Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur
AMIDST those thick clouds which envelope the first ages of the world, reason and history throw some lights on the origin and primitive employment of this divine art. Reason suggests, that before the invention of letters, all the people of the earth had no other method of transmitting to their descendants the principles of their worship, their religious ceremonies, their laws, and the renowned actions of their sages and heroes, than by poetry; which included all these objects in a kind of hymns that fathers sung to their children, in order to engrave them with indelible strokes in their hearts. History not only informs us, that Moses and Miriam, the first authors that are known to mankind, sung, on the borders of the Red Sea, a song of divine praise, to celebrate the deliverance which the Almighty had vouchsafed to the people of Israel, by opening a passage to them through the waters; but it has also transmitted to us the song itself, which is at once the most ancient monument and a master-piece of poetic composition.
The Greeks, a people the most ingenious, the most animated, and in every sense the most accomplished, that the world ever produced - strove to ravish from the Hebrews the precious gift of poetry, which was vouchsafed them by the Supreme Author of all nature, that they might ascribe it to their false deities. According to their ingenious fictions, Apollo became the god of poetry, and dwelt on the hills of Phocis, Parnassus, and Helicon, whose feet were washed by the waters of Hyppocrene, of which each mortal that ever drank was seized with sacred delirium. The immortal swans floated on its waves. Apollo was accompanied by the Muses - those nine learned sisters - the daughters of Memory: and he was constantly attended by the Graces. Pegasus, his winged courser, transported him with a rapid flight into all the regions of the universe. Happy emblems! by which we at this day embellish our poetry, as no one has ever yet been able to invent more brilliant images.
The literary annals of all nations afford vestiges of poetry from the remotest ages. They are found among the most savage of the ancient barbarians, and the most desolate of all the Americans. Nature asserts her rights in every country and every age. Tacitus mentions the verses and the hymns of the Germans, at the time when that rough people yet inhabited the woods, and while their manners were still savage. The first inhabitants of Runnia, and the other northern countries, those of Gaul, Albion, Iberia, Ausonia, and other nations of Europe, had their poetry, as well as the ancient people of Asia, and of the known borders of Africa. But the simple productions of nature have constantly something unformed, rough, and savage. The Divine Wisdom appears to have placed the ingenious and polished part of mankind on the earth, in order to refine that which comes from her bosom rude and imperfect: and thus art has polished poetry, which issued quite naked and savage from the brains of the first of mankind.
But what is Poetry? It would be to abridge the [171] limits of the poetic empire, to contract the sphere of this divine art, should we say, in imitation of all the dictionaries and other treatises on versification, That poetry is the art of making verses, of lines or periods that are in rhyme or metre. This is rather a grammatical explanation of the word, than a real definition of the thing, and it would be to degrade poetry thus to define it. The father of criticism has denominated poetry τεχνη μιμητικη, an imitative art: but this, though just in itself, is too general for a definition, as it does not discriminate poetry from other arts which depend equally on imitation. The justest definition seems to be that given by Baron Bielfield (Elem. of Univ. Erud.), That poetry is the art of expressing our thoughts by fiction. In fact, it is after this manner (if we reflect with attention) that all the metaphors and allegories, all the various kinds of fiction, form the first materials of a poetic edifice: it is thus that all images, all comparisons, allusions, and figures, especially those which personify moral subjects, as virtues and vices, concur to the decorating of such a structure. A work, therefore, that is filled with invention, that incessantly presents images which render the reader attentive and affected, where the author gives interesting sentiments to every thing that he makes speak, and where he makes speak by sensible figures all those objects which would affect the mind but weakly when clothed in a simple prosaic style, such a work is a poem. While that, though it be in verse, which is of a didactic, dogmatic, or moral nature, and where the objects are presented in a manner quite simple, without fiction, without images or ornaments, cannot be called poetry, but merely a work in verse; for the art of reducing thoughts, maxims, and periods, into rhyme or metre, is very different from the art of poetry.
An ingenious fable, a lively and interesting romance, a comedy, the sublime narrative of the actions of a hero, such as the Telemachus of M. Fenelon, though written in prose, but in measured prose, is therefore a work of poetry: because the foundation and the superstructure are the productions of genius, as the whole proceeds from fiction; and truth itself appears to have employed an innocent and agreeable deception to instruct with efficacy. This is so true, that the pencil also, in order to please and affect, has recourse to fiction; and this part of painting is called the poetic composition of a picture. It is therefore by the aid of fiction that poetry, so to speak, paints its expressions, that it gives a body and a mind to its thoughts, that it animates and exalts that which would otherwise have remained arid and insensible. It is the peculiar privilege of poetry to exalt inanimate things into animals, and abstract ideas into persons. The former licence is so common, that it is now considered as nothing more than a characteristical dialect appropriated by the poets to distinguish themselves from the writers of prose; and it is at the same time so essential, that we question much if this species of composition could subsist without it: for it will perhaps, upon examination, be found, that in every poetical description some of the qualities of Animal Nature are ascribed to things not having life. Every work, therefore, where the thoughts are expressed by fictions or images, is poetic; and every work where they are expressed naturally, simply, and without ornament, although it be in verse, is prosaic.
Verse, however, is not to be regarded as foreign or superfluous to poetry. To reduce those images, those fictions, into verse, is one of the greatest difficulties in poetry, and one of the greatest merits in a poem: and for these reasons, the cadence, the harmony of sounds, particularly that of rhyme, delight the ear to a high degree, and the mind insensibly repeats them while the eye reads them. There results therefore a pleasure to the mind, and a strong attachment to these ornaments: but this pleasure would be frivolous, and even childish, if it were not attended by a real utility. Verses were Verse, invented in the first ages of the world, merely to aid and to strengthen the memory: for cadence, harmony, and especially rhyme, afford the greatest assistance to the memory that art can invent; and the images, or poetic fictions, that strike our senses, assist in graving them with such deep traces in our minds, as even time itself frequently cannot efface. How many excellent apophthegms, sentences, maxims, and precepts, would have been buried in the abyss of oblivion, if poetry had not preserved them by its harmony? To give more efficacy to this lively impression, the first poets sung their verses, and the words and phrases must necessarily have been reduced, at least to cadence, or they could not have been susceptible of musical expression. One of the great excellencies, therefore, though not a necessary constituent, of poetry, consists in its being expressed in verse. See Part III.
Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
The Encyclopædia Britannica;
or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature.
Third Edition.
Volume XV.
Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. MacFarquhar 1797, S. 170-264.
Unser Auszug: S. 170-171.
Ungezeichnet.
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
Die Marginalien sind als Zwischentitel gesetzt.
The Encyclopædia Britannica (Third Edition) online
URL: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=britannica3
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007695830
Literatur
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The Early Britannica: The Growth of an Outstanding Encyclopedia.
Oxford 2009.
Loveland, Jeff: The European Encyclopedia.
From 1650 to the Twenty-First Century.
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Mauduit, Christine u.a. (Hrsg.): Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aristotle's Poetics.
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Hrsg. von Ralf Haekel.
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Spree, Ulrike: Das Streben nach Wissen.
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Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer