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The Aesthetic Letters, Essays, and the Philosophical Letters of Schiller (1845)
The Aesthetic Letters Essays and the Philosophical Letters of Schiller - 1845 Author:Friedrich Schiller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THOUGHTS UPON THE USE OF THE COMMON AND LOW IN ART. THE COMMON AND LOW. Everything is Common which does not address the spirit, and which excites ... more »only a sensuous interest. It is true, there are a thousand things which are previously common in the matter or content: but since the common in matter can be ennobled by the treatment it receives, we speak in Art only of the Common in form. An ordinary man will disgrace the noblest material by an ordinary treatment: on the contrary, a great head and a refined spirit knows how to ennoble the Common itself, because he connects it with something spiritual, and exposes its most favorable side. Thus a historian of the common stamp, will inform us as solicitously of his hero's most insignificant affairs as of his noblest deeds, and dwell as long upon his pedigree, dress and domestic economy, as upon his schemes and undertakings. He will so relate his greatest deeds, that no man will take them for what they are. On the other hand, a historian of genius and enlarged capacity will infuse even into the private life and the indifferent actions of his hero an interest and a capacity which makes them notable. In creative art the Flemish painters have an ordinary taste : the Italians, but still more, the Greeks, a great and noble taste. The latter continually sought the ideal, rejected every common trait, and selected too no common material. A portrait painter can treat his subject in a style both Common and Great; Common, if he sets forth the contingent as carefully as the necessary, if he neglects the great, and solicitously brings out the little ; Great, if he knows how to discover the most interesting traits, separating the accidental from the necessary, bringing out the great and only indicating the little. But nothing is Great,...« less