Herder has discussed, in connection with two groups of poetry which he distinctly calls Volkspoesie, each race from which the particular collection arose. Both directly and indirectly he presents in each of these peoples the peculiar characteristics by which he identifies a community with his ideal conception of Volk.
In his collection of Volk songs he has presented literature from many and varied peoples of the earth, but he has discussed at length, to show the traits which stamp their Volkspoesie as such, only two of these groups.
An examination of the common factors which the author sees as essential elements of each of these races ought to give us in one form his conception of Das Volk.
The two races are: (1) Those whom he believes to be the ancient Gauls, from whom we have the collection known as “The Songs of Ossian”[10]; (2) the ancient Hebrews.[11]
Herder places the people among whom this body of literature arose in the islands known as the “Hebrides,” in the highlands of Scotland, and in Ireland.
Rugged mountains covered with roaring forests or spotted with desert tracts surround the inhabitants. Mists and clouds, midnight and storm, abound both on mountain tops and in the intervening valleys. Their huts are bordered by rocks and narrowly shut in by foggy darkness or from rough cliffs; they overlook the sea.
At the time at which we see them these highland dwellers look often upon wilderness full of sacred views, upon battlefields, lonesome graves, and blotted-out footsteps.
These old Highlanders believed in an all-high Being, whom they conceived to be self-existing. The cloud was the dwelling place of patriotism and love. The voice of renown, that is of song sung by friends yet alive to the honor of their departed ones, still highly esteemed, introduced these departed to their ancestors. With a sigh and tear as password, they were received at once into the smiling presence of their forefathers, who had clear, transparent figures like to the curled clouds. Their hands were weak, their voices deep and soft. They swayed themselves over the entire abode of their race and rejoiced in boundless space. Space they prized above everything else. Fright and horror were considered as narrow and shut in. Hence they called the grave the narrow house, and weak courage, the breath of a narrow soul.
The noble dead never became old, but grew constantly wiser because they conversed with the good of other times. On the other hand, the souls of the wicked were driven whirling into a thick fog which always hung over an offensive smelling morass. They never came out of this fog, and never saw the sun. One did not know the name of the other. The black water of the morass lake was their only converse; the voice of the Heron and the quacking of ducks their music.
Ossian’s folk attributed every sudden death to an invisible hand which threw a stone out of the clouds and which they called an “arrow of the destroying woman.”
“Their chief conception of the highest being was that it governs the clouds and heavenly bodies and rejoices at bravery and fortune of mankind; that it remained ever invisible ... that the entire earth out of fear would like to catch and imprison it.”
The dead were mourned in funeral dirges sung on the graves of the departed; in the case of heroes, often amid battle tumult, these songs were directed to ancestral heroes who awaited the dead in the clouds.
One of their myths which Herder extracts from Ossian shows a certain phase of their religion:
“As they sing in the moonlight to the moon goddess, Mona, this maiden of the heavens comes with gentle movement, with silent, beautiful cheek; her playmates, the stars, stand in rows to receive her; the clouds bordered with gold trip before them as servants; she outshines all her rivals so that they blush and conceal themselves in veils. On such an occasion as this the hero Ossian turns his sad song to the thought, How would it be if she should once disappear from the heavens, if she should then go into her little hut to cry and cry as he does? He wonders if she like him has lost friends, and he begins to comfort the beautiful girl and to cheer her up so that she quite joyfully smiles again.”
The family feeling is strong, and it is the foundation of nearly all good feeling toward fatherland and friend, tribe and neighbor. There are common among these people scenes full of innocence, of friendship, of fatherly, brotherly, in fact family, love in general. Fingal is hero and leader but also lover, bridegroom, husband, friend, father. Ossian is warrior, but also son of noble Fingal, and in this very relation the singer of the praises of his ancestors, of his friends, of his brothers, of his sons.
It is out of the sadness of separated loved ones that we hear the most touching tones and the harp is made to resound to praises sung to ancestors. Although these tribes are said to be wild, they are in many respects closely bound to customs and forms. The harp is their musical instrument to whose touching tones their legends are fitted into song.
Herder points out that the stage in the history of Ossian’s people from which this collection of poetry wins its character is the time of the extinction of the race of heroes of whom Ossian the brave is the chief and sad singer. He is the last of his courageous tribe; the witness to the deeds of noted Fingal and his colleagues; the departing voice of a heroic age to its weaker descendants. His mournful strains are accompanied by no awakening call for an age yet to come. His race was not, like Homer’s on Ionian shores, a growing people in the dawn of splendor looking toward a flowering in the future.
The cause of the mournful strain in the life of Ossian’s race may have been subjection by a foreign power or the invasion of monks bringing the Christian religion. The poems suggest both. Ossian’s songs must have had a powerful effect upon the people out of whose midst they grew. As long as there were bards this people’s strength was irrepressible. But now we see a patient, subject race trying to revive itself on the renown and happy existence of departed ancestors.
When Herder brings to our attention the difference between the mournful tones of Ossian and the arousing strains of Homer, when he reminds us of the differing stages of history commemorated by each, the points entirely unlike at which each writer halts and from which he extracts for his art character, he sets forth a definite theory; namely, that each writer, speaking as his people would speak, characterizes his poetry with the individual content and feeling of his race; that each race has its personality, and each spontaneously expresses this personality in its song:
Und Ossian? Es ist ungerecht von einem Baume Früchte zu erwarten, die er, seiner Art nach, nicht bringen kann; Ossian sei an seinem Orte das was Homer war; nur stand er auf einer ganz andern Stelle. In jedem Lande bildet sich der Volksgesang nach innnern und äussern Veranlassungen der Nation.
The eye and the ear of these people are wide open to every sight and sound which their physical environment presents. The ear is strong, quick, lasting; the eye keen, embracing, receptive. A certain perceptual power expressed in alertness, boldness, and noble aspect pervaded their entire being. According to Herder’s philosophy, as expressed in Erkennen und Empfinden, the senses present to the mind pictures which receive the stamp of feeling and which in turn are given back through some medium of expression.
In Ossian, the material for these pictures is first and foremost Nature; Nature robed in the peculiar majesty of the north. The sun is a rash youth, the moon a maiden who has had as sisters other moons in the heavens. The evening star is a lovely boy who comes out, winks, and goes away again. All objects are personified, filled with life and movement, whether it be wind or wave, or even the down of a thistle. As soon as possible the object itself becomes a voice, and we hear moanings of sadness and songs of the harp. These figures are often of the mist, coming out of clouds through which the stars twinkle.
Ossian sings, also, deeds, happenings of history, the bygone fates of forefathers, and old legends.
In outline all these pictures are delineations, which are snappy, strong, manly, abrupt, wild, lively. They are not painted in detail, and their content does not stream forth slowly in regular and measured intervals. Less harsh and wild are they, however, than the songs of the so-called “Northmen,” because Ossian’s soul possesses a charm giving out lonesomeness, love, and gentleness mingled with courage and strength of feeling.
The language is crisp, short, true, and exact, and penetrates by its simplicity. A single word literally seizes a whole thought and the two break forth together upon a voice tender and sad. When the singer would exhort his comrades to courage, he painted his pictures through tones that fell upon the ear.
In general, Ossian makes us see and hear the living world in scenes that pass quickly, singly, one by one, without arranging themselves in a regular and formal procession. Rough, strong sublimity is their character. The colors which burst upon the eye and the tones which storm the ear come forth without premeditation and polish; the natural outlet of a people to whom nature has given an eye and heart and mind for wild beauty, and in whom manners, customs, and language of civilization have wrought no marring effects. These peoples see and feel, but they do not think and ponder. Here Herder makes spontaneity a child of unwarped nature.
Herder applies his studies to the Hebrew people as he finds them in their earliest habitations. From his analysis of formative forces and of the peculiar personality resulting from these influences we have what follows: The physical features of the lands with which the Hebrews were familiar were varied enough to give them a rather complete natural history of the earth. They understood the subsiding of water that left mountains above them and valleys in between these. They saw that waters coursed through the valleys and made fertile plains. They knew how springs gush forth from rocks and trees grow on the banks of rivers. They knew both the sea and the desert. The summer sun brought calm waters and the cold winds forged fetters of ice. The palm tree and the cedar, the olive and the grape, grew in these lands. The variety of animals seems to imply a wide and varied expanse of territory.
The crane, the turtledove, the eagle, the raven, the stork, the ostrich, the lion, the wild ox, perhaps the elephant and the rhinoceros, as well as most of our common domestic birds and other animals, frequented these environments.
Herder conceives of this entire milieu as a world in which the dawn of human life was arising out of dark night, and giving way to the broad daylight in which water and air, earth and sea, mountain and forest, were in the fullest view and most powerful working. The strong contrasts of oriental skies wrought through light and darkness their sharpest outlines.
The mild climate was perhaps the most beautiful in the world, and produced the simplest needs of life with little labor on the part of the inhabitants. With fertile river valleys in addition, which furnished grazing lands, it was natural that one of the earliest grades of civilization should arise here—the shepherd folk.
