Poets ranked

I come across references to the 18th century and to Goethe and the Goethe era in unexpected places.  Case in point, the most recent issue of the New Left Review has a translation of an article by the German scholar Carlos Spoerhase that appeared in Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft in 2014. The article is entitled "Das Maß der Potsdamer Garde," the measurement referring to the standard by which the Prussian military chose its soldiers (apparently 6'2" minimum). The NLR title is "Rankings: A Prehistory." The article begins by noting the many rankings by which the world around us is evaluated in the 21st century -- best sellers, restaurants, impact factors -- and also by noting that such evaluations likewise existed in antiquity: the so-called canons of Hellenistic philologists. The latter, however, did involve "critical-aesthetic" judgments, which is not the case, for instance, for best seller lists.

Between 1700 and 1800, the classical comparatio, contrasting comparisons of "persons, positions, or objects, was established, beginning with the "Scale of Painters" drawn up by the art connoisseur and collector Roger de Piles in 1708. Listing alphabetically fifty-seven "best-known painters" and judging them on a variety of attributes, he set up a "numerically based aesthetic ranking." While up to 20 points could be given in the various categories (color, expression, etc.), De Piles did not aggregate the scores. For those interested in the background, I recommend the German version or the NLR translation. It wasn't long before a similar scale was established for poets. The first was that of the Scottish poet and physician Mark Akenside, which was published in 1746 as "Balance of the Poets" and included poets of all times. Oliver Goldsmith drew up a scale for English and Irish poets. (Note again the image of weight.)

By degrees, the Germans got around to weighing poets, which shows the interplay among the various European "literati," and also how much in the 18th century started in France. Christoph Martin Wieland published in 1757 "Balance der großen Poeten," but it included no Germans. As Spoerhase writes, the Germans apparently had, in Wieland's estimation, achieved nothing exemplary. There was a certain grade inflation in Wieland's rankings, with James Thompson coming out on top. (In Spoerhase's estimation, Thompson is remembered today only for the lyrics of "Rule, Britannia." But, he was oh so loved by German writers of the 18th century!)

C.F.D. Schubart brought the Germans on board in his "Kritische Skala der vorzüglichsten deutschen Dichter" in 1792, but, by then, "mathematically inclined rationalism" employed in ranking the "Moderns" came under pressure with the rise of Romanticism. In a scale of numerical evaluations, how to deal with "Genius"? For Schubart, "the poet was beyond the reach of numerical aesthetic evaluation," there being no measure in feet and inches for the mind, as there is for the body." Still, Schubart found a rationale for his "scala": low-scoring poets would see the gulf that separated them from the great ones. Or, per the caption at the bottom of the chart: "The dwarf sees more clearly that he is a dwarf when he stretches himself up against the measure of a Potsdam guard."

In the image of Schubart's chart here (click to enlarge), earlier poets (Bodmer, Hagedorn, etc.) scored fewer points than contemporaries. I have not added up all the listings, but it looks to me as if Wieland (at 165 points) came out ahead of Klopstock (154) and Goethe (152). I was interested to see that all of the poets that Schubart listed (excluding "Denis") were still very much with us when I was in graduate school in German.

A few years later Herder rejected “the project of the aesthetic scale altogether,” a position that went on to win the day. Spoerhase: “The project of arithmetizing the aesthetic or, in the terminology of de Mairan, a ‘geometrization of taste’, was abandoned. A century after the publication of de Piles’s ‘Balance des Peintres’, Jean-François Sobry (1743–1820) summarized the new viewpoint in his Poétique des arts: ‘Let us love what is beautiful when we see it, without bothering about weighing it. Let us repay the enthusiasm of talent with the enthusiasm of esteem; and leave the scales to the merchants.’”

What we know of Goethe allows us to say that he would draw a similar conclusion.

Image credit: Berkeley Haas