore separated from the personality of the producer (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 70). He furthermore saw in Schiller's notion of “correctness” or accomplishment a mere scholastic notion, which he contrasted with the enormous success of “Lenore” in England (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 83-4). Yet he also took issue with Bürger's notion of popularity and considered his maxim of “popularity as the seal of perfection” as basically wrong (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 75).

This controversy also became an issue in the early correspondence between the Schlegel brothers, but Friedrich Schlegel showed little inclination to involve himself in the “aesthetic scolding” set in motion by this dispute. As far as Schiller's insistence on the “art of idealization” was concerned, he certainly shared his brother's point of view, but had grave doubts about Bürger's poetic qualities and seemed to agree more with what had been expressed by Schiller. “I confess to you,” he wrote in November 1793 to his brother, “I cannot see what you find beautiful or great in his [Bürger's] works. You also speak of art, language and beautiful rhymes: but I feel that the truth he has is really quite common and nothing great. To rhyme beautifully has always appeared to me as something subordinate in our language, which is capable of a higher harmony” (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 155).¹³ If we read these statements on the subject more carefully, however, especially F. Schlegel's derogatory remarks about Bürger's “beautiful rhymes” and his “totally modern and often ugly” expression of love, passion, and enjoyment (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 155, 165), we soon realize that Friedrich Schlegel was approaching the subject not from a modern or contemporary view of poetry, but from the perspective of his study of classical Greek poetry. The requirements for lyric poetry were of a completely different order for him than for his brother. “There are many interesting instances in your last letters,” he wrote on 11 December 1793, “which I should like to discuss more closely; but nothing among them is more important to me than prosody and metrics because I cannot get around in these matters so easily by myself and hope to learn from you what I cannot find in books” (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 167).¹⁴ Rhythm was the main quality in a formal consideration for Friedrich Schlegel, whereas rhyme seemed to constitute not only a secondary entity, but even a mere artifice in which the poetically inferior spirit of the moderns liked to display itself. Indeed, in his Über das Studium der Griechischen Poesie (On the study of Greek poetry) of 1791 he spoke of Dante's Divina Commedia as a “capricious arrangement of the material,” a “most peculiar structure of the colossal work,” and thought that these features originated neither in the natural talent of the bard nor in the wisdom of the artist, but only in the “gothic” attitude of the modern barbarian. Rhyme in particular appeared to him to be a “distinguishing mark of this original artificiality of our aesthetic culture.” Human feeling might find some pleasure in the “regular return of a noise.” Certain species of animals always repeat the same noise to make their individuality known to the world—and thereby rhyme. How this ornament could have become a “necessary law of poetry,” however, and how this “childish pleasure in a stubborn playfulness” could have been elevated to “the ultimate goal of art,” remained incomprehensible to Friedrich Schlegel (F. Schlegel [1958-], 1: 233-4).¹⁵

In a letter dated 15 January 1796, F. Schlegel wrote to his brother more directly about his study of Greek metrics: “If you do not have at least Dionysius [of Halicarnassusl, Hephaestion, Meibom on classical musicians, Plato, and Aristotle (in the eighth book of Politics and Rhetoric) in front of you, together with the most important poets and the metrical notes of the scholiasts, you cannot even begin to study Greek metrics. But with that, the matter is not over. If you want to know Greek rhythm, you have to bring along a complete theory of music that will not take a back seat in anything to the scientific evidence of music. Even more, you have to know the entirety of Greek culture in the most comprehensive sense of the word. Never will anyone who does not know the spirit of Solon's legislation comprehend the hints of the ancients concerning the dithyramb; nor can one for whom the manners and constitution of the Dorians are alien, comprehend the Pindaric rhythm” (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 273).¹⁶ In the month of February 1794, he wrote his brother that he intended to translate the tragic poets of the Greeks and had decided to render the choric parts in “free lyric rhythms,” to translate them into “something the ancients would have called dithyrambs. I was particularly pleased by an ode from Pindar which Caroline showed me and some choric parts by Aeschylus in the Berliner Monatsschrift, both done by the older Humboldt [Wilhelm von Humboldt]” (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 185).¹⁷

With August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, we therefore encounter at the beginning of the Romantic period two diametrically opposed approaches to lyric poetry, one focused on a modern conception of this genre and on modern phenomena such as meter and rhyme, and the other proceeding from a classical understanding of the lyric and viewing its essence in rhythm and dithyramb. “The two of us proceed from completely different perspectives and concepts,” F. Schlegel wrote in November 1795 (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 259).¹⁸ The following investigation attempts to show how these two approaches complemented each other and eventually led to a remarkable characterization of the lyric genre in early Romantic theory.

A. W. Schlegel, himself a specialist in classical metrics, soon felt that his younger brother's derogatory remarks about the lyrical expressions of the moderns were based on a deficiency, on insufficient knowledge in these matters. To remedy this gap, he composed his “Betrachtungen über Metrik. An Friedrich Schlegel” (Reflections on metrics: To Friedrich Schlegel) in letter form—a text that had been intended only for private consumption, but is now part of A. W. Schlegel's complete works. The first paragraph sets the course for the entire argument: “You write to me about Bürger: ‘To me to rhyme beautifully seems to be something subordinate in our language, which is susceptible to a higher harmony.’ I have always forgotten to thank you for the nice compliment you paid me by considering an accomplishment I only too willingly claim and one which others flatter me with having attained, as so low. If the difficulty is of any importance to the matter, I can assure you that it is extremely difficult to write melodiously and expressively in rhymed meters in German. Perhaps I can praise myself and prove that I can also do the other, in Greek meters, if I want to. It might even be much easier; I have tried it” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 156).¹⁹ To give his brother the appropriate reward for his “impertinences,” A. W. Schlegel exposed him to a treatise on this subject consisting of three parts: 1. euphony; 2. eurythmy; and 3. rhyme, placing rhyme last because it evolves out of the two prior phenomena. Originally, he might have hoped to receive responses from his brother's classical viewpoint on this subject and begin their projected communal letters “On Poetry” with a discussion of lyric poetry (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 81, 129, 140, 153, 525). But aside from occasional remarks, A. W. Schlegel's letters on metrics remained a text of instruction for F. Schlegel. When the latter had the first pieces in his hand, he wrote on 21 January 1794: “Please finish your treatise on euphony, etc. I have read it frequently, but I am not yet in the position of answering properly. I will do this in the future, after having received the pages on eurythmy and rhyme, for which I am still much more desirous” (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 176).²⁰