Although these people had a civilization that was early circumscribed, it nevertheless presupposes some cultivation. Even the shepherd state cannot exist without arts and fixed customs. The Hebrews in this shepherd state had developed family bonds and fixed the ruling power of the father in domestic life. They had domesticated animals, and developed tender feelings toward them.
Let us look at the moral and mental traits due to this physical and social environment.
The eye developed clearness and acuteness, a vivid sensitiveness; it saw every leaf, every blade of grass, the plains and valleys, the waters in outline and expanse, the planets and the broad ether in which they hung, and it distinguished every movement. The ear heard the delicate rustlings of branches and bows, as well as the roar of winds, the smallest raindrop, and the rush of mighty waters. Every sense was thus developed to a finesse which left no phenomenon of nature unobserved.
These sense impressions were impregnated with the feelings and carrying these effects of feelings they passed onward to the mind and made mental pictures of a kind which correspond to the character of the imprint made by the feelings. Then these made-over pictures were given back to the world in the sublime language found in the Old Testament. It is in these pictures, in this investing of free nature with the power to feel, that we see the texture and depth of feeling which are an essential part of the personality of this group.
They saw the dawn rising out of darkness. They felt that the phenomenon was due to a cause superior to any power in man. They could not account for the beginnings of mankind. The consciousness of limitations of their own knowledge and the awe for the unknown first cause turned the actual darkness and dawn and full daylight into chaotic emptiness, a ray of light at the beginning of creation and a completed work at the end of six days—a wonderful personality directing it all. They saw the trees and the plants thriving in their own spheres, and they attributed to them life impulses given them by the sympathy and love and directing force of special geniuses, the messengers of God. The stars were light; they had undeceiving brightness and constant courses. They stamped the sense impression of them with the feeling of worshipful joy, of rhythm which became music and dancing, and so it was that the stars became the daughters that shouted about the throne of the Great Ruler. At times they assigned to them the sense of power for defense in well-ordered numbers of individuals, and the stars became an army ready to do battle for God. Again they were his willing servants and messengers. They saw the heavens stretching from horizon to horizon, and everything in creation working in its own sphere with regularity and order. Their own feeling for system, harmonious working in family and tribal circles, pictured God in paternal relations; a householder who stretched his great tent by fastening it to the outmost borders of the earth, and opened and arranged therein the treasures of his household. They heard a light rustle of leaves and imprinted upon it the feeling of gentleness and kindness, and it became a messenger of God, an angel. They heard the thunder and their shuddering gloom translated it into the voice of an angry God. They listened to their own heartbeats and transferred their rhythm to their own speech, for we may account for the free light rhythm in their songs by comparing it with the systole and diastole of the heart and the movements of the breath in the physiological processes of inspiration and expiration.
Their national pride and national joy found expression in collective song which might either glorify God or invoke their own well-being. Such song is at one and the same time inspiration and expression.
In general, their poetic language draws concise analogy between the objects of creation and the qualities and attributes of the creator of these things. It lingers over single images, repeats them, wonders at them, and finally gives them forth with a vigorous tongue incapable of empty words.
These souls so entirely formed by the sights and sounds of nature blended with inner feeling give a secret, mystical significance touched with the finest spiritual sense to the pictures and parallels which they produce. We have here a peculiar race type living close to crude nature, an individuality which is shaped by this primitive milieu and which expresses itself in sharp and strong outlines in its art. The most marked feature of this individuality is the spontaneity in its expression.
The common factors to be drawn from this exposition, which contribute to the interpretation of Herder’s general conception of Volk are:
1. The physical environment of both groups was primeval nature; i.e., a material world that had undergone very few of the changes which may be wrought by the arts and crafts of what we term higher stages of civilization.
