Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm FriedrichSchlegel, usually cited as Friedrich Schlegel, was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of the Jena romantics. He was a zealous promoter of the Romantic movement and inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Mickiewicz and Kazimierz Brodziński. Schlegel was a pioneer in Indo-European studies, comparative linguistics, in what became known as Grimm's law, and morphological typology. As a young man he was...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 March 1772
CountryGermany
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel quotes about
Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.
The historian is a prophet looking backward.
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.
A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.
Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.
The history of imitation of the older literature, particularly abroad, has among other advantages this one, that the important concepts of unintentional parody and passive wit can be deduced from it most easily and comprehensively.
It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
In true prose everything must be underlined.
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.