Romantic Style (Collected Critiques of Schlegel)

Author: (German) Schlegel, translated by Li Bojie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Tragedy exhilarates the audience, thereby elevating their taste and thus preventing the degradation of their taste as long as possible. Comedy, on the other hand, tempts the audience to descend and accelerates the degradation of their taste. Middle-class writers, with the demeanor of celebrating a small book as if it were a grand work, should be compelled by literary censors to affix the following inscription to their works: This is the largest elephant in the world, except for the one from which it came. Everything that becomes tiresome, is it inherently flawed or mediocre from the start? To feel amazed by beauty or greatness is not refined; as if they should be something else entirely. Mythology has a great advantage: whatever the consciousness can never grasp can be seen and preserved through the senses and spirit in mythology, just as the soul remains in the body that surrounds it. And it is through the body that the soul flashes into our eyes and speaks to our ears.