RECORD: Darwin, C. R. n.d. Abstract of Lessing's Laocoon. CUL-DAR91.22-24. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
REVISION HISTORY: Text prepared by John van Wyhe. RN2
NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volume CUL-DAR91 contains early notes on guns & shooting. Darwin's draft of recollections of Henslow, 1861. Notes on the moral sense. Wallace pension. 'a sketch of the principal events in my life' & list of Darwin's works. Loose notes found with CUL-DAR119 'Books to be read'.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. 1836. Laocoon; or, the limits of poetry and painting. Translated by William Ross. London.
[22]
Lessing's Laocoon 2d Lect— The object of art, sculpture & painting, is beauty— which he thinks is a better definition than Winklemen's, who says it is simplicity with grandeur of character.— Hence Lessing shows expression of pain cannot be respected. But what is beauty?— it is an ideal standard, by which real objects are judged: & how obtained— implanted in our bosoms— how comes it there?
[23]
Laocoon p. 75
"The beauties developed in a work of art are not approved by the eye itself, but by the imagination through the medium of the eye;" he will allow the secondary pleasure of harmonious colours &c &c surely to be added.
[24]
Lessings Laocoon
p. 125— says new subjects are not fit for painter or sculpture, but rather subjects which we know, it is therefore the embodying of a floating idea,— as statue of beauty, is of the "beau ideal," my instinctive impression
Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
File last updated 6 September, 2023