Campaigner

ers, with all their particular private thoughts, and And now, if the composer or the landscape
calculate these in such a way that those criteria are painter penetrates the secret of those laws which
met? The argument Schiller now develops is one of hold sway over the inner movements of the
the least understood aspects of all his work, since it human heart, and if he studiesthe correspondence
concerns the necessity that any subject material be between these movements of the soul and certain
"idealized."
external phenomena, then he will change from a
As long as the poet remains within the domain of lowly pictorialist into a true painter of souls. He
the arbitrary and individual, it is indeed quite impos- will emerge from the domain of arbitrariness into
sible for him to determine the reader's thought pro- the realm of necessity,and he can then confidently
cesses. It is possible to do so only if he can discover the take his place, not beside the plastic artist whose
lawfulness in associative connections, and such law- material is the external man, but beside the poet
fulness holds true only for the domain of necessity, whose material is the internal man.
and not for what is arbitrary or accidental. The poet's
subject material must therefore be the "pure object,"
the universal, without regard for the accidental. The poet--whatever the material of his poem
The subject material of a poem must therefore may be--must therefore always strive to use the
be a universal one, and must be directed to that part standpoint of his reason to bring the play of the
of the reader which is likewise free of all that is acci- imagination into harmony with the lawfulness of
dental, if a lawfully calculable sentiment is to be reason. If the poet proceeds in this fashion, addressing
produced within him. As long as the poet addresses the reader's reason, he will determine not only what
solely what is specific and individual within the read- the reader's associations will necessarily be, but will
er, then virtually every individual will have a differ- also--in accordance with reason--make the reader
ent response. The only aspect, however, which is conscious of his own associative process; for he will
determined within every reader is his species make the reader conscious of how the free associative
character, process of the preconscious becomes conscious
Obviously, any poet who himself thinks and feels through synthesizing a concept not contained in any
as a mere individual cannot discover within himself, of the poem's literal contents.
and hence cannot set down in a poem, the lawfulness Therefore, Schiller says, the poet must never
which resides within everyone. The poet must there- permit himself to explicate his ideas fully; he can only
fore "have extinguished the individual within himself indicate them, just as he can never directly portray
and have become elevated to his species character." emotions, but can only hint at them, so as not to
Hence, if the universal content of the poem must prematurely block the reader's imagination. "Any
address the universal within the human being, his more explicit rendering will here be perceived as a
species character, then everything in a poem must be burdensome limitation, for the attraction exerted by
true nature, and never actual or historical nature, such aesthetic ideas lies precisely in our being able to
since all actual nature limits to a greater or lesser look into it.s content as into a bottomless abyss. The
degree the universal natural truth, just as everything actual, explicit contents included by the poet will
merely individual within the human being diminishes always remain finite in magnitude; the potential
his humanity,
content which he leaves us to fill in, infinite."
Hence, if only what is universal in the poem can What Schiller describes as the poem s "infinite
be directed at man's species character, it is immedi- magnitude" is the universal to which all possible
ately evident that man himself is the proper material concrete elaboration is merely a predicate. This infifor
the poem. But does this mean that poetic descrip- nite magnitude, however, is the "simultaneous '
tions of landscape scenes do not meet the criteria of impression of the whole," which can be created only
beautiful art? Schiller believes and we share his through the"successiveordering"ofideasandimages
view that the same principles which hold true for _ithin the reader's imagination. By thus continually
composing poetry about man can nevertheless be spurring the reader on to imagine universals in sucapplied
to other domains of art by means of a cessive sequence, the poet creates within his mind the
"symbolic operation." quality corresponding to Cantor's concept of the
For Schiller, every pictorial and poetic composi- transfinite and Plato's higher hypothesis. Whoever
tion is subject to the same laws which regulate music, has mastered this art, Schiller says at the conclusion of
Music, however, is only art when it pursues the inner "On Matthison's Poetry," is "an initiate in the poetic
necessary lawfulnesses of the creative human mind. art's innermost Secrets."
52 June 1980 / CAMPAIGNER