" Finally, he desires a place in some corner of Buenau's
library. "Perhaps, at some future time, I shall become more useful to the
public, if, drawn from obscurity in whatever way, I can find means to
maintain myself in the capital."
Soon afterwards we find Winckelmann in the library at Noethenitz. Thence
he made many visits to the collection of antiquities at Dresden. He
became acquainted with many artists, above all with Oeser, Goethe's
future friend and master, who, uniting a high culture with the practical
knowledge of art, was fitted to minister to Winckelmann's culture. And
now there opened for him a new way of communion with the Greek life.
Hitherto he had handled the words only of Greek poetry, stirred indeed
and roused by them, yet divining beyond the words an unexpressed
pulsation of sensuous life. Suddenly he is in contact with that life,
still fervent in the relics of plastic art. Filled as our culture is with
the classical spirit, we can hardly imagine how deeply the human mind was
moved, when, at the Renaissance, in the midst of a frozen world, the
buried fire of ancient art rose up from under the soil.
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