By hastening the
decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it, and yet keeping unbroken
the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose
that it might awake when day came, with eyes refreshed, to those antique
forms.
The aim of a right criticism is to place Winckelmann in an intellectual
perspective, of which Goethe is the foreground. For, after all, he is
infinitely less than Goethe; it is chiefly because at certain points he
comes in contact with Goethe, that criticism entertains consideration of
him. His relation to modern culture is a peculiar one. He is not of the
modern world; nor is he of the eighteenth century, although so much of
his outer life is characteristic of it. But that note of revolt against
the eighteenth century, which we detect in Goethe, was struck by
Winckelmann. Goethe illustrates that union of the Romantic spirit, in its
adventure, its variety, its profound subjectivity of soul, with
Hellenism, in its transparency, its rationality, its desire of
Beauty--that marriage of Faust and Helena--of which the art of the
nineteenth century is the child, the beautiful lad Euphorion, as Goethe
conceives him, on the crags, in the "splendour of battle and in harness
as for victory," his brows bound with light.
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