Metaphorical organicism in Herder’s early works: A study of the relation of Herder's literary idiom to his worldview 9783111681849, 9783111295244

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE VIEWPOINTS AND AIMS OF THIS STUDY
PART ONE. THE CENTRAL PART OF ORGANISTIC IMAGERY WITHIN THE YOUNG HERDER'S PROSE WORKS
PART TWO. HERDER, THE ORGANICIST
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

DE PROPRIETATIBUS

LITTERARUM

edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana

University

Series Practica,

20

METAPHORICAL ORGANICISM IN HERDER'S EARLY WORKS A Study of the Relation of Herder s Literary Idiom to His World-view by E D G A R B. State University

SCHICK

oj New York at

1971 MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

Albany

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N. V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this booh may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

L I B R A R Y OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD N U M B E R : 74-134546

Printed in Hungary

PREFACE

The vitality of the young Herder, his search for a vivid way of' expressing his belief in a whole, living universe cannot help but infect the student of his work with a similar enthusiasm. With his call for a comprehension of the physiological/psychological unity in man and for a synthesizing, concrete liberal education in the face of dichotomizing abstraction and narrow, mechanistic, compartmentalized training and with his appeal for an unbiased appreciation of literary works and of historical periods and developments apart from the prejudiced pride of our own age, Herder's stimulating voice is still timely as he speaks to us across two centuries. His respect for language as an essential factor of the mind as it communicates man's consciousness is reflected today in some of the thought of a Susanne Langer and a Martin Heidegger. Early in his career in his Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit Herder forecasts the fecund, germinating influence of his own thought in the midst of the deficient culture of the declining Enlightenment: "Dem wehenden Zephyr vertraue den Saamen: um so weiter wird er ihn führen, und wenn einmal alle die Keime aufwachen, zu denen auch der edlere Theil unsres Jahrhunderts still und schweigend beitrug - in welche selige Zeit verliert sich mein Blick! - " (HWS, V, 573). It is a privilege to express my gratitude to teachers, students, friends, and colleagues for inspiration and help in the preparation of this study, a revised version of a doctoral dissertation. At Rutgers University my work was guided in particular by Professors H. John Fitzell, Claude Hill, Johannes Nabholz, Kenneth G. Negus, and Israel S. Stamm. At the State University of New York at Binghamton I am indebted to my colleagues Professors Roger C. Norton and Gerard F. Schmidt and Mr. Gilbert J. Shaver for useful suggestions and assistance.

6

PREFACE

To Professor Robert R. Heitner, Editor of The German Quarterly, goes my thanks for permission to reproduce in this book some materials which appeared in my paper "Art and Science: Herder's Imagery and Eighteenth-Century Biology" (May, 1968). And to my wife I express my gratitude for patience, confidence, and encouragement. State University of New York at Albany August 25, 1968

Edgar B. Schick

CONTENTS

5

Preface Introduction: The Viewpoints and Aims of this Study

11

A. Herder Viewed through the Poetic Expression in his Prose B. The Young Herder C. The Significance of the Images and Figures in the Young Herder's Style D. Terminology: Image, Simile, Analogy, Metaphor, and Symbol E. Herder's Interest in the Metaphoric and ConcreteSensuous Character of Primitive Language

11 14 16 23 26

PART ONE: THE CENTRAL ROLE OF ORGANISTIC IMAGERY WITHIN THE YOUNG HERDER'S PROSE WORKS

I. Language, Literature and Aesthetic Criticism A. Origin and Development of Language and Linguistic Usage B. Literature C. Aesthetic Criticism II. Mankind's Historical and Cultural Development I I I . Two Psychological Problems: the Nature Creative Thinker and the Education of Man A. The 'Genie' and the Creative Artist B. Education IV. Conclusion to Part One

33 33 40 51 54

of

the 81 81 87 98

8

CONTENTS

PAKT TWO: H E R D E R , T H E ORGANICIST

V. The Image per se as Basic Analogy for the Writer and his Age 103 VI. Herder, the Organicist, and Certain Trends in Eighteenthcentury Biological Thought 108 VII. Conclusion - Herder the Organicist: His Place as Both Conservative and Innovator in the New Organistic Trend A. The Rising Wave of Organicism in Aesthetics B. The Conservative Herder, Rooted in his Age C. Herder, Organicist and Innovator

116 116 119 121

Select Bibliography

128

Index

133

Rede, d a ß ich Dich sehe I J o h a n n Georg H a m a n n , "Aesthetica in nuce", Sämtliche Werke, ed. Josef Nadler (Wien, 1949ff.), I I , 198. Reden in eine Worte, (Ibid.,

ist übersetzen - aus einer Engelsprache Mensehensprache, das heist, Gedanken in - Sachen in Namen, - Bilder in Zeichen . . . . p. 199)

I t is like listening to t h e thoughts of a sensitive plant, miraculously gifted with words. E . M. Butler, The Tyranny (Boston, 1958), p. 73.

of Greece over Germany

INTRODUCTION: T H E VIEWPOINTS AND AIMS OF T H I S STUDY

A. H E R D E R V I E W E D THROUGH THE POETIC EXPRESSION IN HIS PROSE

The many-sided genius of Johann Gottfried Herder presents the student of his work with an almost endless area of investigation. This was felt quite keenly, for example, by the Herder scholar, the late Professor Robert T. Clark, who throughout his outstanding book on Herder - the fruit of a labor of nineteen years - stresses how receptive Herder was to the intellectual atmosphere about him and who at the conclusion of his comprehensive study emphasizes Herder's range as critic, historian, poet-translator, philosopher, and scientist. 1 Herder's fine sensitivity to every vibration in the realm of ideas has also been observed by E. M. Butler, who calls him "an instrument on which the most diverse hands could play" (p. 74). In this study we shall approach Herder through a poetic aspect in his writing and not as a discursive historian, theologian, philosopher, or psychologist: in these fields much of what Herder wrote has needed revision in the light of modern investigation, even though Herder was frequently the original stimulant to much of t h a t same interest and research. We shall here observe Herder through his figures of speech which often give vibrant poetic organization, unity, and force to his expression. Indeed, our observations of the poetic aspect in Herder's writings can bring us close to his very spirit regardless of the obsolescence of much of his subject matter, while at the same time allowing us to enjoy the fervor and zeal of the young Herder proclaiming his gospel. I t is just this poetic approach - not a scientific, objective one - whicli 1 Cf. Robert T. Clark, Jr., Herder: His Life and, Thought (Berkeley, 1955), p. 436.

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INTRODUCTION

another great Herder scholar, Rudolf Haym, points out in his discussion of Herder's treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (1778): "Sein POETISCHER Blick sucht rückwärts und vorwärts die Analogiezusammenhänge."2 The significant role of poetic expression in the imagery of this treatise (portions of which will be examined later in this study) is readily apparent to the attentive reader, and although Herder is treating objective, scientific matters, he is, for example, certainly not a normal model for the detached textbook writer in the following passage, so permeated by poetic imagery, in which he discusses the care to be taken in the education of the young 'Genie': Nicht zu f r ü h reiße sie auf, diese lebensschwangre Knospe, laß sie sich ins L a u b der Bescheidenheit und o f t D u m p f h e i t , wie wir sagen, verstecken. E s ist ein unersetzlicher Schade, wenn m a n die liebe jungfräuliche Blume aufbricht, d a ß sie lebenslang welke. Fühlst du die Freuden der Morgenröthe, ihren lieben ersten Dämmerungsstral nicht i W a r t e ! die große Sonne wird schon hervor schreiten. 3

Such subjective and poetic exuberance is, according to Haym also a stylistic trait in Herder's Plastik: Die Schrift ist, namentlich in ihrer zweiten, weniger gefeilten Hälfte, voll von jenem ungenierten Kraftstil, der später k a u m noch in der Hitze des Streites wiederkehrt. Von Gefühlseindrücken redend, Erscheinungen, Charaktere, Gestalten schildernd, die ihn anziehen oder anwidern, sprengt der Verfasser, auf Augenblicke wenigstens, die Fesseln des gesellschaftlich Schicklichen, u m jetzt einmal mit einem derben oder zynischen Vergleich u n t e r das Niveau der gewöhnlichen Schriftsprache herab-, jetzt wieder, vielleicht dicht daneben, m i t einer edel großen, poetischen Anschauung über dies Niveau hinauszugreifen. (Haym, I I , 95 f.)

In a similar fashion, Bruno Markwardt, in his study of Herder's Kritische Wälder, in a chapter devoted to "Der poetische Einschlag in Herders Stil",4 after remarking about the rhythmic quality of Herder's prose, emphasizes as well Herder's love of linguistic beauty; what Markwardt says about the Wälder in this context can be applied to much of Herder's early work: 2

Rudolf H a y m , Herder, nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt, 2 volumes (Berlin, 1954), I, 706; m y emphasis. Original edition 1877 — 85. 8 J o h a n n Gottfried Herder, "Vom Erkennen und E m p f i n d e n der menschlichen Seele", Herders Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, et al., 33 volumes (Halle and Berlin, 1877—1913), V I I I , 227. All references t o this standard edition are indicated by "HWS", volume and page. 4 Bruno Markwai'dt, Herders Kritische Wälder (Leipzig, 1925), p. 296 ff.

INTRODUCTION

13

U m so beachtenswerter aber ist es, daß sieh Herders Stil - wenn auch nicht zu reinen R h y t h m e n - so doch o f t zu dichterischem Schwung der ganzen Darstellungsart erhebt. Seine warme Empfindung, sein hohes P a t h o s überwindet immer wieder den Willen zur Kritik und Polemik. Die Liebe Herders zum Worte, die Freude an der Schönheit der Sprache, läßt sich eben nicht so leicht vergewaltigen: weder durch das Streben nach sachlicher Schärfe im ersten "Wäldchen", noch durch die Verbitterung im zweiten und dritten, noch durch den Versuch eines systematischen Aufbaues im letzten der " W ä l d e r . " Mit recht k a n n Suphan sagen: " P o e t ist er a m wenigsten da, wo er sein will, a m meisten, wo er unwillkürlich dichtet: in schwungvollen Stellen seiner Prosa[. . .]" (Markwardt, p. 296. The quotation is f r o m H W S , I, viii.).

Markwardt discusses such 'poetic' elements in the Wälder as alliteration (p. 293 f.) and poetic prose rhythm (p. 295), giving numerous examples for each (p. 119). One concrete example of rhythmic prose is apparent in the following quotation which can be scanned and written as poetry: . . . und wie ein Strom, in den sich Ströme stürzen, wälzt sein Gesang sich prächt(i)'ger fort. (HWS, I I I , 360)

Then too, the emotional and 'poetic' force of Herder's prose is made particularly clear when compared with Lessing's style, as Kurt May points out in his comparison of how these two great thinkers express themselves on the subject of genius: W a s auch Lessing über das Genie gesagt haben mag, klingt schwach und zaghaft gegen den Dithyrambus, den Herder auf das dramatische Genie im Shakespeareaufsatz anstimmt. Hier sagt ja wohl nicht ein einziger Satz mit klaren Worten, was denn das Wesen eines Genies eigentlich sei; aber verkündet wird der Preis des künstlerischen Schöpfertums in der Sprache der Anschauung und des erschütterten Gefühls. 5

Subjective poetic feeling suffuses much of the young Herder's writing, according to May, who indicates that frequently the excited inner life of the young man is poured out even into the most 'objective' research: Mit der künstlerischen Empfindung, o f t von ihr sich loslösend, alle Schranken des Denkens überflutend, strömt aber auch immer wieder das ganze Innenleben des ewig bewegten und gereizten Menschen Herder selbst in 5

K u r t May, Lessings und Herders kunsttheoretische Gedanken in ihrem Zusammenhang (Berlin, 1923), p. 43.

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INTRODUCTION

die strengste Forschung. In sittlichem Eifer, religiöser Ergriffenheit, in metaphysischen Schauern wandelt sich dann seine Wissenschaft mitunter zur Predigt oder zum Pamphlet, zur Prophetie oder zum Hymnus. Dann läßt der stärkere persönliche Auftrieb wieder nach, und die ruhige und ernste Sachlichkeit kehrt zurück, (p. 18)

In this study we shall, then, seek to draw near to Herder's vital spirit through an examination of vibrant, synthetic, poetic expression in his prose as it frequently opposes and replaces the analytic objectivity of Rationalism. In particular we shall try to observe some of the essential Herder in the poetic, literary images through which his impassioned feelings and thoughts gain expression. Herder himself, appropriately enough, provides the motivation for such an approach in his treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden ... aB he emphasizes that creators of work of poetic expression reveal themselves in their creations: Jedes Gedieht, zumal ein ganzes, großes Gedicht, ein Werk der Seele und des Lebens, ist ein gefährlicher Verräther seines Urhebers, oft, wo dieser am wenigsten sich zu verrathen glaubte. Nicht nur siehet man bei ihm etwa, wie der Pöbel ruft, des Mannes dichterische Talente; man sieht auch, welche Sinne und Neigungen bei ihm herrschten ? durch welche Wege und wie er Bilder empfing ? wie er sie und das Chaos seiner Eindrücke regelte und fügte? die Lieblingsseiten seines Herzens, so wie oft die Schicksale seines Lebens: seinen männlichen oder kindischen Verstand, die Stäbe seines Denkens und seiner Erinnerung - (HWS, VIII, 208).

B. THE YOUNG H E R D E R

Our attention in this study will be focused on the writings of the Herder rather than on those of his later period as Superintendent in Weimar when he became increasingly isolated from many of his important contemporaries. Moreover, as Kurt May points out, advacing years brought frequently a reversion in Herder's aesthetics to a position closer to Lessing's and even behind some of those standards which the mature Lessing achieved: YOUNG

. . . die Herderische Kunsttheorie hat, wo sie Lessings aufgenommen und fortgeführt hat, sich zwar meistens (nicht immer) mit glücklicher und fortschrittlicher Kritik über sie hinaus entwickelt, um dann doch in entschieden rückläufiger Tendenz zu den Kunstbegriffen Lessings zurückzukehren oder gar zu denen, gegen die Lessing seine neuen und vorwärtsführenden, auch in sich selber, erst hat durchsetzen müssen, (p. 157)

INTRODUCTION

15

Indicating the apparent contradictions between the viewpoints of the young and the old Herder, May concludes his book with these words: I n d e m Gegensatz aller sich k r e u z e n d e n u n d l ä h m e n d e n r a t i o n a l e n u n d irrationalen K r ä f t e , der sieh u n s f ü r H e r d e r h i n t e r all diesen Begriffsverwandlungen u n d - Verschiebungen e n t d e c k t h a t , b r i c h t schließlich wie eine heimliche W u n d e die ganze Zweideutigkeit der geistesgeschichtlichen Stellung H e r d e r s a u f , der sich o f t bis n a h e a n die R o m a n t i k entwickelt h a t , ohne doch die A u f k l ä r u n g je ganz, f ü r m e h r als ein p a a r J a h r e , in sich ü b e r w u n d e n zu h a b e n , (p. 158)

Indeed, in his essay Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . the young Herder himself recognizes that changes in a man's thought patterns may come with advancing years. To be sure, in the final sentence of this prose paragraph - so suffused with the poetic beauty of sensitive feeling and vibrant imagery - Herder wisely allows room for all the thinker's ages, perhaps almost as an afterthought as he looks ahead to his own later years. Yet he does leave the vivid impression in the reader's mind that the creations of youth with their vernal intimation rather than autumnal fulfillment provide the most interesting area of investigation: E i n Mensch in verschiednen Lebenszeiten ist sich nicht gleich, d e n k t anders, n a c h d e m er anders e m p f i n d e t . J e d e r m a n n weiß, wie öfters, zumal bei plötzlichen Leidenschaften, u n s unser erstes Urtheil trüge; und wie Gegentheils der erste Eindruck a n Frische u n d N e u h e i t nichts seines Gleichen h a b e . D a s erste u n b e f a n g n e W e r k eines A u t o r s ist d a h e r meistens das Beste: seine B l ü t h e ist im A u f b r u c h , seine Seele noch Morgenröthe. Vieles ist bei i h m noch volle, ungemeßne E m p f i n d u n g , was n a c h h e r Grübelei oder reifer Gedanke wird, der schon sein J u g e n d r o t h verlohren. W i r lieben i m m e r m e h r d a s H a l b e als d a s Ganze, den versprechenden Morgen als d e n M i t t a g in höchster Sonnenhöhe. W i r wollen lieber empfinden, als wissen, lieber selbst u n d vielleicht zu viel e r r a t h e n , als langsam hergezählt e r h a l t e n . Indessen sind z u m B e s t e n der W e l t alle Lebens- u n d Tagszeiten nöthig. (HWS, V I I I , 209)

We shall deal primarily, then, with the young Herder of the period up to and including the year 1778: by that year Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . , Ueber die Würkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten, and the Vorrede to the Volkslieder, zweiter Theil were either completed or had appeared. B y that date other important early works had been completed, including the Fragmente, the memorial Ueber Thomas

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INTRODUCTION

Äbbts Schriften, the Kritische Wälder, the Reisejournal, the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, the contributions to Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Oßian and Shakespear), Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, the prize essay Ursachen des gesunknen Geschmacks bei den verschiednen Völkern, da er geblühet, and Von Ähnlichkeit der mittlem englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst. We shall thus be able to include in our study much of the basic, seminal work of Herder, the creative critic.

0. T H E SIGNIFICANCE OF T H E IMAGES A N D FIGURES I N T H E YOUNG H E R D E R ' S STYLE

The wide range of Herder's interest has attracted a broad variety of studies devoted primarily to the content and ideas in his works and correspondence. There are, however, a few studies which do discuss the form of the young Herder's expression: two of these are dissertations by Johannes Haußmann 6 and Elfriede Saffenreuther. 7 The former lists the various metaphors by type and location in Herder's works and also examines cases where Herder's orthography differs sharply from contemporary German usage. Dr. Saffenreuther limits herself to Herder's work up to 1776 and does not treat Herder's imagery either in specific relation to the content of the works in which it is found or as a revelation of Herder's mind and his place in intellectual history. Instead, she discusses primarily Herder's sentence structure and his innovations in vocabulary - for example, new prefix usage and word formations not found in standard German etymological dictionaries. I n two compact articles Marcel Janssens has more recently investigated certain aspects of plant imagery - in particular t h a t of the flower - in the young Herder's work, seeking to place these figures, be they pejorative or laudatory in their force, into two general categories: those which the young Herder simply adopted from standard literary usage of his day

6 Johannes Haußmann, Untersuchungen über Sprache und Stil des jungen Herder (Diss., Wisconsin, 1906; Borna-Leipzig, Buchdruckerei Robert Noske, 1906). 7 Elfriede Saffenreuther, Der Prosastil Johann Gottfried Herders in seinen Wandlungen bis zur Weimarer Zeit (Diss. Masch. Sehr., Köln, 1941).

INTRODUCTION

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and those through which he expresses his Organismusgedanke.8 Janssens' valuable essays lack the space for lengthy, numerous, and systematic examples, bringing instead random items from a variety of works on many topics ; they seem to break off precisely at that moment when they could offer detailed conclusions on the relation of Herder's Organismusgedanke to certain trends in eighteenth-century Oeistesgeschichte, the goal of the conclusions reached in this study. The more general topic of the young Herder's linguistic style has been the subject of several fine studies by Professor Eric A. Blackall: the articles "The Imprint of Herder's Linguistic Theory on His Early Prose Style", 9 and "The Language of Sturm und Drang"; 10 and the chapter on Herder, "The Return to Origins",11 in his book The Emergence of German as a Literary Language. In these three publications Professor Blackall has devoted much skill to a careful analysis of Herder's linguistic style as it reflects his theories of primitive literary expression; he has not, however, addressed himself exclusively to the matter of imagery in the young Herder's literary style, which is the purpose of this study. The form of linguistic expression used in the works of a writer with poetic feeling is at least as essential for a proper understanding of him as is his 'content', as Schopenhauer has pointed out: "[Eine] Vorliebe für den Stoff im Gegensatz der Form ist, wie wenn einer die Form und Malerei einer schönen hetrurischen Vase unbeachtet ließe, um den Ton und die Farben derselben chemisch zu untersuchen."12 In fact, for a writer like Herder language is so much 8

Marcel Janssens, "Das Bild der Pflanze und der Organismusgedanke im Schrifttum des jungen Herder", Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, N. F., LXVII (1963), 30-39; "L'Image de la fleur dans les écrits du jeune Joh. Gottfr. Herder", Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, X L I I (1964), 913-925. 9 Bric A. Blackall, "The Imprint of Herder's Linguistic Theory on His Early Prose Style", PMLA, LXXVI, Nr. 5 (Dec., 1961), 612-18. 10 E. Blackall, "The Language of Sturm und Drang", in Stil- und Formprobleme in der Literatur, ed. Paul Böckmann (Heidelberg, 1969), pages 272-83. 11 E. Blackall, "The Return to Origins", Chapter XIV, in The Emergence of German as a Literary Language (Cambridge, England, 1959), pages 46181. 12 Arthur Schopenhauer, "Über Schriftstellerei und Stil", Sämtliche Werke, ed. Wolfg. Frhr. von Löhneysen (Stuttgart/Frankfurt am M., 1960), V, 596.

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INTRODUCTION

a part of 'Gehalt', that 'content' and 'form' usually cannot be fruitfully separated. In general, Herder, much like the contemporary thinker Susanne Langer,13 could not represent an abstract view of language as something distinct from what it conveys. Herder's view of the nature of language as inherent in consciousness is summarized well in Clark's discussion of the Abhandlung ilber den TJrsprung der Sprache: "For the most part the Treatise is content to demonstrate that language is not a system of conventional signs, but is, rather, as Ernst Cassirer puts it, a factor in the structure of the consciousness itself."14 Even in his later years (1799) Herder still identifies thought with language in his Metakritik. When Clark summarizes the main points of this work, we note that he speaks of Herder's sense of 'poetic discourse' and writes: "Herder's chief result in the Metacritique is the identification of thought with language, and this identification is the act of a poet. Poetic discourse is identical with its language . . ." (p. 405). Since theory is for Herder not the precursor but the result of literary activity (cf. Haym, II, 201), we may expect his own language and style to be intertwined with his thought. Moreover, in his article on "The Imprint of Herder's Linguistic Theory. . .", Blackall states emphatically that the young Herder was not a 'slipshod' writer but rather worked 'consciously and carefully' (p. 518). What Herder writes - coming from his vibrant inner life - is not accidently put down on paper but is the result of careful thought and revision (Cf. Blackall, pp. 516 — 18). We may, then, expect that the poetic element in Herder's prose style - in particular his imagery - is an organic aspect of his careful composition expressing his essential consciousness. Let us now turn our attention from the general problem of language to the specific problem of the word and its use as an image. Austin Warren, in a chapter entitled "Literature and Psychology", discusses the significance of the word for the poet: "For the poet, the word is not primarily a 'sign', a transparent counter, but a 'symbol', valuable for itself as well as in its capacity of representative; it may even be an 'object' or 'thing', dear for

13

Susanne K. Langer, Philosophical Sketches (Baltimore, 1962), p. 88. Cf. Clark, p. 138. The quotation is found in: Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der syrnbolischen Formcn (Berlin, 1923), I, 93, as cited by Clark. 14

INTRODUCTION

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its sound or look." 15 In the course of this study we shall note the use which Herder, the POETIC thinker, makes of the word as a symbol. Elsewhere in this book - in a chapter entitled "Image, Metaphor, Symbol, Myth" - Warren attacks the older method of literary study which separated imagery from content and treated it as an ornament: The whole series (image, metaphor, symbol, myth) we may charge older literary study with treating externally and superficially. Viewed for the most part as decorations, rhetorical ornaments, they were therefore studied as detachable parts of the works in which they appear. Our own view, on the other hand, sees the meaning and function of literature as centrally present in metaphor and myth. There are such activites as metaphoric and mythic thinking, a thinking by means of metaphors, a thinking in poetic narrative or vision. All these terms call our attention to the aspects of a literary work which exactly bridge and bind together old divisive components, "form" and "matter", (p. 182)

This passage with its reference to 'metaphoric . . . thinking' and 'thinking in poetic . . . vision' reminds us of Herder, and we shall consider in the course of this study the central role which imagery frequently plays in Herder's exposition. Indeed, as we shall observe later, he was quite aware of a kind of 'metaphoric . . . thinking' in primitive language which resulted in linguistic 'Sinnlichkeit'. Blackall, discussing the interest which the young Herder of the Fragmente had in 'Sinnlichkeit' in primitive language, sums up the factors which constitute Herder's 'ideal in language' by saying, "Sinnlichkeit gives emphasis; it elevates language to poetry" ("The Imprint of Herder's Linguistic Theory . . .", p. 512). He also points out that for the young Herder poetry was 'the highest form of literature' (Ibid.). Then too, T. S. Eliot in his essay, "Hamlet and His Problems" (1919), calls Herder to mind when he dwells on the importance of concrete, sensual expression of feeling: The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. 16 15

René Wellek & Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York, 1966), p. 77, Chapter VIII, "Literature and Psychology", by Warren. 16 T. S. Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", Selected Essays, New Edition (New York, 1950), p. 124 f.

