Not only in the history of the world but in the history of literature as well, we meet with strange aberrations on the part of entire epochs in their estimate of individual men, rightly or wrongly raised above their environment.  Exactly what the age happens to demand, what fits in with its restless activity, that is what it rewards and values.  We cannot deny, indeed, that every generation has the right to require the poet, as well as its other sons, to consult its needs so far as possible.  But it is seldom satisfied with this; he must confer his benefits in the most agreeable way, and whether or not he is weak enough to humor it in this, determines, as a rule, whether it will take him fondly in its arms, or will crush him.  These reflections were recently aroused in me when a volume of Heinrich von Kleist’s writings came into my possession together with a volume of Theodor Koerner’s works, and I trust that the Scientific Society will not consider them too unimportant to be developed in some detail.

In the two poets named we see two remarkable examples of the above-mentioned aberration of an entire epoch.  While the first of the two, Heinrich von Kleist, possesses all the qualities that go to make up the great poet and at the same time the true German, the other, Theodor Koerner, has only enthusiasm for those qualities; but while Kleist refuses to forget his own dignity in the interests of the times, and finally strives to unite these interests with the highest mission of art, Koerner prefers to throw himself submissively into the vortex.  For this reason Kleist was maligned, ignored, and misjudged during his lifetime, scorned at his death, and forgotten by immediate posterity, whereas Koerner was enthusiastically received and applauded, and when he descended into his early grave, was mourned by the whole world.  I would gladly pass by his grave in silence, and leave him the laurels which he purchased with his death; but I see no reason why he should swell the number of our fathers’ sins, and should neglect an act of justice, which will, in any case, be performed some day by our grandchildren, and then perhaps with a smile of pity for us.

Before we go farther it will be necessary to establish, so far as possible, certain conceptions of art in general, and of the branches of art cultivated by Koerner and Kleist.  I purposely say “so far as possible;” for it would not be easy to expound a complete conception of art before one set forth a complete conception of the human soul, of which art might be called the most comprehensive phenomenon.  We must therefore infer this conception from the effects of art, so far as they appear; but as these effects are infinite the conception may be something very different from a barrier erected for the purpose of a mere provisional designation, which ceases to exist the moment that it pleases genius to overstep it.  We find this possibility confirmed when we examine how the conception in question has changed in German literature alone, during the various epochs of its relatively short history.