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Updated: May 24, 2025
Strange that this particular evening, while I sat with the half forgotten letter in my pocket, imagination was busier than ever, while I found it more than usually difficult to comprehend Lessing's ponderous thoughts; and the desire seized me to leave these high thinkers, on their lonely mountain heights, and, with my guardian, come down to the summer places of everyday life.
But the majority of Lessing's contemporaries understood him as little perhaps as did the Duke of Brunswick. If anything were needed to prove this, it would be the uproar which was made over the publication of the "Wolfenbuttel Fragments," and the curious exegesis which was applied to the poem of "Nathan" on its first appearance.
A letter from Düsseldorf under date of 9th July, in the Courier and Enquirer, says that Lessing's great painting, "The Martyrdom of Huss," Sad just been finished and had been exhibited for the last few days at the Academy of Fine Arts, where it was visited by thousands.
Consequently, it is soon recognised that they write for the sake of filling up the paper, and this is the case sometimes with the best authors; for example, in parts of Lessing's Dramaturgie, and even in many of Jean Paul's romances. As soon as this is perceived the book should be thrown away, for time is precious.
During Lessing's residence at Hamburg, he had come into possession of a most important manuscript, written by Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a professor of Oriental languages, and bearing the title of an "Apology for the Rational Worshippers of God."
So I must believe that less wise than Lessing's son, who looked at life and thought it would be more prudent to turn his back upon it I greeted with a laugh the existence which, amid beautiful days of sunshine, was to bring me so many hours of suffering.
He proved, that, in all the essentials of art, no less than in the truth of nature, the Plays of Shakespeare were incomparably more coincident with the principles of Aristotle, than the productions of Corneille and Racine, notwithstanding the boasted regularity of the latter. Under these convictions were Lessing's own dramatic works composed.
It is wholly unlike the iconoclasm of the deists, and, coming in the eighteenth century, it was like a veritable evangel. "Nathan" was not brought out until three years after Lessing's death, and it kept possession of the stage for but a short time. In a dramatic point of view, it has hardly any merits. Whatever plot there is in it is weak and improbable.
The places represented are three in number and the same in both plays. Here, however, the parallel ends. Instead of Gemmingen's high-minded paterfamilias we have the rascally President von Walter, who, with his tool Wurm, reminds one of Lessing's Prince and Marinelli.
He who cannot know what is right can know that some one else knows; he who has no law may still have a master; he who is incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity; he who understands little may have his sins forgiven because he loves much." Such was Lessing's religion, so far as it can be ascertained from the fragmentary writings which he has left on the subject.
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