Читать книгу The Beginnings of Poetry онлайн

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This distinction of art and nature as a theory of origins, and with a touch of the historical method in its treatment, is found again and again in treatises on poetry from the renaissance to our own time.^[267] It is by no means confined to the brilliant and epoch-making writers. Who was farther removed from Herder, so far as notions about poetry are concerned, than Gottsched? But Gottsched, dull dog, as Dr. Johnson would have called him, makes a clear distinction between natural and artistic verse;^[268] more than this, he backs his theory of origins by referring to those “songs of the hill folk,” heard in his own day, which still show characteristics of primitive poetry. Earlier yet, in the remarkable work of Morhof^[269] one finds use of the comparative method and a keen sense of historic values; here is investigation, not theory outright, as with the younger Racine,^[270] or mere chronicle, as with M. de la Nauze.^[271] It is curious, too, that from the clergy came some of the most rationalistic accounts of the dualism of nature and art, in opposition to the divine and human idea of the renaissance. One must not forget Herder’s cloth; Lowth took Hebrew poetry, as poetry, quite out of the supernatural; and Calmet,^[272] whose work on the Bible was once valued by scholars, comments at length on the dualism as natural and artificial, not as human and divine. Improvisation seems to be his test for the natural sort, submission to rules and deliberation, his test for artificial verse; and in the first case it is wrath, joy, sorrow, hate, love, some natural outburst of passion, which is poetry by the mere fact of its utterance. Moreover, this poetry of nature is found in every clime;^[273] and inseparable from it, in early stages, is the natural music, song, which itself in course of time must be tamed by art. Like Budde in our own day, Calmet points out “natural” songs in the Bible. It was left, however, for Herder to bring forward all natural, artless poetry not as a regret but as a hope, or rather as a disinherited exile come back to claim his own; how the German pleaded for his client, and with what success, is matter of common fame. At the historical school of which he is the conspicuous exponent in matters of poetry we must give a closer look.