The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

I.--Art Greater than the Beauty of Art

Lauchstadt, September 1, 1805. As we are convinced that he who studies the intellectual world, and perceives the beauty of the true intellect, can also realise the Father of them, who is supreme above all sense, let us therefore seek as best we may to achieve insight into the beauty of the mind and of the world, and to express it for ourselves.

Suppose, then, two blocks of stone, side by side, one rough and unshaped, the other artistically shaped into a statue. To you the stone worked into a beautiful figure appears lovely not because it is stone, but because of the form which art has given it. But the material had not such a form, for this was in the mind of the artist before it reached the stone. Of course, art is greater than that which it produces. Art is greater than the beauty of art. The motive power must be greater than the result. For as the form gains extension by advancing into the material, yet by that very process it becomes weaker than that which remains whole. For that which endures removal from itself steps aside from itself--strength from strength, warmth from warmth, force from force, so also beauty from beauty.

Should anyone disparage the arts because they imitate nature, let him note that nature also imitates much besides; and, further, that the arts do not precisely imitate what we see but go back to that rational element of which nature consists, and according to which she acts.

Carlsbad, June 22, 1808. It is an extraordinary fact that man in himself, so far as he avails himself of his sound mind, is the greatest and most precise physical apparatus that can be. And it is in fact the greatest evil of the newer physics that experiments are, as it were, separated from man himself, so that nature is recognised only in what is ascertained by artificial instruments. It is exactly so with calculation. Much is true which cannot be computed, just as much can never be experimentally demonstrated.

Man, however, stands so high that that which otherwise admits of no representation is represented in him. What, then, is a string and all its mechanical division compared with the ear of the musician? Indeed, it may be said what are the elementary phenomena of nature compared with man, who must first master and modify them all in order to assimilate them to himself?

II.--Music and Musicians

Weimar, November 16, 1816. I send you a few words with reference to your proposal to write a cantata for the Reformation Jubilee. It might best be contrived after the method of Handel's "Messiah," into which you have so deeply penetrated.

As the main idea of Lutheranism rests on a very excellent foundation, it affords a fine opportunity both for poetical and also for musical treatment. Now, this basis rests on the decided contrast between the law and the Gospel, and secondly on the accommodation of these two extremes. And now, if in order to attain a higher standpoint we substitute for those two words the terms "necessity" and "freedom," with their synonyms, their remoteness and proximity, you see clearly that everything interesting to mankind is contained in this circle.

And thus Luther perceives in the Old and New Testaments the symbol of the great and ever-recurring world-order. On the one hand, the law, striving after love; on the other, love, striving back towards the law, and fulfilling it, though not of its own power and strength, but through faith; and that, too, by exclusive faith in the all-powerful Messiah proclaimed to all.

Thus, briefly, are we convinced that Lutheranism can never be united with the Papacy, but that it does not contradict pure reason, so soon as reason decides to regard the Bible as the mirror of the world; which certainly should not be difficult. To express these ideas in a poem adapted to music, I should begin with the thunder on Mount Sinai, with the Thou shalt! and conclude with the resurrection of Christ, and the Thou wilt!