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IN the three last sentences there is a false thought unworthy of Lessing's acuteness. The vulgar conception of didactic poetry is – that the adjunct, didactic, expresses the primary function (or, in logical phrase, the difference) of that class of poetry; as though the business were, first of all, to teach something, and secondly, to convert this into poetry by some process of embellishment. But such a conception contains a contradictio in adjecto, and is in effect equivalent to demanding of a species that it shall forego, or falsify, the distinctions which belong to it, in virtue of the genus under which it ranks. As a term of convenience, didactic may serve to discriminate one class of poetry; but didactic it cannot be in philosophic rigour without ceasing to be poetry. – Indirectly, it is true, that a poet, in the highest departments of his art, may, and often does, communicate mere knowledge, but never as a direct purpose – unless by forgetting his proper duty. Even as an epic poet, for instance, Virgil may convey a sketch of the Mediterranean Chorography, and Milton of the Syrian Pantheism; but every reader perceives, that the first arises purely in obedience to the necessities of the narrative, and that the other is introduced as an occasion of magnificent display, and no more addressed to a didactic purpose, than the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, which gave the hint for it, was designed as a statistical document, or than the ceremonial pomps and emblazonments of a coronation, &c. are designed to teach the knowledge of heraldry. This is self-evident; but the case is exactly the same in didactic poetry – with this single difference, that the occasions for poetic display are there derived, uniformly and upon principle, from cases admitting of a didactic treatment, which, in the two instances just noticed, furnished the occasion only by accident. The object is to wrestle with the difficulties of the case, by treating a subject naturally didactic in a manner, and for a purpose, not didactic; this is accomplished by such a selection from circumstances otherwise merely technical, and addressed to the unexcited understanding, as may bend to the purposes of a Fine Art; a branch of knowledge is thrown through that particular evolution which serves to draw forth the circumstances of beautiful form, feeling, incident, or any other interest, which in some shape, and in some degree, attach themselves to the dullest of exercises of mere lucrative industry. In the course of this evolution, it is true, that some of the knowledge proper to the subject is also communicated; but this is collateral to the main purpose, which is to win the beauty of art from a subject in itself unpromising or repulsive; and, therefore, the final object of the didactic poet is accomplished not by the didactic aspects of his poem, but directly in spite of them; the knowledge which emerges in such a poem, exists not for itself, but as an indirect occasion for the beauty, and also as a foil or a counter-agent for strengthening its expression; as a shadow by which the lights are brightened and realized.
Suppose a game at cards – whist, l'hombre, or quadrille – to be carried through its principal circumstances and stages, as in the Rape of the Lock and elsewhere, – nobody is so absurd as to imagine that in this case the poet had [22] designed to teach the game; on the contrary, he has manifestly presupposed that knowledge in his reader, as essential to the judicious apprehension of his description. With what purpose, then, has he introduced this incident, where no necessity obliged him, and for what is it that we admire its execution? Purely as a trial of skill in playing the game with grace and beauty. A game at cards is a mimicry of a battle, with the same interests, in a lower key, which belongs to that scene of conflict. The peculiar beauty, therefore, of such a description, lies in the judicious selection of the principal crises and situations incident to the particular game in its most general movement. To be played with skill and grace, it must evolve itself through the great circumstances of danger, suspense, and sudden surprise, – of fortune shifting to this side and that, – and finally, of irrevocable peripeteia, which contain the philosophic abstract of such scenes as to the interest which they excite. Meantime the mere instruments by which the contest is conducted, the cards themselves, by their gay colouring, and the antique prescriptiveness of the figures, (which in the midst of real arbitrariness has created an artificial semblance of law and necessity, such as reconciles us to the drawing upon China cups, Egyptian and Etruscan ornaments, &c.) throw an air of brilliancy upon the game, which assists the final impression.
Now, here in miniature, we have the law and exemplar of didactic poetry. And in any case, where the poet has understood his art, it is in this spirit that he has proceeded. Suppose, for instance, that he selects as the basis of this interest, the life, duties, and occupations of a shepherd; and that instead of merely and professedly describing them, he chooses to exhibit them under the fiction of teaching them. Here, undoubtedly, he has a little changed the form of his poem; but that he has made no change in the substance of his duties, nor has at all assumed the real functions of a teacher, is evident from this: – Pastoral life varies greatly in its aspect, according to the climate in which it is pursued; but whether in its Sicilian mode, which tends to the beautiful, or in our sterner northern mode, which tends to the sublime, it is like all other varieties of human employment, of a mixed texture, and disfigured by many degrading circumstances. These it is the business of the poet to clear away, or to purify at least, by not pressing the attention on their details. But, if his purpose and his duties had been really didactic, all reserve or artist-like management of this kind would have been a great defect, by mutilating the full communication of the knowledge sought. The spirit in which he proceeds, is that of selection and abstraction: he has taken his subject as a means of suggesting, of justifying, and of binding into unity, by their reference to a common ground, a great variety of interesting scenes, – situations, – incidents, – or emotions. Wheresoever the circumstances of the reality lead naturally into exhibitions on which it is pleasant to the mind to be detained, he pursues them. But, where the facts and details are of such a nature as to put forth no manifestations of beauty or of power, and, consequently, are adapted to no mode of pleasurable sympathy, it is his duty to evade by some delicate address, or resolutely to suppress them, which it would not be, if the presiding purpose were a didactic one.
