Poets are either nature, or they seek nature. The former makes him a simple poet, the latter makes him a sentimental poet.
Although the freedom of imagination and understanding leads man away from the simplicity, truth and necessity of nature, not only is the road to nature always open to him, but there is an indestructible and powerful impulse that constantly urges him to do so. He returns to nature.
(——Two ways of expressing the genius of poetry)
The path taken by modern poets is the path that people must take both as individuals and as a collective. Nature makes man whole, art divides man into two, and ideal brings man back to wholeness. However, since ideal is an infinite thing that man can never reach, cultured man will never change in his own kind. become perfect, whereas natural man can become perfect in his own kind. The natural man obtains his value by reaching the absolute limit, while the cultural man obtains his value by constantly approaching the infinite.
(——Contrast between cultural man and natural man)
Essence should always remain unchanged, free from all external stimulation, and should arise from the passionate impulse towards ideals, This impulse is the only real quality that satirical poetry, and sentimental poetry in general, must possess.
Bitter irony must come from a heart deeply infiltrated with thought at any time. If sad irony is only suitable for a noble soul, then playful irony can only be produced by a beautiful heart. to complete.
The tragic poet is supported by the subject matter. On the contrary, the comic poet must use his own personal power to maintain the aesthetic quality of his subject matter. The former can spread its wings and fly, which is not difficult; the latter must be consistent and must always be comfortable and comfortable in a lofty artistic realm, but the tragic poet must jump to enter this realm. This is the difference between a beautiful character and a noble character.
Beautiful character already embraces all the great forms, which flow freely from its nature, in fact, it seems to be an infinity at every point of its progress. power. A noble character can achieve all kinds of greatness through intense effort, and it can splice consistent power to push itself beyond the limits of any state. A noble character is only intermittently free and requires effort; a beautiful character is always free and effortless.
The preeminent character of comedy is to produce and preserve in us this freedom of the mind; the mission of tragedy is to help restore it aesthetically when it has been destroyed by violent passions.
(—Satire, tragedy and comedy from this point of view)
Just as there are two kinds of satire, there are two kinds of elegiac poetry. Either nature and ideals become objects of sorrow, when nature is lost and ideals are shown as unattainable; or nature and ideals become objects of joy, when both are shown as realities. The former is an elegy in a narrow sense, and the latter is a pastoral in a broad sense.
Poetry has only two realms, it must be either in the sensory world or in the ideal world; it cannot flourish in the conceptual realm or the intellectual realm.
(--Elegy Poems)
Simple ways of dealing with sentimental themes. The subject seemed entirely new and particularly difficult, for there was no such material in the ancient and austere world, and in the modern world there were no poets who could write about it. However, genius posed this problem to himself and solved it very appropriately.
A character embraces an ideal with passionate emotion and escapes reality in order to pursue an unreal infinity; he constantly seeks outside himself what he forever destroys in his own nature; he Feeling that his own dreams are the only real things, that his own experience is nothing but a permanent bondage; that he sees his own existence as a bondage that must be shattered in order to penetrate into absolute reality; - this type of sentimental character Dangerous extremes.
It is interesting to see with what pleasant instincts gathered in Werther everything that nourishes a sentimental character: passionate and unhappy love, sensitivity to natural beauty, religious sentiment, the spirit of philosophical contemplation , and finally, in order not to forget anything, restore my own dark, chaotic and melancholy world. If we add to this how unfriendly, even hostile, the external world appears to the suffering man, and how everything around him conspires to drive him back into his ideal world, we do not see such a The character has any possibility of redeeming himself from this circle.
(——Naive treatment: Goethe)
Light and joyful temperament alone, without inner ideological content as its basis, is not enough to be suitable for banter. Sarcasm, although common popular opinion is appropriate. But tender feelings and melancholy moods are not suitable for elegies. Both require sufficient poetic talent and strong principles to animate matter in order to produce true beauty. Therefore, such soft works can only soften us and cater to our feelings, but they cannot refresh us or occupy our hearts.
Being inclined to this kind of emotion for a long time will inevitably take away the active power of the character, causing a person to fall into a passive state, unable to produce anything that is real for external life, nor can it produce anything that is real for inner life. Therefore, people are right to use ruthless sarcasm to attack sentimental moods and weeping attitudes.
(Sentimentality—ruthless irony, for example)
The pastoral is always a beautiful and inspiring structure, and the genius of poetry works for the ideal in depicting pastoral life. For it is of the utmost importance to a man who has fallen away from the simplicity of nature and allowed himself to be guided by the dangers of his own ideals, to see again the laws of nature in their purest form, and to look in the mirror without all the stains of a false life. Since it was produced in the era before the beginning of culture, pastoral poetry not only eliminates the disadvantages of culture, but also eliminates its superiority. Therefore, pastoral poetry is fundamentally opposed to culture. Thus, in theory, the pastoral moves us backward, but in practice, it leads us forward. They are of the highest value for the mood, but of little value for the spirit, and their tedious territory is quickly covered. They can only give healing to a sick mind, not food to a healthy mind.
(——The effect and limitation of pastoral poetry)
It is not to take people back to Agadia (the place of happy shepherds in pastoral poetry, that is, happy place), but to guide people to Ilysium (the eternal resting place of the souls of the dead in Greek mythology).
Tranquility must be the main impression produced by this kind of poetry on us, but it is the tranquility of completion, not the tranquility of laziness; this tranquility comes from the relationship between our various powers Balance, not from the cessation of activity in our various powers; from fullness, not from emptiness; in short, accompanied by the feeling of infinite power.
(——Sentimental pastoral is the highest type of poetry: the ideal of beauty applied to real life)
Nature has endowed the naive poet with the ability to always be indivisible and unified The spirit acts, is an independent and complete whole at all times, and expresses human nature in reality according to human essence. In the sentimental poet, nature gives the power, or rather arouses in him the passionate desire to restore from the depths of his heart the unity that abstraction has destroyed in him, to bring about in himself Human nature is becoming more and more perfect, moving from a finite state to an infinite state.
It is true that the simple poet can complete his task anywhere, but this task is limited. Although sentimental people cannot completely complete his task, his task is unlimited.
We would rather indulge in ourselves and find nourishment for the impulses aroused by poets in the conceptual world, but with simple poets we strive to find perceptual objects outside ourselves. Sentimental poetry is the product of seclusion and silence, and it invites us to seek seclusion and silence; simple poetry is the son of life, and it guides us back to life.
Thus, we see that the simple genius is in a state of dependence on experience, a situation that the sentimental genius does not understand.
We know that the place where sentimental genius begins his activity is exactly where the naive genius ends his activity: the power of sentimental genius lies in perfecting the defective object with his own inner efforts and relying on himself The power to move oneself from a limited state to a state of absolute freedom.
Real nature is the subject of simple poetry. Actual nature exists everywhere, but true nature is very rare because it requires an inherent necessity of existence.
There is some danger in the sentimental poet in his endeavor to overcome the obstacles of denying humanity entirely, of not only pushing himself beyond every definite indication to the realm of absolute possibility - or To idealize - and even transcend the boundaries of what is possible - or to fly in a world of fantasy.
If intelligence is sometimes lacking in the creations of naive geniuses, there is often no subject to be found in the works of sentimental poets. In this way, although these two geniuses set out in opposite directions, they both fell into the shortcoming of emptiness.
The true genius of sentimental poetry, if he wants to raise himself to the realm of ideals, must occasionally transcend the boundaries of reality and nature. However, the hypocritical genius indiscriminately transcends all boundaries and insists on his own Believe that the wild activities of imagination are the inspiration for poetry. This will never happen to a true genius who gives up reality only for the sake of his ideal, or it will only happen when he loses or forgets himself.
(——On the relationship of naive poetry and sentimental poetry to nature)
If we understand our natural state as the infinite possibility of expressing our humanity in various ways and In the same way as the ability to freely dispose of our forces, then any separation and isolation of these faculties would be a forced state, while the ideal of rest consists in (mentioned earlier that one of the functions of poetry is rest), unilaterally through the faculties After development, we as individuals are restored as a natural whole.
Whatever constitutes a visionary is precisely what makes him a philosopher; and the merit of a philosopher is not so much that he has never been a visionary, but that he has not. Still be a visionary.
(——About aesthetic comments)