Each art, therefore, having its own peculiar
and incommunicable sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching
the imagination, its own special responsibilities to its material. One
of the functions of aesthetic criticism is to define these limitations;
to estimate the degree in which a given work of art fulfils its
responsibilities to its special material; to note in a picture that true
pictorial charm, which is neither a mere poetical thought nor sentiment,
on the one hand, nor a mere result of communicable technical skill in
colour or design, on the other; to define in a poem that true poetical
quality, which is neither descriptive nor meditative merely, but comes
of an inventive handling of rhythmical language--the element of song in
the singing; to note in music the musical charm--that essential music,
which presents no words, no matter of sentiment or thought, separable
from the special form in which it is conveyed to us.
To such a philosophy of the variations of the beautiful, Lessing's
analysis of the spheres of sculpture and poetry, in the Laocoon, was a
very important contribution.
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