THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART BY G. W. F. HEGEL TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A. AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS VOL. IV LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 1920 CONTENTS OF VOL. IV SUBSECTION III THE ROMANTIC ARTS_--continued_ CHAPTER III POETRY Introduction [Summary and contrast between poetry and the other particular arts. Its relation to the other two romantic arts. Absence of all external sensuous presence. Poetry appeals to imaginative vision. Not so direct as sense-perception. Advantage over painting through its ability to display facts in their historical succession or natural process. Far profounder and more extended embrace of world of idea than in music; due to its greater power of definition in speech and its use of tone merely as a subordinate instrument. The content of poetry is the ideal envisagement of imaginative content itself. Everything made intelligible by language may form part of content, subject to the condition that it is poetical. Analysis of what this condition implies. The imagination of artist must be Contributive; distinction from mere prose consciousness and thinking. In its entire independence of the material of sense it may be defined as the universal art. The material is the imagination, and as such conjoint with all the arts. It is, however, not the only art open to philosophical review on this ground. It marks, however, the commencement of the disintegration of Art, its bridge of passage to the notion of religion and philosophical thought] Subdivision of subject-matter I. Poetical composition as distinguished from that of Prose 1. The poetical and prosaic composition (_a_) The world of natural or prosaic fact relatively excluded. Primarily what it deals with is the infinite domain of Spirit and the energies of its life (_b_) Distinction between poetical and prosaic conception 21 [(_α_) Poetical anterior to the prosaic form of artistic speech. It is the original imaginative grasp of truth. Dates from first effort of man at self-expression. Endeavours to make that expression of a higher virtue than mere prose (_β_) The kind of prose life from which poetry is separate postulates a different kind of conception and speech. The finite categories of the understanding applicable to the former. The ideal rationale of fact is aimed at by poetry. Its affinity with and distinction from pure thought (_γ_) Difference between the relation of poetic conception to prosaic in early times and more modern, where the prosaic form of life has become stereotyped in a definite system] (_c_) The nature of the differentiation of poetical activity in different ages and nations