Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/109

 depart from him. An extension and amplification of the language’s range of sensuous imagery having thus been begun by the thinker, to send it in flood through the whole field of sensuous images, so that every image may receive its appropriate share of the new spiritual ennoblement and so that the whole of life, down to its deepest depths of sense, may appear steeped in the new ray of light, may be well-pleasing, and may unwittingly give the illusion of ennobling itself—to do this is the work of true poetry. Only a living language can have such poetry, for only in such a language can the range of sensuous imagery be extended by creative thought, and only in it does what has already been created remain alive and open to the influence of kindred life. Such a language has within itself the power of infinite poetry, ever refreshing and renewing its youth, for every stirring of living thought in it opens up a new vein of poetic enthusiasm. To such a language, therefore, poetry is the highest and best means of flooding the life of all with the spiritual culture that has been attained. It is quite impossible for a dead language to have poetry in this higher sense, for none of the conditions necessary to poetry exist in it. Such a language can have, however, though only for a limited period, a substitute for poetry in the following way. The outpourings of the art of poetry in the original language will attract attention. The new people, indeed, cannot go on making poetry in the path that has been begun, for this is foreign to its life, but it can introduce its own life and its new circumstances into the sphere of sensuous imagery and poetry in which the preceding age expressed its own life; it can, for example, dress up its knights as heroes, and vice versa, and make the ancient gods exchange raiment with the new ones. It is precisely this placing