The Hundred Greatest Men

 

 

Matthew Arnold

 

Introduction to Volume I.

 

Text
Editionsbericht
Werkverzeichnis
Literatur: Arnold
Literatur: Anthologie

 

THE men who are the flower and glory of our race are to pass here before us, the highest manifestations, whether on this line or on that, of the force which stirs in every one of us – the chief poets, artists, religious founders, philosophers, historians, scholars, orators, warriors, statesmen, voyagers, leaders in mechanical invention and industry, who have appeared amongst mankind. And the poets are to pass first. Why? Because, of the various modes of manifestation through which the human spirit pours its force, theirs is the most adequate and happy.

The fact of this superior adequacy of poetry is very widely felt; and, whether distinctly seized or no, is the root of poetry's boundless popularity and power. The reason for the fact has again and again been made an object of inquiry. Partial explanations of it have been produced. Aristotle declared poetry to be more philosophical and of more serious worth than history, because poetry deals with generals, history with particulars. Aristotle's idea is expanded by Bacon, after his own fashion, who extols poetry as "submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind," to the desires for "a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things." No man, however, can fully draw out the reasons why the human spirit feels itself to attain to a more adequate and satisfying expression in poetry than in any other of its modes of activity. For to draw them out fully we should have to go behind our own nature itself, and that we can none of us do. Portions of them we may seize, but not more; Aristotle and Bacon themselves have not succeeded in seizing more than portions of them. And at one time, probably, and to one set of observers, one ground of the primordial and incontestable fact before us comes clearest into light; at another, and to other observers, another.

[II] For us to-day, what ground of the superiority of poetry is the most evident, the most notable? Surely its solidity. Already we have seen Aristotle prefer it to history on this very ground. Poetry has, says he, a higher wisdom and a more serious worth than history. Compare poetry with other efforts of the human spirit besides history. Compare it with art. It is more intellectual than art, more interpretative. Along with the plastic representation it utters the idea, it thinks. Poetry is often called art, and poets are classed with painters and sculptors as artists. But Goethe has with profound truth insisted on the difference between them. "Poetry is held to be art," he says, "and yet it is not, as art is, mechanism, mechanical. I deny poetry to be an art. Neither is it a science. Poetry is to be called neither art nor science, but genius." Poetry is less artistic than the arts, but in closer correspondence with the intelligential nature of man, who is defined, as we know, to be "a thinking animal;" poetry thinks, and the arts do not.

But it thinks emotionally, and herein it differs from science, and is more of a stay to us. Poetry gives the idea, but it gives it touched with beauty, heightened by emotion. This ist what we feel to be interpretative for us, to satisfy us – thought, but thought invested with beauty, with emotion. Science thinks, but not emotionally. It adds thought to thought, accumulates the elements of a synthesis which will never be complete until it is touched with beauty and emotion; and when it is touched with these, it has passed out of the sphere of science, it has felt the fashioning hand of the poet. So true is this, that the more the follower of science is a complete man, the more he will feel the refreshment of poetry as giving him a satisfaction which our nature is always desiring, but to which his science can never bring him. And the more an artist, on the other hand, is a complete man, the higher he will appreciate the reach and effectualness which poetry gains by being, in Goethe's words, not art but genius; by being from its very nature forbidden to limit itself to the sphere of plastic representation, by being forced to talk and to think.

Poetry, then, is more of a stay to us than art or science. It is more explicative than art, and it has the emotion which to science is wanting. But the grand sources of explication and emotion, in the popular opinion, are philosophy and religion. Philosophy – the love of wisdom – is indeed a [III] noble and immortal aspiration in man. But the philosophies, the constructions of systematic thought which have arisen in the endeavour to satisfy this aspiration, are so perishable that to call up the memory of them is to pass in review man's failures. We have mentioned Goethe, the poet of that land of philosophies, Germany. What a series of philosophic systems has Germany seen since the birth of Goethe! and what sort of a stay is any one of them compared with the poetry of Germany's one great poet? So necessary, indeed, and so often shown by experience, is the want of solidity in constuctions of this kind, that it argues, one may say, a dash of the pedant in a man to approach them, except perhaps in the ardour of extreme youth, with any confidence. And the one philosopher who has known how to give to such constructions, not indeed solidity, but charm, is Plato, the poet among philosophers, who produces his abstractions like the rest, but produces them more than half in play and with a smile.