The subject seems of little significance, A. W. Schlegel admits, and also of scant appeal to research, and this may explain why so little has been written on it. It is nevertheless a “very important” subject for A. W. Schlegel and one that has to be known from practice, from writing poetry, although good poets usually abhor theoretical considerations in these matters. “You cannot believe, dear Fritz, how much I loathe this cursed criticism to which nature has damned me” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 156).²¹ Yet metrics becomes even more difficult if one attempts to write about it not only on the basis of examples from one's own language but in a comparative fashion. His main point, however, which already relates to his later theory of lyric poetry, is that eurythmy is the basis for prosody, rhythm, meter, and anything else that belongs to the formal attributes of lyrics. “The merely sensuous impressions are stronger than the finer aesthetic ones,” he says (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 157).²² What colors are to painting, sounds to music, language is for poetry. The material components of language are syllables, while the formal ones consist in prosodic and rhythmic relationships. These relationships comprise the field of poetic composition, and one basic rule is that “whatever is difficult or painful for our organs of language to pronounce is also displeasing to our ear,” or more generally, that there is a “sympathy among the various organs” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 159).²³ Later, he adds, “The sense decides earlier than the spirit: if sense has declared a matter disagreeable, no appeal to the spirit is valid; spirit can never presume to exceed its own jurisdiction” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 179).²⁴

A. W. Schlegel's translations of scenes from Dante's Purgatorio in Die Horen had found broad recognition in Germany and earned him a special letter from Schiller on 12 June 1795, not only praising this particular accomplishment, but encouraging the young critic to contribute something of his own choice and inclination to the periodical (Schiller [1943-], 27: 194). Schlegel therefore decided to work out his own approach to poetry from specific potentialities of the human language such as euphony, eurythmy, rhythm, and rhyme as he had just explained them in the series of letters “Betrachtungen über Metrik” to his brother. He asked to have these letters returned and took them as a basis for his “Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache,” which appeared in two installments in Die Horen in 1795. These letters can be considered the first attempt at a theory of poetry of early German Romanticism from an original and for that time also quite unusual point of view. In Amsterdam, Schlegel had lived far removed from speculations in the mode of idealistic philosophy then dominating Schiller's and his brother's approach to poetry. But it was also through personal inclination and predilection that A. W. Schlegel took his starting point from sources such as Herder's, Moritz's, and Hemsterhuis's writings.

The “Briefe” are addressed to Amalie, in whom we easily recognize Caroline Böhmer, then Schlegel's beloved and later his wife. They begin with a strong rejection of any idolizing of the poet in the sense of a fostered “favorite of nature” (Kant), or an “intimate messenger of the gods” whose revelations he mediates, or as someone who possesses a language superior to the insufficiencies of ordinary, everyday language (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 98). Schlegel objects to these views: “The most beautiful poem consists only of verses; these verses of words; the words of syllables; the syllables of single sounds. These must be examined according to euphony or cacophony, the syllables must be counted, measured, and weighed, the words chosen, the verses neatly ordered and fixed to one another” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 99).²⁵ All this has to be done not only according to one sense, but in accordance with the “sympathy” of all senses. The ear, for instance, receives a pleasant sensation “when following certain intervals similar-sounding word-endings return” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 99).²⁶ Sometimes, in order to find one single consonant ending, the poet has to traverse the whole realm of language from West to East. This does not always succeed and has affected the prejudice against metrical perfection, relegating it to minor importance. Great original poets often betray some ineptitude in versification and permit themselves more than is proper here. Dante and Shakespeare are rather untroubled as far as versification is concerned, whereas Tasso and Pope show a “successful suppleness.” All these observations lead to the question: Is meter essential to poetry?

A. W. Schlegel himself is of the opinion “that the rhythmical movement of poetry is not less natural for the human being than poetry itself.” He says: “Wherever human beings breathed and lived, sensed and spoke, there they also poetized and sang” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 103)²⁷—implying of course that this took place in rhythmical form. His main argument for this opinion, however, is that human language is “the most astounding creation of the human poetic capacity, the great, so to speak, never finished poem in which human nature depicts itself” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 104).²⁸ In order to appreciate these statements fully, one has to realize that the relationship between the human mind and the world is first mediated through an imaginative, “poetic,” creative contact for Schlegel, through signs of designation and communication of an entirely metaphorical character. This is the “original” language of the human being which is entirely poetic in this regard and indeed the first creation of the human poetic capacity. During its usage and modified from all sides for the purpose of better applicability, this language lost some of its original power, and just as the infinite manifold of nature was reduced to abstract concepts, the lively abundance of sounds retracted into dead letters. It will be impossible to drive out the original poetic and metaphysical language entirely, however, because the human being will always remain a sensual being. His inclination to reveal his personal perceptions to others and to reproduce these will never get lost as much as it may be weakened by the dominion of reason. If we look at languages as they are used for the presentation of abstract insights of a scientific nature, we hardly sense traces of this lost origin from which they appear to be infinitely removed. These languages indeed appear as a “collection of signs determined by agreement.” However, Schlegel argues, even in these languages there is hidden “that intimate, irresistible, restricted, but even in its restriction infinite language of nature” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 105).²⁹ This language has to be hidden because it makes poetry possible: “That individual is a poet who does not only discover this divinity, but is able to reveal it to others; and the degree of distinctiveness with which this can still occur in a language determines its poetic power” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 105).³⁰