What may have misled Lessing on this point, is the fact that subjects are sometimes chosen, and lawfully chosen, for didactic poems, which are not adapted to pleasurable sympathies in any mode – but in their great outline to a sympathy * of disgust. Beauty, however, exists everywhere to the eye which is capable of detecting it; and it is our right, and duty indeed, to adapt ourselves to this ordinance of Nature, by pursuing and unveiling it even under a cloud of deformity. The Syphilis of Fracastorius, or Armstrong's Art of Health, I do not particularly allude to; because in neither case is the subject treated with sufficient grace, or sufficient mastery over its difficulties. But suppose the case of some common household occupation, as the washing of clothes for example; no class of human labours are at a lower point of degra[23]dation, or surveyed with more disdain by the aspiring dignity of the human mind, than these domestic ones, and for two reasons; first, because they exercise none but the meanest powers; and secondly, from their origin and purpose as ministering to our lowest necessities. Yet I am persuaded that the external aspect of this employment, with no more variety than it presents in the different parts of this island, might be so treated as to unfold a series of very interesting scenes, without digressing at all from the direct circumstances of the art, (if art it can be called,) whilst the comic interest, which would invest the whole as proceeding from a poet, would at once disarm the sense of meanness in the subject, of any power to affect us unpleasurably
Now, Virgil, in his ideal of a cow, and the description of her meritorious points, is nearly upon as low ground as any that is here suggested. And this it is which has misled Lessing. Treating a mean subject, Virgil must (he concludes) have adapted his description to some purpose of utility: for, if his purpose had been beauty, why lavish his power upon so poor an occasion, since the course of his subject did not in this instance oblige him to any detail? -– But, if this construction of the case were a just one, and that Virgil really had framed his descriptions merely as a guide to the practical judgment, this passage would certainly deserve to be transferred from its present station in the Georgics, to the Grazier's Pocket-book, as being (what Lessing in effect represents it to be) a plain bonâ fide account of a Smithfield prize cow. * But, though the object here described is one which is seldom regarded in any other light than that of utility, and, on that account, is of necessity a mean one, † yet the question still remains, in what spirit, and for what purpose, Virgil has described this mean object? For meanness and deformity even, as was said before, have their modes of beauty. Now, there are four reasons which might justify Virgil in his description, and not one of them having any reference to the plain prosaic purpose which Lessing ascribes to him. He may have described the cow –
I. As a difficult and intractable subject, by way of a bravura, or passage of execution. To describe well is not easy; and, in one class of didactic poems, of which there are several, both in Latin, English, and French, viz. those which treat of the mechanic parts of the critical art, the chief stress of the merit is thrown upon the skill with which thoughts, not naturally susceptible of elegance, or of a metrical expression, are modulated into the proper key for the style and ornaments of verse. This is not a very elevated form of the poetic art, and too much like rope-dancing. But, to aim humbly, is better than to aim awry, as Virgil would have done if interpreted under Lessing's idea of didactic poetry.
II. As a familiar subject. Such subjects, even though positively disgusting, have a fascinating interest when reproduced by the painter or the poet: upon what principle has possibly not been sufficiently explained. Even tran[24]sient notices of objects and actions, which are too indifferent to the mind to be more than half consciously perceived, become highly interesting when detained and re-animated, and the full light of the consciousness thrown powerfully upon them, by a picturesque description. A street in London, with its usual furniture of causeway, gutter, lamp-posts, &c. is viewed with little interest: but, exhibited in a scene at Drury Lane, according to the style of its execution, becomes very impressive. As to Lessing's objection about the difficulty of collecting the successive parts of a description into the unity of a co-existence, that difficulty does not exist to those who are familiar with the subject of the description, and at any rate is not peculiar to this case.
III. As an ideal: the cow is an ideal cow in her class. Now, every ideal, or maximum perfectionis (as the old metaphysicians called it) in natural objects, necessarily expresses the dark power of nature which is at the root of all things under one of its infinite manifestations in the most impressive way: that, which elsewhere exists by parts and fractions dispersed amongst the species and in tendency, here exists as a whole and in consummation. A Pandora, who should be furnished for all the functions of her nature in a luxury of perfection, even though it were possible that the ideal beauty should be disjoined from this ideal organization, would be regarded with the deepest interest. Such a Pandora in her species, or an approximation to one, is the cow of Virgil, and he is warranted by this consideration in describing her without the meanness of a didactic purpose.
IV. As a beautiful object. In those objects which are referred wholly to a purpose of utility, as a kitchen garden for instance, utility becomes the law of their beauty. With regard to a cow in particular, which is referred to no variety of purposes, as the horse or the dog, the external structure will express more absolutely and unequivocally the degree in which the purposes of her species are accomplished; and her beauty will be a more determinate subject for the judgment than where the animal structure is referred to a multitude of separate ends incapable of co-existing. Describing in this view, however, it will be said that Virgil presupposes in his reader some knowledge of the subject; for the description will be a dead-letter to him, unless it awakens and brightens some previous notices of his own. I answer, that, with regard to all the common and familiar appearances of nature, a poet is entitled to assume some knowledge in his readers: and the fact is, that he has not assumed so much as Shakespeare in his fine description of the hounds of Theseus, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, or of the horse of Arcite: * and Shakespeare, it will not be pretended, had any didactic purpose in those passages.
This is my correction of the common idea of didactic poetry; and I have thought it right to connect it with the error of so distinguished a critic as Lessing. If he is right in his construction of Virgil's purpose, that would prove only that in this instance Virgil was wrong.
[Die Anmerkungen stehen als Fußnoten auf den in eckigen Klammern bezeichneten Seiten]
[22] The word sympathy has been so much contracted in its meaning by a conversational use, that it becomes necessary to remind the reader that this is not a false application of it.
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[23] Mrs Barbauld has given a very pleasing sketch on this subject, in her 'Washing-Day'; but she has narrowed the interest by selecting, amongst the circumstances, the picturesque ones, to the exclusion of all those which approach to the beautiful, and also by the character of the incidents, such as the cheerless reception of the visitor; for, as the truth of such an incident belongs only to the lower, and less elegant, modes of life, it is not fitted for a general sympathy.
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[23] † This, for two reasons. 1st, because, whatever is useful, and merely useful, is essentially definite; being bounded and restricted by the end to which it is adapted: it cannot transcend that end; and, therefore, can never, in the least degree, partake of the illimitable – 2d, because it is always viewed in a relation of inferiority to something beyond itself. To be useful, is to be ministerial to some end: now, the end does not exist for the sake of the means, but the means for the sake of the end. Hence, therefore, one reason why a wild animal is so much more admired than the same animal domesticated. The wild animal is useless, or viewed as such; but, on that very account, he is an end to himself; whilst the tame one is merely an
instrument, or means for the ends of others. The wild Turkey of America, is a respectable bird, but, the "tame villatic fowl," of the same species in England, is an object of contempt.
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[24] In the Two Noble Kinsmen: The first act has been often and justly attributed to
Shakspeare; but the last act is no less indisputably his, and in his very finest style.
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Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
Bd. 21, 1827, Nr. 121, Januar, S. 21-24.
Postskriptum zu:
Gallery of the German Prose Classics.
By the English Opium-Eater.
No. II. – Lessing [ebd. S. 9-21].
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine online
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URL: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Blackwood's_Magazine
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine inhaltsanalytische Bibliographie
The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900.
Hrsg. von Walter E. Houghton.
Bd. 1. Toronto 1966.
Zeitschriften-Repertorium
Kommentierte und kritische Ausgabe
Literatur
Brandmeyer, Rudolf: Poetiken der Lyrik: Von der Normpoetik zur Autorenpoetik.
In: Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte.
Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping.
2. Aufl. Stuttgart 2016, S. 2-15.
Duff, David: Romanticism and the Uses of Genre.
Oxford 2009.
Kap. 3: (Anti-)Didacticism.
Küster, Burkhart: "Merci, poëte...": Baudelaire zwischen Victor Hugo und Thomas de Quincey.
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 175.1 (2023), S. 129-147.
McGrath, Brian: Thomas De Quincey and the Language of Literature:
Or, on the Necessity of Ignorance.
In: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900; 47.4 (2007), S. 847-862.
Vance, Norman / Wallace, Jennifer (Hrsg.):
The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature.
Bd. 4: 1790-1880. Oxford 2015.
Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer