It is this which
Winckelmann imprints on the imagination of Goethe, at the beginning of
his culture, in its original and simplest form, as in a fragment of Greek
art itself, stranded on that littered, indeterminate shore of Germany in
the eighteenth century. In Winckelmann, this type comes to him, not as in
a book or a theory, but importunately, in a passionate life or
personality. For Goethe, possessing all modern interests, ready to be
lost in the perplexed currents of modern thought, he defines, in clearest
outline, the problem of culture--balance, unity with oneself, consummate
Greek modelling.
It could no longer be solved, as in Phryne ascending naked out of the
water, by perfection of bodily form, or any joyful union with the world
without: the shadows had grown too long, the light too solemn, for that.
It could hardly be solved, as in Pericles or Pheidias, by the direct
exercise of any single talent: amid the manifold claims of modern
culture, that could only have ended in a thin, one-sided growth.
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