IDEA OF LAW IN POETRY 715 



powers of the State are devoted to perfecting the splendid scientific 

 faculties of the German mind, so as to make it irresistible in the oper- 

 ations of war and the enterprise of commerce, and to render the- 

 influence of Germany paramount in the councils of Europe. 



But after all, the question as regards Fine Art is, What effect has 

 this great historical change made in the elementary German character, 

 or how far has that character caused the change, because the source 

 of all Poetry, of all ideal creation, is the mind of the People itself ? 

 How will the intense passion of the German mind for free thought and 

 speculation reconcile itself with the rule of the military Absolutism, 

 which seems to be the necessary instrument for realizing the ambitions 

 of the new German State ? And again, in what poetic form will these 

 imperial ideals express themselves without destroying that domestic 

 sensibility and that spirit of romance and reverie which have been in 

 the past the parents of German song and German music ? 



It is certainlv a striking fact that the establishment of the German 

 Empire lias not been followed by a period of characteristic creation 

 in German Fine Art, at least in the arts of Painting and Poetry. 

 There have been characteristic movements of art in other nations. 

 The movement of the Poetical Preraphaelites of England, and that 

 of the Poetical Symbolists in France, may not fulfil the requirements 

 of the Tniversal, but certainly neither of them is wanting in distinct 

 character. Xor is characteristic movement wanting in that one of the 

 Fine Arts in which the Germans specially excel, for a German of 

 remarkable genius has, within our own generation, endeavored to 

 extend the functions of Music, by making it into a vehicle for the ex- 

 pression of intellectual ideas. Of the wisdom of his aims I do not ven- 

 ture to- speak, since the <|iieslion. whether this particular art is justified 

 in appropriating the principles of another, is one that belongs to the 

 Chair of Music rather than to that of Poetrv. But of what is passing 

 in the poetical imagination of the German people, as distinct from 

 the mind of the German Stale, wo know nothing for in poetry the 

 Gorman soul is at present silent. 



I do not wonder that it should bo so. To find out the form of 

 Poetry fitted to reflect the conflict of ideas between Feudalism and 

 Socialism. Catholicism and Nationalism, a= well as the forces that 

 attract tlio centrifugal units of German nationality to the Imperial 

 Crown, is a task that requires meditation both long and doop. Yet 

 the problem will doubtless be faced. And when the Muse of Germany 

 speaks again through ilic genius of a great poet, it is to be expected 

 that her utterances will not simply take the old lyrical form, but that 

 she will also employ those forms of drama or romance which are 

 needed to express universal idoas of life and action. In the sphere of 

 Poetry, as in that of Politics, the Germans will perhaps awake the 

 sleeping Barbarossa. 