Kurz wir sind mit Denkart, Sprache, Sitten des Jahrhunderts so weit aus Ossians Natur heraus, als unsre Städte, Höfe, Palläste, Schulgebäude keine Schottische rauhen Gebürge, unsre Gesellschaftskreise und Zerstreuungen im Museum kein Tanz unter rauschenden Bäumen.[12]
Als Gesetzgeber wirkte Moses auf den Geist seines Volks mit Riesenstärke. Dass er sie zum Acker- und Hirtenvolk machte, und so viel es seyn konnte, Handel u. Eroberung ausschloss. Land- und Hirtenmässig ist ihre Poesie dem grössten Theile nach. Ländlich sind ihre Bilder, im Hirten- und Ackerleben der grösste Reichtum ihrer Sprache.[13]
2. Both races were subject to powerful control by this physical environment:
Alle Gesänge solcher wilden Völker weben um daseiende Gegenstände, Handlungen, Begebenheiten, um eine lebendige Welt.[14]
Und alle hat das Auge gesehen! Die Seele stellt sie sich vor! Das setzt Sprünge und Würfe:[15]
Ihre Ideen sind voll starker Contraste, voll Licht und Dunkel, voll Ruhe und Arbeit: dies ist der Character des morgenländischen Himmels, und des Genius seiner Nationen.[16]
Wenn die Biblischen Dichter von den Schneegüssen des Libanon; vom Thau des Hermon; von den Eichen Basans; vom prächtigen Libanon, und angenehmen Carmel reden; so geben sie Bilder, die ihnen die Natur selbst vorgestellt hat.[17]
3. Among both, their ideas of God and their religion were interwoven with personified nature:
Darthula. Ein Gesang an die Mondgöttin (Mona, Mana, μήνη) vielleicht der schönste, der je im Mondschein gesungen worden.[18]
Solche Bilder und Ideen, als uns auch nur die ersten Kapitel Moses gewähren. Hier ist als ob Einer der Elohim selbst, der Genius der Menschheit unsichtbar lehrte .... und singet den Menschen, seinem unsichtbaren Vater und Schöpfer gleich.[19]
4. Both were races of people with keen, strong, exact senses:
.... der rauhe Schotte Ossian? Er sang lebendig, und stürmte also in den kurzen Augenblicken lebendiger Stimme auf Herz und Ohr; für matte Augen im Lehnstuhl, .... wollte er nie in der Welt solche schöne klassische Augenweide schaffen.[20]
Bilderrede und Gesang also sind die beiden Hauptforten der Poesie der Ebräer; .... sie sind Poesie fürs Auge und Ohr, durch welche beide sie das Herz besänftigen oder bestürmen.[21]
5. The members of both races had, as innate characteristics, rapid and direct interaction between sensation, feeling, imagination, and expression:
Wir sind freilich in der ganzen Denkart unsres Jahrhunderts zu weit von Ossian ab. Mehr an eine Kette raffinirter Vorstellungen, leichter Abstraktionen angenehmer Pensées und Reflexionen gewöhnt, fals an den rauhen Schrei der Leidenschaft, kühner Hinwürfe einer starkgetrofnen Einbildung, und einer wüsten, starken Gestalt der Seele.[22]
Seine Muse ist Tochter der Natur auf ihren wildesten Höhen erzogen, aber rasch, kühn, edeln Ansehens, nur mit natürlichem Reitze geschmückt und im Tanze der Natur hinfliegend.[22]
Sehen Sie Hiob. Die Erde war ein Pallast.... Der Ocean ward, wie ein Kind, gebohren und gewindelt: das Morgenroth handelte, die Blitze sprachen.[23]
6. In general, the texture resulting from control of the individual by forces of nature unchanged by human interference is in both peoples fitly correlated with functioning; i.e., spontaneity is innately and intrinsically their nature.
Homers Rhapsodien und Ossians Lieder waren gleichsam impromptus, weil man damals noch von Nichts als impromptus der Rede wusste.[24]
Nun ist bei den Ebräern beinahe Alles Verbum: d.i. alles lebt und handelt.[25] Alles in ihr ruft: ... ich lebe, bewege mich, wirke. Mich erschuffen Sinne und Leidenschaften, nicht abstrakte Denken und Philosophen.[26]
With all these points in common, Ossian’s people and the ancient Hebrews, as portrayed in Herder’s analysis of their poetry, differ from each other as races in religion and in social customs. They show us different habitats. They depict different historical epochs and scenes. But that which is common in all this difference is, according to Herder, that each has a personality of its own which characterizes its art.
In jedem Lande bildet sich der Volksgesang nach innern und äussern Veranlassungen der Nation. Ossians Gedichte bezeichnen den Herbst seines Volkes. Die Blätter färben und krümmen sich; sie falben und fallen. Der Lufthauch, der sie ablöset, hat keine Erguickung des Frühlinges in sich; sein Spiel indessen ist traurig ... angenehm mit den sinkenden Blättern.[27]
Gesetzt, wir konnten alles dies wissen; singen wir denn für Juden die sich für das einzige Volk Gottes hielten?... Von allen Völkern der Erde abgesondert, brachte es seinem Schutzgott Nationalgesänge.[28]
Es verdient fast nicht bemerkt zu werden ... dass man die poetischen Bilder und Empfindungen keines Volks und keiner Zeit nach dem Regelmaas eines andern Volks, einer andern Zeit zu beurteilen, zu tadeln, zu verwerfen habe.[29]