August Wilhelm von Schlegel

“ Inward liberty and external necessity are the two poles of the tragic world. It is only by contrast with its opposite that each of these ideas is brought into full manifestation. As the feeling of an internal power of self-determination elevates the man above the unlimited dominion of impulse and the instincts of nature; in a word, absolves him from nature's guardianship, so the necessity, which alongside of her he must recognize, is no mere natural necessity, but one lying beyond the world of sense in the abyss of infinitude ”

“ Most movingly has he expressed the old German cordiality: the situations which are sketched with a few rapid strokes are irresistibly powerful; the whole conveys a great historical meaning, for it represents the conflict between a departing and a coming age; between a century of rude but vigorous independence, and one of political tameness. In this composition the poet never seems to have had an eye to its representation on the stage; rather does he appear, in his youthful arrogance, to have scorned it for its insufficiency. ”

“ In the presence, it is true, of that band of men by which he had been abandoned, and if he must depend on their superior power, Philoctetes would no more have wished for life than did Ajax. But he is alone with nature; he quails not before the frightful aspect which she exhibits to him, and still clings even to the maternal bosom of the all-nourishing earth. ”

“ But now in the invention and conduct of a drama the practical spirit must prevail: the dramatic poet is not allowed to dream away under his inspiration, he must take the straightest road to his end; but the Germans are only too apt to lose sight of the object in the course of their way to it. Besides, in the drama the nationality does usually, nay, must show itself in the most marked manner, and the national character of the Germans is modest and retiring: it loves not to make a noisy display of itself ”

“ The moral freedom of man, therefore, can only be displayed in a conflict with his sensuous impulses: so long as no higher call summons it to action, it is either actually dormant within him, or appears to slumber, since otherwise it does but mechanically fulfil its part as a mere power of nature. ”

“ The youthful Edgar has, by the wicked arts of his brother, and through his father's blindness, fallen, as the old Lear, from the rank to which his birth entitled him; and, as the only means of escaping further persecution, is reduced to assume the disguise of a beggar tormented by evil spirits. The King's fool, notwithstanding the voluntary degradation which is implied in his situation, is, after Kent, Lear's most faithful associate, his wisest counsellor. This good-hearted fool clothes reason with the livery of his motley garb; the high-born beggar acts the part of insanity ”

“ What an unpoetical spectator were he who, instead of following the incidents with his sympathy, should, like a gaoler, with watch or hour-glass in hand, count out to the heroes of the tragedy, the minutes which they still have to live and act! Is our soul then a piece of clock-work, that tells the hours and minutes with infallible accuracy? Has it not rather very different measures of time for agreeable occupation and for wearisomeness? ”

“ Romeo and Juliet, and Othello, differ from most of the pieces which we have hitherto examined, neither in the ingredients of the composition, nor in the manner of treating them: it is merely the direction of the whole that gives them the stamp of Tragedy. Romeo and Juliet is a picture of love and its pitiable fate, in a world whose atmosphere is too sharp for this the tenderest blossom of human life. Two beings created for each other feel mutual love at the first glance; every consideration disappears before the irresistible impulse to live in one another ”

“ The picture becomes gloomier and gloomier; and seems at last to be painted rather with blood than with colours. With horror we behold fury giving birth to fury, vengeance to vengeance, and see that when all the bonds of human society are violently torn asunder, even noble matrons became hardened to cruelty. ”

“ Such a tragic exhibition resembles a comet's course, which, hardly visible at first, and revealing itself only to the astronomic eye, appears at a nebulous distance in the heavens, but soon soars with unheard-of and accelerating rapidity towards the central point of our system, scattering dismay among the nations of the earth, till, in a moment, when least expected, with its portentous tail it overspreads the half of the firmament with resplendent flame. ”

“ And this tragical Titan, who storms the heavens and threatens to tear the world from off its hinges, who, more terrible than Aeschylus, makes our hair to stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed at the same time the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poesy; he toys with love like a child, and his songs die away on the ear like melting sighs. ”

“ It is in love that he has been found coldest; and this was because he could not prevail on himself to paint it as an amiable weakness, although he everywhere introduced it, even where most unsuitable, either out of a condescension to the taste of the age or a private inclination for chivalry, where love always appears as the ornament of valour, as the checquered favour waving at the lance, or the elegant ribbon-knot to the sword. Seldom does he paint love as a power which imperceptibly steals upon us, and gains at last an involuntary and irresistible dominion over us ”

“ A permanent place in the history of German literature belongs to Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm as the critical leaders of the Romantic school, which derived from them most of its governing ideas as to the characteristics of the middle ages, and as to the methods of literary expression. ”

“ As the highest and greatest of man’s endowments, it was almost deified, whatever did not appear at once and easily explicable by reason, being forthwith and indiscriminately pronounced a prejudice, and, as such, to be got rid of with all diligence. In this state of things, modern German philosophy commenced its career with attempting to show that this sovereign reason, which had set itself forth as the first and highest in man, is extremely defective, and comes far short of the requisitions both of science and life. ”

“ He lived most of the time in Vienna, partly engaged in the literary service of the Austrian government, partly in lecturing on history and literature. He died in 1829 in Dresden, whither he had gone to deliver a course of lectures.
Friedrich Schlegel's philosophy of life was based upon the theory of supremacy of the artist, the potency of poetry, with its incidental corollaries of disregard for the Kantian ideal of Duty, and aversion to all Puritanism and Protestantism. "There is no great world but that of artists," he declared in the Athenæum; "artists form a higher caste ”

“ Otto von Schlegel was a younger son of the old Silesian family of that name. His father had originally destined him for the army, but at the advice of his teachers, who saw the surprising talent of the youth, had sent him to the University of Buda-Pesth to be educated in medicine. Here young Schlegel carried everything before him, and promised to be one of the most brilliant graduates turned out for many a year. Though a hard reader, he was no bookworm, but an active, powerful young fellow, full of animal spirits and vivacity, and extremely popular among his fellow-students. ”

“ True life can spring only from the vivifying spirit of eternal truth. In science the absolute is the abyss which swallows up the living truth, and leaves behind only the hollow idea, and the dead formula. In the political world the absolute in conduct and speculation is that false spirit of time, opposed to all good and to the fulness of divine truth, which in a great measure rules the world, and may entirely rule it, and lead it for ever to its final ruin. As errors would not be dangerous or deceptive, and would have little effect, unless they contained a portion or appearance of truth ”

“ Scarce had Germany recovered from the enthusiasm which this work, (the Philosophy of Life) excited; when its illustrious author delivered, in the year 1828, the following course of Lectures on the "Philosophy of History," which are now presented to the reader in an English garb. Defective as may be the medium through which the English reader becomes acquainted with this work, he will be enabled to form on it a more impartial, as well as more enlightened, judgment than any the translator could pronounce ”

“ They have, strictly speaking, no soul; for the distinctive faculties of the soul (as will be presently shown) are reason and imagination; and these faculties cannot be ascribed to [lx] beings in whom an intuitive understanding needs not the slow deductions, and analytic process of reason; nor wants a medium of communication with the world of sense, like imagination. Hence the lines of the great German poet fully represent the difference, as well as the resemblance, in the intellectual action of man and the angelic spirits:
"Science, O man, thou shar'st with higher spirits ”

“ The philosophy of life, then, can not be any mere absolute philosophy of reason. And as little can, or ought it to be purely and absolutely a philosophy of nature; not, at least, an exclusive one, that is, exactly such and nothing more. Such a philosophy of nature may, indeed, in its physiological aspect, possess unequaled scientific wealth, and be full of profound and ingenious thoughts. But still the right principles and the regulative ideas of human life can never be deduced from it easily, and without having recourse to forced constructions. ”

“ Schlegel, though of mature years, is still in vigorous health, a most charming old man, bright, cheerful, and affable, possessing an inexhaustible fund of conversation and knowledge, enriched by the careful observation of a long and well-spent life. ”

“ A true and living philosophy can not choose and pursue this method of ever-advancing abstraction; much less can it recognize it as the only right one. It proceeds rather from life itself and the feeling of life, and, in truth, from a feeling and consciousness of it, which strives to be as complete as possible. Far is it from dreaming that it is in any artificial and elaborately-worked-out division of the human mind, that it must seek its success or hope to attain its aim—the end of all true knowledge. ”

“ It must even acknowledge that man, beside his higher dignity and divine destiny, is and remains in his outward existence a physical creature—and though he be such not in an exclusive, but only secondary and subordinate sense, still, in respect to his external being and external development, he may be subject to certain natural laws in history. In the same way it may admit that man endowed with freedom, even when he rejects the religious principle, is [251] still a being gifted with reason ”

“ On the other hand, the negative philosophy of the English remains true to its character, in as far as carefully shunning all objects of a higher nature, it has for the most part made it a principle to limit its views entirely to man, without attempting to dive and penetrate into the profound mysteries of the Deity, or into the internal secrets of nature. To this a high philosophy will object, man is no isolated being ”

“ As a property, however, it can only be ascribed to those beings who, like man, behold the law of God far above them, but by no means to that Being who is Himself the sum and source of all moral laws. But let us now revert to our first question of the predication of reason to the Deity. If, in our present reigning systems, and especially in the latest German philosophy, reason is, notwithstanding, ascribed to Him, or, rather, the eternal, unconditional, and absolute reason is itself called God, and rationality is made to be His essence ”

“ To the all-seeing eye of Providence, every human life, however brief its duration, however apparently insignificant, presents a point of internal development and crisis, consequently a species of history, cognizable and visible to that Eye only, and therefore not entirely without an object. But this point of view belongs to another order of things, and is no longer historical—it has reference to the immortal destinies of the human soul, and the connection of the present life with another world invisible to us. But our historical science is limited to the department of man's present existence ”

“ With respect to natural science in general, and the possibility of our attaining to it, the case stands thus:—If nature be a living force—if the life which reigns within it be in a certain though still very remote degree akin to the life of man and the human soul—then is a knowledge of nature easily conceivable, and right well possible (for nothing but the like, or at least the similar and cognate, can be known by the like) even though this cognition may still be extremely defective, and at best can never be more than partial. ”

“ Although those absolute principles which appear to characterize the European nations at this time, have much less influence on real life and on the social relations in Germany than in any other country; yet the false spirit of the absolute seems to be quite native to German science and philosophy ”

“ Historical research should never be separated from any philosophy, still less from the German; as historical erudition is the most effectual counterpoise to that absolute spirit, so prevalent in German science and German speculation.
Art and poetry constitute that department of intellect wherein every nation should mostly follow the impulse of its own spirit, its own feelings, and its own turn of fancy ”