We must, however, at this point again remind ourselves that the
question is not one of abstract "poets" but one of a large number of
living _men_ who, happily, differ widely from one another. Above all,
when considering them we must think of the typical development of the
generations. Those for whom patriotic interests, at least in a direct
sense, seemed to have little meaning, were always followed by
generations patriotically inspired. The Germany of to-day hides, under
the self-deluding appearance of a confinement to purely esthetic
problems, a predominating and lively joy in the growth of the
Fatherland, and naturally also in its mental broadening. To have given
the strongest expression to this joy constitutes the historical
significance of Gustav Frenssen, just as solicitude for its future
inspired the muse of Wilhelm von Polenz.

The preference shown to individual literary _genres_ changes in an
almost regular order of sequence--the Swiss Bovet has even tried
recently to lay down a regular law of alternation. Especially is the
theatre from time to time abused for being a destructive negation of
art, in just as lively a fashion as it is declared at other times to
be the sole realization of the artistic ideal. As to prevailing
temperaments, a preferably pathetic tone--as, for example, in the
epoch of Freytag, Geibel, Treitschke--alternates with a sceptically
satiric one--as in Fontane who (like so many writers, in Germany
especially) did not belong to his own generation nor even to the
immediately succeeding one, but to the next after that! With these are
associated preferences for verse or prose; for idealism or realism and
naturalism; a falling away from philosophy or an inclination to
introduce it into poetry; and numerous other disguises for those
antagonistic principles, to which Kuno Francke in a general survey of
our literature has sought to trace back its different phases.