20

INTRODUCTION

In this study we shall observe, then, the poetic, sense-related (sinnlich) element of imagery and its use sometimes almost as an 'objective correlative' in the synthetic fusion of metaphor in Herder's essays and treatises. At an early stage in his career - in the Torso of the memorial to Thomas Abbt — although he readily admits that his imagery may appear to be a poorly-ordered conglomeration, Herder defends his reliance on figurative language as being virtually his duty: "Ich rede durch Bilder, die wie ein übel zusammen geordnetes Gemisch vorkommen müssen; wenn ich aber offenbar spräche, so hätte ich über meine Obliegenheit mir selbst zu viel zu verantworten" (lieber Thomas Abbts Schriften, HWS, II, 265). About a year later, in an entry in his Reisejournal (1769), in the course of his rejection of the frequently feeble and diffuse literary style of his day, Herder calls for forceful, concentrated imagery - not weak repetitions to make a lasting impression: "Welche grosse Regel: mache deine Bilder der Einbildungskraft so ewig, daß du sie nicht verlierest, wiederhole sie aber auch nicht zur Unzeit! eine Regel zur ewigen Jugend der Seele"(HWS, IV, 460). Then too, shortly thereafter, writing to Merck from Strassburg, Herder comments that it is his IMAGERY on which the mixture of philosophy and feeling in his poetic expression depends: " . . . was kann ich aber dafür, daß das, was in mir dichtet, eine Mischung von Philosophie und Empfindung ist, die beide am Bilde hangen . . . " (quoted in Haym, I, 446). Now although alluding here primarily to his early ODES, what Herder confesses concerning the role of imagery in his poetry also holds true, as we shall see later in this study, for the prose works of this early period. It is, however, precisely Herder's use of the poetic element of the metaphor in his prose works of which Professor Alexander Gillies is quite critical. Commenting on the "Unzulänglichkeit seines [i.e.,Herder's] Stils", he writes: "Er schwelgte in malerischen, erzählenden und selbst überspannten Metaphern, ermangelte jedoch der Gewandtheit." 17 Gillies also feels that Herder's use of the image of the tree in his Auch eine Philosophie . . . is strictly a poetic device applied to compensate for a lack of logic: "Sein Bild vom Baume, der sich ständig wieder erneuert, bewahrt seine "Alexander Gillies, Herder:

Der Mensch

1949), p. 52. English edition: Herder

und Sein

Werk (Hamburg,

(Oxford, 1945), p. 27.

21

INTRODUCTION

Abhandlung davor, schlechterdings unmöglich zu sein, bleibt aber ein poetischer Kunstgriff, der die nun einmal fehlende Logik nicht ersetzen kann" (p. 114; English edition, p. 67). Gillies may not have enough credit to the poetic power of Herder's expression, for - as we shall observe later in this study - while the image of the tree is indeed poetic, it is not just a device but rather is the logic of Herder's exposition and fuses his ideas of the historical process into a concentrated, organized, vivid expression. Yet apart from the unifying force of imagery, Herder's works are more carefully structured than Gillies indicates. For as Professor Joe Fugate has recently pointed out, Herder's works actually ". . .reveal definite principles of composition and organization, an inner method of presentation which says much more than mere rational concepts could ever express". 18 Other critics of Herder's style, including Johannes Haußmann, Bruno Markwardt, and Elfriede Saffenreuther, give a positive evaluation to Herder's imaged expression. After examining the young Herder's earliest writings, Haußmann discusses the increasingly important role which images assume in them, not with showy superficiality but as organic parts of Herder's exposition: "Stärker tritt in den großen Werken der Rigenser Periode die bildliche Fülle und K r a f t hervor, welche das Metaphorische nicht bloß als ein aufgestreutes Schmuckwerk verwendet, sondern es o f t als ein organisches Glied aufnimmt" (p. 79 f.). Markwardt had also noticed the essential role which imagery plays in Herder's literary activity. Like Haußmann, Markwardt insists the images are not 'tacked on' to impress the reader but are really 'sinnlich angeschaut': E i n Bild ist für Herder nicht eine bloße, s c h m ü c k e n d e R e d e w e n d u n g , sondern eine wirkliche Erläuterung; es ist gleichsam eine E r h o l u n g s s t ä t t e für d a s rein begriffliche D e n k e n und gibt d e n Sinnen Gelegenheit, sich frei auszuleben. E s wird Herder schwer, e i n Bild selbst z u schaffen; aber w e n n i h m eines gelingt, oder w e n n er ein i h m zusagendes bei anderen Schriftstellern findet, so wird dieses Bild nicht äußerlich als Zierat auf d e n Stil a u f g e s e t z t , sondern a u c h wirklich sinnlich a n g e s c h a u t , w o b e i d a n n d a s Anschauungserlebnis n o c h längere Zeit nachwirkt. . . . (p. 308)

And Saffenreuther regards Herder's arboreal imagery as the virtual essence of Auch ein Philosophie . . . (cf. p. 73). The viewpoint in 18

J o e K . F u g a t e , The H a g u e , 1966), p . 281.

Psychological

Basis

oj Herder's

Aesthetics

(The

22

INTRODUCTION

this study is closer to t h a t of Haußmann, Markwardt, and Saffenreuther than to t h a t of Gillies. We have already noticed t h a t Herder sees an organic relationship of language thought and consciousness and t h a t according to Blackall, Herder worked 'consciously and carefully'. Careful revision has, however, not prevented the forceful expression of Herder's 'Innenleben' from suffusing his works (May, p. 18), so t h a t poetic imagery does convey inner thought and feeling. Moreover, imagery is inherent in Herder's style, it is not just 'tacked on' for adornment, but rather is an ORGANIC part of his exposition. Indeed, Herder himself tells us in his Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache t h a t man's use of language is a key to an understanding of him. Gillies sums up this idea in Herder's Treatise when he writes: So ist der Mensch nicht nur der Schöpfer der Sprache, sondern ebensosehr ihr Geschöpf. Er offenbart sich in ihr und sie bestimmt zugleich seine Selbstoffenbarung. Sie drückt alle Vorgänge seiner Seele aus, die eine unteilbare Einheit von mannigfaltigen Kräften und Antrieben ist. So ist die Sprache der Schlüssel zum gesamten Verständnis des Menschen. . . . (p. 68; English edition, p. 37)

We shall proceed with the conviction that Herder's linguistic usage, including his use of imagery, is not an artifical device to compensate for a lack of logic, but t h a t his literary figures reveal something about his basic Weltanschauung, for, as Haym says, Herder placed the " . . . Totalität seiner Seele in das, was er schrieb" (I, 147). Certain groups of figures which Herder uses do stand out more clearly than others: organistic figures from botany and zoology; figures of fluency; figures from Classical Antiquity, music, the pictorial and plastic arts, and the Bible (Cf. Markwardt, p. 299 f.). I n this study we shall concentrate on the first group metioned here, the figuration taken from the botanical and zoological worlds. The attentive reader of Herder's treatises will probably sense a stress on the organic feeling for life and growth in Herder's views on various topics, and it is just this ORGANIC feeling in contrast to the mechanical views of the Enlightenment t h a t attracts our attention when we study Herder. Elfriede Saffenreuther notes Herder's preference for imagery of organic growth in nature, especially for botanical figuration, as in keeping with his rejection of rigid, static systems and his proclamation of a new feeling for organicism:

INTRODUCTION

23

Bei der Wahl des eigentlichen poetischen Bildes bevorzugt der junge Herder den Bereich des organischen Wachsens in der Natur. Nichts konnte ihm, der im Kampfe gegen erstarrtes System und Regel das Gesetz des Organischen verkündete, näher liegen. Das pflanzliche Wachstum mit seinen Grundbedingungen gibt ihm Anlass zu den eindruckvollsten und hellsten seiner Vergleiche, (p. 28)

As we shall see, then, Herder's metaphoric organicism is of central importance to his work both intrinsically and extrinsically. Internally, we shall observe his use of organistic imagery to provide beauty and force, and even to become virtually a structural principle within a single work or among several essays in his early period. Externally, we shall note how his imagery, which expresses an ORGANIC feeling, can, at times, reveal more about his mind t h a n the 'content' of his writings alone and disclose his position in Oeistesgeschichte as an important forerunner of a new a n d influential Weltanschauung. D. TERMINOLOGY: IMAGE, SIMILE, ANALOGY, METAPHOR A N D SYMBOL

Until now we have used the terms 'metaphor' and 'symbol' sparingly while working instead with t h e German term 'Bild' and the English terms 'figure' and 'image'. We now want to be more specific in our use of terms applied to the images used by the young Herder. Austin Warren, in the above-mentioned chapter, "Image, Metaphor, Symbol, Myth", defines IMAGE by saying, " I t can be both presentation and representation a t once . . .", a f t e r writing: "The visual image is a sensation or a perception, b u t it also 'stands for', refers to, something invisible, something 'inner'" (Wellek & Warren, p. 177). An image is not just something casually mentioned by a writer with poetic feeling, b u t rather it points beyond itself to an idea or concept; it is the result of creative thought and not just chosen at random; it is a 'carrier' of both denotation and connotation beyond its bare dictionary meaning. The general difference between 'metaphor' and simile' is well known. The latter expresses a comparison b y using 'like' or 'as' (in German, 'so' and 'wie', as Gero von Wilpert points out in his discussion of 'Gleichnis'). 19 The METAPHOR, on the other hand, is 19 Gero von Wilpert, Sachwörterbuch 1961), p. 214.

der Literatur,

3. Aufl. (Stuttgart,

24

INTRODUCTION

a figure of speech in which one object is likened to another or to an idea as though it actually WERE t h a t other. Both von Wilpert (p. 368) and Wolfgang Kayser 2 0 indicate t h a t traditionally since Quintilian's definition the metaphor is interpreted as forming its comparison without 'as' or 'like'. The word used as a metaphor is frequently applied to something to which it is not literally applicable, in order to suggest a resemblance. Warren analyzes the metaphor as follows: "The four basic elements in our whole conception of metaphor would appear to be that of analogy; t h a t of double vision; t h a t of sensuous image, revelatory of the imperceptible; t h a t of animistic projection. The four in equal measure are never present. . ." (Wellek and Warren, p. 187). An examination of Herder's images can show the role of those images and figures used as metaphors according to ideas such as those which Warren presents. Let us, however, not stop at this point, for Herder does not use certain metaphors only at random or upon rare occasion. As this study will demonstrate, certain figures appear and reappear throughout the works of the young Herder, and not without 'rime or reason'. Warren discusses the change which an image or metaphor undergoes if it is used repeatedly: "An 'image' may be invoked once as a metaphor, b u t if it persistently recurs, both as presentation and representation, it becomes a symbol, may even become part of a symbolic (or mythic) SYSTEM" (Wellek and Warren, p. 178; my emphasis). Warren then proceeds to discuss this trend in a footnote: "When do metaphors become symbols? (a) When the 'vehicle' of the metaphor is concrete-sensuous . . . (b) When the metaphor is recurrent and c e n t r a l . . . . The normal procedure is the turning of images into metaphors and metaphors into symbols . . ." (Ibid., p. 292, note 12 to p. 178). Though it is obvious t h a t at times Herder is using a metaphor in an individual 80

Cf. Wolfgang Kayser, Das sprachliche Kunstwerk, 6. Auflage (Bern, 1960), p. 123. But Professor Kayser also goes on to indicate wider meanings for the term (pp. 123-27) as the poet creates and there arises ". . . in dem Glutstrom des Empfindens oder der Visionen eine Verbindung, die die Autonomie der Elemente aufhebt und aus ihnen ein Neues, Drittes macht" (p. 124). Poets are, moreover, forever seeking and creating new connections and associations in language, and a study of metaphoric usage can reveal ". . . daß es nicht nur auf die Bedeutung ankommt, sondern daß gefühlsmäßige Wirkungen und Neben Vorstellungen aller Art beteiligt sind" (p. 125).

INTRODUCTION

25

case, this study will endeavor to ascertain whether or not Herder's organistic metaphors are part of a 'symbolic system'. We should also examine the term 'symbol' as distinguished from 'allegory'. A symbol is something material representing something that is material or immaterial; the symbol itself cannot be abstract but rather must have concrete-sensual reality. (The eagle is a large bird which still exists in this country and which is the symbol of our nation: even when hunters and DDT will have finally destroyed it, the eagle will still be a symbol, for it will have existed at one time in nature. On the other hand, the tall man with the white beard and striped pants, Uncle Sam, or the scantily-clothed, blind-folded lady holding the scales, are allegories since they are not really things in themselves. In this sense of the words, then, it should be clear that we are not dealing with allegories in this study of Herder.) Warren sets up the following definition of 'symbol': "In literary theory, it seems desirable that the word should be used in this sense: as an object which refers to another object but which demands attention also in its own right as a presentation" (Wellek and Warren, p. 178). (We would say that a symbol is an object which refers to another object OR to an idea.) The analyses of the term 'symbol' by two other modern thinkers are also of interest. Hermann Pongs speaks of the 'symbol' as follows: "Es ist ein sinnliches Zeichen, das etwas Unsinnliches, Geistiges oder Seelisches meint."21 He then proceeds to dissect the German term 'Sinnbild': "Im Sinnbild fallen Sinn und Bild zusammen. Zugleich aber weist der im Bild gemeinte Sinn weit über das Bild hinaus" (Ibid.). Fritz Strich, demonstrating his knowledge of the Greek origin of the term 'symbol', describes it by saying: "Im Symbol, dem Zusammenwurf, ist Bedeutung und Gestalt, Sinn und Sein, Idee und Erscheinung völlig eines."22 All three of these descriptions are applicable to the symbol as Herder uses it, for, as we have already observed, the images which he uses are not externally added to compensate for a lack of logic, nor are they used to impress and overpower the reader (as in the Baroque). It will be seen in the course of this study that Herder's symbols are in keeping with his ideal of linguistic strength; that they have a 11

Hermann Pongs, Das Bild in der Dichtung, 2 vols. (Marburg, 1939), II, 1. (Vol. I, 1927). 82 Fritz Strich, "Das Symbol in der Dichtung", in Strich, Der Dichter und die Zeit (Bern, 1947), p. 22.

26

INTRODUCTION

significance beyond the limits of the meanings of the images themselves; t h a t they are concrete and definite; t h a t they provide a sense of vibrant organization and continuity in a variety of essays as they convey specifically related ideas; and that as they reveal the young Herder's mind, they also reveal something essential about his world-view and his place in intellectual history. W. B. Yeats, writing about Shelley and the images in his works, comes to a conclusion which, we believe, can also be applied to the young Herder's poetic expression in prose: "One finds in his poetry, besides innumerable images t h a t have not the definiteness of symbols, many images t h a t are certainly symbols, and as the years went by he began to use these with a more and more deliberately symbolic purpose . . . ," 23 And as Professor Leland Phelps indicates, the older Herder himself, looking back on his work, showed his awareness of the presence of 'metaphorical systems' rather than individual images in his thought: In the Adrastea (1802) Herder stressed the value of the metaphorical complex, revealing that he thought not in terms of isolated figures to fill individual needs as they arose, but rather in terms of organic metaphorical families or systems. Ein neugefundnes Bildwort gab oft ein ganzes System, bo wie man aus einem Goldkörnchen ungeheure Ballen glänzenden Goldpapiers fabriciret.24 E. H E R D E R ' S INTEREST I N THE METAPHORIC A N D CONCRETESENSUOUS CHARACTER OF PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE

Herder's enthusiasm for the metaphoric power of primitive language and his emphatic use of organistic metaphors are, as we shall see, a natural result of his desire for a strong, concrete-sensuous literary style. I n the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache Herder refutes the Süß milch theory of the divine origin of language 25 and explains " W . B. Yeats, Essays (London, 1924), p. 95 f. 24 L. R. Phelps, "Gottsched to Herder: the Changing Conception of Metaphor in Eighteenth Century Germany", Monatshefte (Madison, Wisconsin), X L I V (March 1952), 134. The quotation is taken from HWS, X X I I I , 323. 25 Cf. esp. HWS, V. 10 f., 13 f., 17, 21, 34, 38-42, 51 f., 55, 60, 71, 75 f., 81 f., 87 f., 106-9, 121, 143-7; also H a y m I, 431.

INTRODUCTION

27

it as being 'gesamtmenschlich organisch'26 in genesis. On the other hand, Herder also disagrees with the French thinker, Condillac, who maintained that language originates in sub-human animal cries which eventually become words.27 Herder stresses 'Besonnenheit' as that essential faculty of the mind by which man is distinguished from other animals. And since man with his 'Besonnenheit' was able to create the forceful, metaphoric, 'sinnlich', linguistic idiom, which Herder describes, then, Herder might argue, the 'modern' writer has vivid examples which he, too, with his 'Besonnenheit' can profitably emulate. In the Abhandlung Herder sees PEELING as opposed to abstraction as characteristic of primitive language: " . . . je ursprünglicher die Sprache, desto weniger Abstraktionen, desto mehr Gefühle" (HWS, V, 78). Consider also, for example, Herder's enthusiasm in this treatise as he writes about the power and interfluence of 'Gefühle' in primitive language which led to impassioned transfers of metaphor: " J e älter und ursprünglicher die Sprachen sind, desto mehr durchkreuzen sich auch die Gefühle in den Wurzeln der Wörter!" Man schlage das Erste, beste Morgenländische Wörterbuch auf, und man wird den Drang sehen, sich ausdrücken zu wollen! Wie der Erfinder Ideen aus Einem Gefühl hinausriß und für ein anderes borgte ! wie er bei den schwersten, kältesten, deutlichsten Sinnen am meisten borgte! wie Alles Gefühl und Laut werden muste, um Ausdruck zu werden! Daher die starken kühnen Metaphern in den Wurzeln der Worte ! daher die Übertragungen aus Gefühl in Gefühl, so daß die Bedeutungen eines Stammworts, und noch mehr seiner Abstammungen gegen Einander gesetzt, das buntschäckichste Gemälde werden. Die Genetische Ursache liegt in der Armuth der Menschliehen Seele, und im Zusammenfluß der Empfindungen eines rohen Menschen, (p. 71)

The young Herder goes on to speak of the 'Metapherngeist' still present among 'fiery' nations and in 'wild' languages where feeling and emotion reign: In allen wilden Sprachen lebt er [i. e. "Metapherngeist"]: nur freilich in jeder nach Maas der Bildung der Nation und nach Eigenheit ihrer Denkart. Ein Volk, das seine Gefühle nicht viel und nicht scharf unterschied: ein Volk, das nicht Herz gnug hatte, sich auszudrücken und Ausdrücke mächtig Willi A. Koch (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder: Mensch und Geschichte, sein Werk im Grundriß (Stuttgart, 1957), p. 2. 27 Cf. esp. HWS, V, 17-20, 21 f., 25, 27, 28 f., 30 f., 34, 37, 46, 58, 138; also Haym, I, 431.

28

INTRODUCTION

zu rauben - wird auch wegen Nuancen des Gefühls weniger verlegen seyn, oder sich mit schleichenden Halbausdrücken behelfen. Eine feurige Nation offenbart ihren Muth in solchen Metaphern, sie mag in Orient, oder Nordamerika wohnen . . . . (p. 72) Whereas Herder is enthusiastic in this treatise about the power of emotions to produce a language with a vibrant 'Metapherngeist', he rejects any studied metaphoric writing which does not derive power from a strong, natural interaction of senses and feelings but is only a shallow imitation of past expression, lacking 'raw sublimity of phantasy' which primitive man's emotion injected into language: Der Grund der kühnen Wortmetaphern lag in der ersten Erfindung; aber wie ? wenn spät nachher, wenn schon alles Bedürfniß weggefallen ist, aus bloßer Nachahmungssucht, oder Liebe zum Alterthum dergleichen Wortund Bildergattungen bleiben? und gar noch ausgedehnt und erhöhet werden? Denn, o denn wird der erhabne Unsinn, das aufgedunsne Wortspiel daraus, was es im Anfang eigentlich nicht war. Dort wars kühner, männlicher Witz, der denn vielleicht am wenigsten spielen wollte, wenn er am meisten zu spielen schien! es war rohe Erhabenheit der Phantasie, die solch Gefühl in solchem Worte herausarbeitete; aber nun im Gebrauche schaaler Nachahmer, ohne solches Gefühl, ohne solche Gelegenheit - ach ! Ampullen von Worten ohne Geist! (p. 73 f.) The 'Metapherngeist', however, is not the only positive quality which Herder sees in primitive language. In the Fragmente, especially in the chapter following the section "Von den Lebensaltern einer Sprache", Herder enumerates the qualities of primitive language that make it 'sinnlich': . . . die stärksten Machtwörter, die reichste Fruchtbarkeit, kühne Inversionen, einfache Partikeln, der klingendste Rhythmus, die stärkste Declamation - alles belebte sie [i.e. language], um ihr einen sinnlichen Nachdruck zu geben, um sie zur Poetischen zu erheben. (HWS, I, 157) I n his article on "The Language of Strum und Drang" Blackall discusses the sources of Herder's conception of primitive, poetic language and what he in particular advocated as a result of his insights: The realisation of the sensual nature of primitive, poetic language came to Herder from Condillac . . .; the important idea that metaphor was not a derived and secondary aspect of language but part of its everyday and its original nature had been suggested by Dumarsais, Rousseau and other French critics. But the claim that writers should return to this earliest

INTRODUCTION

29

stage of language and so revitalise the flat, colourless language of the rationalistic era was advocated more emphatically by Herder than by anyone in France or England, (p. 277)

Blackall also points out the feeling of the period that literary expression must differ from rational statement. . .", indicating that the . . . crucial point was the establishment of a contrast between the poetic language of passion (Leidenschaft) and the prose language of reason (Witz, Verstand, Vernunft). Hamann rejects the latter as contrary to the essentially metaphorical nature of language, Herder admits it only for philosophy . . . "Für das Poetische Genie ist diese Sprache der Vernunft ein Fluch . . . " (Ibid.; the quotation is from the Fragmente, HWS, I, 194).

