Winckelmann here
reproduces for us the earlier sentiment of the Renaissance. On a sudden
the imagination feels itself free. How facile and direct, it seems to
say, is this life of the senses and the understanding, when once we have
apprehended it! Here, surely, is the more liberal life we have been
seeking so long, so near to us all the while. How mistaken and roundabout
have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic
reverie; how they have deflowered the flesh; how little they have
emancipated us! Hermione melts from her stony posture, and the lost
proportions of life right themselves. Here, then, we see in vivid
realisation the native tendency of Winckelmann to escape from abstract
theory to intuition, to the exercise of sight and touch. Lessing, in the
Laocoon, has theorised finely on the relation of poetry to sculpture; and
philosophy can give us theoretical reasons why not poetry but sculpture
should be the most sincere and exact expression of the Greek ideal. By a
happy, unperplexed dexterity, Winckelmann solves the question in the
concrete.
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