Neither, with any justice, could men like Augier
and Dumas be placed in different groups. The attempt to point out
realism in the lyric art was likewise exceedingly audacious.
However, this division and grouping seemed to me at that time to be a
great discovery, and great was my disappointment when one day I
consulted Chasles on the subject and he thought it too forced, and
another day submitted it to Renan, who restricted himself to the reply:
"No! no! Things do not proceed so systematically!"
As this survey of the literature of France was also intended to guide me
with regard to the Danish, I groped my way forward in the following
manner:
I. _Romanticism_. Oehlenschlaeger's attitude towards the past
corresponds exactly to Victor Hugo's; only that the resurrection of the
Middle Ages in poetry is much more successful (_Earl Hakon, The Gods
of the North_), by reason of the fresh originality in Snorre and the
_Edda_. Grundtvig's _Scenes from the Lives of the Warriors of the
North_ likewise owes all its value to the Edda and the Sagas.
Oehlenschlaeger's _Aladdin_ is the Northern pendant to Hugo's _Les
Orientales_. Gautier, as a poet, Delacroix as a painter, affect the
East, as Oehlenschlaeger does in _Ali and Gulhyndi_. Steffens and
Sibbern, as influenced by Schelling, correspond to Cousin.
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