Schiller’s “Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”
“Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”, published in the journal, Die Horen, seems to pit Göethe, the naïve poet, against Schiller, the sentimental poet. The essay is an early and influential effort to sort out types of artists, as makers and as psychologies. Naïve and Sentimental” refers to both poets and to poetry, not to themes, subject matter, or content, and are seen by Schiller as opposites, somewhat like Kant’s antinomies—a way of organizing the world in terms of contrasts. It is here that the famous “compare and contrast” methodology of art historical discourse begins, for Schiller’s comparative pairing of poets will be copied by the early Twentieth Century art historian, Aby Warburg, who was also fascinated by psychological themes. That being said, Schiller’s ultimate purpose goes beyond his purpose of understanding two kinds of genius and two means of artistic creation. He analyzes modes of perception, ways of being, and ways of living in the world, ways of relating and responding, not only to nature itself but also to one’s own inner nature, to the structure of one’s own mind.
In establishing between psychological types, Schiller paved the way for later thinkers, such as Freud and Jung, Nietzsche and Dilthey, and James, as the originator of the notion of psychological types. But Schiller’s aesthetic is also a moral philosophy. It was an examination of the human being and the human condition in a world that is so modern it had yet to be defined, discussed or understood. Schiller’s predecessor in grappling with the new place of nature in the newly industrialized society would be René Descartes who advocated a turning away from the artificiality of French society to the simplicity of nature to rediscover the “natural” human being, free of civilization and its “discontents”, as Freud would express it later. Schiller leads the way to the Nineteenth Century and to Modernism, for his world is far more “civilized” than that of Rousseau. Both philosophers (who would influence Freud on this point) understood civilization to be necessary and inevitable and unavoidable, the result of Rousseau’s “Social Contract”, but the social system has built a wall of rules, regulations, and conventions that is entirely artificial. Trapped in the social system, blindly following its customs and mores, we are alienated from nature and the natural. We have lost our sense of oneness, our feelings of harmony with our world. Worse yet, we are alienated from ourselves, divided within our own minds, disconnected from the totality of our own being.
Responding to a system that purports to be “rational”, we struggle with our irrational side, repressing it until we are alienated not only from it but also from a part of our selves. Thus we, as humans in the modern world, are alienated from nature itself, which is neither rational nor irrational. Nature simply exists in a state of pure being which we, in our divided state, can no longer comprehend or connect with. In our alienated condition—alienated from ourselves and from our fellow human beings—we can only respond to nature through the distorting filters of civilization. Our varying modes of perception—“Naïve“ or “Sentimental”—can never encounter nature, the pure state of being. Such unity must wait until we reach our own natural state of harmony within ourselves and our natural environment.
Like Rousseau, Schiller does not present “Natural Man” as a lost state but a goal we must aim for. This goal cannot be reached in an individual’s lifetime but can be achieved only through successive generations, which must struggle to regain wholeness, harmony, and unity, both internally, within the individual, and externally, with nature. This modern concept of the alienated human being seeking a lost unity would be of great consequence to Nineteenth and Twentieth Century thought. The author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, writing somewhat later than Schiller, warned that we have become estranged and alienated from ourselves and from nature. As the allegory of the creation of Frankenstein’s monster shows, we have become deluded into playing God through the misuse of technology. G. W. F. Hegel will write of “thesis”, “antithesis”, and “synthesis”, the ultimate Absolute unity. Karl Marx will write of “alienation” of the working class from industrial products and will warn that humans have become so alienated that we are no longer aware of it and exist in a state of “false consciousness”. Marx’s “alienation” was sociological due to economic causes. Jacques Lacan will write of Lack, resulting from the human’s entry into society and the severing of the child from its mother (loss of unity and wholeness). Alienation will be come a major theme and perhaps the definition of the condition of Modernity itself.
Thus aesthetic philosophy becomes a moral philosophy and art becomes an arena for self-actualization, a way of thought to counter the evils of artificiality and civilization. For Schiller, in “Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”, all art is inferior to nature but all art must begin with nature. Art becomes a way of reacting to ourselves and a means of responding to nature. Nature takes on a dual meaning: nature is the world surrounding us and our own individual personalities. Art also seems to assume duality, being equated at times with that which is artificial, in other words with a wide range of artifacts, works and activities, while, at other times, art is the natural product of a creative process. Art was a means of restoring a natural balance in personality. Art was a journey towards a purer morality and an exposition of the nature of artistic genius that rises above artificial rules and ideas on morality. The role of free play of imagination in art and the artist as a genius is indebted to Kant. Six decades later, perhaps thinking of Schiller, Emil Zola famously wrote of “nature seen through a corner of a temperament” to define art, which is, in those terms, a response to nature shaped by the personality of the artist.
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Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed. Thank you.
