much as distantly appear: the only universal factor of our modern world, the spirit of usury and speculation, has with them also held each germ of true dramatic art in egoistic severance from its fellow. Art-forms to answer to this sordid spirit, however, the French dramatic school has found, without a doubt: with all the unseemliness of their contents, they evince uncommon skill in making these contents as palatable as may be; and these forms have this distinctive merit, that they have actually emanated from the inborn spirit of the French comedian's art, and thus from life itself.
Our German dramatists, in their longing for some seeming-necessary form wherewith to clothe the arbitrary contents of their poetic thought, and since they lacked the inborn plastic gift, set up this needful form in pure caprice; for they seized upon the Frenchman's 'scheme,' without reflecting that this scheme had sprung from quite another, and a genuine Need. But he who does not act from sheer necessity, may choose where'er he pleases. Thus our dramatists were not quite satisfied with their adoption of French forms: the stew still lacked of this or that, - a pinch of Shakespearian audacity, a spice of Spanish pathos, and, for a sauce, a remanet of Schiller's ideality or Iffland's burgher bonhomie. All this is now dished up with unheard archness, according to the French recipe, and served with journalistic reminiscences of the latest scandal; the favourite actor-since the real poet had not learnt how to play his comedies-provided with the rôle of some fictitious poet, wherever possible ;-with a further slice from here or there thrown in to suit the special circumstance-: and so we have the modernest dramatic art- work, the poet who in sooth writes down himself, i.e., his palpable poetic incapacity.
Enough! of the unexampled squalor of our theatric poetry I with which indeed we here have alone to do; since we need not draw the special subdivision of literary poesy within our closer ken. For, with our eyes directed toward the Artwork of the Future, we are seeking out Poetic art where she is struggling to become a living and immediate art, and this is in the Drama; not where she renounces every claim to this life-issue, and yet-for all her fill of thought -but takes the terms of her peculiar manufacture from the hopeless artistic unfitness of our modern public life. This Literature-poesy (die litteraturpoesie) supplies the only solace-however sad and impotent I-of the lonely human being of the Present who longs to taste poetic food. Yet the solace that she gives is truly but an access of the longing after Life, the longing for the living Artwork; for the urgence of this longing is her very soul,-where this does not speak out, does not proclaim itself with might and main, there has the last trace of verity departed from this poesy too. The more honestly and tumultuously, however, does it throb within her, so much the more veraciously does she admit her own unsolaceable plight, and confess the only possible assuagement of her longing, to be her own self-abrogation, her dissolution into Life, into the living Art-work of the Future.
Let us ponder how this fervent, noble longing of Liter ary Poesy must one day be responded to; and meanwhile let us leave our modern Dramatic Poetry to the pompous triumphs of her own ridiculous vanity!
6. WHILOM ATTEMPTS AT RE-UNITING THE THREE HUMANISTIC ARTS.
In our general survey of the demeanour of each of the three humanistic (rein menschlich) arts after its severance from their initial communion, we could not but plainly see that exactly where the one variety touched on the province of the next, where the faculty of the second stepped-in to replace the faculty of the first, there did the first one also find its natural bounds. Beyond these bounds, it might stretch over from the second art-variety to the third; and through this third, again, back to itself, back to its own especial individuality,-but only in accordance with the natural laws of Love, of self-offering for the common good impelled by Love. As Man by love sinks his whole nature in that of Woman, in order to pass over through her into a third being, the Child,-and yet finds but himself again in all the loving trinity, though in this self a widened, filled, and finished whole: so may each of these individual arts find its own self again in the perfect, throughly liberated Artwork-nay, look upon itself as broadened to this Art-work-so soon as, on the path of genuine love and by sinking of itself within the kindred arts, it returns upon itself and finds the guerdon of its love in the perfect work of Art to which it knows itself expanded. Only that art-variety, however, which wills the common art-work, reaches therewith the highest fill of its own particular nature; whereas that art which merely wills itself, its own exclusive fill of self; stays empty and unfree-for all the luxury that it may heap upon its solitary semblance. But the Will to form the common artwork arises in each branch of art by instinct and unconsciously, so soon as e'er it touches on its own confines and gives itself to the answering art, not merely strives to take from it. It only stays throughout itself, when it throughly gives itself away: whereas it must fall to its very opposite, if it at last must only feed upon the other :-' whose bread I eat, his song I'll sing.' But when it gives itself entirely to the second, and stays entirely enwrapt therein, it then may pass from that entirely into the third; and thus become once more entirely itself in highest fulness, in the associate Art-work.
(Of all these arts not one so sorely needed an espousal with another, as that of Tone; for her peculiar character is that of a fluid nature-element poured out betwixt the more defined and individuahised substances of the two other arts.) Only through the Rhythm of Dance, or as bearer of the Word, could she brace her dehiquescent being to definite and characteristic corporeality. But neither of the other arts could bring herself to plunge, in love without reserve, into the element of Tone: each drew from it so many bucketsful as seemed expedient for her own precise and egoistic aims; each took from Tone, but gave not in return; so that poor Tone, who of her life-need stretched out her hands in all directions, was forced at last herself to take for very means of maintenance. Thus she engulfed the Word at first, to make of it what suited best her pleasure: but while she disposed of this word as her wilful feeling listed, in Catholic music, she lost its bony framework-so to say-of which, in her desire to become a human being, she stood in need to bear the liquid volume of her' blood, and round which she might have crystallised a sinewy flesh. A new and energetic handling of the Word, in order to gain shape therefrom, was shown by Protestant church-music; which, in the 'Passion-music,' pressed on towards an ecclesiastical drama, wherein the word was no longer a mere shifting vehicle for the expression of feeling, but girt itself to thoughts depicting Action. In this church-drama, Music, while still retaining her predominance and building everything else into her own pedestal, almost compelled Poetry to behave in earnest and like a man towards her. But coward Poetry appeared to dread this challenge; she deemed it as well to cast a few neglected morsels to - swell the meal of this mightily waxing monster, Music, and thus to pacify it; only, however, to regain the liberty of staying undisturbed within her own peculiar province, the egoistic sphere of Literature. It is to this selfish, cowardly bearing of Poetry toward Tone that we stand indebted for that unnatural abortion the Oratorio, which finally transplanted itself from the church into the concert-hall. The Oratorio would give itself the airs of Drama; but only precisely in so far as it might still preserve to Music the unquestioned right of being the chief concern, the only leader of the drama's 'tone.'
Where Poetry fain would reign in solitude, as in the spoken Play, she took Music into her menial service, for her own convenience; as, for instance, for the entertainment of the audience between the acts, or even for the enhancement of the effect of certain dumb transactions, such as the irruption of a cautious burglar, and matters of that sort I Dance did the selfsame thing, when she leapt proudly on to saddle, and graciously condescended to allow Music to hold the stirrup. Exactly so did Tone behave to Poetry in the Oratorio: she merely let her pile the heap of stones, from which she might erect her building as she fancied.
But Music at last capped all this ever-swelling arrogance, by her shameless insolence in the Opera. Here she claimed tribute of the art of Poetry down to its utmost farthing: it was no longer to merely make her verses, no longer to merely suggest dramatic characters and sequences, as in the Oratorio, in order to give her a handle for her own distention,-but it was to lay down its whole being and all its powers at her feet, to offer up complete dramatic characters and complex situations, in short the entire ingredients of Drama; in order that she might take this gift of homage and make of it whatever her fancy listed.
The Opera, as the seeming point of reunion of all the three related arts, has become the meeting-place of these sisters' most self-seeking efforts. Undoubtedly Tone claims for herself the supreme right of legislation therein; nay, it is solely to her struggle-though led by egoism-towards the genuine artwork of the Drama, that we owe the Opera at all. But in degree as Poetry and Dance were bid to be her simple slaves, there rose amid their egoistic ranks a growing spirit of rebellion against their domineering sister. The arts of Dance and Poetry had taken a personal lease of Drama in their own way: the spectacular Play and the pantomimic Ballet were the two territories between which Opera now deployed her troops, taking from each whatever she deemed indispensable for the self- glorification of Music. Play and Ballet, however, were well aware of her aggressive self-sufficiency: they only lent themselves to their sister against their will, and in any case with the mental reservation that on the first favourable opportunity they each would clear themselves an exclusive field. So Poetry leaves behind her feeling and her pathos, the only fitting wear for Opera, and throws her net of modern Intrigue around her sister Music; who, without being able to get a proper hold of it, must willy-nilly twist and turn the empty cobweb, which none but the nimble play-