Thinking that he had found examples of primitive language in Ossian, Herder praises these songs and folk-poetry in general for possessing the 'sinnlich' and 'lyrisch' qualities which make them vibrant. In the following crucial passage from Oßian the enthusiastic young Herder describes the natural, lyrical power of 'wild' poetry: Wißen Sie also, daß jo wilder, d.i. je lebendiger, je freiwürkender ein Volk ist, (denn mehr heißt dies Wort doch nicht!) desto wilder,d.i. desto lebendiger, freier, sinnlicher, lyrisch handelnder müßen auch, wenn es Lieder hat, seine Lieder seyn ! Je entfernter von künstlicher, wißenschaftlicher Denkart, Sprache und Letternart das Volk ist: desto weniger müßen auch seine Lieder fürs Papier gemacht, undtodte Lettern Verse seyn . . . . (HWS, V, 164)

In his article on "The Imprint of Herder's Linguistic Theory on His Early Prose Style", Blackall summarizes Herder's comments in Oßian on power and feeling in language as found in Ossian, folksongs, and certain works by Klopstock and then goes on to say: "We must bear in mind that Herder in this essay is speaking of poetry, and of folk-poetry in particular: but these observations represent his general view of what constitutes strength in language. And they are all a development of the basic concept of sinnlich" (p. 516). While Herder opposes shallow imitations of antiquated language, he is concerned with a vital rejuvenation of the colorless language of his day, as we have seen. Indeed, as Phelps points out in his article on the "Changing Conception of Metaphor in Eighteenth Century Germany" from Gottsched to Herder, much of this rejuvenation process was for Herder throughout his life a matter of greater reliance on metaphor as a desirable and necessary element of prose style:

30

INTRODUCTION

One need only compare a page of Gottsched's prose with one of Herder's prose t o see t h a t metaphor had come into t h e foreground of German prose style. T h a t Herder's understanding of m e t a p h o r was more basic and correct t h a n t h a t of Gottsched as f a r as its actual relationship to language was concerned is revealed in t h e Adrastea: N ä h m e m a n der Sprache ihre Bildwörter, auch die sie nicht mehr d a f ü r erkennt; es blieben ihr weder Namen, noch Zeichen der Handlung, k a u m Ausrufe u n d Pronomina übrig. ([HWS], X X I I I , 323) N o t only did Herder recognize the role which m e t a p h o r played in the development of language, b u t he helped free it from the bonds into which t h e Enlightenment had cast it. (p. 134)

Observing his own theory, then, Herder, as we shall observe in the course of thiß study, fortifies his own language with vibrant, 'sinnlich' metaphoric elements which are such an integral part of the language of his exposition. Herder's mentor, Hamann, sets the tone for this attitude when he comments on the relationship of the senses and passions to imagery in his Aesthetica in nuce: "Sinne und Leidenschaften reden und verstehen nichts als Bilder. In Bildern besteht der ganze Schatz menschlicher Erkenntniß und Glückseeligkeit" (Nadler, II, 197).

PART ONE

THE CENTRAL PART OF ORGANISTIC IMAGERY WITHIN THE YOUNG HERDER'S PROSE WORKS

Die Metapher ist für den echten Dichter nicht eine rhetorische Figur, sondern ein stellvertretendes Bild, das ihm wirklich, an Stelle eines Begriffes, vorschwebt. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Die Geburt der tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik", Werke in Drei Bänden, ed. Karl Schlechta (München, n.d.). I, 51.

I LANGUAGE, L I T E R A T U R E , AND AESTHETIC CRITICISM

A. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC USAGE

Proceeding in a chronological manner through several of the young Herder's works, we shall illustrate in this part of our study the use which he makes first of botanical and then of zoological imagery to characterize linguistic origins and growth, and we begin with the symbolization, in his essay, Ueher den Fleiß in mehreren gelehrten Sprachen (1764), of language as a plant which undergoes natural metamorphoses in the various soils and climates which nourish it. After providing a brief sketch of linguistic variation and mutation in different historical periods and geographical regions, Herder, already at the age of twenty, concludes his introduction to his topic, singificantly enough, with vivid 'sinnlich' synthetic vegetable metaphor rather than with analytic deduction and writes: "So verwandelte sich diese Pflanze nach dem Boden, der sie nährte, und der Himmelsluft, die sie tränkte . . ." (HWS, I, 2). And so, at the very outset of his literary career, Herder relies on organistic imagery to give emphasis to his exposition, and he strikes tones of 'organic belonging' to time and place and also of natural, organic growth and flux which will become, as we shall see in P a r t One, such a prominent element in his thought. About two years later, in the section of the Fragmente, "Von den Lebensaltern einer Sprache" (HWS, I, 151 ff.). Herder again seems to feel that he can best characterize the basic nature of linguistic development by analogy to the commonly observed life-cycle of the plant, and after commenting on how the passing of time changes everything, he writes: "So ists mit jeder Kunst und Wissenschaft: sie keimt, trägt Knospen, blüht auf, und verblühet. - So ists auch mit der Sprache" (p. 152).

34

T H E CENTRAL PAKT OF ORGANISTIC

IMAGERY

In contrast to the preceding V E G E T A B L E imagery (some further examples of which will also be noted in later works of this period), Herder's "Zweite völlige umgearbeite [sic!] Ausgabe" of the Fragmente (1768) presents us with an early, vivid use by the young writer of arboreal figuration which is - as we shall see - to become for him in the 1770's an essential, organistic symbol, to express his respect of great literary masterpieces and the organic complexity, growth, and power of man's historical and cultural development. In the following significant passage the complex, vital tree - with its seeds, shoots, leaves, fruits, and branches - becomes virtually the unifying organization of the young Herder's paean on the merits and accomplishments of the ancient Greek literary idiom growing so naturally in its own linguistic soil with its unique, organic fecundity: Wenn Urkunden einer Sprache möglich sind; so haben wir sie in ihr [i.e. "in der griechischen Sprache"] - in ihr eine Menge von Ueberbleibseln und Denkmälern und Nachrichten, als vielleicht nicht in allen übrigen der alten Sprachen zusammen genommen. Sie ist nicht wie die Litteratur anderer Sprachen ein Baum, der den Erdreich, als ein Fremdling erzwungen, durch die Kunst als ein Sklave aufgetrieben, und als Weichling erzogen, widernatürliche Propfreiser empfängt, und den ungesunden Fleiß seines Treibers nicht anders lohnen kann, als durch vorzeitige Früchte: durch Früchte die das Auge betrügen, den Geschmack aufbringen, statt ihn zu besänftigen, und am liebsten die Speise der Würmer sind: denn so war die Litteratur anderer Sprachen. Allein die ihrige war wie ein freiwilliger Baum, aus seiner Wurzel in schöner Erde langsam hervorgetreten; aus ädler Natur gebar er adle Keime, gesunde Blätter, erquickende Blüthen, vollendete Früchte: so mancherlei Gewächs- und Fruchtarten er empfieng; so wurden alle seine Säfte verwandt, und in seine Natur verädelt: nichts an ihm erstickte durch den überwältigenden Schatten eines zu nahen, hohen Baumes: nichts wurde durch die nachbarlichen Gewächse verbittert: nichts dorfte in zu enger Luft verroten - in freiem, seligen Revier breitete er sich mit allen Aesten und Zweigen aus, und ward die Krone aller seiner Nachbarn, und die Mutter so vieler Sprößlinge . . . . (HWS, II, 59)

Here, in this poetic vision, idea and image are so intertwined, and metaphor is so vivid, vital, and 'sinnlich', that the literary figure is truly organically part of the exposition and a revelation of the author's mind and spirit. The plant as symbol for linguistic origin and growth is found also in the IV. Wäldchen (1769?) in which Herder represents cognates with a vegetable figure and writes, " . . . . schauen, Schein,

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Schön, Schönheit sind verwandte Sprößlinge der Sprache. . . (HWS, IV, 44). A similar usage for this idea is found in the prize Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (completed late in 1770) when he writes: "Jede Familie von Wörtern ist ein verwachsnes Gebüsche um eine sinnliche Hauptidee, um eine heilige Eiche . . ." (HWS, V, 54). Early in the Abhandlung . . . when discussing the human being's first direct Naturtöne - the direct 'animal' expressions of, joy, pain, sorrow — Herder employs botanical figures as the vivid organization of his argument t h a t these Naturtöne are NOT the basis of human language; they are not its 'roots' but are only a 'vivifying sap': "In allen Sprachen des Ursprungs tönen noch Reste dieser Naturtöne; nur freilich sind sie nicht die Hauptfäden der Menschlichen Sprache. Sie sind nicht die eigentlichen Wurzeln, aber die Säfte, die die Wurzelnder Sprache b e l e b e n ' ' ( H W S V, 9). Indeed, Herder makes repeated metaphoric use of the image 'Wurzel' as he discusses the beginnings of language; when writing, for example, in the following paragraph about the earliest natural tones in primitive languages, he exclaims: "Noch exsistirt für mich kein Wort: sondern nur Töne zum Wort einer Empfindung; aber sehet! in den genannten Sprachen, in ihren Interjektionen, in den Wurzeln ihrer Nominum und Verborum wie viel aufgefangene Reste dieser Töne !" (p. 10) Or again, some lines later: ''Die Wurzeln ihrer [i.e., of primitive peoples] einfachsten, würksamsten frühesten Verben endlich sind jene ersten Ausrüffe der Natur, die erst später gemodelt wurden . . ." (Ibid.). Later in this treatise when writing about how the human mind gave meaning to sounds, Herder says, ". . . . so sind z. E. die Morgenländischen Sprachen voll Verba als Grundwurzeln der Sprache" (p. 52). Several paragraphs laterwhile refuting a Süßmilch theory on the nature of linguistic forms, Herder comments: " I n den Resten der für die älteste angenommene Sprache sind die Wurzeln alle zweisylbige V e r b a . . . " (p. 55); and he then goes on to use another plant image when he refers to linguistic groupings as 'Stämme' (p. 56). When speaking of the boldness of primitive linguistic expression, Herder writes, " . . . daß je älter eine Sprache ist, je mehr solcher Kühnheiten in ihren Wurzeln ist . . ." (p. 74). Similar usages are to be found elsewhere in the treatise, (see, for example, pp. 70, 71, 84) indicating Herder's conscious reliance on such imagery throughout much of this work. Significantly, Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch cites Herder's use of 'Wurzel' to denote a basic word sound; under Wurzel we read:

:i6

THE CENTRAL TAKT OF OKGANISTIC IMAGERY

3b) als terminus in der Sprachwissenschaft bezeichnet würzet ein ursprüngliches, der bildung anderer Wörter zugrunde liegendes wort.. . . ß) seit dem späten 18. jh. eine ursprüngliche, bedeutungstragende, selbst nioht mehr ableitbare, unflektierte gruppe von lauten, die verschiedenen Wörtern der gleichen oder verschiedener sprachen zugrunde liegt, von der die bildung dieser Wörter ausgeht und die in ihnen enthalten ist: aber sehet 1 in den genannten sprachen, in ihren interjektionen, in den wurzeln ihrer nominum und verborum wie viel aufgefangene reste dieser töne (1770/2) Herder 6, 10 S. 1

The same entry proceeds to indicate t h a t Adelung did not use 'Wurzel' in this specific context until 1782 in his Lehrgebrauch der deutschen Sprache (I, 194). Herder is using, then, not a 'dead' metaphor but rather fresh organistic imagery to convey his theories. Interestingly enough, at the end of this early period, in the essay Von Ähnlichkeit der mittlem englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst, Herder is still employing botanical imagery - here an arboreal figure — to symbolize language as he urges his fellow Germans not to neglect their own national product: " . . .und wie viel haben wir Deutsche noch am Stamm unserer eignen Sprache zu thun, ehe wir unsre Nebensprößlinge pflegen und darauf das Unsere suchen!" (HWS, I X , 523). I n addition to botanical imagery, Herder also turns to zoological figuration to characterize linguistic development, especially in the above-metioned chapter "Von den Lebensaltern einer Sprache" in the first edition of the Fragmente in which, as Clark points out (p. 63), Herder adopts from Rousseau the figures of the 'ages of man' to characterize systematically stages of linguistic development. The young writer begins by representing language in its 'childhood', distinguished by its monosyllabic 'raw and high tones' and by its gesticulations which speak to 'eye and ear', 'senses and passions', a linguistic age when one 'thought little' but 'felt all the more': Eine Sprache in ihrer Kindheit bricht wie ein Kind, einsylbichte, rauhe und hohe Töne hervor. Eine Nation in ihrem ersten wilden Ursprunge starret, wie ein Kind, alle Gegenstände an; Schrecken, Furcht und alsdenn Bewunderung sind die Empfindungen, derer beide allein fähig sind, und die Sprache dieser Empfindungen sind Töne, - und Geberden. Zu den Tönen sind ihre Werkzeuge noch ungebraucht: folglich sind jene hoch 1

Jakob Grimm & Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, hrsg. von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 14. Bandes II. Abteilung, 15. Lieferung (Leipzig, 1960), Spalte 2356. The reference is that of the editors to HWS, V, 10.

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und mächtig an Accenten; Töne und Geberden sind Zeichen von Leidenschaften und Empfindungen, folglich sind sie heftig und stark: ihre Sprache spricht f ü r Auge und Ohr, f ü r Sinne u n d Leidenschaften: sie sind größerer Leidenschaften fähig, weil ihre Lebensart voll Gefahr und Tod und Wildheit ist: sie vorstehen also auch die Sprache des Affects mehr, als wir, die wir dies Zeitalter nur aus s p ä t e m Berichten und Schlüssen kennen; denn so wenig wir aus unsrer ersten Kindheit Nachricht durch Erinnerung haben, so wenig sind Nachrichten aus dieser Zeit der Sprache möglich, d a m a n noch nicht sprach, sondern tönete; d a m a n noch wenig dachte, aber desto mehr fühlte; und also nichts weniger als schrieb. (HWS, I, 162 f.)

In the latter part of this 'childhood', characterized by its 'Töne und Geberden', a change occurred which was as natural for Herder as human development; for although this age was still marked by a reliance on gesticulation for communication, the first 'sinnlich' names were given onomatopoetically to concrete-sensuous objects in nature. So wie sich das Kind oder die Nation änderte: sö mit ihr die Sprache. E n t s e t zen, F u r c h t und Verwunderung verschwand allmälich, d a m a n die Gegenstände mehr kennen lernte; m a n ward mit ihnen v e r t r a u t und gab ihnen N a m e n , Namen, die von der N a t u r abgezogen waren, und ihr so viel möglich im Tönen nachahmten. Bei den Gegenständen f ü r s Auge m u s t e die Geberdung noch sehr zu Hülfo kommen, u m sich verständlich zu machen: und ihr ganzes Wörterbuch war noch sinnlich, (p. 153)

Herder vividly symbolizes the next stage of development as that of child to youth, and he seems to be so sure that his own symbols have become the clear and unifying logic of his exposition, that at first he does not even mention that he is speaking again of specific linguistic ages. For the young Herder, this period is marked by its poetry, the absorption of abstract ideas into language, and plentiful metaphoric imagery to vivify and make 'sinnlich' any such concepts, a practice, which Herder himself carries out in his own works. Moreover, using the organistic image of the blossom as a figure of praise, he manifests his enthusiasm for this poetic age with its 'bold imagery', passions, and freedom in sentence structure:2

2

Blackall in his article, "The I m p r i n t of Herder's Linguistic Theory on His E a r l y Prose Style" (p. 612 ff.), traces Herder's incorporation of this enthusiasm for free sentence structure - bordering on the chaotic - into his own youthful style.

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THE CENTRAL PAKT OF ORGAN ISTIC IMAGERY

Das Kind erhob sich zum Jünglinge: die Wildheit senkte sich zur Politischen R u h e : die Lebens- und Denkart legte ihr rauschendes Feuer a b : der Gesang der Sprache floß lieblich von der Zunge herunter, wie dem Nestor des Homers, und säuselte in die Ohren. Man n a h m Begriffe, die nicht sinnlich waren, in die Sprache; m a n n a n n t e sie aber, wie von selbst zu vermuthen ist, mit bekannten sinnlichen N a m e n ; daher müssen die ersten Sprachen Bildervoll, und reich a n Metaphern gewesen seyn. Und dieses jugendliche Sprachalter, war blos das Poetische: m a n sang im gemeinen Leben, und der Dichter erhöhete nur seine Aecente in einem f ü r das Ohr gewählten R h y t h m u s : die Sprache war sinnlich, und reich an kühnen Bildern: sie war noch ein Ausdruck der Leidenschaft, sie war noch in den Verbindungen ungefesselt: der Periode fiel aus einander, wie er wollte ! - S e h t ! das ist die Poetische Sprache, der Poetische Periode. Die beste Blüthe der Jugend in der Sprache war die Zeit der Dichter . . . . (p. 153 f.)

With apparent reluctance Herder takes leave of this poetic age of youth, and turning to the age of prose, he organistically characterizes this stage of development as manhood: beautiful prose, abstractions, rules, and stylistic artificialities caused by a lack of intimacy with nature mark a decline from natural poetic expression with its bold imagery and natural sentence inversions: J e älter der Jüngling wird, je mehr ernste Weisheit und Politische Geseztheit seinen Charakter bildet: je mehr wird er männlich, und hört auf Jüngling zu seyn. Eine Sprache, in ihrem männlichen Alter, ist nicht eigentlich mehr Poesie; sondern die schöne Prose. Jede hohe Stuffe neiget sich wieder zum Abfall, und wenn wir einen Zeitpunkt in der Sprache f ü r den a m meisten Poetischen annehmen: so m u ß nach demselben die Dichtkunst sich wieder neigen. J e mehr sie K u n s t wird, je mehr entfernet sie sich von der N a t u r . . . . J e mehr m a n a m Perioden künstelt, je mehr die Inversionen abschaffet, je mehr bürgerliche und a b s t r a k t e Wörter eingeführet werden, je mehr Regeln eine Sprache erhält: desto vollkommener wird sie zwar, aber desto mehr verliert die wahre Poesie, (p. 154)

The final organistic analogy in this progression is old age, the period of 'philosophy' in which correctness supplants beauty as the goal, in which the rules of a Sparta suppress the free expression of an Attic creative beauty: Das hohe Alter weiß s t a t t Schönheit blos von Richtigkeit. Diese entziehet ihrem Reichthum, wie die Lacedämonische Diät die Attische Wohllust verbannet. J e mehr die Grammatici den Inversionen Fesseln anlegen; je m e h r der Weltweise die Synonymen zu unterscheiden, oder wegzuwerfen sucht, je mehr er s t a t t der uneigentlichen eigentliche Worte einführen

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kann; je m e h r verlieret die Sprache R e i z e : aber a u c h d e s t o weniger wird sie sündigen. E i n F r e m d e r in Sparta siehet keine U n o r d n u n g e n und keine Ergözzungen. D i e s ist d a s Philosophische Zeitalter der Sprache, (p. 155)

Herder's reliance on organistic zoological figuration provides vividness, continuity, unity, and, indeed, the very organization to his poetically systematized - if philologically somewhat inaccurate - presentation of linguistic history. Moreover, this same zoological imagery becomes, as we shall see, a significant organizing principle in his important treatise, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte . . . . Imagery of human PROCREATIVE ORGANS is also used by the young Herder when, for example, in his memorial Ueber Thomas Abbts Schriften he writes of language as a fertile womb and calls upon his fellow German writers, " . . . Deutsche in der Sprache zu seyn, in deren Schoos noch unendlich viel unbekannte Schätze ruhen . . . " (HWS, II, 283). A few years later, in his prize Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, Herder again speaks of human procreation when he discusses the development of linguistic genders: "Die Dichtung, und die Oeschlechterschaffung der Sprache sind also Intereße der Menschheit, und die Genetalien der Rede gleichsam das Mittel ihrer Fortpflanzung" (HWS, V, 55). We have illustrated how the young Herder already at the age of twenty relies on organistic imagery to be the vital conclusion of a discussion and how both botanical and zoological figuration are found in several works of his early period when he writes about linguistic origins and development. We have observed t h a t the growth and mutation in language - the essential tool for Herder himself and for any author or poet - is for the young writer an organic process, for it is vividly portrayed as the lifecycle of the plant, as the plant in its natural soil and environment, or as the growth of the human organism from child to old man. Then too, in this 'Lebensalter' imagery we have an early precursor of figuration to be so essential in the later treatise Auch eine Philosophie . . . . Moreover, the young Herder's enthusiasm for the youth of language serves to give his own idiom a poetic vitality and vivify abstract concepts through a style 'reich an Metaphern', and 'reich an kühnen Bildern'. And finally, one particular use of an image, 'Wurzel', is directly attributed by Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch to Herder as he tries to make 'sinnlich' '. . . Begriffe, die nicht sinnlich waren . . .' (HWS, I, 153 f.).

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B. LITERATURE

I t is not surprising that Herder, who expresses an organic view of the origin and growth of language through organistic symbolism, should also apply this same form of expression to the study of literature, the aesthetic application of language. I t is now appropriate to examine Herder's use of organistic imagery in some of his statements on literatures of various lands and peoples down through history as found in several works from his early period. Beginning our historical approach with the ancient Hebrews, we find that in his treatise Ueber die Würkung der Dichtkunst. . . Herder characterizes the ancient Hebrews as a people living in intimate contact with the luxuriant nature surrounding them, that nature through which God and the spirit of their poetry spoke to them through their senses in vivid imagery, not in pale intellectual abstractions (HWS, VIII, 360). With this in mind Herder employs the figure of the withered, uprooted tree, no longer blossoming, as he inveighs against divesting Hebrew poems of their vital concreteness by regarding them (because of a special religious interest in their universal validity) out of the natural context of their own time and place. Machet sie [i.e., Hebrew poems] zu einer Abstraktion, zum Hirngespinste für alle Zeiten und Völker; und sie werdon für keine Zeit und kein Volk mehr seyn. Der blühende Baum ist ausgerissen und schwebt, eine traurige, dürre Abstraktions- und Faserngestalt, über den Bäumen, (p. 362)

Herder's organistic imagery is also significant in his discussion of the literary achievements of the ancient Greeks. As he stresses the profit students can derive from reading the works of Herodotus, Xenephon, Lucian, and Homer in the pedagogical program of the Journal meiner Reise, he employs the flower to symbolize the eminence of these writers: "Hier ist die wahre Blume des Alterthums in Dichtkunst, Geschichte, Kunst, Weisheit!" (HWS, IV, 398). But in another passage, taken from his prize essay Ursachen des gesunknen Geschmacks . . . the flower image is more than a superlative of praise; here the image of the blossom serves this laudatory purpose while an additional flower and a seminal figure depict vividly how the Greek drama grew organically from a basic seed as a natural flower of its age and taste, containing those essential elements of the stage noted by Aristotle. After commenting

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on the development of other forms of Greek culture, Herder continues: Eben bo natürlich entstand das Griechische Drama in aller Blüthe seines Geschmacks. Aus Heldenfabeln, Spielen, Musik, Zeitvertreib, Gottesdienst, (Alles auf Griechische Art gefühlt, gemischt, behandelt) erwuchs die Bühne, auf der Äschylus, Sophocles und Euripides Wunder würkten. Alle Bestandtheile, die Aristoteles aufzählet, Handlung, Sitten, Meinungen, Musik, Sprache, Verzierung lagen im Kein der Entstehung, und waren kein Schulgeheimniß. (HWS, V, 615) . . . Das Griechische Drama war eine Naturblume der Zeit, der Veranlaßungen des damals lebendigen Geschmacks . . . . (p. 616)

Or, in an even more impressive passage in Shakespear, Herder employs the closely related figure of the pod to symbolize the organic form and tone of the Greek tragedy within which the fruit of that great art naturally matured: Jene Simplicität der Griechischen Fabel, jene Nüchternheit Griechischer Sitten, jenes jort ausgehaltne Kothurnmässige des Ausdrucks, Musik, Bühne, Einheit des Orts und der Zeit - das Alles lag ohne Kunst und Zauberei so natürlich und wesentlich im Ursprünge Griechischer Tragödie, daß diese ohne Veredlung zu alle Jenem nicht möglich war. Alles das war Schlaube, in der die Frucht wuchs. (HWS, V, 210)

Then too, in his prize essay on the decline of taste, Herder makes use of seminal imagery, writing of seeds from earlier ages having been planted and nurtured, to characterize vividly what power really made it possible for Greek art and comedy to endure beyond the age of Greece's freedom and greatest influence: Die Kunst also, zusammt der Komödie, daureten über das Zeitalter der Griechischen Freiheit und Würksamkeit heraus, nur aber, wie man offenbar siehet, aus den Samenkörnern voriger Zeiten. Wären diese nicht längst voraus gepflanzt, und gepflegt worden, hätten sie jetzt die Gestalt nicht gewonnen. (HWS, V, 620)

Turning to an illustration of his use of organistic imagery when he writes on Latin literature, we observe t h a t in the same essay Herder employs a vegetable figure to contrast vividly the Greek aesthetic character with Roman absence of such a character. If for the Greeks taste had been a natural element, for the ancient Romans t was to be resisted as a harmful and foreign plant: Die Römer drängten sich hart auf die Griechen; der Geschmack ist ihnen aber nie geworden, was er den Griechen war, Nationalsache und Element der Bildung. Man weiß wie lange sie sich ohne Geschmack behalfen, ja groß

42

THE CENTRAL PART OF ORCANISTIC

IMAGERY

und mächtig wurden, so gar, daß sich die alten, wahren Römer der Einführung des Geschmacks, als einer fremden, schädlichen Pflanze, widersetzten . . . . (p. 622 f.)

Proceeding with his evaluation of Latin literature from the implication of this plant figure - namely, t h a t aesthetic taste was not organically at home in ancient Rome but was from the very beginning viewed as something foreign - Herder symbolizes the true nature of Roman 'Dichtkunst' with a seminal and botanical figure to express emphatically its derivative, transplanted character which lacked the basic foundation of taste: D e n Römern sind also auch die Produktionen des Geschmacks, die bei den Griechen Grundlage zu Allem waren, Kunst und Dichtkunst, nie würksame Triebfedern worden. Die Dichtkunst entstand nur spät, d.i. sie ward aus Griechischem Saamen in den Garten eines Kaisers verpflanzt, wo sie als schöne, müßige Blume da stand und blühte, (p. 623)

I n the next paragraph, while he does give the Romans credit for their achievements in rhetoric and history - the natural products, he calls them, of their spirit - Herder again employs botanic imagery to symbolize Roman literature as being essentially a foreign plant which neither had its roots deep in Rome's cultural soil nor contributed to it because, as we have observed above, the foundation of Roman 'Dichtkunst' - aesthetic taste - was not organically germane to Rome. Roman 'Dichtkunst' was able to blossom at all only in the first period of leisure AFTER Roman rhetoric and history had dominated the cultural scene for some time: "Die Dichtkunst blühte bei erster Muße des Staats nach, und trug allerdings viel zur Bildung der Sprache und Philosophie der Römer bei, nur aber als fremdes Gewächs, so eben nicht tief aus Römischem Boden sproßte, noch dahin einwürkte" (p. 624). Herder's use of organistic imagery - when he writes about literary accomplishments after Rome's fall, namely 'christliche Poesie' and Dante - is particularly vivid in several cases in his prize essay Ueber die Würkung der Dichtskunst.... For example, after discussing the great influence religious poetry has always possessed down through the ages, Herder symbolizes the first influential vernacular poems with a human-organistic figure, saying with this imagery t h a t they were the organic product of the Christian-Latin tradition: "Die ersten wirksamen Gedichte in der Volkssprache waren also auch, da sieh die Dichtskunet wieder empor hob, aus dem Schoos und Busen der Religion Kinder"

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(HWS, VIII, 405). And when in the next sentences he comes to Dante, Herder quite appropriately symbolizes the complexity and power of Dante's poem with the impressive organistic figure of the tree, from which Milton - as it were - took a branch for his own great poetic works: Dante's grosses herrliches Gedicht umfaßt die Enoyklopädie seines Wissens, das Herz seines Lebens und seiner Erfahrungen, die Blüthe aller Mysterien und Moralitäten, Himmel und Erde. Von diesem Baume brach Milton seinen Zweig, da er das verlohrne und wiedergefundene Paradies schrieb. (Ibid.)

Then, in the following paragraph, as he proceeds to newer literature and concludes this section of his treatise, Herder employs botanical imagery and speaks of the garden of poetry from which he will pick the important flowers and fruits for his consideration: "Wir gehen zu den neuern Zeiten über, und wollen aus dem so vervielfältigten, reichen und bunten Garten der Dichtkunst nur die für uns nothwendigsten Blumen und Früchte brechen" (p. 405 f.). As Herder discusses the influence of the poetry of 'neuerer Zeiten' (p. 406) and selects various works and movements for his consideration, we sense some pages later a negative force in the flower figure assigned to newer poetry. Observing a general movement away from older strength and concentration, a loss of depth, content, and value (p. 413 f.), Herder remarks t h a t 'Poetry' has become 'Literature' - a paradise of flowers fair enough but of dubious quality: "Die Poesie ist Litteratur: ein Paradies voll schöner Blumen und lachender Früchte; nur zeugt die schöne Farbe nicht von Güte derselben, noch weniger der süsse Geschmack" (p. 415). So, continuing directly from this passage, Herder speaks specifically of Italian Literature - a lovely flower, B U T ONLY a flower. Again, the flower appears as a negative appellation and not, as was the case with the literary accomplishments of Classical Greece, as a term of praise: "Die italienische Poesie wars, die sich zu erst formte. Ihre schöne Sprache, das Land, der Karakter der Nation, ihre Verfassung, die mithelfenden Künste trugen bei, daß sie bald und in blühender Gestalt erschien, eine liebliche Blume auf der Römer Grabe, aber nur Blume" (Ibid.). I t is in this context - in the very next sentence - t h a t Herder again uses an arboreal figure to contrast the strength of Dante as an influential, deep-rooted tree: " I m grossen Dante kämpfen noch alle seine Leidenschaften: sein Gedicht ist Umfang seines

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Herzens, seiner Seele, seiner Wissenschaft, seines besondern und öffentlichen Lebens: er ist noch ein Stamm aus dem alten Walde der Freiheit und Mönchswürkung" (Ibid.). Twice we have seen Herder employ this arboreal figure for Dante to characterize vividly his complexity, his organic power, and the depths from which he draws this power as compared with the fragile flower of Italian literature growing on a Roman tomb. Thus, as it characterizes literature as a product of organic growth, Herder's organistic imagery becomes virtually the cohesive agent, joining two sections of the prize essay together and contrasting strikingly the great might of a Dante with his lesser contemporaries. Herder's organistic imagery is also important when he discusses another aspect of 'newer' literature, namely contrasts in the histories of English and German literature, in his brief essay Von Ähnlichkeit der mittlem englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst. Because an essential point of the essay is the organic growth of English literature as against the relatively broken history of German poetry, his use of such imagery is quite appropriate. Thus, after considering the English devotion to older folk poetry as used, absorbed, and re-worked by various poets, Herder relies on seminal and arboreal figures as integral parts of his exposition: . . . aus Samenkörnern der Art ist der Britten beste lyrische, dramatische, mythische, epische Dichtkunst erwachsen . . . . (HWS ,IX, 527) Überall indeß sieht man, aus welchen rohen, kleinen, verachteten Samenkörnern der herrliche Wald ihrer Nationaldichtkunst worden? aus welchem Marke der Nation Spenser und Shakespear wuchsen, (p. 630)

Here it is significant to contrast the organistic figure of the mighty forest of English literature with t h a t of the pale flower (early Italian literature) on the Roman grave or with the arboreal symbol of Dante growing to great majesty alone. Now one particular area in this 'glorious forest' of the English 'Nationaldichtkunst', which Herder considers, is Shakespearian drama. I n his significant Shakespear essay, which is dominated by a mood of organicism, Herder impressively employs organistic imagery to describe the differences in the nature of Greek and English drama, so t h a t Shakespeare may no longer be judged by dogmatic, Neo-Classical rules. Early in this essay, observing t h a t along with the drama's essence external rules have been transmitted through tradition for which a later age may have had little-use, Herder uses the figure of the essential kernel within

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the husk in his summation - rather than an analytical proof - before proceeding with his central argument that the drama naturally had to develop differently in Greece than in the North: Es ist von Griechenland aus, daß man die Wörter Drama, Tragödie, Komödie geerbet; und so wie die Letternkultur des Menschlichen Geschlechts auf einem schmalen Striche des Erdbodens den Weg nur durch die Tradition genommen, so ist in dem Schoosse und mit der Sprache dieser, natürlich auch ein gewißer Regelnvorrath überall mitgekommen, der von der Lehre unzertrennlich schien. Da die Bildung eines Kindes doch unmöglich durch Vernunft geschehen kann und geschieht; sondern durch Ansehen, Eindruck, Göttlichkeit des Beispiels und der Gewohnheit: so sind ganze Nationen in Allem, was sie lernen, noch weit mehr Kinder. Der Kern würde ohne Sohlaube nicht wachsen, und sie werden auch nie den Kern ohne Schlaube bekommen, selbst wenn sie von dieser ganz keinen Gebrauch machen könnten. Es ist der Fall mit dem Griechischen und Nordischen Drama. In Griechenland entstand das Drama, wie es in Norden nicht entstehen konnte. In Griechenland wars, was es in Norden nicht seyn kann. In Norden ists also nicht und darf nicht seyn, was es in Griechenland gewesen. (HWS, V, 209 f.)

Several pages later Herder uses the figure of the nutshell to represent the externals of traditional drama which the English refused both because - as we have just observed-the Northern European drama had to differ from that of ancient Greece and also because this nation insisted on a drama native to its land and character: "Laßet uns also ein Volk setzen, das aus Umständen, die wir nicht untersuchen mögen, Lust hatte, sich statt nachzuäffen und mit der W'allnußschaale davon zu laufen, selbst lieber sein Drama zu erfinden . . ." (p. 217). In the very next paragraph, in one of the most significant passages in the essay, animal and vegetable figures organize and concentrate Herder's argument: To demand that a Greek drama grow naturally from Elizabethan circumstances is worse than demanding that a sheep bear lions. Then Herder makes his CENTRAL, ORGANISTIC point: To understand Shakespeare, we must know the soil from which he grew, the seed planted in it, and the crop that such soil can bear. Daß da, und zu der und vor der Zeit kein Griechenland war, wird kein pullulus Aristotelis läugnen, und hier und da also Griechisches Drama zu fodern, daß es natürlich (wir reden von keiner Nachäffung) entstehe, ist ärger, als daß ein Schaaf Löwen gebären solle. Es wird allein erste und letzte Frage: "wie ist der Boden? worauf ist er zubereitet? was ist in ihn gesäet? was sollte er tragen können?" (Ibid.)

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Later in this paragraph, at the very heart of the essay, Herder chooses the organistic figure of the plant to represent the product of the creative genius, Shakespeare. Metaphor - rather t h a n abstract analytical exposition - fuses, organizes, and vivifies Herder's arguments in this crucial passage as we are shown t h a t the creation of a genius, growing out of its own cultural soil, must be evaluated and interpreted as the individual, organic being it is rather than by abstract rule; that Shakespeare's essence, virtue, and completeness lie in the very fact t h a t his drama - as compared with t h a t of Sophocles - is a plant in a different soil: ". . . was für ein Thor, der nun vergliche und gar verdammte, weil dies Zweite nicht das Erste sey ? Und alle sein Wesen, Tugend und Vollkommenheit beruht ja darauf, daß es nicht das Erste ist: daß aus dem Boden der Zeit, eben die andre Pflanze erwuchs" (p. 218). Or, a few pages later, Herder again finds that he can best express what he considers to be the true nature and relationship of Shakespearean drama to its age by symbolizing it as a PLANT drawing sap and strength from a PARTICULAR SOIL, which has, therefore, an organic wholeness and rightness. To want to uproot this plant, i.e., to fail to comprehend and appreciate this organic relationship, is to want to destroy the very life of Shakespeare's creative work, transmuting, as it were, what had been vivid life to a mere pictorial reproduction: "Nimm dieser Pflanze ihren Boden, Saft und K r a f t , und pflanze sie in die L u f t : nimm diesem Menschen Ort, Zeit, individuelle Bestandheit - du hast ihm Othem und Seele genommen, und ist ein Bild vom Geschöpf" (p. 225). The organistic mood of Shakespear finds further expression when Herder, opposing abstract 'unities' demanded by Neo-Classicists and proclaiming the NATURALNESS of the participation of time and place in the whole organic spirit of a drama, so aptly uses the organistic figure of the husk around the essential seed before proceeding to indicate how this natural organization is found in Shakespeare's dramas: D a ß Zeit und Ort, wie H ü l s e n u m den K e r n i m m e r m i t gehen, sollte nicht einmal erinnert werden dörfon, u n d d o c h ist hierüber e b e n d a s h e l l e s t e Geschrei. F a n d Shakespear d e n Göttergriff eine ganze W e l t der Disparates t e n A u f t r i t t e zu Einer B e g e b e n h e i t z u erfaßen; natürlich gehörte es e b e n zur W a h r h e i t seiner B e g e b e n h e i t e n , a u c h Ort und Zeit jedesmal z u idealisiren, d a ß sie m i t zur T ä u s c h u n g beitrügen, (p. 222)

Several pages later, in the midst of so much organicism, while

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conducting his attack against those Neo-Classicist, mechanical critics limited to measuring dramatic time by their watches (he sarcastically calls such a critic a 'gutherziger Uhrsteller des Drama' [p. 227]), Herder even carries over organistic imagery to symbolize their limited perspective. If, as Herder had pointed out in his argument leading up to our quotation, the quality of time and place is relative to actions, passions, thoughts, and situations even in these critics' slow 'worm and tree life', then how much more relative is this quality in the poet's vivid, dramatic world: Und wenn das [i.e. this relativity of time and place in life itself] in deinem trägen, schläfrigen Wurm- und Baumleben möglich ist, wo dich ja Wurzeln gnug am todten Boden deiner Stelle festhalten, und jeder Kreis, den du schleppest, dir langsames Moment gnug ist, deinen Wurmgang auszumessen - nun denke dich Einen Augenblick in eine andre, eine Dichterwelt . . . . (p. 227 f.)

Shakespeare's characters are for Herder, as we might expect, so deeply and wholly alive because they are organic growths. Some pages earlier in this essay Herder uses seminal imagery as he notices in the Lear of the opening scenes all the 'seeds' which naturally will produce the 'harvest' of his dark future: "Lear, der rasche, warme, edelschwache Greis, wie er da vor seiner Landcharte steht, und Kronen wegschenkt und Länder zerreißt — in der Ersten Scene der Erscheinung trägt schon allen Saamen seiner Schicksale zur Ernte der dunkelsten Zukunft in sich" (p. 220). I n another seminal work published a few years later, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele, Herder, stressing how naturally and unreflectingly Shakespeare could create a character, uses botanical imagery to represent a Shakespearian character as an organic growth whose passion can be followed to the deepest soil from which it sprouts: "Ein Charakter, von Shakespear geschaffen, geführt, gehalten, ist oft ein ganzes Menschenleben in seinen verborgnen Quellen: ohne daß ers weiß, malt er die Leidenschaft bis auf die tiefsten Abgründe und Fasern, aus denen sie sproßte" (HW8, VIII, 183). Again, later in the same paragraph, Herder with another botanical figure speaks of Shakespear's ability to break through the 'soil' and probe the depths from which a person 'grows': ". . . wie tief ist nicht der barbarische gothische Shakespear durch Erdlagen und Erdschichten überall zu den Grundzügen gekommen, aus denen ein Mensch w ä c h s t . . ." (p. 183 f.).

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We have observed, then, how in his magnificent essay in praise of Shakespeare's dramatic genius, the young Herder uses imagery of the seed within its husk or pod to represent with metaphorical vividness t h a t the very essence of the drama must be differentiated from external rules and customs of different times and places in his biting attacks on the 'Enlightened' approach to creative genius. This same figure also aptly characterizes the natural organization of the drama as it is found in Shakespeare's works. Of particular significance is Herder's reliance on the symbol of the 'plant Shakespeare' - the organic poet and his work - growing so naturally in the soil of his own time and place: the young enthusiast makes striking his argument t h a t fully to understand Shakespeare, one must know the soil in which he grew, the seed planted in it, and the yield which can be expected. Furthermore, in both Shakespear and Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . Herder's organistic imagery characterizes how a Shakespearian character develops quite naturally from his seminal potentialities and how Shakespeare with his organic sensitivity could probe to those psychological depths from which man grows. And so, because Shakespeare in his drama is the great organic poet and genius, Herder most vividly conveys the sense of the great dramatist's life through the life and force of his own organistic figures. Leaving Herder's world of Shakespearian drama, we consider his metaphorical organicism when he writes about folk poetry. We recall, to begin with, t h a t he characterizes English folk poetry as a 'seed' from which more sophisticated English poetry grew. Herder, of course, wanted such organic nourishment for German poetry, and in his essay, Von Ähnlichkeit der mittlem englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst, he regrets the lack of such an organic tradition in Germany; here he characterizes such natural growth as a sprouting from a national tree: Aua altern Zeiten haben wir also durchaus keine lebende Dichterei, auf der unsre neuere Dichtkunst, wie Sprosse auf dem Stamm der Nation gewachsen wäre; dahingegen andre Nationen mit den Jahrhunderten fortgegangen sind, und sicli auf eigenem Grunde, aus Nationalprodukten, auf dem Glauben und Geschmack des Volks, aus Resten alter Zeiten gebildet haben. (HWS, I X , 528)

B u t since so much of the then contemporary German literature was not rooted 'auf eigenem Grunde' or 'auf dem Glauben und

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Geschmack des Volks', Herder, two pages later, does not speak of it in vegetable terms; instead, he symbolizes it as a bird of paradise, gay and soaring — but without footing on (solid) German soil: "Unsre klassische Litteratur ist Paradiesvogel, so bunt, so artig, ganz Flug, ganz Höhe und - ohne Fuß auf die deutsche Erde" (p. 530). We also find in the Preface to the Volkslieder - Zweiter Theil several significant passages in which Herder symbolizes the natural, wild, organic character of folk poetry quite aptly with the figure of the wild flower growing naturally in its own habitat. For example, Herder uses such botanical imagery - the wild flower contrasted with the cultivated species - in the following quotation: when he speaks caustically 'vom honetten Publikum' which took exception to some natural folk poems lacking in 'Korrektheit', he maintains that this misunderstanding occurred because much of the public misinterprets the true quality of folk poetry when it is transplanted out of its natural surroundings to which it - like a wild flower — organically belongs. Ich sah leider ! beim ersten Theil, welche armselige Gestalt die gute Feldblume mache, wenn sie nun im Gartenbeet des weissen Papiers dasteht und vom honetten Publikum durchaus als Schmuck- und Kaiserblume gefälligst beäuget, zerpflückt und zergliedert werden soll, wie gern und inständig sie dieses verbäte! (HWS, X X V , 329 f.)

On the following page Herder repeatedly symbolizes Spanish folk poetry as a fragrant flower (or a sweet fruit) blossoming unknown in a wilderness in spite of the interest of a Cronegk or the translations of a Kästner: Cronegk liebte die Sprache [i.e. Spanish] und holte aus ihr die Blume her, die in seinen besten Gedichten so melancholischsüß duftet. Das kleine Liedchen, das Kästner übersetzt hat, das Gil-Blas aus dem Thurm singen hörte: Ach, daß Jahre voll Vergnügen Schnellen Winden gleich verfliegen; Einen Augenblick voll Leid Macht der Schmerz zur Ewigkeit welchen Lilienduft verbreitets um sich ! und so sind Haine von Blumen und süssen Früchten, die verkannt und in Oede dort blühen - . (Ibid., p. 331)

And finally, suggesting only a modest position for the 'Volkslied',

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Herder contrasts the poor little flower with more formal and finished poetic products: Mich dünkt, es ist weder Weisheit noch Kunst, Materialen für gebildete Werke, gebrochnes Metall, wie es aus dem Schoos der grossen Mutter kommt, für geprägte klaßische Münze, oder die arme Feld- und Waldblume für die Krone ansehen zu wollen, damit sich König Salomo oder ein lyrischer Kunstrichter, der etwa mehr als er ist, krönet, (p. 331 f.)

To summarize, then, the young Herder repeatedly uses organistic imagery in several important essays in his discussion of literary works of various genres, historical periods, and creative writers and poets. Though zoological figures do occur, botanical imagery prevails. Herder does, to be sure, use zoological figuration, for example, to characterize early Christian vernacular poetry as springing from the womb of the Latin-Christian tradition or to make vivid with the figure of a sheep bearing lions his contention that it is equally impossible to expect Greek drama to born in Elizabethan England. Herder's characterization of literature as having organic life through his use of botanical imagery, on the other hand, is particularly keen when he writes of Greek art and comedy growing from a seed planted by earlier generations or as he portrays the growth of English literature from mere seeds to a glorious forest of national literature. Then too, flower and blossom imagery can appear with several meanings; as a superlative of greatness, as a symbol for folk poetry, or to represent the literary product as the natural growth of an age; but the flower is also for Herder a figure to express a lesser category when writing about Roman poetry and serves as a criticism of the quality of some early Italian poetry. Dante, by contrast, is a mighty tree because of his great proportions and because he provides an organic basis for Milton's poetry. Herder also portrays aesthetic taste and poetry as being plants which remained foreign, never rooting in Rome's cultural soil. Above all, Shakespear is particularly permeated by an organistic atmosphere as Herder, for example, symbolizes the great dramatist and his work as a plant growing naturally in England's cultural soil or represents the character Lear as containing from the first all those seeds which will organically ripen into the harvest of his downfall. Indeed, we find that Thomas Carlyle in 1827 when reviewing what he called 'new criticism' in Germany, noticed the emphasis on the 'living, growing'

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nature of poetry: the Englishman commenting on " . . . K a n t , Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Richter, and the Schlegels, remarked penetratingly t h a t a common element in these various systems was the stress on poetry as a living, growing whole . . . ," 3

C. A E S T H E T I C CRITICISM

I n the preceding section we have observed how the young Herder writes in organistic terms of organic literature which has true life in it becaused it is rooted in a natural soil. When Herder deals with critics of the arts - in particular literature - he readily measures them, too, by his organic tenets. He employs botanical imagery in his IV. Wäldchen when discussing certain French aestheticians' writings on 'das dunkle Gefühl' 'des Schönen' which they call 'taste' (HWS, IV, 149). He writes of the wholeness t h a t one should expect in such inquiries into 'taste', namely taste itself. This wholeness, a rapid presentation of evidence in the entirety of an evaluation without analytical distinctions he characterizes as flourishing meadows ready to be enjoyed and harvested, in contrast to already mowed fields: M a n erwarte sich bei allen solchen U n t e r s u c h u n g e n über d e n Geschmack nichts als selbst Geschmack, eine schnelle E v i d e n z i m Ganzen eines Urtheils, o h n e g e n a u e U n t e r s c h e i d u n g - schöne A u e n voll B l u m e n u n d F r ü c h t e , die z u s a m m e l n , zu genießen, z u e r n t e n sind; n i c h t aber s c h o n g e m ä h e t e E r n t e n und B l u m e n h a u f e n . (Ibid.)

Several pages later, in writing of Home's deficient sense of organization, Herder observes how the Scottish critic offers literary examples detached from context, torn away from their root and vivifying sap: W a s sind ausgerißene B e i s p i e l e ? m a t t e , v e r w e l k t e B l u m e n , die vielleicht n o c h Spuren der e h e m a l i g e n R o t h e u n d Grüne u n d Schönheit zeigen m ö g e n , aber erbleicht, verwelkt, sterbend: d e n n sie sind a u s ihrer E r d e , v o n ihrer Wurzel, a u s ihren S ä f t e n gerißen und liegen einzeln da. (p. 152)

This passage is a good illustration of how Herder organizes a significant idea with botanical imagery instead of making an analytic 3 Meyer H . A b r a m s , The Mirror 1953), p. 216.

and the Lamp

(Oxford U n i v e r s i t y Press,

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statement; indeed, the figures are not just casual comparisons but are carried through the entire passage, acquiring a symbolic character. When at the outset of his journey through the I. Wäldchen Herder turns to those critics in his own land who with their smallmindedness can praise Lessing only at Winckelmann's expense, his charge is made vivid by its use of organistic metaphors. These critics are characterized as rodents bent on ravaging the few remaining fields of flourishing genius: Die Kunatrichter unsrer Zeit, ein Heerde der kleinen Geschöpfe, die Apollo Smintheus jetzt scheint auf unser liebes Vaterland gebannet zu haben, um auoh die wenigen Blumen- und Fruchtreichen Auen zu verwüsten, die noch hie und da als Ländereien des Genies übrig geblieben - diese Boten Apollo haben meistens Laokoon nicht besser zu loben gewußt, als auf Winkelmanns Kosten; denn welch ein Lob fließt von den Lippen großer Leute wohl glatter herunter, als das auf Kosten eines Dritten? (HWS, III,

7) On the other hand, writing Ueber Thomas Abbts Schriften, Herder employs organistic imagery in a more positive context to characterize latent qualities in this critic's work. Though he admits in the lines preceding our quotation that Abbt's writings are not without their 'Schwächen und Fehler' (HWS, II, 264), Herder still sees in his countryman's efforts potentialities, 'seeds 'which could be made to grow into great 'trees', or 'barren trees' which could become green if touched by a sympathetic 'prophet'. Indeed, Herder feels he should produce a critical commentary on Abbt's works which would show " . . . wo hier Samenkörner liegen, die zu den größten Bäumen erzogen werden können; und dort dürre Bäume, stehen, die zu grünen anfangen müssen, wenn sich, nach jener Fabel von Mahomed, ein Prophet an dieselbe lehnt . . ." (p. 265). Significantly, a few lines later the young Herder admits, "Ich rede durch Bilder . . . " (Ibid.). Of special interest is Herder's striking use of a seminal figure in the IV. Wäldchen. When discussing Riedel's definition of the term 'Malerei', Herder asks .". . . ist das der engste Grundkeim, der die ganze Frucht in sich fasset: ist das die kürzste Metaphysische Formel, um Malerei im deutlichsten vollständigsten Begriffe zu geben. . .?" (HWS, IV, 134) Herder is here applying an ORGANIC test to the idea of distinct ('deutlich') definition, a chief weapon of Reason and crux of Ration-

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alism. In asking that definition be like the seed which includes all future fruit, Herder applies his new organistic mind to the very essence of Rationalism, demonstrating a significant juncture of two cultural modes. In this brief section we have observed how organistic imagery occurs within the young Herder's writings on aesthetic criticism. Although he is interesting when he stresses the need for interpreting literary examples organically in their contextual soil or when he enthusiastically symbolizes the potentialities in Abbt's writings with seminal and arboreal imagery, particularly noteworthy is his choice of an ORGANIC assessment for a distinct definition: as a keystone of Rationalism is here examined by the young Herder's organistic mind - seen in his seminal imagery - the confluence of two world views is exhibited.

II

MANKIND'S HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Our method so far in this study has been to provide important excerpts on a given topic from a variety of the young Herder's significant writings to illustrate t h a t the similarities and parallels in his use of organistic imagery are an important, organizing factor in his thought rather t h a n being only occasional, isolated stylistic elements. Here, however, we shall follow Herder through Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit to observe his organistic figuration in a continuous, historical account. I n the very first paragraph of this work we find an organistic, seminal figure to characterize the first human couple, and there follows directly a plant and seed image as an analogy to man's primitive development: Man nähert sich . . . dem glücklichen Klima, wo Ein Menschenpaar unter den mildesten Einflüßen der schaffenden Vorsehung . . . den Faden anspann, der sich nachher mit solchen Wirrungen weit und lang fortgezogen: wo also auch alle erste Zufälle für Anstalten einer Mütterlichen Vorsehung gelten können, einen zarten Doppelkeim des ganzen Geschlechts mit alle der Wahl und Vorsicht zu entwickeln, die wir immer dem Schöpfer einer so edeln Gattung und seinem Blick auf Jahrtausend und Ewigkeit hinaus zutrauen müßen. Natürlich, daß diese erste Entwicklungen so simpel, zart und wunderbar waren, wie wir sie in allen Hervorbringungen der Natur sehen. Der Keim fällt in die Erde und erstirbt: der Embryon wird im Verborgnen gebildet . . . und tritt ganz gebildet hervor . . . . (HWS, V, 477 f.)

From the very beginnings Herder sees an organic process a t work. Moreover, as he discusses mankind's slow rooting in a patriarchal stage, the organistic figure shifts appropriately from a seminal to an arboreal one to characterize the patriarchal order which organically nurtured tree-like primitive mankind: . . . gehörte nicht auch allein jenes erste, stille, ewige Baum- und Patriarchenleben dazu, um die Menschheit in ersten Neigungen, Sitten und Einrichtung-

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en zu wurzeln und zu gründen? (Ibid., p. 478 f.) . . . m i t frohem Sehauer stehe ich dort vor der heiligen Ceder eines Stammvaters der Welt! Ringsum schon hundert junge blühende Bäume, ein schöner Wald der Nachwelt und Verewigung ! aber siehe ! die alte Ceder blüht noch fort, hat ihre Wurzeln weit umher und trägt den ganzen jungen Wald mit Saft und Kraft aus der Wurzel, (p. 479)

Or, again, he characterizes primitive man as plant-like while speaking of his environment as a God-chosen 'garden' a n d comparing the action of man's inner feeling to t h a t of tree sap: '. . . welch ein erwählter Garten Gottes zur Erziehung der ersten, zartesten Menschengewächse! Siehe diesen Mann voll Kraft u n d Gefühl Gottes, ahev so innig u n d ruhig fühlend, als hier der S a f t im Baume t r e i b t . . .' (p. 480). Herder also relies heavily on a HUMAN-organistic figure, namely the ages of man, in his discussion of primitive mankind. Two comments, however, regarding Herder's use of the image must be made. First, as we have seen, Herder has used this imagery several years earlier in t h e section of his Fragmente entitled "Von den Lebensaltern einer Sprache" ( H W S , I, 151-55) in which he characterizes the various stages of development in man's linguistic idiom as language in its 'Kindheit', 'jugendliche[s] Sprachalter', männliche[s] Alter', and its 'hohe[s] Alter'. And second, as Clark indicates, Herder adopted this figure for t h e historical ages of man f r o m Isaak Iselin 's Geschichte der Menschheit, 1768, with the polemical purpose in mind of discrediting t h e Swiss historian's 'enlightened' view of history: In his description of the ages of history Iselin used Rousseau's analogy with the ages of the individual, as Herder had used it in the first edition of his Fragments. (Clark, p. 190) The Rousseauistic scheme of the ages of man held polemic possibilities too good to neglect, for Iselin had not mentioned one age of man - senility, (p. 191; cf. also pp. 188-93)

For, as we shall see in t h e course of this study, if Rome is characterized with the figure of manhood, then there is the clear implication of greatly advanced years, yes, senility, for t h e eighteenth century. Herder reduces, as Clark expresses it, 'the RousseauIselin scheme of the ages of man to complete absurdity' (p. 193). Yet, for Herder, as we hope to illustrate in this section, the organistic image of the ages of man is not purely a polemical metaphor but rather together with the various images from the entire plant realm, reveals Herder's understanding of an organic process through-

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out all of history. In the following passage, when praising the patriarchal stage in mankind's development as a 'golden age', Herder characterizes it with the figure of childhood, saying, " . . . ewig wird Patriarchengegend und Patriarchenzelt das goldne Zeitalter der Kindlichen Menschheit bleiben" (Auch eine Philosophie . . ., HWS, V, 481). Moreover, Herder continues to use BOTH human ('Lebensalter') and plant figuration in his discussion of man's history through the period of ancient Roman power. To explain, for example, how differently from the enlightened rationalist primitive man gained knowledge, Herder proceeds to draw an analogy to the childhood of individual man and at the same time uses seminal figuration to underscore his conception of the organic process of history. Note in this exposition how Herder seems dissatisfied with inorganic terms ('Grundsäule', 'Grundsteine') and feels, instead, the need for organistic figures ('Keim', 'Boden Gottes') as though such images alone are strong and whole enough to carry his thought: Gibts nicht in jedem Menschenleben ein Alter, wo wir durch trockne und kalte Vernunft nichts, aber durch Neigung, Bildung, nach Autorität Alles lernen? . . . Grundsäulen alles deßen, was später über sie gebaut werden soll, oder vielmehr schon ganz und gar Keime, aus denen sich alles Spätere und Schwächere . . . entwickelt . . . . Und siehe, was jedem einzelnen Menschen in seiner Kindheit unumgänglich noth ist: dem ganzen Menschengeschlecht in seiner Kindheit gewiß nicht weniger. Was du Despotismus in seinem zartesten Keime nennest, und eigentlich nur Vaterautorität war, Haus und Hütte zu regieren . . . wie gut! fürs ganze Geschlecht wie nützlich ! da wurden Grundsteine gelegt . . . sie liegen noch ! und glücklich, da alles auf ihnen ruht. Morgenland, du hiezu recht auserwählter Boden Gottes 1 (p. 482 f.)

As Herder continues his interpretation of history and arrives at mankind's transitional stage from patriarchal society to organized Egyptian culture, he continues to employ the image of the ages of man as the unifying, organizing element in his exposition, repeatedly characterizing this development as the growth from childhood to boyhood: . . . die Neigungen, die dort [i.e., in patriarchal society] bios väterlich, Kindlich, Schäfermäßig, Patriarchalisch gewesen waren, wurden hier [i.e., in ancient Egypt] bürgerlich, dörflich, städtisch. Das Kind war dem Flügelkleide entwachsen: der Knabe saß auf der Schulbank und lernte Ordnung, Fleiß, Bürgersitten, (p. 488)

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Indeed, Herder immediately proceeds both to make clear that his analogy to the ages of man is essential to his argument - it is no idle 'game' - and to discuss the similarities and differences in the two ages: Eine genaue Vergleichung des Morgenländischen und Ägyptischen Geistes müste zeigen, daß meine Analogie von Menschlichen Lebensaltern hergenommen, nicht Spiel sey. Offenbar war allem, was beide Alter auch gemeinschaftlich hatten, der Himmlische Anstrich genommen, und es mit Erdehaltung und Ackerleim versetzt: Ägyptens Känntniße waren nicht mehr Väterliche Orakelsprüche der Gottheit, sondern schon Gesetze, Politische Regeln der Sicherheit, und der Rest von jenen ward blos als heiliges Bild an die Tafel gemahlt, daß es nicht unterginge, daß der Knabe davor stehen, entwickeln und Weisheit lernen sollte. Ägyptens Neigungen nicht mehr so Kindeszart als die in O r i e n t . . . . (Ibid.)

As Herder goes on directly to discuss the significant changes in family and social life while pointing out that certain cultural elements were weakened or lost in the transition, he employs again the organistic figure of the ages of man to give emphasis and vividness to his argument: . . . das Familiengefühl schwächte sich, und ward dafür Sorge für dieselbe, Stand, Künstlertalent, das sich mit dem Stande, wie Haus und Acker forterbte. . . . Die freie Aue Gottes voll Heerden, ein Acker voll Dörfer und Städte: das Kind, was Milch und Honig aß, ein Knabe, der über seine Pflichten mit Kuchen belohnt wurde . . . . (Ibid.)

Or again, on the very next page, Herder employs these two ages of man to vivify his point that 'providential ways' (i.e., as seen in the plenitude or lack of certain natural resources) educated man in his new surroundings. Indeed, by this time Herder no longer has to say each time 'the child of the Orient' or 'the boy of Egypt': through repeated use the figures have acquired enough symbolic significance, that the reader immediately understands to which historical periods Herder is referring: "Zum Erstaunen sind sie, die leichten Wege der Vorsehung: sie, die das Kind durch Religion lockte und erzog, entwickelte den Knaben durch nichts als Bedürfniße und das liebe Muß der Schule" (p. 489). Herder also employs this figuration of human 'Lebensalter' to concentrate both his explanation of why in each stage of development man's customs and mores frequently clashed with those of a preceding period and also his rejection of that approach to

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history which measured and even rejected one age by the standards of another. Thus in the following significant passage the stages of childhood, boyhood, and youth of humanity become the essential logic of Herder's argument that the various early periods of man's history had to differ from each other just as the human organism in different ages develops and changes its behavior and tastes: Dem Morgenländer, wie eckelt ihm noch jetzt Ackerbau, Städteleben, Sklaverei in Kunstwerkstäten? wie wenig Anfänge h a t er noch nach J a h r t a u s e n d e n in alle dem gemacht: er lebt und webt als ein freies Thier des Feldes. Der Ägypter im Gegentheil, wie h a ß t e und eckelte er den Viehhirten, m i t allem was ihm anklebte ! eben wie sich nachher der feinere Grieche wieder über den lastbaren Ägypter erhob - es hieß nichts, als dem K n a b e n eckelte das Kind in seinen Windeln, der Jüngling h a ß t e den Schulkerker des K n a b e n ; im Ganzen aber gehörten alle drei auf- und nacheinander. Der Ägypter ohne Morgenländischen Kindesunterricht wäre nicht Ägypter, der Grieche ohne Ägyptischen Schulfleiß nicht Grieche - eben ihr H a ß zeigt Entwickelung, Fortgyang, Stufen der Leiter! (p. 488 f.)

Herder uses his organistic imagery to argue against an evaluation of Egyptian cultural achievements by standards based upon ancient Greek culture: in the following instance, for example, Herder insists upon viewing the Egyptian 'Kultur des Bodens' (p. 489) 'bios auf seiner Stelle' (p. 490) or run the risk of misinterpreting it: Auch hier wieder Thorheit, eine einzige Ägyptische Tugend aus dem Lande» der Zeit und dem Knabenalter des Menschlichen Geistes herauszureißen, und mit dem Maasstabe einer andern Zeit zu meßen ! Konnte, wie gezeigt, sich schon der Grieche so sehr a m Ägypter irren, und der Morgenländer den Ägypter haßen: so d ü n k t mich, sollts doch erster Gedanke seyn, ihn blos auf seiner Stelle zu sehen, oder m a n sieht, zumal aus Europa her, die verzogenste Fratze. Die Entwicklung geschah aus Orient und der Kindheit herüber - natürlich muste also noch immer Religion, Furcht, Autorität, Despotismus das Vehikulum der Bildung werden: denn auch mit dem K n a b e n von sieben J a h r e n läßt sich noch nicht, wie mit Greis und Manne vernünfteln. (p. 489 f.)

A few lines later in this paragraph Herder carries the organistic imagery of the ages of man to its next level, the 'Jüngling' öf Classical Greece, to emphasize in yet another crucial passage his contention that Egyptian cultural conditions had to differ from those of Classical Antiquity by the very nature of the organic growth and development of mankind, just as the 'Knabe' matures

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to 'Jüngling'. Again, with this figure Herder is sounding a warning against using one period t o measure another: Du kannst so viel Galle du willt, über den Ägyptischen Aberglauben und das Pfaffenthum ausschütten, als z.B. jener liebenswürdige Plato Europens, der nur alles zu sehr nach Griechischem Urbilde modeln will, gethan hat - alles wahr ! alles gut, wenn das Ägyptenthum für dein Land, und deine Zeit seyn sollte. Der Rock des Knaben ist allerdings für den Riesen zu kurz ! und dem Jünglinge bei der Braut der Schulkerker aneekelnd . . . . (p. 490)

H e also immediately proceeds to rebuke his own age for expecting t h e earlier boyhood of mankind t o fit t h e 'robe' of t h e E n l i g h t e n m e n t and indirectly characterizes his self-satisfied era with t h e image of old-age as he points out t h a t t h e E g y p t i a n ' K n a b e ' would be transformed into an 'elenden Greisknaben' b y rationalistic abstractions: . . . aber siehe ! dein Talar ist für jenen [Knaben] wieder zu lang, und siehst du nicht, wenn du etwas Ägyptischen Geist kennest, wie deine Bürgerliche Klugheit, Philosophischer Deismus, leichte Tändelei, Umlauf in alle Welt, Toleranz, Artigkeit, Völkerrecht und wie der Kram weiter heiße, den Knaben wieder zum elenden Greisknaben würde gemacht haben ! (Ibid.)

Indeed, Herder uses the same organistic figure of boyhood t o protest even more strongly against those who would destroy t h e significance of E g y p t i a n culture b y considering it a p a r t f r o m its time, place, a n d mankind's state of development " . . . w a r u m willt du ihn [i.e., den K n a b e n ] von seiner Stelle, aus seinem Lebensalter rücken - den armen K n a b e n t ö d t e n ? " (p. 491). Progressing with his figure of the ages of man, Herder characterizes both E g y p t and another forerunner of and influence on ancient Greece, Phoenicia, as 'Zwillinge Einer Mutter des Morgenlands', though he makes it clear t h a t t h e y are not identical. A few lines later, reminding us t h a t he is using what he calls an 'Allegorie', he speaks of Phoenicia as 'der erwachsnere K n a b e ' who spread cultural elements along with its t r a d e : Ägypter und Phönicier waren also bei allem Kontraste der Denkart, Zwillinge Einer Mutter des Morgenlands, die nachher gemeinschaftlich Griechenland und so die Welt weiter hinaus bildeten. Also beide Werkzeuge der Fortleitung in den Händen des Schicksals, und wenn ich in der Allegorie bleiben darf, der Phönicier, der erwachsnere Knabe, der umher lief, und die Reste der uralten Weisheit und Geschicklichkeit mit leichterer Münze auf Märkte und Gaßen brachte. (Ibid., p. 494)

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A sentence later, to conclude this paragraph and to prepare the reader for what follows, Herder employs a 'Lebensalter' figure as a structural element, exclaiming: "Und nun der schöne Griechische Jüngling" (Ibid.). Herder, now having reached another plateau in his study of mankind's historical development, the golden age of Classical Greece, continues to avail himself of this same imagery, while in the following significant passage - an entire paragraph dominated by an organistic atmosphere - he also uses such figures as the fertile womb and the blossoming flower which he links in his vivid, on-rushing paean of ancient Greece as being both a high point in itself and an organic basis for later historical activity and hopes. Interestingly enough he also acclaims the organic unity of 'Geist und Körper' of the Greek 'Jüngling' as a single, blossoming flower, i.e., he employs one image of organicism to represent another. To vivify for us the wonder and power of the youth of our history in ancient Greece, Herder reminds us of the wonder, power, and promise of our own, personal youth: Wenn wir uns vor allem der Jünglingszeit mit Lust und Freude erinnern, die unsre Kräfte und Glieder bis zur Blüthe des Lebens ausgebildet: unsre Fähigkeiten bis zur angenehmen Schwatzhaftigkeit und Freundschaft entwickelt: alle Neigungen auf Freiheit und Liebe, Lust und Freude gestimmt, und alle nun im ersten süßen Tone - wie wir die Jahre fürs güldne Alter und für ein Elysium, unsrer Erinnerung halten, (denn wer erinnert sich seiner unentwickelten Kindheit?) die am glänzendsten ins Auge fallen, eben im Aufbrechen der Blüthe, alle unsre künftige Würksamkeit und Hofnungen im Schoose tragend - in der Geschichte der Menschheit wird Griechenland ewig der Platz bleiben, wo sie ihre schönste Jugend und Brautblüthe verlebt hat. Der Knabe ist Hütte und Schule entwachsen und steht da - edler Jüngling mit schönen gesalbten Gliedern, Liebling aller Grazien, und Liebhaber aller Musen, Sieger in Olympia und all' anderm Spiele, Geist und Körper zusammen nur Eine blühende Blume! (p. 494 f.)

The now familiar figures of the childhood and boyhood of man in both the preceding paragraph and in the passage which directly follows it, looking back as they do to earlier stages of history, provide a sense of continuity and organic progression to Herder's thought and exposition. Herder goes on, then, to discuss how the 'Jüngling' of mankind - Greece - chose what was best suited for his stage of growth from the cultures around it, and Herder symbolizes t h a t cultural material which was selected as most essential with the image of the blossom:

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Die Orakelsprüche der Kindheit und Lehrbilder der mühsamen Schule waren jetzt beinahe vergeßen; der Jüngling entwickelte sich aber daraus alles, was er zu Jugendweisheit und Tugend, zu Oesang und Freude, Lust und Leben brauchte. Die groben Arbeitkünste verachtete er, wie die blos Barbarische Pracht, und das zu einfache Hirtenleben; aber von allem brach er die Blüthe einer neuen schönen Natur, (p. 495)

Herder now employs organistic imagery from the plant realm with consistency and greater frequency, for after having pointed out t h a t the Greek youth plucked a blossom - the best by-products of earlier cultures - he uses a seminal figure to represent the organic nature of the process by which Greece developed what it borrowed from elsewhere into its own achievements. Continuing directly from the preceding passage he writes: Handwerkerei ward durch ihn [i.e., "Jüngling"] schöne Kunst: der dienstbare Landbau, freie Bürgerzunft, schwere Bedeutungsfülle des strengen Ägyptens, leichte schöne Griechische Liebhaberei in aller Art. Nun welche neue schöne Klaße von Neigungen und Fähigkeiten, von denen die frühere Zeit nichts wüste, zu denen sie aber Keim gab. (Ibid.)