And religion? The reign of religion as morality touched with emotion is indeed indestructible. But religion as men commonly conceive it – religion depending on the historicalness of certain supposed facts, on the authority of certain received traditions, on the validity of certain accredited dogmas – how much of this religion can be deemed unalterably secure? Not a dogma that does not threaten to dissolve, not a tradition that is not shaken, not a fact which has its historical character free from question. Compare the stability of Shakspeare with the stability of the Thirty-Nine Articles! Our religion has materialised itself in the fact – the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact. For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is its world of illusion, of divine illusion; it attaches its emotion to the idea, the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry. The future of poetry is immense, because in conscious poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay.

 

 

 

 

Erstdruck und Druckvorlage

The Hundred Greatest Men. Portraits of the One Hundred Greatest Men of History.
Reproduced from Fine and Rare Steel Engravings.
Volume I: Poetry. Poets, Dramatists, and Novelists.
London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington 1879, S. I-III.

Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck (Editionsrichtlinien).

PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.e0000385930

 

Kommentierte Ausgabe

 

 

 

Werkverzeichnis


Verzeichnis

Smart, Thomas B.: The Bibliography of Matthew Arnold.
London: Davy & Sons 1892.
URL: https://archive.org/details/bibliographymat00smargoog
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086843448



Arnold, Matthew: Preface.
In: Ders., Poems. A New Edition.
London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1853, S. V-XXXI. .
URL: https://archive.org/details/poems03arnogoog

Arnold, Matthew: On Translating Homer.
Three Lectures Given at Oxford.
London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts 1861.
URL: https://archive.org/details/ontranslatingho00unkngoog
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435078160819

Arnold, Matthew: Heinrich Heine.
In: The Cornhill Magazine.
Bd. 8, 1863, November, S. 233-249.
URL: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000522322
URL: https://archive.org/details/cornhillmagazine08londuoft

Arnold, Matthew: The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time.
In: The National Review.
Bd. 19, 1864, November, S. 230-251.
URL: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000055240
Aufgenommen in
Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism.
London u. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1865, S. 1-41.

Arnold, Matthew: Essays in Criticism.
London u. Cambridge: Macmillan 1865.
URL: https://archive.org/details/essaysincritici18arnogoog
URL: http://digitalisate.bsb-muenchen.de/bsb10730601
URL: https://books.google.de/books?id=TbINAAAAQAAJ

Arnold, Matthew: Culture and Anarchy.
An Essay in Political and Social Criticism.
London: Smith, Elder & Co 1869.
URL: https://archive.org/details/cultureandanarc00arnogoog
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiuc.3234314

Arnold, Matthew: Sainte-Beuve.
In: The Academy. A Monthly Record of Literature, Learning, Science, and Art.
Bd. 1, 1869/70, 13. November 1869, S. 31-32.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006791517
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529050
URL: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=theacademy
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/716416-6

Arnold, Matthew: Introduction to Volume I.
In: The Hundred Greatest Men.
Portraits of the One Hundred Greatest Men of History.
Reproduced from Fine and Rare Steel Engravings.
Volume I: Poetry. Poets, Dramatists, and Novelists.
London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington 1879, S. I-III.
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.e0000385930

Arnold, Matthew (Hrsg.): Poems of Wordsworth.
London: Macmillan and Co. 1879.
S. V-XXVI: Preface.
URL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hwpk8u

Arnold, Matthew: Introduction.
In: The English Poets.
Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers, and a General Introduction by Matthew Arnold.
Edited by Thomas Humphry Ward.
Vol. 1: Chaucer to Donne.
London: Macmillan and Co. 1880, S. XVII-XLVII.
URL: https://archive.org/details/englishpoetssel01unkngoog
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x000682342
Aufgenommen in
Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism. Second Series.
London: Macmillan and New York 1888;
hier S. 1-55 (u.d.T. "The Study of Poetry").
URL: https://archive.org/details/essaysincritici18arnogoog
URL: http://digitalisate.bsb-muenchen.de/bsb10730601
URL: https://books.google.de/books?id=TbINAAAAQAAJ

Arnold, Matthew: Thomas Gray.
In: The English Poets.
Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers, and a General Introduction by Matthew Arnold.
Edited by Thomas Humphry Ward.
Vol. 3: Addison to Blake.
London: Macmillan and Co.1880, S. 302-316.
URL: https://archive.org/details/englishpoetssel02wardgoog
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x001497536

Arnold, Matthew: John Keats.
In: The English Poets.
Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers, and a General Introduction by Matthew Arnold.
Edited by Thomas Humphry Ward.
Vol. 4: Wordsworth to Dobell.
London: Macmillan and Co.1880, S. 428-437.
URL: https://archive.org/details/englishpocrit04warduoft
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x001497992

Arnold, Matthew: Byron.
In: Macmillan's Magazine.
Bd. 43, 1881, März, S. 367-377.
URL: https://archive.org/details/macmillansmagazi43macmuoft
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000061600
Wiederholt
Poetry of Byron. Chosen and Arranged by Matthew Arnold.
London: Macmillan and Co. 1881, S. VII-XXXI (Preface).
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t3st7rh4f
URL: https://archive.org/details/poetryofbyroncho00byrorich

Arnold, Matthew: Amiel.
In: Macmillan's Magazine.
Bd. 56, 1887, September, S. 321-329.
URL: https://archive.org/details/macmillansmagaz57grovgoog
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000061600

Arnold, Matthew: Essays in Criticism. Second Series.
London: Macmillan and New York 1888.
URL: https://archive.org/details/essaysincritici18arnogoog
URL: http://digitalisate.bsb-muenchen.de/bsb10730601
URL: https://books.google.de/books?id=TbINAAAAQAAJ

Arnold, Matthew: Shelley.
In: The Nineteenth Century.
Bd. 23, 1888, Januar, S. 23-39.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006061863
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/6704-0
URL: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=19thcentury


Russell, George W. E. (Hrsg.): Letters of Matthew Arnold 1848-1888.
Bd. 1. London: Macmillan and Co. and New York 1895.
URL: https://archive.org/details/dli.granth.111547
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086843075

Russell, George W. E. (Hrsg.): Letters of Matthew Arnold 1848-1888.
Bd. 2. London: Macmillan and Co. and New York 1895.
URL: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.211262
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044090315243

Arnold, Matthew: The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.
Hrsg. von R. H. Super.
11 Bde. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1960/77.

Lang, Cecil Y. (Hrsg.): The Letters of Matthew Arnold.
Bd. 1 ff. Charlottesville u.a.: University Press of Virginia 1996 ff.

 

 

 

Literatur: Arnold

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.

Caufield, James W.: Overcoming Matthew Arnold. Ethics in Culture and Criticism. Farnham u.a. 2012.

Christ, Carol T.: Victorian Poetics. In: A Companion to Victorian Poetry. Hrsg. von Richard Cronin u.a. Malden, MA 2002, S. 1-21.

Dawson, Carl / Pfordresher, John (Hrsg.): Matthew Arnold: The Critical Heritage. Volume 1: Prose Writings. London 1979.

Genette, Gérard: Paratexte. Das Buch vom Beiwerk des Buches. Frankfurt a.M. 2001 (= suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft, 1510).

Harrison, Anthony H.: The Cultural Production of Matthew Arnold. Athens, Ohio 2009.

Ley, James: The Critic in the Modern World. Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood. London 2014.

Machann, Clinton: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). In: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 6: The Nineteenth Century, c. 1830-1914. Ed. by M. A. R. Habib. Cambridge 2013, S. 419-439.

Machann, Clinton: Arnold as a Critic: A Twenty-First Century Perspective. In: Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature. Hrsg. von Laurence W. Mazzeno. Lanham u.a. 2014, S. 151-168.

Rapple, Brendan A.: Matthew Arnold and English Education. The Poet's Pioneering Advocacy in Middle Class Instruction. Jefferson, NC 2017.

Tucker, Herbert F.: Arnold and the Authorization of Criticism. In: Knowing the Past. Victorian Literature and Culture. Hrsg. von Suzy Anger. Ithaca, NY u. London 2001, S. 100-120.

 

 

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Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer