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Psychologie der Lyrik - Beiträge zur Analyse der dichterischen Phantasie

Psychologie der Lyrik - Beiträge zur Analyse der dichterischen Phantasie (English: psychology of poetry - contributions to the analysis of the poetic fantasy) is a book written by German philosopher, writer and occultist Dr. Carl du Prel (1839-1899). It was published 1880 by Ernst Günther's Verlag in Leipzig as part of the book series Darwinistische Schriften.

The main aim of the book is to provide a psychological account on where poetic skills stem from and what functions they bear, as well as compare poetic fantasy to fantasy in dreams. In addition, du Prel uses his book to compare his contemporaries' poetry to poetry from other historical literature movements.To do so, multiple famous poets are cited within his book, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and William Shakespeare.

The book was written as a favour to du Prel's friend Martin Greif, a German poet whose sales he wanted to improve by praising the emotional writing style of his friend. Martin Greif is also cited multiple times in the book.

Historical context

Romanticism

Psychologie der Lyrik was published in the year 1880. At this time, realism and naturalism dominated as the literary movements. Both realism and naturalism were movements actively rejecting the ideas of romanticism. In his book, du Prel criticizes this rejection of the romantic way of writing. He stresses how intense emotions are important to be conveyed, and that nature imagery is the only and most efficient way for them to be conveyed. He compares concrete examples of contributions by popular representatives of the romanticism, for example Goethe and Schiller, with the way he sees his own contemporaries write. He believes contemporary poets to be inferior in artistic skills due to their focus on pleasing aesthetics, instead of using inspiration coming from their unconscious.

The unconscious

In the year 1828, Schopenhauer stated in his publication Parerga II that every original and real thought comes from the unconscious. When people first work consciously with those originally unconscious ideas, the ideas are always changed, hence bear not their originality anymore. He also stated that the unconscious exists only as an inborn tendency and cannot be learned. Du Prel mentions Schopenhauer's work multiple times in Psychologie der Lyrik, while introducing his own approach to the unconscious. Similarly to Schopenhauer, du Prel also believes the unconscious to underlie all artistic ideas, and that conscious thinking cannot bring about any real philosophical or creative ideas. According to him, artistic skills are not teachable, similar to Schopenhauer's conception, but only come as a natural disposition.

Another movement mentioned by du Prel in his book Psychologie der Lyrik is pantheism. Representatives of the movement believe that everything in our world is one unity, and this unity is divine. As theologist Owen claimed in 1971, pantheism is also closely linked to monism. He explains this by pointing out that the two conceptions match due to their similar view of everything in the world being identical, or being modes of the same thing. Du Prel includes both monistic and pantheistic elements in his work, since he puts forward the unconscious to be part of everything in nature, including humans. He uses this to reason for good poets to be able to express emotions best with natural imagery, since then the connection with the one underlying element of everything is best described with.

Du Prel's analysis of the unconscious is further continued in his later works Die Philosophie der Mystik (1910, English: the philosophy of mysticism) and Die Entdeckung der Seele durch die Geheimwissenschaften (1910, English: the discovery of the soul through occultism).

Du Prel is also cited by psychoanalyst Freud in his famous book Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, about the independency of the soul from the consciousness. Here, du Prel's perception of more to the mind than the conscious is addressed by Freud.

Content

The book is subdivided into seven chapters. In the first chapter, with the name Die unbewusste Produktion (English: The unconscious production), du Prel argues for poetic skills to stem from the unconscious and that they are being inherited as a natural disposition. He stresses that no reflective thought will bring forward real artistic products, and that this also is the reason why science and art are dissociated from each other. Aesthetics, the study of beauty cannot bring about real art. Due to that, du Prel also has the opinion that in Ancient Greece and the romanticism movement brought forward qualitatively better art than his contemporaries, because they worked less with explicit, aesthetical knowledge, but rather intuitively used natural imagery.

He then goes on by addressing the similarities between poetic fantasy and fantasy in dreams in his second chapter Die dichterische Phantasie im Traume (English: the poetic fantasy in dreams), and his third chapter Die Traumphantasie in der Dichtung (English: dream fantasy within poetry). He uses this resemblance to strengthen his point about poetry being created in the unconscious, the same way dreams are. He also believes that in dreams material is delivered to the poet, which he then can use in his work.

He goes on by stressing nature to be the source of aesthetics with which the poet can successfully convey emotion in the remaining chapters. In the fourth chapter Das Malerische im lyrischen Gedichte (English: the picturesque view in poetry), he puts forward that poems are the most efficient means to create a picture in the recipients mind, since no spatial or temporal limits are set. In this chapter, the popular quote of Dichten heißt verdichten. (English: poetry is compressing) is written, which refers to the idea that good poets should be able to use little words to convey a vivid image and clear emotions. In his fifth chapter Die äesthetische Anschauung der Linie (English: the aesthetic view of the line), he illustrates the importance of using nature as the source for aesthetics by comparing examples of how lines in the environment can be dynamically described. He also illustrates his point about nature being the only true source of inspiration by comparing poetry with a palaeonthological worldview in his sixth chapter Die Lyrik als paläontologische Weltanschauung (English: poetry as palaeontological world view). He likens poetry to being able to transport people back to the state of "savages'" animistical worldview back in pre-historic ages, who interpreted every natural phenomenon to have a soul.

He also sees poetry to be confirming for a monistic world creation, since nature and soul show to be stem from the identical material, as emotions can be conveyed best through natural imagery. In his last chapter Landschaftliche Elemente in der modernen Lyrik (English: Scenic elements in modern poetry) he gives concrete examples of natural imagery written in the way of the palaeontological world view on the basis of the description of water and vegetation.

Reception

Psychologie der Lyrik is said to be one of the the most original pieces by du Prel, and helped him gain a reputation among many young writers back in the time. They liked his focus on intense emotions as a source for aesthetics. Among others, Detlev von Lilienkron (1844-1909), Richard Dehmel (1863-1920) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) asked for du Prel's judgement about their work. Du Prel himself anticipated a bad reception. In a letter to Moritz Necheles, he stated that when throwing down the gauntlet, one cannot expect good reception, refering here to his criticism about contemporary poetry.