Some three pages later Herder again uses a seminal image to indicate t h a t the culture of ancient Greece received some of its germinating power from abroad: "Daß Griechenland Samenkörner der Kultur, Sprache, Künste und Wißenschaften anders woher, erhalten, ist, dünkt mich, unläugbar, und es kann bei einigen, Bildhauerei, Baukunst, Mythologie, Litteratur offenbar gezeigt werden" (p. 498). In the course of these pages Herder several times uses the blossom to symbolize the specific achievements of Classical Greece and the whole period itself as he is about to take leave of it and turn his attention to ancient Rome: Die Blüthe brach hervor: holdes Phänomenon der Natur ! heißt "Griechische Freiheitl" (p. 495 f.) . . . und siehe ! die neue schöne Blüthe brach hervor "Griechische Leichtigkeit, Milde, und Landesfreundschaft." (p. 496) . . . Griechenland! Urbild und Vorbild aller Schöne, Grazie und Einfalt! Jugend blüthe des Menschlichen Geschlechts - o hätte sie ewig dauren können ! (p. 498)

Herder has thus used the image of the youth of mankind to characterize ancient Greece as another link in the organic historical development of mankind. His seminal figures also give emphasis to this feeling of organic growth. For the glory of ancient Greece the blossom is a recurring metaphor which Herder does not employ to praise the other realm of Classical Antiquity, Rome.

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Advancing to ancient Roman civilization, Herder appropriately introduces the figure of the MANHOOD of humanity's 'Lebensalter': " E s kam das Mannesalter Menschlicher Kräfte und Bestrebungen die Römer" (p. 499). On the next page after enumerating various aspects of ancient Roman civilization, Herder again employs this organistic figure to organize and sum up his account. Herder succinctly indicates t h a t Rome made use of the 'Jüngling', Greece, but also stands proudly in its own manhood. "Gnug hier stand der Mann, der des Jünglings genoß und brauchte, für sich aber nur Wunder der Tapferkeit und Männlichkeit thun wollte; mit Kopf, Herz und Armen!" (p. 500) U p to this point in his presentation Herder has made extensive use of 'Lebensalter' imagery to characterize and organize vividly what he sees as organic development and growth in history. The repetition of these figures (often without further reference to the specific historical period which they represent) has given them a symbolic significance, while also giving to Herder's exposition a sense of unity and progression. However, later on the same page as the preceding quotation, Herder begins to employ another organistic figure, the tree of history, which - as we shall see also plays a central and organizing role in this treatise. In the course of his discussion of the structure and power of ancient Roman civilization, its utilization and modification of previous cultures (especially t h a t of the ancient Greeks), Herder suddenly speaks of the growth and size of a T R E E , without any explanation of the figure or further use of it in the immediate context: "Der Stamm des Baums zu seiner größern Höhe erwachsen, strebte, Völker und Nationen unter seinen Schatten zu nehmen, in Zweige" (Ibid.). Herder seems to expect the reader to understand intuitively this image, t h a t it symbolizes all of history; only some pages later will he pick up this figure again, make it the organizing factor in his presentation, and through its frequent use let its further meanings become clear. Herder now pauses in his dicussion of mankind's historical development to reflect on the significance of what he has said so far before proceeding in P a r t I I of the treatise with the Fall of Rome. I n these pages, as Herder stresses his opposition to a static view of history, the very logic of his argument for recognizing organic historical growth is found in his imagery of the

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botanical life-cycle. 1 J u s t this pattern of germination, growth, blossoming, and withering, characterizes t h a t quality of the passage of historical time which makes each historical age unique. This figure, as Roy Pascal suggests, expresses "Herder's biological conception of society . . . " wherein the " . . . purpose of each culture is to fulfill its own potentialities [as] it grows and dies like a plant". 2 Herder argues: Daß kein Volk lange geblieben und bleiben konnte, was es war, daß Jedes, wie jede Kunst und Wißenschaft, und was in der Welt nicht? seine Periode des Wachsthums, der Blüthe und der Abnahme gehabt; daß . . . in der Welt keine zwei Augenblicke dieselben sind . . . . (Auch eine Philosophie . . ., HWS, V, 604)

(We have already noted a similar figure when Herder in his Fragmente characterizes the 'Lebensalter einer Sprache' with imagery of plant growth from seed to decay [HWS, I, 152].) By comparison, several pages later Herder again uses the figure of plant growth and decay in his criticism of those historians who see only purposelessness in organic growth and death throughout history, a planless blowing about of the leaves of fate: Andre [i.e., historians] . . . sahen Laster und Tugenden, wie Klimaten, wechseln, Vollkommenheiten, wie einen Frühling von Blättern entstehen und untergehen, Menschliche Sitten und Neigungen, wie Blätter des Schicksals fliegen, sich umschlagen - kein Plan! kein Fortgang! . . . . (p. 511)

Herder's use of organistic imagery to stress his own view of historical development WITH a purpose, on the other hand, will both be noted below when in considering his discussion of the causes of the Reformation, and on the very next pages of this treatise as he asks: "Sollte es nicht offenbaren Fortgang und Entwicklung aber in einem höhern Sinne geben, als mans gewähnet h a t ? " (p. 512) and answers with what he will call ". . . die Analogie in der Natur, das redende Vorbild Gottes in allen Werken! . . . " (p. 512f.). In1

See F. M. Barnard, Herder's Social and Political Thought. From Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford, 1965), esp. pp. 31-87. In his presentation of 'Herder's Conceptual Framework' before turning to the subject announced in the title of his book, Barnard examines, among other topics, 'Organism* and the 'Problem of Continuity' particularly in Herder's mature work, emphasizing the Herderian belief in a 'dynamic whole' in contrast to a 'static' conception (p. 46). 2 Roy Pascal, The German Sturm und Drang (New York, 1953), p. 224.

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deed, Herder in the following significant passage avails himself of both basic images, the tree and the ages of man, to emphasize his understanding of the organic development and apparent progress in history in which each age contains " . . . den Mittelpunkt seiner Glückseligkeit in sich selbst!" while also helping form the basis for succeeding generations: . . . siehest du jenen wachsenden Baum! jenen emporstrebenden Menschen! er muß durch verschiedne Lebensalter hindurch ! alle offenbar im Fortgange! ein Streben auf einander in Kontinuität! Zwischen jedem sind scheinbare Ruheplätze, Revolutionen! Veränderungen! und dennoch hat. jedes den Mittelpunkt seiner Glückseligkeit in sich selbst! Der Jüngling ist nicht glücklicher als das unschuldige, zufriedne Kind: noch der ruhige Greis unglücklicher, als der heftigstrebende Mann . . . . Niemand ist in seinem Alter allein, er bauet auf das Vorige, dies wird nichts als Grundlage der Zukunft, will nichts als solche seyn - so spricht die Analogie in der Natur, das redende Vorbild Gottes in allen Werken! offenbar so im Menschengeschlechtes (Ibid.)

The Fall of Rome is Herder's first topic of interest at the outset of the second part of this treatise as he resumes his consideration of mankind's history. I n the very first paragraph he uses arboreal imagery, b u t whereas on p. 500 of this work the tree symbolizes all of history, here Herder shifts its meaning to represent strictly the great height and breadth of Roman imperial power: Völker und Erdtheile hatten unter dem Baume gewohnt, und nun, da die Stimme der heiligen Wächter rief: "Haut ihn ab !" - welch eine große Leere! wie ein Riß im Faden der Weltbegebenheiten ! Nichts minder, als eine neue Welt war nöthig, den Riß zu heilen, (p. 513 f.)

On the following page, however, Herder reverts to the imagery of the ages of man, carrying it to a final, step, the corpse of Roman civilization, while pointing out t h a t a 'new man' would be born into the new world called for in the preceding quotation: Die schönen Römischen Gesetze und Känntniße konnten nicht Kräfte ersetzen, die verschwunden waren, Nerven wiederherstellen, die keinen Lebensgeist fühlten, Triebfedern regen, die da lagen - also Tod! ein abgematteter, im Blute liegender Leichnam - da ward in Norden neuer Mensch gebohren. (p. 515)

B u t continuing directly from this passage, Herder shifts to another image, symbolizing the new man born in Northern Europe not as branches taken from the old Roman tree but as those new sprouts in human history - the Germanic and Slavic tribes migrating

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into Roman territories - which were to bear a harvest in the future: Unter frischem Himmel, in der Wüste und Wilde, wo es niemand vermuthete, reifte ein Frühling starker, nahrhafter Gewächse, die in die schönern, südlichem Länder - jetzt traurigleere Äcker! - verpflanzt neue Natur annehmen, große Ernte fürs Weltschicksal geben sollten ! (Ibid.)

The change of figures is not so abrupt as it might at first seem, for on the previous page Herder has pointed out t h a t because of the raw climate, northern man had to differ organically from his oriental and southern predecessor who is indirectly characterized as a plant, i.e., as being nurtured in a hothouse: Herder says t h a t " . . . eben die schwerem Bedürfniße, und die Nordluft die Menschen aber mehr härtete, als sie im warmen Aromatischen Treibhause Osts und Süds gehärtet werden konnten . . ." (p. 514). Herder shifts his imagery from botanical, arboreal, seminal, or human figures to figures of fermentation when he proceeds to discuss the period between Rome's collapse and the Renaissance, and such metaphoric representation is, indeed, most appropriate for a period known for its turmoil and for its development of political and cultural concepts which later were to gain expression in the Renaissance. After mentioning how the invading tribes brought along their own customs and natural ways of thought and behavior into Roman territories, Herder is thrilled at how " . . . das alles nun zusammen gährte - welch ein Eräugniß !" (p. 515). Or, on the following page, Herder suggests t h a t his readers consider " . . . was die Menschheit in den Jahrhunderten dieser Gährung für Erholungsfrist und Kräfteübung . . . bekam . . ." (p. 516), and a few lines later he characterizes this period as "Zeit der Gährung ..." (Ibid.). Herder continues to employ organistic imagery as he analyzes Christianity's 'leavening' effects on this age of 'fermentation'. Iselin's Geschichte der Menschheit had characterized Christianity as a 'yeast' (Cf. Clark, p. 190 f.), and it may well be that Herder - just as he had with the figure of the ages of man - is again borrowing from the 'enlightened' Swiss historian. Herder writes of the new organic mixture: Indeß hatte die Vorsehung für gut befunden, zu dieser neuen Gährung Nordsüdlicher Säfte noch ein neues Ferment zu bereiten und zu zumischen die Christliche Religion. Ich . . . betrachte sie ja nur als Ferment, als Sauerteig, zu Gutem oder zu Bösem - wozu man noch will. (Auch ein Philosophie . . HWS, V, 516)

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Now for Iselin, as Clark says (p. 190 f.) the term 'yeast' characterizes only those fermenting aspects of Christianity whose main purpose it was to help produce the glories of eighteenth-century deistic morality. By contrast - in spite of a certain sarcastic tone to be sensed especially in the concluding sentence of our quotation - for Herder such a figure belongs organically to his discussion of an age in ferment in which Christianity was of importance to the very period itself and is not to be regarded only as a tool for the construction of some future morality. Herder employs seminal imagery to stress his contention that Christianity ORGANICALLY had to appear when it did. After indicating t h a t other historians have demonstrated essentially the same thing, he argues " . . . daß eine solche Religion gewiß nicht zu anderer Zeit, früher oder später hätte aufkeimen oder aufkommen, oder sich einstehlen können — man nenne es wie man wolle" (Auch eine Philosophie . . . HWS, V, 519). On the next page Herder marvels at the organic leavening power of Christianity both as it has been prepared by preceding history and also as it may ferment to produce new values. He does not name Christianity as this fermenting agent, relying instead upon the synthesizing force of his imagery to serve as the unifying principle. " F e r m e n t ! wie sonderbar bist du bereitet! und alles auf dich zubereitet! und tief und weitumher eingemischet! hat lang und stark getrieben und gegähret - was wird es noch ausgähren?" (p. 520). Herder also employs such imagery in contrasting the fermenting power of Christianity with the Emperor Julian's (361-63) futile attempts to resurrect ancient oriental, heathen religion - nothing but a corpse decorated with mortician's cosmetics - in place of Christianity: ". . . alles umsonst! sie [i.e., 'die älteste Heidnische' religion] erlag! sie war verlebt - elender Aufputz eines todten Leichnams, der nur zu andrer Zeit hatte Wunder thun können: die nackte, neue Christliche Religion siegte!" (p. 518). With his imagery Herder makes clear t h a t Christianity prevailed as a leavening agent because it belonged organically to an age in ferment. Indeed, rather than characterizing the medieval period as dark and dead as his 'enlightened' contemporaries were wont to do, Herder repeatedly uses biological imagery to symbolize the age as vibrant. I n the following passage he combines a zoological figure with one of fermentation to characterize the early Middle Ages in which the all-pervading Gothic spirit of the period

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was active: "Wenn mit seinen Gährungen und Reibungen der Gothische Körper überhaupt Kräfte regte: gewiß trug der Geist, der ihn belebte und band, das Seine bei" (p. 522). As Herder continues to emphasize that the often ridiculed Middle Ages were organically necessary to produce later cultural and political institutions, he aptly avails himself of the figure of the nurtured and growing plantlike power of medieval culture: "Da konnten in etwas spätem Zeiten denn soviel Kriegerische Republiken und wehrhafte Städte werden ! erst waren die K r ä f t e gepflanzt, genährt und durch Reiben erzogen, von denen im traurigen Reste ihr [i.e., his fellow thinkers] noch jetzo lebt" (p. 525). On the following page as Herder continues his discussion of the culture of the Middle Ages, he uses seminal imagery to depreciate the relative barrenness of his own age in contrast to the vitality of the older period: Wer liest diese Geschichte [i.e., of the Middle Ages], und ruft nicht o f t : Neigungen und Tugenden der Ehre und Freiheit, der Liebe und Tapferkeit, der Höflichkeit und des Worts, wo seyd ihr geblieben ! eure Tiefe verschlämmet! eure Veste, weicher Sandboden voll Silberkörner, w o nichts wächst! (p. 526)

Aboreal imagery - in addition to fermentative, seminal, and vegetable figures - once again gains central, unifying importance in Herder's depiction of the whole growth of history, particularly in his treatment of the Middle Ages and later the Enlightenment. In the following passage the mighty tree of history represents more than only Roman imperial power (Cf. p. 513 f.) because Herder portrays the trunk both reaching back into the Orient prior to Rome and also bearing even higher in upward growth the 'branches' of the Middle Ages in natural biological development: "Von Orient bis Rom wars Stamm: jetzt gingen aus dem Stamme Äste und Zweige; keiner an sich Stammvest, aber ausgebreiteter, luftiger, höherr (p. 528). On the next page in a significant passage dominated by a mood of organicism, Herder again relies on this figure with the trunk reaching back into the past to symbolize the wholeness and unity of the historical process. Its later branches, blossoms, and fruits symbolize complex medieval cultural and political institutions. Moreover, just as Herder earlier has used zoological imagery of the various ages of man to persuade the reader that it is biologically impossible to interchange the bodies of a child and a fullygrown man, or to expect that man in all the stages of his develop-

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ment have the same tastes and patterns of behavior, or to rejuvenate a corpse, so here he argues t h a t the top of the tree can no longer be the trunk by the very nature of botanical growth, i.e., t h a t it is impossible to expect t h a t the Middle Ages be exactly like earlier periods which preceded them. Writing of the spirit of the age, Herder says: Und wenn sich der Geist bis auf die kleinsten Einrichtungen und Gebräuche erstreckt - ists unrecht, wenn in diesen Jahrhunderten noch immer Krone des alten Stamms erschiene ! (Nicht Stamm mehr, das sollts und konnts nicht seyn, aber Krone!) Eben das nicht-Eine, das Verwirrte, der reiche Überfluß von Ästen und Zweigen; das macht seine Natur! da hangen die Blüthen von Rittergeist, da werden, wenn der Sturm die Blätter abtreibt, einst die schönern Früchte hangen, (p. 529)

Thus, at the conclusion of the passage, Herder stresses the lifebearing capacity of the tree of human history to produce new fruits for future historical periods. He then immediately continues to employ this arboreal image to characterize the complexity of medieval civilization and to depict the tree, so penetrated by the 'wind' of papal authority, as having expended its branches and fruits in the convulsions of the crusades and mass conversions: So viele Brüdernationen und keine Monarchie auf der Erde ! - Jedweder Ast von hier gewißermaasse ein Ganzes - und trieb seine Zweige! alle trieben neben einander, flochten, worren sich, jedes mit seinem Safte. - Diese Vielheit von Königreichen ! dies Nebeneinanderseyn von Brüdergemeinden; alle von einem Deutschen Geschlechte, alia nach einem Ideal der Verfaßung, alle im Glauben einer Religion, jedes mit sich selbst und seinen Gliedern kämpfend, und von einem heiligen Winde, dem Päbstlichen Ansehen, fast unsichtbar aber sehr durchdringend getrieben und beweget - wie ist der Baum erschüttert! auf Kreuzzügen und Völkerbekehrungen, wohin hat er nicht Aste, Blüten und Zweige geworfen! (Ibid.)

Yet through all this complexity and confusion, Herder succeeds by means of his arboreal symbol in conveying to his reader a basic unity which supported all the variegated growth, and he concludes this discussion not with analytical statement but rather with his organizing, synthesizing image: " . . . wie schoß der eine alte simple Stamm des Menschengeschlechts in Aste und Zweige!" (Ibid.). Taking leave of the Middle Ages, Herder reflects on the evidence of a Providential Power t h a t moves and organizes history. Historical developments are so tremendous and remarkable that they are obviously not the work of man, a mere ant on the great wheel of

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destiny (p. 531). Herder, as we might expect, uses a botanical figure to convey his sense of this providential agency. The same power which lets fall a seed fall from which a great oak grows is the power t h a t planted the seeds from which Venice and great Rome grew: W e r l e g t e hier Venedig a n diesem P l a t z e , unter d e m tiefsten Bedrängniß der N o t h a n ? und wer überdachte, was dies Venedig, allein a n diesem Platze, ein Jahrtausend hindurch, allen Völkern der Erde s e y n k o n n t e und sollte? D e r diesen Sund v o n Inseln in d e n Morrast warf, der diese w e n i g e n Fischer dahinleitete, war derselbe, der d a s Saamenkorn fallen läßt, das zu der Zeit und a n d e m Orte eine Eiche werde; der die Hütte an die Tiber pflanzte, d a ß Rom, das ewige H a u p t der W e l t daraus würde. (Ibid.)

On the following page, as he continues to emphasize man's role as t h a t of a tool in the organic historical process rather than as the responsible prime mover, Herder aptly symbolizes the beginnings of the Reformation as a Spring when new shoots burst forth: " . . . nun ist Frühling: die Erde öfnet sich, die Sonne brütet und tausend neue Gewächse gehen he vor - Mensch, du warst nur immer, fast wider deinen Willen, ein kleines blindes Werkzeug (p. 532). Herder then proceeds with botanical imagery once again to suggest the organic development of the Reformation in its time, but also to answer the question why such a reformation must involve the violence of revolution. For, Herder tells us, as botanical seeds must swell and burst through the earth, so the reformations in history must swell and burst through the events of history. A n t w o r t ! weil so ein stiller Fortgang des Menschlichen Geistes zur Verbeßerung der W e l t k a u m e t w a s anders als Phantom unsrer K ö p f e , nie Gang Gottes in der Natur ist. D i e s Saamenkorn fällt in die E r d e ! da liegts und erstarrt; aber n u n k o m m t Sonne es zu w e c k e n : d a brichts auf: die Gefässe schwellen m i t Gewalt auseinander: es durchbricht d e n B o d e n - so Blüthe, so Frucht k a u m die garstige Erdpilze w ä c h s t , wie dus träumest. D e r Grund jeder R e f o r m a t i o n war allemal eben solch ein kleines Saamenkorn, fiel still in die Erde, k a u m der R e d e werth: die Menschen h a t t e n s schon lange, besahens und achtetens nicht - aber n u n sollen dadurch Neigungen, Sitten, eine W e l t v o n Gewohnheiten geändert, neugeschaffen werden - ist d a s ohne Revolution, ohne Leidenschaft und Bewegung m ö g l i c h ? (Ibid.)

Carrying his study into his own day, Herder symbolizes 'die leichte, die schöne [Philosophie]' (p. 536) of the Enlightenment as the very sap and blossom of the century. Interestingly enough,

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Herder is here using figures of ORGANICISM - the vivifying sap and its by-product - to characterize what he is decrying as a MECHANICAL philosophical world view since it was organically germane to the mechanistic atmosphere of the period. After having discussed 'die schwerere [i.e. the more serious and systematic] Philosophie' of modern Europe, Herder enters upon a scathing evaluation of ". . . die leichte, die schöne! Gottlob ! was ist Mechanischer, als diese. I n Wißenschaften, Künsten, Gewohnheiten, Lebensart, wo sie hineingedrungen, wo sie Saft und Blüthe des Jahrhunderts ist, was Mechanischer als sie?" (Ibid.). As Herder attempts to show what he understands to be the relationship and perspective of the Enlightenment to earlier historical development, he once again relies on the arboreal figure to be the organizing factor in his exposition. The tree is in the following passage, a symbol for all historical growth; root, trunk, and lower branches symbolize paßt ages and cultural accomplishments from which the twigs of his century draw their vivifying sap. Now, to be sure, the position of these twigs high on the tree of history does afford his age a wide survey of the past, and in their every movement these uppermost European branches do affect so much of the (colonial) world. But with irony Herder also indicates t h a t the top branches are quite thin, lacking the power of the lower parts of the tree: Wahrlich ein grosses Jahrhundert als Mittel und Zweck: ohne Zweifel der höchste Gipfel des Baums in Betracht aller vorigen, auf denen wir stehen! Wie haben wir uns so vielen Saft aus Wurzel, Stamm und Ästen zu Nutz gemacht, als unsre dünnen Gipfelzweige nur faßen können! sehen hoch über Morgenländer, Griechen, Römer, zumal über den mittlem Gothischen Barbarn! hoch sehen wir also über die Erde! gewißermaasse alle Völker und Welttheile unter unserm Schatten, und wenn ein Sturm zwei kleine Zweige in Europa schüttelt, wie bebt und blutet die ganze Welt! (p. 546)

Or, in the following passage which concludes this part of the treatise, Herder uses the of the very pinnacle of the tree of history to characterize with disdainful sarcasm his self-confident age: ". . .aber wer kann in einem solchen Jahrhunderte, als das unsre ist, alles rühmen! Gnug wir sind 'Gipfel des Baums! in Himmlischer Luft webend: die goldne Zeit is n a h e ! " ' (p. 554). The opening lines of the "Zusätze" present a continued use of the central arboreal image as Herder calls upon his readers to descend from the 'Himmelsluft' (Ibid.) of the vain eighteenthcentury hope for a perfect golden age and to consider the develop-

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ment in history as he will present it in the following significant passage dominated by an organistic metaphoric mood. As Herder waxes enthusiastic from his vantage point in surveying historical development, he employs the tree image once again as the logical unity in his argument for an interpretation which stresses the natural biological growth and basic organic unity in history's complexity (the single tree with its root, great trunk, boughs, and branches). Then, in the succeeding paragraph, Herder utilizes many stages of plant growth from simple seed to complex, mighty tree to emphasize both his faith in the biological, growing nature of human history and his firm belief in the necessity for each developmental stage in this process which must differ from every other stage with no possibility of interchange or reversion. Each stage of growth is both important in itself and is a life-giving factor without which future development is impossible: Großes Geschöpf Gottes! Werk dreier Wellt heile, und fast sechs Jahrtausende ! die zarte, Saftvolle Wurzel, der schlanke, blühende Sprößling, der mächtige Stamm, die starkalrebende verschlungne Äste, die luftigen weit verbreiteten Zweige - wie ruhet alles auf einander, ist aus einander erwachsen ! - Großes Geschöpf Gottes! aber wozu? zu welchem Zwecke? Daß offenbar dies Erwachsen, dieser Fortgang aus einander nicht "Vervollkornmung im eingeschränkten Schulsinne sei, hat, dünkt mich, der ganze Blick gezeigt." Nicht mehr Saamenkorn, wenns Sprößling, kein zarter Sprößling mehr, wenns Baum ist. Über dem Stamm ist Krone; wenn jeder Ast, jeder Zweig derselben Stamm und Wurzel seyn wollte - wo bliebe der Baum? Orientalier, Griechen, Römer waren nur einmal in der Welt . . ., - Wir also, wenn wir Orientalier, Griechen, Römer auf Einmal seyn wollen, sind wir zu verläßig Nichts. (Ibid.)

Through the use of this arboreal figure Herder is able succinctly to summarize his understanding of historical processes; he can also inveigh against both rejecting certain periods (especially the Middle Ages) as being of no value in human historical development and against the erroneous attempt to turn back the clock to some past age and make its norms and mores in all facets of culture and sociology obtain in a period for which they are organically not suited. (This was also Herder's approach to an evaluation of literature, as we have noted above.) In the succeeding pages, however, Herder specifically applies the arboreal figure to symbolize his own century as the uppermost, delicate branches on the powerful tree of history. Through frequent repetition of this figure Herder has, we believe, succeeded in finding

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a kind of 'objective correlative' so t h a t whenever he uses this symbol, the reader is immediately reminded of the last 'refinements' of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment. Consider, for example, this representation of the lofty and attenuated character of the eighteenth century: . . . wir sind dort oben die dünnen, luftigen Zweige, freilich bebend, und flisternd bei jedem Winde; aber spielt doch der Sonnenstral so schön durch uns ! stehn über Ast, Stamm und Wurzel so hoch, sehen so weit und - ja nioht. vergeßen, können so weit und schön jlistern! (p. 555).

In the next paragraph Herder proceeds to explain why he symbolizes his own day not as history's life-giving root and. trunk, nor as the vivifying sap, nor as the strong, supporting branches but only as weak shoots which must rely on the nourishment which historical processes bring them from the past. He again employs an image from the plant realm to emphasize his argument t h a t his age in its refinement has lost both the 'Laster und Tugenden' of earlier ages, i.e., much of the vital power of the past: "Ob man nicht sähe, daß wir alle Laster undTugenden der vergangnen Zeit nicht haben, weil wir durchaus nicht ihren Stand, Kräfte und Saft, Raum und Element haben" (Ibid.). On the next page, by the mere citation of "Dünne, schwankende Aste!" (p. 556) Herder can summarize his argument of the feebleness of his age as against the strength of the past. Some pages later Herder varies the figure slightly as he writes of the fruit on the tree of history (i.e., mankind's accomplishments in the past which produce fruit in his day) found on these thin, uppermost branches. In so doing, he ridicules the smugness of the Enlightenment which felt itself to be God's greatest achievement, the finest of the fruits of the historical process. At the same time, however, Herder is trying to find some comfort for his position as part of his age up in these fine, fragile branches; and in the course of his admission that his age has gained greater breadth of knowledge than the past has possessed though at the cost of a sacrifice in depth, he shifts his imagery in the middle of his exposition from tree to stream and, later in the development of his argument, the ocean. Eben an Baumes höchsten Zweigen blühen und sprießen die Früchte - siehe da die schöne Voraussicht des größesten der Werke Gottes! Aufklärung - wenn sie uns gleich nicht immer zu statten kommt, wenn wir gleich bei größerer Oberfläehc und Umfange an Tiefe und Grabung des Stroms verlieren: gewiß

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eben damit, daß wir uns einem großen Ocean, schon selbst ein kleines Meer, nähern. 3

Furthermore, at the conclusion of this paragraph, Herder symbolizes lasting cultural accomplishments with the figure of the life-producing essential seed and fruit (in contrast to the external, transitory husk) hanging on the little branch as he comforts himself by implying that his own age, just as others which have preceded it, will also provide something enduring for the future: "Die Zukunft streift uns unsre Schlaube ab und nimmt den Kern. Der kleine Zweig hat nichts davon, aber an ihn hangen die lieblichen Früchte" (p. 574). While considering the intellectual and cultural achievements of his own century, particulary its philosophy of history as contrasted with his own, Herder uses the image of the blossom as it grows, flourishes, withers, and fades in death to represent how each historical period and society also must grow and then fade away. Moreover, Herder seems to attach considerable significance to the seminal figure, both that of the seed in its pod and that of the germinating seed, for he twice relies on it to vivify his argument that EVERY historical era contains certain qualities essential to mankind throughout history, including, by implication, any period (e.g. the Middle Ages) which the 'Enlightened' historian might consider to be of virtually no significance in humanity's development. Speaking somewhat sarcastically of the 'wise' thinker(s) of his day, Herder says: Und der Weise bedachte nicht, . . . daß es eine Schöpfung von Klima, Zeitumständen, mithin National- und Säkulartugenden gebe, Blüthen, die unter dem Himmel wachsen und fast von nichts gedeihen, dort aussterben oder elend falben; . . . daß es dies alles geben könne und müße, von innen aber unter der vielfach veränderten Schlaube immer noch derselbe Kern von Wesen und Glückfähigkeit aufbewahrt seyn könne, und nach aller Menschlichen Erwartung fast seyn werde. - bedachte nicht, daß es unendlich mehr Fürsorge des Allvaters zeige, wenn dies geschähe; wenn in der Menschheit ein unsichtbarer Keim der Glücks- und Tugendempfänglichkeit auf der ganzen Erde und in allen Zeitaltern liege, der verschiedlich ausgebildet, zwar in verschiednen Formen erscheine, aber innerlich nur ein Maas und Mischung von Kräften, (p. 558) 3 P . 573. An investigation of water and flowing imagery in the young Herder's works - similar to the one undertaken in this study - could also be profitable, as his aquatic figures also reveal an espousal of a dynamic world-view with its consequent rejection of a static conception of all of history and being.

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A few pages later Herder uses an arboreal figure - the tree of Germanic mythology which here symbolizes universal history to implicate himself directly in the historical process; he ponders whether he is the eagle perched upon one branch of the tree, the raven sitting on Wotan's shoulder, a little fibre within the tree itself, or - shifting away from organistic imagery - b u t a tiny punctuation mark in the book of all worlds. I n the succeeding paragraph Herder replies t h a t no m a t t e r what he may be, he is involved, he is of some significance: Unter dem grossen Baume Allvaters, deßen Gipfel über alle Himmel, deßen Wurzeln unter Welten und Hölle reichen: bin ich Adler auf diesem Baume? bin der Babe, der auf seiner Schulter ihm täglich den Abendgruß der Welten zu Ohr bringt? - welch eine kleine Laubfaser des Baums mag ich seyn ! kleines Komma oder Strichlein im Buche aller Welten ! Was ich auch sey! Ruf von Himmel zu Erde, daß wie alles, so auch ich an meiner Stelle etwas bedeute, (p. 561)

As Herder f r o m his vantage point once again quickly surveys past cultures a n d periods, he repeats his organistic imagery and begins with an implicit figure f r o m t h e ages of man, his infancy in the Orient. Herder calls out: " D o r t Morgenland! die Wiege des Menschengeschlechts, Menschlicher Neigungen u n d aller Religion" (p. 562). I n the paragraph which follows he continues his imagery of the 'Lebensalter' b u t also employs botanical figuration in his discussion of the achievements of Classical Greece, just as he has done earlier in his treatise. He again characterizes the Greeks as t h e 'Jünglinge' of humanity in their literary and artistic accomplishments while chiding his own sophisticated a n d short-sighted age for overlooking the more naive yet influential productions of 'Kindisch' mankind before Greece: Die Jünglinge aller sogenannten feinen Litteratur und Kunst, sind die Griechen: was weiter liegt, ist dem Gesichte des Jahrhunderts vielleicht zu tief, zu Kindisch; aber sie in der rechten Morgenröthe der Weltbegebenheiten, was haben sie auf all' ihre Nachzeit gewürkt! (Ibid.)

Then he immediately proceeds to praise m a n y aspects of Greek culture with a familiar botanical image: Die schönste Blüthe des Menschlichen Geistes, des Heldenmuths, der Vaterlandsliebe, des Freiheitgefühls, der Kunstliebhaberei, des Gesanges, des Tons der Dichtung, des Lauts der Erzählung, des Donners der Beredtsamkeit, des Aufbruchs aller Bürgerlichen Weisheit, wie es jetzt ist, ist ihr [i.e., 'theirs', the Greeks'], (Ibid.)

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In the lines concluding this significant paragraph in which organic metaphors dominate the exposition in each important argument, Herder uses a vegetable image as he argues t h a t ancient Greece like the once green, now dead sprout - b y the very nature of the organic processes of historical growth could thrive only once. (Indeed, just this was Herder's realization when he commented on literature.) For Herder, any endeavor aimed at recreating an identical Classical Greece in any different period, climate, or soil is «loomed to remain fruitless. Herder continues immediately a f t e r the preceding quotation: Sie [i.e. the ancient Greeks] dahingestellet: ihnen Himmel, Land, Verfaßung, ein glücklicher Zeitpunkt gegeben: sie bildeten, erfanden, nannten: wir bilden und nennen noch nach - ihr Jahrhundert hat ausgerichtet! - aber nur einmal ausgerichtet! Da Menschengeist mit allen Kräften es zum zweitenmal wecken wollte - der Geist war Staub; der Sprößling blieb Asche: (Ibid.) Griechenland kam nicht wieder.

Now whereas Herder characterizes the ancient Greeks as the 'youths' of humanity in their literary and artistic productions and as the 'fairest blossom' of the human spirit in many cultural areas, or their age as a tender green sprout, in the following paragraph he symbolizes the cultural achievements prior to the emergence of R o m a n power as the 'fruits' of an earlier cultural process which fell ripened into the hands of the Romans who were, to be sure, capable gatherers and distributors of such cultural fruits but were unable to make culture's natural vivifying power - its blossom and sap - truly their own: Römer, die ersten Sammler und Austheiler der Früchte, die anderweit vorher gewachsen, jetzt reif in ihre Hände fielen. Zwar musten sie Blüthe und Saft an seinem Orte laßen: aber Früchte theilten sie doch aus: Reliquien der uralten Welt im Römerkleide, nach Römerart, in Römersprache . . . . (Ibid..)

Later in this paragraph Herder uses a seminal figure to symbolize the essence of Greek culture as he tries to explain further the necessary role of the Romans in conveying it to northern Europe. He speaks of the delicate 'Griechenduft' - the fragrance of the blossom or fruit just referred to - which the coarse northern European shell might have had difficulty in containing or even receiving without its modification by the tougher R o m a n character. But, interestingly enough, in the middle of this passage Herder injects

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the nonorganistic figure, 'Brücke', rather t h a n an organistio one such as 'Garten' or 'Treibhaus'to characterize the transitional land, Italy: Griechenland, noch so entfernt dem Norden, in seinem schönen Archipelagus von Weltgegend: der Menschliche Geist in ihm, noch so schlank und zart wie sollt er mit allen Völkern ringen? ihnen seine Nachfolge aufzwingen? wie konnte die grobe Nordische Schale den feinen Griechenduft faßen? Also Italien war die Brücke: Rom die Mittelzeit der Härtung des Kerns und seiner Aus heilung . . . . (p. 563)

Having represented Italy as a 'Brücke' in the transmission of organic culture from ancient Greece to northern Europe, Herder in his next paragraph represents 'Arabien' with an aquatic figure as the sluggish channel by which certain aspects of Greek culture (Herder, as we shall see, specifies Aristotle) were to influence Europe: "Selbst, da Griechenland zum zweitenmal auf Europa würken sollte, konnts nicht unmittelbar würken: Arabien ward der verschlämmte Kanal - Arabien der under-plot zur Geschichte der Bildung Europa's" (Ibid.). Herder proceeds to signify certain other poetic elements of Greek culture as flowers, hated and therefore not transmitted by Islam, which might not have flourished in Europe at t h a t time as had Aristotle, had they been exposed there sooner; t h a t is, Herder again draws an analogy to nature's organic processes in his use of these plant figures to suggest why certain historical occurrences virtually had to develop when and where they did. Wenn, wies jetzt ist, Aristoteles bestimmt war, seine Jahrhunderte allein zu herrschen und die Wurme und Modermotten der Scholastischen Denkart in allem - zu erzeugen: wie, wenns Schicksal gewesen wäre, daß Plato, Homer, die Dichter, Geschichtschreiber, Redner früher hätten würken können? - wie alles unendlich anders ! Es war nicht bestimmt. Der Kreis sollte dort hinüber: die Arabische Religion und Nationalkultur haßte diese Blumen: vielleicht hätten sie in Europa der Zeiten auch noch nicht gedeihet; da sich Gegentheils Aristotelische Spitzfündigkeit und Mohrischer Geschmack so wohl mit dem Geiste der Zeit vertrug - Schicksal! - (Ibid.)

Hastening on in his brief recapitulation of mankind's history, Herder employs vegetable and seminal imagery to symbolize developed cultural accomplishments and forces as he considers Europe's role as a transmitter of the cultural products of the paßt to the peoples of the world. Significantly enough, in contrast to these botanical figures Herder again uses mechanistic imagery

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(cf. p. 536) - connoting the very antithesis of an organistic view of historical growth and cultural interaction - as the most striking metaphorical summation and condemnation of the abstract, stultifying, and dehydrating intellectual tone set by many of his contemporaries. I n B u r o p a sollte d a s Gewächs der alten Welt Jahrhunderte nur gedörret und abgekeltert werden: aber v o n da aus unter die Völker der Erde kommen: . . . und d e n n k a m e n n u n eben die neuen, kältesten Mechanischen Erfindungen hinzu, die es ins Grosse spielten: M aschienen der kalten Europäischnordischen Abstraktion, für die H a n d des Alllenkers grosse Werkzeuge! D a liegen n u n die Saamenkörner fast unter allen Nationen der Erde: wenigstens allen bekannt, allen zugangbar: werden sie haben, w e n n ihr Zeitpunkt k o m m t . E u r o p a h a t sie gedörret, aufgefädelt, verewigt . . . . (p. 563 f.)

Herder, having now reached his own period in this rapid review of history, employs once again the figuration of the ages of man, and this time he does carry the figure into his own day, addressing himself to man in his ". . . . zu klugen, altgreisen Jahren . . ." (p. 566), a basic implication in the imagery of the ages of man indicated at the outset of this part of our study. He now exhorts the historian in mankind's 'altgreisen Jahren' to preserve the monuments of humanity's 'childhood' which reveal the instruction of the 'Father' himself to a man as a 'child'; should this be too difficult a task for the 'old man' of his day, yes, even for a Montesquieu (to whom Herder refers in the paragraph preceding our quotation), then one need only observe carefully the so-called wild peoples, who are still mankind in its 'childhood'. Wer, der u n s d e n Tempel Gottes herstelle, wie er in seinem Forlgebäude ist, durch alle Jahrhunderte hindurch ! Die ältesten Zeiten der Menschenkindheit sind vorbei: aber Reste und Denkmäler gnug da - die herrlichsten R e s t e , Unterweisung des Vaters selbst an diese K i n d h e i t Offenbarung! Sagst du, Mensch, d a ß sie dir zu alt sey, in deinen zu klugen, altgreisen Jahren - siehe u m dich ! - der größte Theil v o n N a t i o n e n der Erde ist noch in Kindheit . . . . (Ibid.)

Herder's organicism also dominates two significant passages found in the concluding pages of this treatise. In the first instance, Herder expresses his hope for the future despite the uncertainty of his own period's position and knowledge (". . . denn wir laufen in Irrlicht und Dämmerung und Nebel" [Ibid., p 580]). As a result of his observations in the preceding one hundred pages of this treatise, his realization of the organic nature of the historical process, his awareness of an enduring, essential, and germinating

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spirit at work in history,4 and his recognition that the Enlightenment was not the ultimate, not the zenith of mankind's history, Herder tells of his awe before the possibilities of creation because of its GERMINAL character, its way of growing and creating from little potentialities: W e n n ich da T h a t e n sehe, oder vielmehr schweigende Merkmale von T h a t e n ahnde aus einem Geiste, der für die Hülle seiner Zeit zu groß, und für ihr Lobgeschrei zu still und blöde dahingeht und im Finstern säet: Samenkörner, die wie alle Gotteswerke und Schöpfungen vom kleinen Keim, anfangen, denen mans aber beim ersten kleinen Sprößlein, so lieblich ansiehet und anreucht, daß sie Schöpfung Gottes im Verborgenen seyn werden - und wärens Anlagen insonderheit zur edelsten Pflanze der Menschheit, Bildung, Erziehung, Stärkung der Natur in ihren bedürftigsten Nerven, Menschenliebe, Sympathie und Brüderglückseligkeit - heilige Pflanzen, wer ist unter euch gewandelt, daß ihn nicht ein Schauer beßerer Zukunft ergriffe, und er euren Urheber klein und groß, König und Knecht, nicht im stillesten Abend- Morgenund Mitternachtopfer segne ! Alle bloß Körperliche und Politische Zweckc zerfallen, wie Scherb' und L e i c h n a m : die Seele! der Geist! Inhalt fürs Ganze der Menschheit - der bleibt: und wohl, wem da aus der reinen, untrübbaren Lebensquelle viel ward !(Ibid.)

Finally, it is quite appropriate for such an ardent organicist as Herder - and it rounds out this long section of our discussion that just as the very first paragraph of Auch eine Philosophie . . . spoke of 'einen zarten Doppelkeim des ganzen Geschlechts' (p. 477), so the very last paragraph comments on 'die reife Ernte der Saamenkörner' (p. 586). Herder has been speaking of man's smallness and the difficulty in achieving a sufficient perspective of history, but he is aware, too, of more positive powers and hopes (p. 585). He first uses the non-organistic figure of a chain of history , but then turns to the organistic figure of the seed spread out among the nations of the earth with its germination and variegated blossoming; he hopes that it will bear fruit for the future just as the distasteful fermentation of the past has been able to produce something flavorful for humanity's general edification.5 Herder, 4 This 'Geist', which calls forth such enthusiasm in the young author, is not designated more specifically in this passage and nowhere in this treatise. There seems, however, to be little doubt t h a t in later years Herder will call this fecund power, which produces the noblest qualities in mankind, 'Humanität'. 5 The implication in 'past' is the Middle Ages, and again Herder uses a n organistic figure without a specific identification, demanding t h a t the reader recall the earlier section in which 'fermentation' imagery was o f oentral importance.

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to be sure, does not specify exactly what his seminal figure symbolizes, apparently feeling t h a t the image is as precise as is necessary. Perhaps we may assume t h a t it is the essential germinating, driving power in mankind's historical and cultural development from which the varieties of blossoming civilizations ('verschiedenartig blühen') grow. Und wenn uns einst ein Standpunkt würde, das Ganze nur unsers Geschlechts zu übersehen! wohin die Kette zwischen Völkern und Erdstrichen, die sich erst so langsam, zog, denn mit so vielem Gehlirr Nationen durschlang und endlich mit sanfterm aber strengerm Zusammenziehen diese Nationen binden und wohin ? leiten sollte - wohin die Kette reicht ? wir sehen die reife Ernte der Saamenkörner, die wir aus einem blinden Siebe unter die Völker verstreut, so sonderbar keimen, so verschiedenartig blühen, so zweideutige Hoffnungen der Frucht geben, sahen - wir habens selbst zu kosten, was der Sauerteig, der so lang, so trüb und unschmackhaft gährte, endlich für Wohlgeschmack hervorbrachte zur allgemeinen Bildung der Menschheit . . . . (p. 586)

Herder is, then, uncertain about the teleology of history in the closing pages of this work. J u s t as throughout the treatise, however, his reliance in these two passages on the concentrating and organizing force of biological imagery manifests his belief t h a t all historical development has at least the order and internal meaningfullness of an organic process. We may conclude, from the material presented in these pages, t h a t Auch eine Philosophie . . . is dominated by a mood of organicism from its opening paragraph, where Herder characterizes the very beginning of the historical process with seminal and vegetable imagery, to the final paragraph, where the same figuration is also a dominant element in his argument. Three main groups of such images are most readily apparent, namely botanical figures (including seminal, vegetable, and arboreal imagery), those of fermentation, and zoological figures, particulary those of the human 'Lebensalter' (also found in Herder's Fragmente \HWS, I, 151 —55] and in Iselin's Geschichte der Menschheit, 1768). According to Elfriede Saffenreuther (in her dissertation on the young Herder's language and style), the virtual essence of the work is arboreal imagery although she does not present many detailed examples and also never mentions the 'Lebensalter' imagery: Wollte man das Wesentliche dieses Buches bildlich darstellen, so müßte de« Bild einen festgegründeten Baum darstellen, der die Entwicklung

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THE CENTRAL PAKT OF OKGANISTIC IMAGERY

des menschliehen Geschlechts versinnbildlicht. Diese Metapher beherrscht die Schrift in vielfacher Variation und glücklicher Ausgestaltung. Hier finden wir eine Reihe der eindruckvollsten und reifsten Bilder des Herderischen Schriftums. (Saffenreuther, p. 73)

Herder employs his imagery neither casually nor at random, b u t rather repeatedly and purposefully, reminding us in one place explicitly t h a t his metaphoric use of the human 'Lebensalter' is not a mere game. Indeed, the central use of such figures as the ages of man and the tree of history provides a sense of unity and progression in the treatise, organizing and becoming the very logic of his argument so t h a t Herder does not have state specifically each time he uses afigure what it represents. Instead, he can succinctly make an essential point - such as characterizing the difference between various historical and cultural periods - simply by alluding to a given period as an age in man's growth, a branch of a tree, or fermentation, thus producing what might be called, in a sense, an 'objective correlative', to apply T. S. Eliot's terminology. Herder expects t h a t the reader become so familiar with his imagery t h a t he automatically understands the author's allusion if he is to keep pace with him. Furthermore, this repeated unifying reliance on organistic imagery has fused metaphors into a symbolic system according to the process outlined in the introduction to this study. Herder's imagery is an essential part of his exposition and not a gaudy or superficial rhetorical device, as we have repeatedly observed. His symbolism, in particular in his Auch eine Philosophie . . . , depicts historical development as an organic process. This basic understanding, as Dietrich Walter Jons points out, is stated explicitly in the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit - a work of a later period - namely, t h a t organic power, as well as tradition, propels history: "Herder selbst formuliert es einmal so, dass 'Tradition und organische Kräfte' die Prinzipien der Geschichte seien." 6 The young Herder's biological imagery is, significant because it reveals his mind and expresses, corresponds to, and is truly germane to his sense of the nature of the unfolding of history.

