of course self-evident. For the rest--be it said
incidentally--here is the point from which a parallel can be drawn
between the phenomena of real life and those of life embodied in art.

I will now review the separate branches of art at which Koerner and
Kleist have tried their hand. We find that they are lyric poetry, drama,
and narrative. All three have to do with the representation of life, and
if a division can be made it can only be based upon the various ways in
which life is wont to manifest itself. Life manifests itself either as a
reaction upon outward impressions, or lacking these, directly from
within. When it works directly from within, we usually designate the
form under which it appears as feeling. Feeling is the element of lyric
poetry; the art of limiting and representing it makes the lyric poet.
Let no one object that there are feelings enough which arise in
consequence of outward impressions, and that these too have been
expressed sufficiently often by the poets; I am very much inclined to
distinguish between the results of these impressions and the feelings
which well up from the depths of the soul in consecrated moments; and in
any case, these alone are a worthy subject for the lyric poet; for only
in them does the whole man actually live, they only are the product of
his whole being. I hate examples because they are either make-shifts or
will-o'-the-wisps, but here I must add that in Uhland's song, "A short
while hence I dreamed," I find such a feeling expressed.

The drama represents the thought which seeks to become a deed through
action or suffering. The narrative is really not a pure form, but a
combination of the lyric and dramatic elements,--a combination which
differs from the drama in that it develops the outer life from the
inner, whereas in the drama the inner proceeds from the outer.

Let us now examine what Theodor Koerner and Heinrich von Kleist have
accomplished, in the first place, as lyric poets. Kleist (unhappily) has
left us very little in this field, Koerner (again unhappily) all the
more. Koerner's war-songs have, in this stage of our investigation, the
precedence over his other lyric productions, for two reasons: in the
first place, they found the largest public and earned for their author,
beside the royalties, the title of a German Tyrtaeus; and in the second
place, Theodor Koerner's soul was most ardently engrossed with the
supposed and the real sufferings of his time, with