REJECTION

The majority rely on science the most. But there are philosophers who maintain that speculative philosophy, as practiced by Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and which I shall call Hegelian after its most characteristic and most celebrated representative today, is above everything, even above poetry, so that the Hegelian philosopher is the most perfect man, and his work the highest human function. While there are poets who think that it is not the Hegelian philosopher, nor the scholar, but the poet who is the most complete man, and poetry may claim a higher rank then philosophy or science. If by ‘poet’ one means anyone who writes a rhyme, a novel, or a play, and by poetry all fictional literature, it certainly sounds ridiculous to want to give poetry the highest rank. But that Goethe had a right to reject the systematic language of his philosophical contemporaries, and that the utterances of Homer, Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Shelley, have greater value to humanity than those of Kant and Hegel, is an entirely different and very tenable opinion.

Frederik van Eeden
From: Poëzie, Wijsbegeerte en Mathesis





www.alberthagenaars.nl


Also see:
Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry