Allegory has an entirely different relation to poetry from that which it has to plastic and pictorial art, and although it is to be rejected in the latter, it is not only permissible, but very serviceable to the former. For in plastic and pictorial art it leads away from what is perceptibly given, the proper object of all art, to abstract thoughts; but in poetry the relation is reversed; for here what is directly given in words is the concept, and the first aim is to lead from this to the object of perception, the representation of which must be undertaken by the imagination of the hearer. If in plastic and pictorial art we are led from what is immediately given to something else, this must always be a conception, because here only the abstract cannot be given directly; but a conception must never be the source, and its communication must never be the end of a work of art. In poetry, on the contrary, the conception is the material, the immediately given, and therefore we may very well leave it, in order to call up perceptions which are quite different, and in which the end is reached. Many a conception or abstract thought may be quite indispensable to the connection of a poem, which is yet, in itself and directly, quite incapable of being perceived; and then it is often made perceptible by means of some example which is subsumed under it. This takes place in every trope, every metaphor, simile, parable, and allegory, all of which differ only in the length and completeness of their expression. Therefore, in the arts which employ language as their medium, similes and allegories are of striking effect. How beautifully Cervantes [pg 311] says of sleep in order to express the fact that it frees us from all spiritual and bodily suffering, "It is a mantle that covers all mankind." How beautifully Kleist expresses allegorically the thought that philosophers and men of science enlighten mankind, in the line, "Those whose midnight lamp lights the world." How strongly and sensuously Homer describes the harmful Ate when he says: "She has tender feet, for she walks not on the hard earth, but treads on the heads of men" (Il. xix. 91.) How forcibly we are struck by Menenius Agrippa's fable of the belly and the limbs, addressed to the people of Rome when they seceded. How beautifully Plato's figure of the Cave, at the beginning of the seventh book of the "Republic" to which we have already referred, expresses a very abstract philosophical dogma. The fable of Persephone is also to be regarded as a deeply significant allegory of philosophical tendency, for she became subject to the nether world by tasting a pomegranate. This becomes peculiarly enlightening from Goethe's treatment of the fable, as an episode in the Triumph der Empfindsamkeit, which is beyond all praise. Three detailed allegorical works are known to me, one, open and avowed, is the incomparable "Criticon" of Balthasar Gracian. It consists of a great rich web of connected and highly ingenious allegories, that serve here as the fair clothing of moral truths, to which he thus imparts the most perceptible form, and astonishes us by the richness of his invention. The two others are concealed allegories, "Don Quixote" and "Gulliver's Travels." The first is an allegory of the life of every man, who will not, like others, be careful, merely for his own welfare, but follows some objective, ideal end, which has taken possession of his thoughts and will; and certainly, in this world, he has then a strange appearance. In the case of Gulliver we have only to take everything physical as spiritual or intellectual, in order to see what the "satirical rogue," as Hamlet would call him, meant by it. Such, then, in the [pg 312] poetical allegory, the conception is always the given, which it tries to make perceptible by means of a picture; it may sometimes be expressed or assisted by a painted picture. Such a picture will not be regarded as a work of art, but only as a significant symbol, and it makes no claim to pictorial, but only to poetical worth. Such is that beautiful allegorical vignette of Lavater's, which must be so heartening to every defender of truth: a hand holding a light is stung by a wasp, while gnats are burning themselves in the flame above; underneath is the motto: