mighty movement of the
stream in _Mahomet_ to the bit of cheese that is weighed by the old
woman in _Die Geschwister_--out of all comes a widening of the poetic
horizon, the like of which had never before been seen in any age. The
Romanticists in reality only made a watchword out of this practice of
Goethe's when they demanded "progressive universal poetry," by which
they meant that the poet should live through the whole experience of
creation in his own person. In demanding this, they--as the aging
Goethe had himself done--formed too narrow a conception of the
personal, and rejected too absolutely the problems of politics and of
science, so that once more a narrowing process ensued. But even in
their own ranks this tendency was offset by the exigency of the times;
after the wars of liberation, political and in general, poetry written
with a purpose was actually in the ascendency. The poetry of the mood,
like that of a Moerike, remained for a long time almost unknown on
account of its strictly intimate character. In the success of Ernst
von Wildenbruch we see provisionally the last victory of this sort of
literature--which directly proclaims what is worth striving for--at
least in its loftier form. For the contemporary novel constantly takes
for its subject the emancipation of woman, or the fight for culture,
the protection of the Ostmark, or the fight against alcohol.

On the other hand the Romantic school has also broadened the realm of
poetic material in a very important manner, by adding to it the
provinces of the phantastic, the visionary, the fairy-like, and by
giving to the symbolical an undreamed-of expansion.

On the whole, modern German literature has probably a richer field
from which to choose her material than any other literature can boast
of. In fact it is perhaps too variegated, and thus, because of the
richness and originality of its subject matter, allows too much
latitude to genius. One field only in poetry, considered from the
viewpoint of real art, is almost uncultivated. All the efforts and all
the attempts on the part of both Catholics and Protestants have not
succeeded in producing religious poems of any degree of importance
since Annette von Droste-Huelshoff ceased to sing; whereas, on the
other hand, poetry that is hostile to the church has brought to
maturity some great productions, not only in Anzengruber or Karl
Schoenherr, in Friedrich Theodor Vischer, in Storm, and Keller, but,
above all