The attempt to provide some “prosodical considerations” has thus involuntarily proceeded to the “origin of poetry, even to the first development of language” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 106).³¹ This theory of language is indeed crucial for Schlegel's theory of poetry and allows the latter to appear as a poetry in an already poetic medium, a poetry in poetry. He is of course aware of the fact that basically we know just as little about questions relating to the origin of poetry and language as we know about the “original state of the human being” and that we use such models of thought in order to formulate the question “out of and with which dispositions of human nature language could originate” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 111).³² Three theories offer themselves as a solution to this question. Language originated either solely from sounds of emotion (Herder), or solely from an imitation of objects (Condillac), or from both sources in conjunction. For Schlegel, the cry of physical pain or bodily desire can never develop into language, nor can he accept the theory of an original “agreement” on the use of signs. He follows Hemsterhuis, who considered language as a means of communication (a system of signs) that presupposes the inner language of the soul (emotion) and determines the coherence and use of the signs of communication through the interaction of these inner and outer realms of the human being (Hemsterhuis [1792], 1: 182-90). Several other philosophers of the time had taken this middle road, Schlegel continues, by progressively eliminating the share of emotion and reducing it to merely the initial stage, the time of a natural sensuality and an untamed passion. For Schlegel, however, this emotional aspect of language is not only operative in the origin of the linguistic process, but just as important during the further development of language. This cannot be proven with single words, nor through the entirety of a given language, and remains just as imperceptible from these particular points of view as the lively presentation of a speech in the written characters of its text. It is rather a “spiritual presence” and constitutes the “sensuous beauty” of our languages (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 120-1).

As is obvious from these observations, the scope of Schlegel's theory of language transcends his metrical considerations and actually constitutes a new and hitherto unknown approach to poetry that cannot be explored in its full impact in this context (cf. Behler [1993], 263-73). If we concentrate on the metrical aspect of it, we realize that his main point is “that meter is by no means an outer ornament but intimately interwoven with the essence of poetry and that its hidden charm has a much greater share in poetry's impressions upon us than we usually believe” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 107).³³ In order to illustrate this point, Schlegel refers to the “origin of poetry,” a topic about which we know just as little as the origin of language and which is employed mainly to exemplify structural relationships. If in the formation of language the two dispositions of the human being, the inner and the outer, emotion and communication, the ability for feeling and that for forming signs, cooperate, then poetry must coexist with language and be of the same age as language. These considerations belong to the broader theory of poetry that has been excluded from the present discussion. The particular question occupying us here is how a “uniform movement,” a “measure of time,” a rhythm, came into this poetic language. Several explanations had been promoted for this phenomenon. Karl Philipp Moritz, for instance, had argued that the alternation of slower and faster movements were more easily remembered, admired, imitated, and therefore progressively developed to an artistic and regular structure of verse (Moritz [1786]). Schlegel himself gives preference to that explanation which grants the least to a conscious intention and thereby comes to our body as the “measurement of time” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 132).

Heartbeat and breathing occur within the same time spans in regular intervals. We also notice a certain beat in human labor because regularly repeated movements seem to be less fatiguing. Hemsterhuis considered the feeling for time as most basic to the human being and believed that it even preceded birth. The human disposition for measure therefore seems physiologically based and leads us into the labyrinths of physiology and psychology, but indicates simultaneously how this seemingly foreign representation of measure could be applied to gestures and dance. The more vehement human passions are, the more they have to be moderated to prevent the destruction of the human being. This applies not only to the expressions of lament and grief, but also to the senseless rapture of joy which can lead to an exhausting self-destruction. Schlegel says: “Involuntarily, the feet became accustomed to jumping according to a measure of time indicated by the quick circulation of the blood or the beatings of the pulsating heart; the other gestures and also the movements of the voice had to follow this natural law of organization in their own course; and through this spontaneous conformity, measure entered into the wild song of joy which originally consisted only of a few repeated exclamations” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 137).³⁴ With these considerations, Schlegel concluded the third letter of his text, which also formed the conclusion of the first installment in Die Horen. At this point, however, he received a letter from Schiller on 10 December 1795, criticizing him for his privileging of physiological, natural phenomena for the derivation of rhythm and poetic language and insisting instead upon an idealistic human Selbsttätigkeit (autonomy) as the basis of our moral nature. In contrast to Schlegel, Schiller defined rhythm on idealistic grounds with his famous formula of das Beharrliche im Wechsel (the enduring in change). Schlegel unfortunately yielded to Schiller's arguments and altered the fourth and concluding letter accordingly. At the conclusion of the third letter, he had still maintained: “The soul, educated by nature alone and not used to any chains, demanded freedom for its proclamations; the body, in order not to succumb to the persistent vehemence of these proclamations, needed a measurement and was sensibly guided to it through its inner constitution. A measured rhythm of movements and sounds combined both, and this was its original magical power” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 139).³⁵ The fourth letter begins with the sentence: “With the invention of the measurement of time, we enter a totally different realm” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 139)³⁶—meaning that now we are leaving the world of nature (plants, animals) and making our entrance into the human world. Schlegel also makes retrospective comments by telling Amalie that although this would be hard to recognize, his earlier remarks about the measuring tendency in the expression of passion were already an appearance of the “dignity of reason” counteracting mere nature (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 143). How this interaction between reason and passion operated is hard to imagine because we have no historical information about these early periods of humanity. The first beginnings of a civilized social life in the human tradition, however, are connected to the invention of music. Osiris and Isis among the Egyptians, and Orpheus among the Greeks employed the power of song to tame wild dispositions. If we interpret these legends more carefully, however, we realize that the attribution of these benefits to real figures with particular names shows the human being at an advanced stage, when song had already become an object of pleasure and a means to convey the sentences of the wise. The most ancient expression of these benefits did not belong to anyone in particular but to humanity in general: “The oldest Orpheus was nowhere personally present but lived everywhere hidden among animalistic humanity, and when he appeared for the first time in his divinity and fettered and tamed the wild rage of passion through melodious rhythm, no ear and no heart could resist his magic power” (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 148).³⁷

When these natural and human arts became a matter of society, external laws of agreement and habit were superadded which provided more space for reason and choice and opened up further developments for the three rhythmic arts: dance, music, and poetry. Schlegel admits that his entire disquisition had been based on two presuppositions, namely, that poetry was originally lyrical and of an “improvised” nature (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 152-3). He promises his correspondence partner Amalie to continue at some later time and show to her how the other forms of poetry developed from this original one.

