This other branch of art into which Dance yearns instinctively to pass, therein to find again and know her own true nature, is the art of Tone; which, in its turn, receives the solid scaffold of its vertebration from Dance's rhythm.
Rhythm is the natural, unbreakable bond of union between the arts of Dance and Tone; without it, no art of Dance, and none of Tone. If Rhythm, as her regulating and unifying law, is the very Mind of Dance-to wit, the abstract summary of corporeal motion,-so is it, on the other hand, the moving, self-progressive Skeleton of Tone. The more this skeleton invests itself with tonal flesh, the more does the law of Dance lose its own features in the special attributes of Tone; so much the more, however, does Dance at like time raise herself to the capability of that expression of the deeper feelings of the heart by which alone she can keep abreast of the essential nature of Tone. But Tone's most living flesh is the human voice; and the Word, again, is as it were the bone-and-muscle rhythm of this human voice. And thus, at last, the movement-urging emotion, which overflowed from art of Dance to art of Tone, finds in the definite decision of the Word the sure, unerring utterance by means of which it can both seize itself as 'object' and clearly speak forth what it is. Thus, through tone become Speech, it wins at once its highest satisfaction and its most satisfying heightening in the tonal art become the art of Poesy; for it mounts aloft from Dance to Mimicry, from the broadest delineation of general bodily sensations to the subtlest and most compact (10) utterance of definite mental phases of emotion and of will-force.-
From this frank and mutual permeation, generation, and completion of each several art from out itself and through its fellow-which, as regards Music and Poetry, we have so far merely hinted at-is born the united Lyric Art-work. In it each art is what its nature accords to it; that which lies beyond its power of being, it does not egoistically borrow from its fellow, but its fellow is that in its place. But in Drama, the perfected form of Lyric, each several art unfolds its highest faculty; and notably that of Dance. In Drama, Man is at once his own artistic 'subject' and his 'stuff,' to his very fullest worth. Now as therein the art of Dance has to set directly forth the separate or joint expressive movements which are to tell us of the feelings both of units and of masses; and as the law of Rhythm, begotten from her, is the standard whereby the whole dramatic semblance is brought into agreement ("Verständigung"), - so does Dance withal exalt herself in Drama to her most spiritual expression, that of Mimicry. As Mimetic art, she becomes the direct and all-embracing utterance of the inner man; and it is now no longer the raw material rhythm of Sound, but the spiritual rhythm of Speech, that shows itself to her as law,-a law, however, which took its earliest rise from her dictation. What Speech endeavours to convey ("verständlichen"), the whole wide range of feelings and emotions, ideas and thoughts, which mount from softest tenderness to indomitable energy, and finally proclaim themselves as naked Will-all this becomes an unconditionally intelligible, unquestioned truth through Mimic art alone; nay, Speech itself cannot become a true and quite convincing physical utterance without the immediate aid of Mimicry. From this, the Drama's pinnacle, Dance broadens gradually down again to her original domain: where Speech now only hints and pictures; where Tone, as Rhythm's soul, restricts herself to homage of her sister; and where the beauty of the Body and its movements alone can give direct and needful utterance to an all-dominating, all-rejoicing feeling.
Thus Dance reaches in Drama her topmost height, entrancing whre she orders, affecting where she subordinates herself, ever and throughout-herself because ever spontaneous and therefore, of indispensable Necessity. For only where an art is indispensable, it is alike the whole thing that it is and can and should be-
Just as in the building of the Tower of Babel, when their speech was confounded and mutual understanding made impossible, the nations severed from each other, each one to go its several way: so, when all national solidarity had split into a thousand egoistic severalities, did the separate art-branches cut-off themselves from the proud and heaven-soaring tree of Drama, which had lost the inspiring soul of mutual understanding.
Let us consider for a moment what fate befell the art of Dance, when she left the graceful chain of sisters, to seek her fortune in the world's great wilderness.-
Though Dance now ceased to offer to the mawkish and sentimental schoolmaster-poetry of Euripides the hand of fellowship which the latter cast away in sullen arrogance, only to take it later when humbly proffered for an 'occasional' service ("Zweckleistung"); though she parted from her philosophical sister who, with sour-faced frivolity, could only envy and no longer love her youthful charms: yet she could not wholly dispense with the help of her bosom-comrade, Tone. By an indisruptible band was she linked to her, for the art of Tone held fast within her hands the key to her very soul. But, as after the death of a father in whose love his children have all been knit together, and have held their life-goods as one common store, the heirs in selfish strife compute the several stock of each,-so did Dance contend that this key was wrought by her, and claimed it back as the first condition of her now separate life. Willingly did she forego the feeling tones of her sister's Voice; for by this voice, whose marrow was the Word of Poetry, she must forsooth have felt herself inextricably chained to that proud leader! But this instrument, of wood or metal, the musical tool which her sister, in sweet urgence to inspire with her soulful breath even the dead stuff of Nature, had fashioned for the buttress and enhancement of her voice,-this tool, which verily was fit enough to mete for her the needful guiding measure of rhythm and of beat, nay even to wellnigh imitate the tonal beauty of her sister's voice,-the Musical Instrument she took with her. Not caring for aught else, she left her sister Tone to float adown the shoreless stream of Christian harmony, tied to her faith in Words, the while she cast herself in easy-going self-sufficience upon the pleasure-craving places of the world.
We know too well this tricked-out figure: who is it that has not come across her? Wherever fatuous modern ease girds itself up to seek for entertainment, she sets herself with utmost complaisance upon the scene, and plays, for gold, whatever pranks one wills. Her highest faculty, the use of which she can no longer see, the faculty of ransoming by her mien and gestures the Thought of Poetry in its yearning for actual human birth, she has lost or made away in thoughtless foolishness, and minds her not-to whom. With all the features of her face, with all the gestures of her limbs, she has nothing now to bring to light but unconfined complaisance. Her solitary care is lest she should seem capable of making a refusal; and of this care she unburdens herself by the only mimetic expression of which she still is mistress, by the most unruffled smile of unconditional surrender to each and all. With her features set in this unchangeable and fixed expression, she answers the demand for change and motion by her lower limbs alone; all her artistic capability has sunk down from her vertex, through her body, to her feet. Head, neck, trunk and thighs are only present as unbidden guests; whereas her feet have undertaken to show alone what she can do, and merely for the sake of needful balance call on her arms and hands for sisterly support. What in private life-when our modern citizens, in accordance with tradition and the time-killing habits of society, indulge themselves in dance, in our so-called 'Balls '-it is only allowable to timidly suggest with all the woodenness of civilised vapidity: that is permitted to the kindly ballerina to tell aloud upon the public stage with frankest candour; for-her gestures, forsooth, are merely art and not reality, and now that she has. been declared beyond the law, she stands above the law. In effect, we may let ourselves be incited by her, without, for all that, following in our moral life her incitations,-just as, on the other hand, Religion also offers us its incitations, to goodness and to virtue, and yet we are not in the smallest bound to yield to them in everyday existence. Art is free,-and the art of Dance draws her profit from this freedom. And she does right in this: else what were Freedom made for?-