Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/478

452 on the other side. And then the wide prospect northwards and southwards over the straits, — a broad expanse indeed, but still shut in on both sides by a beautiful shore. While we were admiring these objects, one after another, our attention was diverted to a certain commotion in the water, at a tolerable distance on the left hand, and still nearer on the right, to a rock distinctly separate from the shore. They were Scylla and Charybdis. These remarkable objects, which in nature stand so wide apart, but which the poet has brought so close together, have furnished occasion to many to make grave complaints of the fabling of poetry. Such grumblers, however, do not duly consider that the imaginative faculty invariably depicts the objects it would represent as grand and impressive, with a few striking touches rather than in fulness of detail, and that thereby it lends to the image more of character, solemnity, and dignity. A thousand times have I heard the complaint that the objects for a knowledge of which we are originally indebted to description, invariably disappoint us when we see them with our own eyes. The cause is, in every case, the same. Imagination and reality stand in the same relation to each other as poetry and prose do: the former invariably conceives of its objects as powerful and elevated, the latter loves to dilate and expand them. A comparison of the landscape painters of the sixteenth century with those of our own day will strikingly illustrate my meaning. A drawing of Iodocus Momper, by the side of one of Kniep's outlines, would at once make the contrast intelligible.

With such and similar discourses we contrived to amuse ourselves; as the coasts were not attractive enough even for Kniep, notwithstanding his having prepared everything for sketching.

As to myself, however, I was again attacked with seasickness; but this time the unpleasant feeling was