This opportunity came when A. W. Schlegel, after his return to Germany in July 1795, accepted a professorship at the University of Jena in 1797 and offered a course of lectures on Philosophische Kunstlehre (Philosophical aesthetics) during the following academic year, 1798-1799. The course dealt with all the arts, including rhetoric and music, architecture, plastic art, painting, acting and dancing, and opera, but the main part was devoted to poetry. Here again, Schlegel took his particular approach to poetry from language and its aesthetic formations in terms of meter and rhyme, but in a much more detailed and elaborate fashion than in the former “Briefe.” Another important addition in these lectures on poetry is a section on the relationship of poetry to mythology, which will be discussed in the present study in the context of Schlegel's Berlin lectures of 1801-1802. As far as lyric poetry is concerned, Schlegel continues his transcendental deduction of this genre where he had left off in his “Briefe” to Amalie. In this previous text he had hardly gone beyond the origin of an original language in which all forms of poetry were, so to speak, enveloped and showed a natural tendency to rhythm, meter, and rhyme that became the ornaments of the lyric genre. In these lectures, we are far beyond this initial point and see Schlegel analyze the more elaborate forms of lyric poetry among the ancients and the moderns. These detailed analyses according to genres and sub-genres are of no interest to the present investigation because they are bound to Schlegel's historical perspective and ignorant of developments in lyric poetry as they have since taken place. What matters for our pursuit, however, is the discussion of lyric poetry from his linguistic premises, his further investigation into this mode of poetry from the point of view of language. The immediate occasion for this consideration in the Jena lectures is the comparison of lyric poetry to music.

Lyric poetry, according to these lectures, takes its name from the musical accompaniment by the lyre, which among the Greeks was inseparable from it and in conjunction with musical art aimed at a certain stimulation of the soul. A mere learned imitation of a foreign lyric poetry could be accomplished without music, as already shown by Horace. Similarly, Provençal poetry was without musical accompaniment, although it seems to have been composed for music. Finally, the name lyre for lyric has become a mere phrase for the moderns, a conventional metaphor. Schlegel, however, sees an essential relationship between lyric poetry and music, and this appears to be the decisive point in his characterization of lyric poetry in these lectures.

The common feature in both music and lyric poetry lies for him in their “immediate representation of inner states” of the soul (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 70).³⁸ Such immediate representation can occur either through mimic expressions, which are involuntary and unartistic, or through freedom, in musical form and in language. As far as his means of expression is concerned, the musician has a “language of feeling” that is much more independent of outer objects than the lyric poet's “language of words.” What connects the poet's language to the musician's, however, is that his language should not be descriptive, but immediate and present. The outer world of the lyric poet is entirely determined by his subjectivity, and only those objects are present for him that have a relationship to his mood, that refer to his mind. The stricter the lyric sphere is limited in its extension, however, the more it becomes necessary to expand it in intensity, so that the mind finds full satisfaction in this limitation. Schlegel says: “Accomplished lyrical beauty is therefore not possible without the active appearance of the striving for the infinite which makes each respective poetic subject as much as possible the center of everything” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 72).³⁹ This striving must always transcend the particular object. Since the guiding principle in a lyric poem is a sensation of feeling, all activities of reason and imagination have to be dependent upon it, and just as thought has to move away from the “law of quiet thinking,” images and comparisons should be distinctly removed from habitual analogies. This is the reason for the “daring transitions and turns, the fragmentary, the sudden leaps, the seeming disorder, as well as the mysterious and the entangled,” which we find for instance in the ode (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 73).⁴⁰

From all of this it emerges that the lyric poet is entitled to exercise his poetic rights over language in the widest manner possible and must even exercise them in an unrestricted fashion in order to shape his language to an appropriate organ. Lyric diction transcends the conventional use of grammatical rules of prose the most. Yet this intensive energy limits the extensive use of lyric diction which, among the forms and components of language, can choose only those that correspond to the respective mood as strictly as possible. Lyric diction always has an “individual coloring” noticeable even in one and the same poet according to the differences among his individual moods and subject matters. Epic diction, in contrast, is impartial, indistinct, and capable of absorbing everything.

This versatility is also discernible in lyric meter. Epic meter can be characterized as the steadiest determination and is, in the last analysis, only one, while in lyric poetry the greatest multiplicity of meters becomes necessary, since the genre cannot find full expression in one poem but only through infinite modifications. In its highest intensification, however, lyric enthusiasm comes to the point where all meter and rhythmic form is abandoned and a “rhythmic lawlessness” appears as the image of an unrestrained energy (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 75). The desire to fix transient inner states of the soul is the basic characteristic of all musical communications of feeling and can lead to a complete exhaustion of this desire for expression. Therefore, a restraint, an ordering sequence becomes necessary, which not only restricts this tendency, but simultaneously supports it and makes it possible. This is the function of melody in music, and its correspondence in lyric poetry is the stanza. The stanza is for Schlegel an image of the “rotation of feelings” which always returns into itself and thereby comes close to what Schiller had called the enduring in change (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 75). The following analysis deals with particular forms of the lyric genre in classical and modern poetry. Of more fundamental interest are Schlegel's views about the relationship between poetry and mythology as he first developed them in the Jena lectures and later gave them a broader scope in his Berlin lectures of 1801-1802.

The basic thought underlying A. W. Schlegel's theory of mythology already finds expression in the first sentence on this topic in his Jena lectures: “Myth, like language, is a general, a necessary product of the human poetic power, so to speak an arche-poetry of humanity” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 49).⁴¹ To appreciate this statement fully, one has to remember that A. W. Schlegel considered the first true intercourse of the human being with the world as a poetic one, mediated by the imagination, and finding linguistic expression as an indication of an inner feeling and as a sign for communication. The section on mythology analyzes how this poetic interaction with the world operates. Schlegel considers mythology a “metaphorical language” of the human mind created according to the needs of the human being in which “everything corporeal is animated and the invisible is made to appear” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 49).⁴² As one can tell from these formulations, mythology does not belong to some early and bygone phase of humanity for A. W. Schlegel, but forms, like language, an essential accompaniment of the human being—a structural principle of his mind. Like language, mythology might lose some of its strength and colors through the process of rationalization, but even in its state of reason, the human mind mythologizes.

Particular mythologies, like the Greek, show stages of development and may eventually die out as a creed of a particular people. Even if they are dead as far as a general belief in them is concerned, they still can be re-created, if only fragmentarily and in particular images, through intentional usages by modern artists. A great deal of modern painting and poetry is based on such arbitrary re-creations of ancient, especially Greek and Roman, mythologies. But aside from these artistic tendencies, our basic manner of experiencing the world will always have a mythologizing trend expressing itself in a metaphorical transformation of everything we have contact with. This tendency should not be misunderstood and minimized as a mere allegorical wording of complicated concepts, which would be an intentional manner of illustration; rather, it should be seen as a much more fundamental, involuntary action of forming images by the imagination. In this sense the mythological or mythologizing tendency of the human mind is a basic endowment of our nature without which a human experience would not be possible. Once formed and shaped to a coherent whole, a particular mythology, although never true poetry itself, can become a “means for attaining poetry” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 49). For this, it has to be “alive and native” among a people: “Metaphorical allusions to a mythology presuppose that it is common and recognized as valid” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 48).⁴³ As with language, a mythology could never be the invention of one single person. Modern authors such as Milton and Klopstock attempted to form a mythology from the holy scriptures of Christianity, but only demonstrated the awkwardness of such attempts.

In his Berlin lectures of 1801, Schlegel amplified these views considerably in both their general epistemological and historical aspects. The more important point of view for our investigation into his notion of poetry and of lyrical poetry in particular, is of course the philosophical, theoretical aspect of the fundamental tendency of the human mind to mythologize, to find metaphorical expressions for its experience. Imagination is the basic power of the human mind, Schlegel would argue in these lectures and conclude from that: “The original action of the imagination is the one through which our own existence and the entire outer world gains reality for us” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 440).⁴⁴ This basic activity of the imagination has to be carefully distinguished from the artistic, intentional usage of it. Whereas the spontaneous imaginative experience can be illustrated by the phenomenon of dreaming, poetry in the specific, artistic sense can be characterized as an artificial re-creation of that mythical state, a “deliberate and waking dreaming” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 441). Schlegel says: “As we already mentioned on the occasion of the origin of language, it is impossible for the childlike human being to imagine a mode of activity different from the one he feels within himself” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 443-4).⁴⁵ The human being, in other words, humanizes all the natural powers he is perceiving. “Personification” is the most general form of his original language (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 444).

This wide range of mythology is already indicated by the Greeks, who themselves considered it the common ground of poetry, history, and philosophy. As far as poetry is concerned, mythology conveys to it a much more elaborate material than mere nature: “Mythology is nature in a poetic garment; it is itself already in a certain sense poetry” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 451).⁴⁶ But in reality, mythology embraces everything that can become an object for the human mind. Mythology provides a complete view of the world and is therefore also the basis of philosophy. The ancient nature philosophy of the Greeks had a decisively mythological character that can still be noticed in his writings. Schlegel believes that the most recent doctrines of modern physics could easily be transformed into mythical images.

The mythical view also determines the basic difference between the pagan and the Christian conception of the world for Schlegel. Rebellion against the gods appears as the highest triumph of pagan religion, whereas the Christian mind sought “a higher spiritual home” and instead of a rebellion against the gods, established the idea of a sacrifice as the most valid. This turning point was for Schlegel the most remarkable revolution of the human mind, which can also be illustrated by the fundamental difference between the pagan (justice, moderation, bravery) and Christian (faith, hope, love) cardinal virtues. The one mythology tended to a divinization of humanity, the other to a human incarnation of the divinity. It is remarkable and proves the power of the imagination that such a religion could then become again the basis for a new mythology.

Against this background of a universally metaphorical and mythological organization of the human mind, A. W. Schlegel's conception of poetry in the narrower sense of an artistic activity gains its characteristic shape. As one immediately notices, this notion of poetry has a basically lyrical character. In the corresponding section of his Berlin lectures, Schlegel maintains that what poetry, what art is “could be indicated in a general sense, but that no concept of reason would be able to embrace that which art should and will realize during the course of time because that is infinite” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 387).⁴⁷ All this, however, occurs in the highest degree in poetry according to Schlegel. The other arts have a certain radius of representation determined by their media of expression. The medium of poetry, however, is the one in which the human mind gains consciousness of itself and is able to connect its representations in an intentional mode of expression. This is language, “Poetry,” Schlegel says, “is not bound to objects, but creates its own; poetry is the most comprehensive of all arts and, so to speak, the universal spirit present in all of them. That which elevates us in the representations of the other arts above the common reality into the world of the imagination is what we call the poetic in them. In this sense, poetry designates artistic invention in general, that marvelous action through which nature is enriched, as its name says, through a true creation or production” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 387).⁴⁸ Schlegel is of course referring to the Greek roots of the terms poiesis and poiein that designate shaping and making in the true sense of the word.

