Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
literature fragments
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
ideas isolated no-idea
No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.
witty literature good-christian
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.
wisdom school form
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
earth kingdoms literature
Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.
believe literature philosopher
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
kissing thinking literature
Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
philosophy home men
Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue.
ideas poetic nonsensical
Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.
views essentials literature
The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.
art real italian
There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.
fall order way
All the great truths are basically trivial and so we have to find new ways, preferably paradoxical ways, of expressing them, in order to keep them from falling into oblivion.
humility serenity veils
Original love never appears in pure form, but in manifold veils and shapes, such as confidence, humility, reverence, serenity, asfaithfulness and modesty, as gratefulness; but primarily as longing and wistful melancholy.
book roots squares
A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time.