On Epic and Dramatic Poetry

by
Friedrich Schiller and Wolfgang Goethe

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This essay, written in 1797 by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Schiller, first appeared in
1827, after Schiller's Art and Antiquity. It appeared again in 1829, as an appendix
to Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe in the Years 1794 to 1805, in the
third part of the Letters of the year 1797. It was written in the period when Schiller
was working on the Wallenstein dramatic trilogy.

On Epic and Dramatic Poetry

Translated by Evelyn Lantz

The epic and dramatic poets are both subject to universal poetic laws, especially the
law of unity and the law of development; furthermore, they both treat similar subjects,
and both can use all kinds of themes; their great essential difference lies, however, in
that the epic poet presents the event as completely past, and the dramatic poet presents
it as completely present. Would one derive the detail of the law, according to which
both have to behave, from the nature of man, then one must alway have in mind a
rhapsodist and a mimic actor, both as poet, the former surrounded by his quietly
hearkening circle, the latter by his impatiently onlooking and listening circle, and it
would not be difficult to explain what is of most avail to each of these types of poetry,
which subjects each especially chooses, which theme will be especially useful to each;
I say especially: for as I already observed at the beginning, neither can claim
something for itself totally exclusively.

The subjects of the epic and tragedy should be purely human, important, and pathetic:
The characters stand best at a certain level of culture, where self-activity is still left to
its own resources, where one operates not morally, politically, or mechanically but
rather personally. The myths from the heroic time of the Greeks were, in this sense,
particularly favorable to the poet.

The epic poem especially presents personally limited activity, tragedy personally
limited suffering; the epic poem presents man working outside himself: battles,
journeys, every sort of undertaking, which requires certain sensual breadth; tragedy
presents the inwardly directed man, and the actions of the true tragedy need, for that
reason, only little space.

I know of five kinds of themes:

1) Progressive ones, which advance the plot; drama especially makes use of these.

2) Regressive ones, which remove the plot from its goal; of these the epic poem almost
exclusively makes use.

3) Impeding ones, which delay action or prolong the process; these both poetic types
make use of to the greatest advantage.

4) Reflexive ones, through which that which has happened before the epoch of the
poem, will be drawn upon.

5) Anticipative ones, which anticipate that which will happen after the epoch of the