For the Eclectic Museum. THE PRESS AND THE AGE. FUGITIVE THOUGHTS. From the Vierteljahrs Schrift. TRANSLATED BY F. A STRALE. If the estimate assigned in the preceding remarks, of the relation between the essentially different powers in man and the present transforming movement, is correct, then the present condition of art contrasted with that of science appears to be a necessary one. The march of the more open, susceptible, palpable, and arbitrary elements of soul, is so impetuous, that no concentration is allowed or attainable for its deeper, in their essence, more instinctive powers; no rest or breathing-time in which to consolidate themselves into a definite form, and constitute the spiritual index of the age. We behold the developments of art carried out of sight by the rush of scientific developments, the hot pursuit after knowledge, after discovery, after invention, the rational and useful appliance. In the pressure of our restless desires to penetrate the entire labyrinth of the past, to measure and adjudge every production of the human mind, and place them as dressing-glasses before us, we have long since been shorn of that enviable ease and contentment with the present, in being and in thought, that self-satisfaction and consequent self-esteem, which rendered antiquity and the middle ages a poetical reality, and VOL. III. No. I. 1 enabled them to seize with a vigorous Even the usual conventional faith in our 1 our God, to our Rulers, to the Arts, or herself popular, and have, by multiplying finally for our own use, where the genius of a past period does not stare out of the windows. the markets and raising the demand, impelled her, on her part, to enter the many various paths of industry. The peculiarities of these reflect themselves on the Artist, and even he often joins the comprehensive class of Modernists (modearbeiter) who meet and gratify the urgent cravings of the great Public for the grandose and modish by airy productions calculated for effect, or else by clever imitations; and thus afford the superficially enlightened the opportunity to imagine themselves occupying the pinnacle of the refinement and taste of the age. Along with the eagerness for historical and antiquarian studies, a desire has also been awakened, to purify life and art from the dregs and rubbish of much naughty stuff, descended from the last century, and this again has had a vivifying effect on historical research. A third auxiliary was added in the simultaneous and mighty stride of activity in trade. Industry now applied itself, as it had to Science, to the numberless branches of Art, and is at this hour endeavoring, with untiring efforts, to Art, which once, strictly limited within rescue the Spirit of History, as embodied intellectual effort, was the leader and pabuin forms whether tasteful or only emblem- lum of the guilds, and gave form and exatical, to meet the ever-increasing and pression to public sentiment in stone, metal more refined wants of the multitude, by the and wood, in lines and colors, now descends splendor, beauty, and recherché character on the one hand quite low into mere handiof its productions, that is, by their fashion- craft, and on the other, as the quintessence able modishness, and to impart an artistical of learned and aesthetical culture, ranges appearance to results obtained by an almost entirely mechanical process, through imitation and division of labor. Industry is incessantly conning and turning over the leaves of History's pattern-book; the silversmith and chaser, the brass or bronzefounder, the jeweller, the japanner, the cabinet-maker, the upholsterer, &c., are all incessantly hammering, casting, clipping, cutting, and filing, now in the antique, now in the gothic taste, rénaissance or rococo, as inspired by some invisible power. They consult their own interest best, when adding as little as possible of their own; but it is of no consequence in the eyes of the public, if in concocting some odd mixture of Grecian and old German models, they present them with some abortive monstrosity. Every day new fashions are invented, in which the luxuriousness of former ages, whether tasteful and spirited, or coarse and insipid, is imitated in the manufacture of more ingenious, more picturesque, and cheaper furniture and utensils. And these artisans take their hints and reasons for changing the mode and fashion of the hour, mostly from the same quarter with the tailor and the milliner, (Modiste.) Through the rapid spread of exterior refinement among all classes of people, so strikingly apparent since the peace, and through the universal increase of ideal wants which seek to be gratified by cheap luxuries, Industry has received a general impulse, and has, to a considerable extent, been necessitated to call the fine arts more and more within her sphere of action. These circumstances have rendered Art upwards to the very summits of sumptuousness. She is divided into an artistical industry of manufacture, and a learned industry of design, which again often merge into the former. Learned industry, or design, is formed, however, if we so may speak, artificially, almost entirely on historical understanding and knowledge, close study of the times in which a definite exposition of the Beautiful attained distinguished perfection. Nearly all our present Architecture and Painting is the offspring of a transposition of the Artist into past ages, and into a forced attitude of contem plation and sympathy, striving to rekindle their spirit in his own imagination, or eclectically using their forms and models to adorn the fashion of the day in her whims and vacillations. Our painters paint after all conceivable manners, our architects build in every style, and we may behold in our exhibition-galleries, and in the new streets of rapidly growing and fielddevouring cities, how every couple of years a new epidemic prevails for this or that particular form, the same as in the cut of our garments. But, when in a boasted historical painting, or in one of the newest dazzling edifices, there is nothing to remind us of any particular period or stage of the Art, the whole sinks too often into insignificance and amounts to nothing. The demon of the age, Knowledge, guides the hand of the Artist, and very bewitchingly in his way. Whatever of calculation, that is, mere intellectual precision-whatever of practice, of lugging in by the shoulders and grouping together any thing auxiliary tellectual evolutions proceeding from the boundary between the present and the past century, have become the landmarks of a new epoch in polite literature in that of Germany and other countries. In this distinguished section of time, happened that from natural and recorded History, is to be found and often developed to perfection in details. Never have artists gone to work with better materials, never were seen more practised burins and brushes, never was the technical science more universal. Never did stone-masons and brick-layers equally rare conjunction of two of the work smarter, or trowel and build faster, or more ornamental; for every calculation, tables and the ready-reckoner are at hand; the old-fashioned crane has given place to the most effective levers and machinery; and thus it would be an easy matter, leaving money out of the question, to complete the dome of the Cologne cathedral: the thought, the design of that wonderful structure, is there, though born such a length of time ago, and the plan of the building is not yet destroyed. We see, then, that the present Age lacks neither genius, materials, nor industry. On the contrary, the same power, which, by its main-spring, the Press, so materially has accelerated the energies of mankind in every direction, has also pushed artificial industry to gigantic proportions, and spread it widely throughout society. Only one thing is wanting, the very thing indispensable to characteristic developments from the hidden recesses of genius: a fixed, permanent centre of feeling, from which alone genuine creative Art can emanate, and on which it can fall back to recruit its strength; there is wanting the historically traced fountain-head of all true Art; there is wanting a common religious faith and its fruits; there is wanting a sense of the poetical import of the present life. Consequently, Genius, in its helplessness, in its eagerness to enwrap the spirit of the times in the most attractive forms, has surrendered and thrown itself into the arms of the monarch of the age, Science; led by this Mecænas, it discurses all History, and vents itself, with whimsical and fretful in consistency, in that form and the other, and in none has it found that independent selfesteem and contentment, which would serve it as the key-stone to works of identity and character. Or, if it should already partly have discovered this keystone, we are unable, in the confused exuberance and multitude of productions, to discern it. So much cried up as of vast importance, as a revelation in its kind-has so speedily been engulfed in the ever-rolling tide of novelties, and given place to new wonders, that the observer's eye becomes shy, and his judgment mistrustful. Poetry, generally speaking, partakes of the fate of the plastic Arts. The great in most creative minds which history has known. Those comprehensive views, which then were opened in every department of human genius, were seized upon by them, each in his peculiar manner, with poetical fervor and acumen. It would appear, as if the new phases of the external and internal world received from them an instantaneous poetical impress, and by so doing, that all true poetic life and energy were forestalled, so as to allow a freer scope for the development of science. That period in our literature which so quickly ended with Schiller and Goethe, may be likened to a green-house plant bearing two glorious blossoms, one male, the other female. Both diffuse, with equally strong scent, but with very different odors, the spirit of that intellectual and moral change, through which mankind has been drawn from the surface into the very depths of creation; the spirit of speculativeness, of restless prying into the laws of human capabilities, and of nature, and of their mutual reaction. The seed dropping from this plant, was exceedingly rich, and brought forth a hundred-fold; but it carried within an organic amalgamation of the poetic element, which, in its very essence, is unchangeable in its loftiness, with that tendency to intellectual development which was roused to such extraordinary vigor; the achievements of knowledge preponderated greatly over the original and underived. In the general onward course of refinement, in the nervous and bustling activity infused into every branch of human industry, poetical aspirings also rose to an immeasurable height, and called into existence that luxuriant crop of literature, which pervades the beau-monde of the present day with exhalations, sometimes narcotic, sometimes actually offensive, but rarely with wholesome, invigorating odors. The present tendency of letters was early and distinctly indicated by those æsthetical ideas and maxims which were broached by Goethe and Schiller, but chiefly formed aside from them, and which soon acquired authority. The great revolution spoken of in all the Sciences, in connection with its direct influence on our greatest poets, has with us very conspicuously called forth the new school of æsthetics and Poetry, which is termed the Romantic School. |