[97]

Lessings Laocoon translated by W. Ross — 1836

Page 19 — "There are certain kinds & degrees of passion which exhibit themselves in the countenance by the most frightful contortions, and throw the whole body into such violent attitudes, that all those beautiful lines which its forms developed in a more tranquil position, become lost. These the ancient artists either altogether avoided, or they expressed them in such a modified degree as might not be unsusceptible of a certain proportion of beauty."

[Expression, p. 15: "Accordingly, I have looked at photographs and engravings of many well-known works; but, with a few exceptions, have not thus profited. The reason no doubt is, that in works of art, beauty is the chief object; and strongly contracted facial muscles destroy beauty.19
19 See remarks to this effect in Lessing's 'Laocoon,' translated by W. Ross, 1836, p. 19."]

Page 20 — "In his (Timanthes') picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, after apportioning to each of the bystanders a suitable share in the scale of grief, Timanthes threw a veil over the countenance of the father,…..

[p. 21] ……..…He (Timanthes) knew that the affliction which would become Agamemnon as a father, expresses itself in distortions which are always disagreeable to the sight"

I shall want this for one of earlier Chapter I forgot which

[98]

In poetry Lessings says that the expression of the most intense passion is not checked, because the description of an object can never take us in the same way as its actual appearance either in sculpture paining or on the stage Virgil makes his Laocoon scream, no body in reading this, remembers that screaming necessitates a widely opened mouth & that such a mouth is a disagreeable object to look at. He also says that the same cause which prevented the expression intense passion in painting & sculpture prevented it on the stage.