 Art in its most basic sense is to be understood as the transformation of what is real into an image (Das Wirkliche in ein Bild zu verwandeln, GS Vol 2: 126, de transformer en image ce qui, dans la nature est réel”, GS Vol 1: 1). The art of the poet, more specifically, “consists in his ability or competence (Fertigkeit) to render the imagination creative according to rules”, to incite the imagination through the imagination (GS Vol 2: 127) and thereby create “a live act of communication” (lebendige Mitteilung) (GS Vol 2: 132). Among all the arts poetry occupies a special position in Humboldt’s view, because the material from which it is fashioned is not like ordinary material, as the stone or marble the sculptor uses, but instead consists of something already endowed with form, namely language. Poetry therefore “is art through language”. Through his imagination the poet creates works that represent “a world” embodying a totality of their own that differs in principle from the world of reality. In his definition of art Humboldt no longer looks at artworks as objects in order to gather from them a list of quasi objective qualities from which the nature of art could then be derived, but instead focuses on the process of aesthetic production and the rules by which it is governed and on how these rules are revealed in the poet’s art. In other words, a generative one has replaced the traditional mimetic or objective concept of art. 