theoryofliteratu00inwell

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Theory of Literature
Morike, C. F. Meyer and Liliencron ;
26 he and Nohl tried to
show that Weltanschauung can be discovered merely from style
or, at least, from scenes in a novel with no direct intellectual content.
Here the theory changes into a theory of fundamental
artistic styles. Walzel has attempted to link it with the Principles
of Art History of Wolfflin and similar typologies. 27
The interest of these speculations is considerable, and many
variations of the theory here expounded have been invented in
Germany. They have also been applied to the history of literature.
Walzel, for example, sees, in nineteenth-century Germany
and, presumably, European literature, a clear evolution from
type II (Goethe's and the Romantics' objective idealism),
through type I (realism), which progressively becomes conscious
of the phenomenality of the world in impressionism, to a sub-
jective, dualistic idealism represented by expressionism, the rep-
resentative of type III. Walzel's scheme does not merely state
that there was this change but that this change is somehow inter-
locking and logical. Pantheism at a certain stage leads to natural-
ism, and naturalism leads to impressionism, and the subjectivity
of impressionism finally merges into a new idealism. The scheme
is dialectical and ultimately Hegelian.
A sober view of these speculations will be skeptical of the
neatness of these schemes. It will doubt the sacredness of the
number three. Unger himself, for example, distinguishes two
types of objective idealism: a harmonious type, represented by
-
Goethe, and a dialectical, in Boehme, Schelling, and Hegel and
similar objections could be voiced against the types of "posi-
tivism," which seems to cover a multitude of frequently highly
divergent points of view. But less important than such objections
against the details of the classification are the doubts which must
arise about the whole assumption behind the undertaking. All
typology of this sort leads only to a rough classification of all literature
under three, or at the most five or six, headings. The
concrete individuality of the poets and their works is ignored or
minimized. From a literary point of view, little seems to be
achieved by classifying such diverse poets as Blake, Wordsworth,
and Shelley as "objective idealists." There seems little point in
reducing the history of poetry to the permutations of three or
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