What is decisive in this conception of poetry, however, is that each “external, material representation” presupposes that language is always the mediating principle of consciousness. Schlegel says: “Language is not a product of nature, but a reproduction of the human mind that deposits in language the origin and relationship of all its representations, the entire mechanism of its operations. Therefore, in poetry something already shaped is reshaped, and the formative capacity of its organ is just as limitless as the ability of the human mind to return into itself through ever more highly exponentiated reflections. It is therefore no wonder that the appearance of human nature in poetry can be more spiritualized and transfigured than in all the other arts and that it can find a pathway into the mystical and mysterious regions” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 387-8).⁴⁹

From this point of view, the early Romantic expression of poetry, which had been considered strange and incomprehensible by some people, has nothing paradoxical about it for Schlegel. It should be obvious to anyone who has a notion of the “inner organization of a spiritual existence” that the same operation which produces something creative returns upon its own product. “Indeed,” he continues, “one can say without any exaggeration and paradox that actually all poetry is a poetry of poetry. For it presupposes language, the invention of which belongs to the poetic disposition and which is a constantly becoming, always changing, and never completed poem of the entire human race” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 388).⁵⁰ In the early stages of formation, language produces, just as necessarily and unintentionally as its own body, a poetic view of the world dominated by the imagination, which is mythology. This is, so to speak, the higher exponent of the first poetic representation of nature through language. Self-conscious poetry goes one step further by treating mythology poetically and by poeticizing it. In this way the process continues, since poetry, according to Schlegel, “will never leave the human being in any stage of his further formation. … Just as poetry is the most originary, the arche- and mother-art of all the others, poetry will also be the last perfection of humanity, the ocean into which everything will return, however far it may have moved away from it in various forms” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 388).⁵¹ Schlegel says that just because poetry is “the most present, the all-pervasive, it is also more difficult to comprehend, just like the air in which we breathe and live, yet do not particularly perceive” (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 388).⁵²

Notes

1. On voit, dans le poète français, l'expression d'un regret aimable, dont les plaisirs de l'amour et les joies de la vie sont l'objet (Staël [1958-1960], 2: 177).

2. La poésie lyrique ne raconte rien, ne s'astreint en rien à la succession des temps, ni aux limites des lieux; elle plane sur les pays et sur les siècles; elle donne de la durée à ce moment sublime pendant lequel l'homme s'élève au-dessus des peines et des plaisirs de la vie (Staël [1958-1960], 2: 119).

3. Befreier der Natur vom Zwange willkürlicher Regeln (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 65).

4. die nicht nur ohne Theorie und Kritik, sondern ohne alles gründliche Kunststudium das Höchste in der Poesie, als die ihrem wahren Wesen nach nur eine freie Ergießung sich selbst überlaßner Originalität sei, zu ergreifen gedachten (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 65).

5. Die Gleichgültigkeit, mit der unser philosophierendes Zeitalter auf die Spiele der Musen herabzusehen anfängt (Schiller [1943-], 22: 245).

6. ist es die Dichtkunst beinahe allein, welche die getrennten Kräfte der Seele wieder in Vereinigung bringt, welche Kopf und Herz, Scharfsinn und Witz, Vernunft und Einbildungskraft in harmonischem Bunde beschäftigt, welche gleichsam den ganzen Menschen in uns wieder herstellt (Schiller [1943-], 22: 245).

7. daß der Geist, der sich in diesen Gedichten darstellte, kein gereifter, kein vollendeter Geist sei, daß seinen Produkten nur deshalb die letzte Hand fehlen möchte, weil sie—ihm selbst fehlte (Schiller [1943-], 22: 251).

8. Eine der ersten Erfordernisse des Dichters ist Idealisierung, Veredlung … das Vortreffliche seines Gegenstandes … zu befreien. … Alle Ideale … sind gleichsam nur Ausflüsse eines innern Ideals von Vollkommenheit, das in der Seele des Dichters wohnt (Schiller [1943-], 22: 253).

9. Diese Idealisierkunst vermissen wir bei Hn. Bürger (Schiller [1943-], 22: 253).

10. Gemälde dieser eigentümlichen (und sehr undichterischen) Seelenlage … Versündigungen gegen den guten Geschmack … durchaus nicht die wohltätige harmonische Stimmung … in welche wir uns von dem Dichter versetzt sehen wollen (Schiller [1943-], 22: 255-6).

11. mit der kalten, abgezirkelten Eleganz abgefaßt, welche Schillers damaligen prosaischen Schriften eigen war, und in seinen Briefen über die ästhetische Erziehung in die äußerste Erstorbenheit überging (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 68).

12. Wie kam gerade Schiller dazu, über einige in Bürgers Gedichten stehen gebliebene gesunde Derbheiten wie ein Rhadamanthus zu Gericht zu sitzen? Der Verfasser der Räuber, in dessen früheren Gedichten und Dramen so manche Züge jedes zarte Gefühl verletzen, mußte wissen, wie leicht genialischer Übermut zu wilden Ausschweifungen fortreißt (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 8: 71).

13. Ich gestehe Dir, ich begreife nicht, was Du Schönes oder Großes in seinen Werken findest; Du redest auch von Kunst, Sprache, schönen Reimen: aber ich denke, die Wahrheit, die er wirklich hat, ist sehr gemein und ist noch nichts Großes; und mir scheint es immer etwas sehr Untergeordnetes, schön zu reimen in unsrer Sprache, die der höhern Harmonie fähig ist (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 155).

14. Es giebt sehr viele interessante Stellen in Deinen lezten Briefen, worüber ich es gerne mehr zur Sprache bringen möchte; aber unter diesen ist mir doch nichts so wichtig als Prosodie und Verskunst, weil ich hier mir selbst nicht so leicht forthelfen kann, und hoffen darf von Dir vielleicht zu lernen, was ich in Büchern nicht finden werde (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 167).

15. Die eigensinnige Anordnung der Masse aber, den höchst seltsamen Gliederbau des ganzen Riesenwerks, verdanken wir weder dem göttlichen Barden, noch dem weisen Künstler, sondern den gotischen Begriffen des Barbaren. … [So] konnte man eine fremde gotische Zierart zum notwendigen Gesetz, und das kindische Behagen an einer eigensinnigen Spielerei beinahe zum letzten Zweck der Kunst erheben (F. Schlegel [1958-], 1: 233-4).

16. Wenn Du nicht wenigstens den Dionys, Hephästion, Meiboms Musiker, den Platon und den Aristoteles (im achten Buche der Politik und in der Rhetorik) vor Dir hast, nebst den wichtigsten Dichtern mit den metrischen Noten der Scholiasten so kannst Du auch gar nicht einmal den Anfang machen, Griechische Musik zu studieren. Aber damit ist die Sache noch gar nicht getan. Willst Du den Griechischen Rhythmus kennen, so mußt Du eine vollständige Theorie der Musik, die an wissenschaftlicher Evidenz der Musik nichts nachgibt, schon mitbringen. Du mußt die ganze Masse der Griechischen Bildung kennen im vollsten Sinne des Worts, Niemals wird einer, der den Geist der Solonischen Verfassung nicht kennt, die Winke der Alten über den Dithyrambus verstehen, und wer kann den Pindarischen Rhythmus begreifen, dem die Sitten und die Staatsverfassung der Dorier fremd sind (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 273).

17. freye lyrische Rythmen (was die Alten Dithyramben nennen würden). … Eine Ode aus dem Pindar, welche mir Car.[oline] zeigte, und einige Chöre des Aeschylus in der Berliner Monathsschrift; beydes von dem ältesten Humbold gefiel mir … ganz vortreflich (F. Schlegel) [1958-], 23: 185).

18. Wir gehen von sehr verschiedenen Anschauungen und Begriffen aus … (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 259).

19. Du schreibst mir über Bürger: Es scheint mir etwas sehr Untergeordnetes zu sein, schön zu reimen in unserer Sprache, die der höhern Harmonie empfänglich ist! Ich habe immer vergessen dir für das artige Kompliment zu danken, das du mir machst, indem du ein Verdienst, auf das ich nur gar zu gern Ansprüche machte—auf das ich, wie man mir schmeichelt auch einige habe—so sehr gering findest. Wenn die Schwierigkeit etwas bei der Sache entscheidet, so kann ich dir sagen, daß es sehr schwer ist, im Deutschen in gereimten Silbenmaßen wohlklingend und ausdrucksvoll zu schreiben. Vielleicht dürfte ich mich rühmen und es beweisen, daß ich auch das Andre, in griechischen Silbenmaßen, kann, wenn ich will. Es möchte gar viel leichter sein; versucht habe ich es (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 156).

20. Vollende nur ‹ja› Deine Abhandlung über Euphonie u.s.w. Ich habe sie sehr oft gelesen, ich bin aber wirklich iezt nicht im Stande sie ordentlich zu beantworten. Ich will das lieber aufsparen, bis ich die Blätter über Eurythmie und Reim bekomme, auf die ich noch weit begieriger bin (F. Schlegel [1958-], 23: 176).

21. Du glaubst nicht, lieber Fritz, wie mich vor dieser verwünschten Kunstrichterei ekelt, zu der mich die Natur verdammt hat (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 156).

22. Bloß sinnliche Eindrücke sind stärker als die feinern ästhetischen (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 157).

23. daß alles, was den Sprachorganen mühsam oder schmerzlich auszusprechen ist, auch dem Gehör mißfällt; … Sympathie zwischen den verschiedenen Organen (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 159).

24. Der Sinn entscheidet eher als der Geist: wenn jener eine Sache für unangenehm erklärt hat, so gilt keine Appellation an diesen, der sich niemals anmaßen kann, über seine Gerichtsbarkeit hinauszugehen (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 179).

25. Das schönste Gedicht besteht nur aus Versen; die Verse aus Wörtern; die Wörter aus Silben; die Silben aus einzelnen Lauten. Diese müssen nach ihrem Wohlklange oder Übelklange geprüft, die Silben gezählt, gemessen und gewogen, die Wörter gewählt, die Verse endlich zierlich geordnet und aneinander gefügt werden (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 99).

26. Wenn nach bestimmten Zeiträumen gleichlautende Endungen wiederkehren (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 99).

27. daß der rhythmische Gang der Poesie dem Menschen nicht weniger natürlich ist, als sie selbst. … Überall, wo nur Menschen atmeten und lebten, empfanden und sprachen, da dichteten und sangen sie auch (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 103).

28. die wunderbarste Schöpfung des menschlichen Dichtungsvermögens, gleichsam das große, nie vollendete Gedicht, worin die menschliche Natur sich selbst darstellt (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 104).

29. durch Übereinkunft festgesetzte Zeichen … jene innige, unwiderstehliche, eingeschränkte, aber selbst in ihrer Eingeschränktheit unendliche Sprache der Natur (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 105).

30. Der ist ein Dichter, der die unsichtbare Gottheit nicht nur entdeckt, sondern sie auch andern zu offenbaren weiß; und der Grad von Klarheit, womit dies noch in einer Sprache geschehen kann, bestimmt ihre poetische Stärke (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 105).

31. bis zum Ursprunge der Poesie, ja bis zur ersten Entwickelung der Sprache weggerückt (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 106).

32. aus und mit welchen Anlagen des Menschen sich die Sprache entwickeln konnte (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 111).

33. daß das Silbenmaß keineswegs ein äußerliches Zierrit, sondern innig in das Wesen der Poesie verwebt ist, und daß sein verborgener Zauber an ihren Eindrücken auf uns weit größeren Anteil hat, als wir gewöhnlich glauben (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 107).

34. Unvermerkt gewöhnten sich die Füße nach einem Zeitenmaße zu hüpfen, wie es ihnen etwa der rasche Umlauf des Bluts, die Schläge des hüpfenden Herzens angaben; nach einem natürlichen Gesetze der Organisation mußten sich die übrigen Gebärden, auch die Bewegungen der Stimme in ihrem Gange danach richten; und durch diese ungesuchte Übereinstimmung kam Takt in den wilden Jubelgesang, der anfangs vielleicht nur aus wenigen oft wiederholten Ausrufungen bestand (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 137).

35. Die Seele, von der Natur allein erzogen und keine Fesseln gewohnt, forderte Freiheit in ihrer äußern Verkündigung; der Körper bedurfte, um nicht der anhaltenden Heftigkeit derselben zu unterliegen, ein Maaß, worauf seine innre Einrichtung ihn fühlbar leitete. Ein geordneter Rhythmus der Bewegungen und Töne vereinigte beides, und darin lag ursprünglich seine wohltätige Zaubermacht (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 139).

36. Mit der Erfindung des Zeitmaßes treten wir sogleich in ein ganz andres Gebiet hinüber (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 139).

37. Der älteste Orpheus war wohl nirgends persönlich gegenwärtig: er wohnte überall verborgen im tierischen Menschen, und als er zum erstenmal göttlich hervortrat, und das wüste Toben der Leidenschaft durch melodischen Rhythmus fesselte und zähmte, konnte kein Ohr und kein Herz seiner Zaubergewalt widerstehen (A. W. Schlegel [1846], 7: 148).

38. unmittelbare Darstellung innerer Zustände (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 70).

39. Vollendete lyrische Schönheit ist also nicht möglich ohne lebendige Erscheinung des Strebens nach dem Unendlichen, welches den jedesmaligen poetischen Gegenstand so viel wie möglich zum Mittelpunkt von allem macht (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 72).

40. die kühnen Übergänge und Wendungen, das Abgebrochene, die plötzlichen Sprünge, die scheinbaren Unordnungen und erst das Dunkele und Verflochtene der Ode (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 73).

41. Der Mythus ist, wie die Sprache, ein allgemeines, ein notwendiges Produkt des menschlichen Dichtungsvermögens, gleichsam eine Urpoesie des Menschengeschlechts (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 49).

42. eine Bildersprache … worin alles Körperliche beseelt ist und das Unsichtbare zur Erscheinung gebracht wird (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 49).

43. Der Mythus kann nur da mit Vorteil in die Dichtung selbst verwebt werden, wo er lebendig und einheimisch ist; sinnbildliche Anspielungen darauf setzen voraus, daß er der Phantasie geläufig und als gültig anerkannt sei (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 48).

44. Der ursprüngliche Akt der Fantasie ist derjenige, wodurch unsere eigne Existenz und die ganze Außenwelt für uns Realität gewinnt (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 440).

45. Es ist, wie wir schon beim Ursprunge der Sprache bemerkt haben, dem kindlichen Menschen unmöglich, sich eine andre Wirkungsart vorzustellen als die, welche er in sich fühlt (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 443-4).

46. einen weit mehr zubereiteten Stoff als die bloße Natur: es ist eine Natur im poetischen Kostüm. Er ist selbst gewissermaßen schon Poesie (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 451).

47. kann wohl im allgemeinen angedeutet werden, aber was sie im Laufe der Zeiten realisieren soll und kann, vermag kein Verstandesbegriff zu umfassen, denn es ist unendlich (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 387).

48. Daher ist sie auch nicht an Gegenstände gebunden, sondern sie schafft sich die ihrigen selbst; sie ist die umfassendste aller Künste, und gleichsam der in ihnen überall gegenwärtige Universal-Geist. Dasjenige in den Darstellungen der übrigen Künste, was uns über die gewöhnliche Wirklichkeit in eine Welt der Phantasie erhebt, nennt man das Poetische in ihnen; Poesie bezeichnet also in diesem Sinne überhaupt die künstlerische Erfindung, den wunderbaren Akt, wodurch dieselbe Natur bereichert; wie der Name aussagt, eine wahre Schöpfung und Hervorbringung (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 387).

49. Die Sprache ist kein Produkt der Natur, sondern ein Abdruck des menschlichen Geistes, der darin die Entstehung und Verwandtschaft seiner Vorstellungen, und den ganzen Mechanismus seiner Operationen niederlegt. Es wird also in der Poesie schon Gebildetes wieder gebildet, und die Bildsamkeit ihres Organs ist ebenso grenzenlos, als die Fähigkeit des Geistes zur Rückkehr auf sich selbst durch immer höher potenzierte Reflexionen. Es ist daher nicht zu verwundern, daß die Erscheinung der menschlichen Natur in der Poesie sich mehr vergeistigen und verklären kann als in den übrigen Künsten, und daß sie bis in mystische geheimnisvolle Regionen eine Bahn zu finden weiß (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 387-8).

50. Ja man kann ohne Übertreibung und Paradoxie sagen, daß eigentlich alle Poesie, Poesie der Poesie sei; denn sie setzt schon die Sprache voraus, deren Erfindung doch der poetischen Anlage angehört, die selbst ein immer werdendes, sich verwandelndes, nie vollendetes Gedicht des gesamten Menschengeschlechts ist (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 388).

51. und wie sie das Ursprünglichste ist, die Ur- und Mutterkunst aller übrigen, so ist sie auch die letzte Vollendung der Menschheit, der Ozean, in den alles wieder zurückfließt, wie sehr es sich auch in mancherlei Gestalten von ihm entfernt haben mag (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 388).

52. das aller gegenwärtigste, das allerdurchdringendste ist, begreifen wir sie schwerer, so wie wir die Luft, in welcher wir atmen und leben, nicht insbesondere wahrnehmen (A. W. Schlegel [1989], 1: 388).

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