• Dietrich Walter Jons, Begri'/ und Problem der historischen Zeit bei Johann Gottfried Herder (Göteborg, 1956), p. 49; quotation by Jons from H WS, X I I I , 347.

III TWO PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS: T H E NATURE OF T H E CREATIVE T H I N K E R AND T H E EDUCATION OF MAN

A. T H E 'GENIE' A N D T H E CREATIVE ARTIST

When the young Herder writes about 'das Genie' and the creative thinker, his organistic, primarily botanical, imagery is so central to his exposition t h a t 'form' reveals perhaps more about his position in intellectual history t h a t does 'content' alone. Before turning in particular to the genius and the creative mind, we want first to examine several significant passages in which Herder characterizes the genesis of the individual in botanical images, thus setting the tone for this chapter. I n the following important passage with its autobiographical slant and botanical figuration the young Herder expresses a realization of the organic, plant-like nature of his own growth - and that of all men - from a basic, inner seed under the influence of environmental factors. I n this passage from the treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele we sense a revelation of the PERSONAL MOTIVE in Herder's 'Weltanschauung': an external organicism sensed because of his feeling of his own inner growth as analogous to the growth of the great fruitful tree from the small life-bearing seed. Herder is moved to a feeling of reverence ('Augen und Füße decken') at the realization of the significance of his insight: Je tiefer jemand in sich selbst, in den Bau und Ursprung seiner edelsten Gedanken hinab stieg, desto mehr wird er Augen und Füße decken und sagen: "was ich bin, bin ich geworden. Wie ein Baum bin ich gewachsen: der Keim war da; aber Luft, Erde und alle Elemente, die ich nicht um mich satzte, mußten beitragen, den Keim, die Frucht, den Baum zu bilden." (HWS, VIII, 198)

Whereas in this passage Herder's arboreal analogy characterizes man's growth, in the following quotation from the earlier IV.

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THE CENTRAL PART OF ORGANISTIC IMAGERY

Wäldchen a curious shift of metophors from botanical to zoological depicts early development of man's sensory faculties: Wir . . . treten in die ersten Zeiten zurück, da der Mensch ein Phänomen unsrer Welt wurde, da er sieh aus einem Zustande, wo er nur denkende und empfindende Pflanze gewesen war, auf eine Welt wand, wo er ein Thier zu werden beginnet. Noch scheint ihm keine Empfindung beizuwohnen, als die dunkle Idee seines Ich, so dunkel als sie nur eine Pflanze fühlen kann; in ihr indessen liegen die Begriffe des ganzen Weltall; aus ihr entwickeln sich alle Ideen des Menschen; alle Empfindungen keimen aus diesem Pflanzengefühl, so wie auch in der sichtbaren Natur der Keim den Baum in eich trägt, und jedes Blatt ein Bild des Ganzen ist, (IIWS, IV, 28 f.)

Two pages later, Herder analogously employs this concept of 'Pflanzengefühl' not for primitive man but for the child, the beginning of individual man: "Unsre Kindheit ist ein dunkler Traum von Vorstellungen, so wie er gleichsam nur auf das Pflanzengefühl folgen kann; aber in diesem dunkeln Traume würkt die Seele mit allen Kräften" (Ibid. p. 31). Herder some years later in his treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . makes similar use of the plant image to charcterize man's infancy: "Durchs Othemholen wird das Kind, das Pflanze gewesen war, Thier" (HWS, VIII, 174). We have observed briefly that Herder characterizes the origin and early development of the human being with botanical imagery, even applying this sort of imagery to his own life, possibly providing a clue to the wealth of organicism in his writings. We now turn to an illustration of such imagery when he writes about creative personalities and the specific type of man the Sturm und Drang called 'das Genie'. In the section of this stud}7 dealing with literature, we have seen how in Shakespear Herder characterizes the great dramatic 'Genie' and his work as a living plant, sprouting naturally in Elizabethan England's cultural soil and climate. Then too, in an earlier, lessknown work, the memorial Ueber Thomas Abbts Schriften, Herder employs organistic imagery to signify vividly the Rationalistic historian's creative spirit and his 'Genie'. Writing of great minds struck down by death with their plans unfulfilled, Herder urges their successors to anoint themselves with the essential 'Salböl. . . aus ihren Schriften' (HWS, II, 255), to emulate them (p. 256), and by carrying the deceaseds' work to completion, to defy death's destructive power. These creative thinkers - like Abbt - Herder

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proceeds to symbolize as t h e blossoms of a land whose continued germination his 'cultivation' would assure: Dies, glaube ich, ist das einzige Mittel, dem Tode zu trotzen, wenn er die Blüthen eines Landes zuerst abschlägt, damit stets neue hervorkeimen, und er doch endlich sagen müsse, was der Tyrann Tiberius bei einem andern Fall sagte: siehe! der ist mir doch entronnen. (Ibid.)

This botanical figure sets t h e tone and becomes, as we shall see, an organizing factor in the balance of the treatise. When in the succeeding section he seeks to explain in his defense of Abbt why " . . . ein jeder großer Schriftsteller die Muttermale seiner Zeit an sich tragen \muß~\ . . ." (p. 265), Herder employs arboreal imagery - much as he uses vegetable figuration in Shalcespear - as the logic of his argument t h a t the creative writer is, and must be, firmly rooted in the intellectual atmosphere of his own time and place: Er [i.e., an author] trägt die Fesseln seines Zeitalters, dem er sein Buch zum Geschenke darbeut: er steht in seinem Jahrhundert, wie ein Baum in dem Erdreich, in das er sich gewurzelt, aus welchem er Säfte ziehet, mit welchom er seine Gliedmaassen der Entstehung decket. (Ibid.)

The botanical atmosphere is most intense, however, in the final part of this treatise with its locus classicus in which Herder specifically symbolizes 'das Genie' as a fertile and fecund plant. Rising to defend the now forgotten Rationalist against charges b y critics who found Abbt's prose style poor because of its 'Auswüchse' a n d preferred rather a 'regelmäßigen todten Stil' (p. 280) and arguing t h a t t h e 'Kunstrichter' Quintilian saw just such 'Auswüchse' as signs of genius, Herder maintains t h a t the 'Genie' is a plant a n d t h a t these 'Auswüchse' are the indicator of his creative abundance: Selbst der Kunstrichterischo Quintilian macht die Auswüchse, die zu verschneiden wären, und die überflüßige Fruchtbarkeit zu Zeichen des Genies: die Erfahrung aller Zeitalter bestätigt dies, und eben so kann ich mich auf Erfahrung berufen, daß solche Auswüchse am meisten neue Genies hervorbringen. Das Genie ist eine Pflanze, die von der überflüßigen Fettigkeit der Erde, die vom Schlamm hervorgebracht wird, sich von Dim nährt, und in ihm sich weiter fortpflanzt. (Ibid.)

Furthermore, Herder then proceeds immediately to emphasize t h e fertile creative power of the botanically described 'Genie' with a figure of 'mating', maintaining t h a t the spontaneity of creation so

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THE CENTRAL PART OF ORGANISTIC IMAGERY

typical for the 'Genie' can excuse the frequent lack of exactly ordered imagery and thought: Das schöpferische Vergnügen, unter seiner Feder Gedanken werden, Bilder entstehen zu sehen, paaret sich selten mit der sparsamen Genauigkeit, Bilder zu ordnen, Gedanken zu feilen. Hingeworfen liegt eines über das andere, aber das hingeworfne sind Schätze, (p. 280 f.)

Indeed, Clark in his book on Herder indicates the truly autobiographical tone, for . . . Herder is presenting the picture of an Abbt who never existed in reality. And when he says of Abbt's works that "one thing lies carelessly thrown upon the other, but the things thrown are treasures," he is drawing a splendid picture of his own work, but one that in no wise fits the careful Rationalist whom he is eulogizing, (p. 77)

Thus we may have found yet another passage like the first one in this section which not only shows Herder's mind functioning, but which also confirms the truth of his observation in the quotation from the treatise Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele (HWS, VIII, 208) concluding the opening part of the Introduction, that the creator often reveals and betrays himself in his work when least aware of it. The importance which Herder attaches to plant-like stylistic 'Auswüchse' as being not only indicative of the 'Genie' but as also possessing a fecundity which can produce 'neue Genies' is sensed when he repeats the figure several paragraphs later. He has been expressing his appreciation of the original character, 'dies Idiotistische' (Ueber Thomas Abbts Schriften, HWS, II, 282), in Abbt's writing and attributes instructive value to some of that historian's stylistic 'Auswüchse': "Auch das Metaphorische seines Stils ist kein, und das zu gedrängte Metaphorische ein nutzbarer Fehler: das Eigentümliche und Launische seines Ausdrucks ist unschätzbar, und selbst seine Auswüchse sind bildend" (Ibid.). In this same treatise Herder employs zoological imagery several times to symbolize vividly the fecundity of the 'Genie'. Thus, commenting on Abbt's fertile imagination, he characterizes him as a "Genie . . ., dessen Einbildungskraft fruchtbar gnug war, Kinder zu gebären . . ." (p. 273); or later in the treatise, Herder again employs a zoological figure to represent the genius's fertile soul which produces ideas while leaving to others the task of working them out in detail, and also his 'sinnliche Aufmerksamkeit' which

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85

has little affinity for abstractions: "Eine fruchtbare Seele gebäret Ideen; diese aber zu erziehen und auszubilden, wird andern überlassen: eine starke sinnliche Aufmerksamkeit paaret sich selten mit der Abstraktion . . ." (p. 289). Interestingly enough, in establishing the solid quality of Abbt's work, Herder represents his imagination as a fertile mother mated with 'dem guten gesunden Verstände' of Rationalism: Selten ists, daß die Phantasie immer eine Schwester der Wahrheit bleibet, wie bei Abbt meistentheils. Das macht, sie paaret sich überall mit dem guten gesunden Verstände, läßt diesem die Herrschaft des Mannes, und wird ihm nur eine Mutter der Fruchtbarkeit, und eine Haushälterin seines Vermögens. (p. 291 f.)

Although the young Herder was perhaps somewhat inaccurate in his enthusiastic presentation of Thomas Abbt's 'Genie', he did, at least, in his characterization strike the organistic, botanical tone which during the subsequent decade was to find similar expression in Shakespear and in an entire section near the end of the treatise Vom Erkennen und, Empfinden . . . . Moreover, such imagery is in keeping with Herder's discussion in this epistemological essay, for when he argues that the term 'Genie' must be extended to encompass more than only 'bookworms', he sees 'Genie' as a product of fruitful nature and as present in every man with 'noble, vibrant energies': In dem Verstände ist die Natur also an Genies nicht so unfruchtbar, als wir wähnen, wenn wir blos Büchergenies und Papiermotten dafür halten. Jeder Mensch von edeln lebendigen Kräften ist Genie auf seiner Stelle, in seinem Werk, zu seiner Bestimmung, und wahrlich, die besten Genies sind außer der Bücherstube. (HWS, VIII, 223)

Some lines later in the same paragraph, Herder again draws a parallel between the fecund processes in nature and the fruitful production of 'Menschengenies': "So lange die Natur an gesunden Keimen und blühenden Bäumen keinen Mangel hat, wird sies auch nicht an Menschengenies haben . . ." (Ibid.). I n his memorial to Abbt, as we recall, Herder wrote of vegetable genius, distinguished by its 'Auswüchse' and 'überflüßige Fruchtbarkeit' (HW8, II, 280). Now by contrast a decade later in Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . he is concerned with more orderly and less flamboyant genius, not recognizable by its excrescence. But this type of genius Herder also portrays botanically with his image of 'edle Keime':

86

THE CENT LI AI, PART OF ORGANISTIC IMAGERY

D i e N a t u r h a t d e r e d l e n K e i m e g n u g : n u r w i r k e n n e n sie n i c h t u n d z e r t r e t e n sie m i t d e n F ü ß e n , weil w i r d a s Genie m e i s t e n s n a c h Unförmlichkeit, nach zu früher Reife oder übertriebnem W u c h s schätzen. E i n wohlgebildeter, g e s u n d e r , k r ä f t i g e r M e n s c h , l e b e n d a u f seiner Stelle, u n d d a s e l b s t s e h r i n n i g w ü r k e n d , z i e h t u n s r e A u g e n n i c h t so a u f sich, als j e n e r a n d e r e m i t Einem ü b e r t r i e b n e n , v o r g e b i l d e t e n Zuge, d e n i h m d i e N a t u r (in G n a d e o d e r in Z o r n ? ) v e r l i e h , u n d d e n v o n J u g e n d a u f h i n z u w a l l e n d e ü b e r f l ü ß i g e S ä f t e n ä h r t e n . (HWS, V I I I , 223 f.)

Onee again, two pages later, Herder depicts botanically the silent, natural growth process of the 'Genie' from its earliest stage when it is unconscious of the influences upon it: J e d e edle Menschenart s c h l ä f t , wie aller g u t e S a a m e , i m s t i l l e n K e i m e : ist d a u n d e r k e n n e t sich s e l b s t n i c h t . W a s in A b s i c h t a u f Seelenkra'Xte Genie h e i ß t , ist in A b s i c h t a u f W i l l e n u n d E m p f i n d u n g , Charakter. Woher w e i ß d e r a r m e K e i m , u n d w o h e r soll ers wissen, w e l c h e R e i z e , K r ä f t e , .Düfte d e s L e b e n s i h m i m A u g e n b l i c k seines W e r d e n s z u s t r ö m t e n ? D a s Siegel G o t t e s , d i e D e c k e d e r S c h ö p f u n g r u h e t a u f i h m : e r w a r d g e b i l d e t i m M i t t e l p u n k t d e r E r d e . (p. 22C)

Herder aptly repeats this seminal image several pages later to symbolize the embryonic 'Genie' who with all its latent abilities still must struggle to break through its shell as it develops. He is writing here of the modesty of 'Genie' aware of its own limitations: D e r w a h r e M e n s c h G o t t e s f ü h l t m e h r seine S c h w ä c h e n u n d G r e n z e n , a l s d a ß er sich i m A b g r u n d seiner " p o s i t i v e n K r a f t " m i t M o n d u n d S o n n e b a d e . E r strebt u n d m u ß also n o c h n i c h t haben: s t ö ß t sich o f t w u n d a n d e r Decke, die i h n u m g i b t , a n der Schale, die ihn verschließet, geschweige d a ß e r sich i m m e r i m E m p y r e u m seiner Allseligkeit f ü h l e , (p. 230)

Again, in the same paragraph, the large consciousness of the humble 'Genie', 'der wahre Mensch Gottes', is characterized botanically as languishing and thirsting for vivifying sap. J e u n e n d l i c h e r d a s M e d i u m , d i e W e l t s e i t e ist, f ü r d i e e r u n m i t t e l b a r h i n t e r seiner E r d s c h o l l e S i n n h a t : d e s t o m e h r w i r d er K r a f t l o s i g k e i t , W ü s t e , Verbannung spüren, und nach neuem Saft, nach höherm Auffluge und V o l l e n d u n g seines W e r k s l e c h z e n - [ . ] (Ibid.)

Finally, on the following page, when arguing that popular classifications of 'Genies' are the work of men and not the nature which created them and before giving his own tentative division of types (noted for either their specialized 'Innigkeit' or their all-encompassing if less profound 'Ausbreitung'), Herder implicitly identifies genius by vegetable imagery: he points out that just as plants are not identified as to type by their external and superficial associations,

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so, too, genius must be characterized internally, 'a/us der Seele heraus', . . . denn kein Gärtner hat noch seine Gewächse nach dem blauen oder rothen Topfe genannt, in die er sie etwa setzte, geschweige daß ein Botanist blos die Kräuter, die auf Mistbeeten und in Treibhäusern wachsen, für die ganze lebendige Flora angesehen hätte (p. 231).

Although in the preceding illustration the figure is an analogy rather than a metaphor or symbol, it is still of interest because it presents yet another example of Herder's use of botanical imagery to characterize a zoological being and is in keeping with the tone struck earlier in this section of our study when we noticed Herder's vivid dictum: "Das Genie ist eine Pflanze . . ." (HWS, II, 280). In this section we have, then, observed the young Herder's use of organistic imagery to characterize the nascence, growth, effect, and essence of the 'Genie' and the creative writer in three works: Ueber Thomas A.bbts Schriften, Shakespear, and Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . . In particular, the botanical mood that had been present in 1768 is still an essential, organizing principle a decade later when to characterize the fully-grown 'Genie', Herder aptly uses, in addition to plant imagery, seminal figuration to depict vividly the embryonic 'Genie' with all its latent powers. In these essays Herder is employing botanical imagery to characterize a zoological being; in Thomas Abbt, however, Herder intermixes both kinds of biological imagery when he symbolizes the human 'Genie' as a plant and, within the same context, provides a botanical being with zoological, reproductive powers. Furthermore, as a possible reaction to the excessive 'Geniesucht' of the early 1770's, the Herder of Vom Erkennen und Empfinden . . . stresses the normal appearance of the vegetable 'Genie' in contrast to his stand in Thomas Abbt, where abnormal and excessive fertility in style are made criteria of the 'Genie'. Finally, Herder's ascription of a laudable, superabundant fertility to Thomas Abbt, making him exemplary as a vegetable 'Genie', is seen to be more a revelation of the young Herder's own mind than of Abbt's. B. EDUCATION

If Herder uses botanical imagery to characterize zoological beings when discussing the creative personality, then it is not surprising that a similar metaphor is present in his writings on education.

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Progressing chronologically through his early works, we shall see t h a t Herder represents youth to be educated both with botanical figuration and with imagery of the fertile soil into which the fruitful 'seed' of learning is to be sown. In the opening pages of his Journal meiner Reise botanical imagery is found once again in an autobiographical context (cf. also HWS, VIII, 198). When the twentyfive-year-old Herder laments the loss of his youth because of the essentially abstract nature of the education his day afforded him, he characterizes himself - and others like him - with an arboreal metaphor, writing vividly of the irreparable damage done by forcing this tree to bear the 'fruit' of maturity far too soon, when it should only be in 'blossom': " 0 was ists für ein unersätzlicher Schade, Früchte affektiren zu wollen, und zu müßen, wenn man nur Blüthe tragen soll! Jene sind unächt, zu frühzeitig, fallen nicht blos selbst ab, sondern zeigen auch vom Verderben des B a u m s ! " (HWS, IV, 347) And when Herder, almost two centuries ago, near the end of this Journal calls for what we today might call the aural-oral approach to language study, he employs the image of blossoming as a term of praise to characterize the learning child's mind: Weg also Grammatiken und Grammatiker. Mein Kind soll jede Todte Sprache lebendig, und jede lebendige so lernen, als wenn sie sieh selbst erfände . . . . Und wer seine Muttersprache so lebendig lernte, daß jedes Wort ihm so zur Zeit käme, als er die Sache sieht und den Gedanken hat: welch ein richtiger philosophisch denkender Kopf! welch eine junge blühende Seele ! (p. 452)

Some five years later, in his Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte . . ., still carrying on Iiis attack against the self-satisfied Enlightenment's educational ideal which prided itself in not 'losing' any years of life 'in einer elenden Kindheit' (HWS, V, 551), Herder uses vegetable imagery to symbolize youth made to ripen too soon and hence wither early. Here, in contrast to our previous quotation, the 'blossom' image sarcastically represents an adolescence characterized by a forced maturity: Philosophie, Erziehung und gute Sitten, welche neue Schöpfung habt ihr geschaffen ! Wir sind jetzt im dreizehnten Jahre reif, und durch stumme und laute Sünden im zwanzigsten verblühet. Wir genießen das Leben, recht in der Morgenröhte und schönsten Blüthe! (Ibid.)

I n the quotations presented so far in this section, Herder has been using botanical imagery when rejecting the pedagogical principles

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of the Enlightenment that resulted in an unhealthy, unnatural early maturity. Now in the following passage, taken from the final part of this treatise, Herder considers the harm done to the boys of his day who at too young an age are selected for the required Prussian military training.1 These inverted and ruined youths Herder depicts vividly with an arboreal image as potentially fruitful but uprooted from family tradition regardless of parental desire, their fruit and blossom scattered on the earth: Der Blüthenroiche Baum, zu früh aus seiner Muttererde gerißen, in eine Welt von Stürmen verpflanzt, denen der härteste Stamm oft kaum bestehet, vielleicht gar dahin eingepflanzt mit verkehrtem Ende, Gipfel s t a t t Wurzel, und die traurige Wurzel in der L u f t - er droht dir in Kurzem da zu stehn, verdorret, scheußlich, Blüthe und Frucht auf der Erde ! (p. 672)

Several pages later Herder protests against certain tendencies in society and education based upon panaceas of the age - human 'Freiheit,

Geselligkeit,

Gleichheit

u n d Allglückseligkeit''

(p. 575) —

because of the damage these do to young people. After lamenting that the very 'springs' of youth, health, vitality, and better education are obstructed, Herder reverts to his botanical figure to symbolize the young men and women cut off from this life-giving source. Because of the early, unnatural maturity forced upon them, their blossom and fruit suffer, and they cannot help but wither like gentle limbs exposed too soon to the powerful sun: Geselligkeit und leichter Umgang zwischen den Geschlechtern, h a t er nicht die Ehre, Anständigkeit und Zucht beider Theile erniedrigt'l f ü r Stand, Geld und Artigkeit alle Schlößer der großen Welt aufgesprengt'! die erste Blüthe des männlichen und die edelsten Früchte des weiblichen Geschlechts in Ehe- und Mutterliebe und Erziehung haben wie viel gelitten'i ihr Schade sich wohin jortverhreitet'i Abgrund unersetzlicher Ü b e l ! da selbst die Quellen der Beßerung und Genesung, Jugend, Lebenskraft und beßere Erziehung

1

Herder addresses parents: "Mit dir rede ich lieber, Hirt deiner Heerde, Vater, Mutter in der armen H ü t t e ! . . . Kannst dein Kind nicht bestimmen ! wird dir frühe vielleicht in der Wiege schon mit einer Ehrenfeßel der Freiheit - höchstes Ideal unsrer Philosophen! - gezeichnet: kannsts nicht f ü r Väterlichen Heerd, Vatersitten, Tugend und Daseyn erziehen - . . . . (p. 571). Suphan indicates i n a n o t e t h a t "Ehrenfeßel der Freiheit" is an "Anspielung darauf, daß in Ostpreußen möglichst früh den f ü r den Militärdienst bestimmten Kindern ein rothes Band um den Hals gelegt wurde" (p. 730).

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THE CENTRAL FAKT OF OKG/iNISTIC IMAGEKY

verstopft sind ! - Die schiankern, also leicht umher spielenden Äste können nicht anders als in ihrem zu früh und unkräftigen Lebensspiele mitten i m Sonnenstrale verdorren! Unersetzlicher V e r l u s t ! (Ibid).

The following year, in the concluding remarks of yet another import a n t essay, Ursachen des gesunknen Geschmacks . . ., Herder is still concerned with difficulties of educating youth in his day, and he symbolizes the pupil as a delicate tree so easily crushed at the road side: Wie schwer aber die Bildung des Geschmacks ist einem verderbten Zeitalter werde, ist unsäglich. D e m Zöglinge k o m m e n lauter Gegenstände vor Augen,