APHORISMS
By FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL
From the Lyceum and the Athenæum (1797-1800)
TRANSLATED BY LOUIS H. GRAY
Perfect understanding of a classic work should never be possible; but those who are cultivated and who are still striving after further culture, must always desire to learn more from it.
If an author is to be able to write well upon a theme, he must no longer feel interest in it; the thought which is to be soberly expressed must already be entirely past and must no longer personally concern the writer. So long as the artist invents and is inspired, he is in an unfavorable situation, at least for communicating his concepts. He will then wish to say everything—a false tendency of young geniuses, or an instinctively correct prejudice of old bunglers. In this way he mistakes the value and the dignity of self-restraint, although for the artist, as for the man, this is the first and the last, the most needful and the highest.
We should never appeal to the spirit of antiquity as an authority. There is this peculiarity about spirits: they cannot be grasped with the hands and be held up before others. Spirits reveal themselves only to spirits. Here, too, the briefest and most concise course would doubtless be to prove, through good works, our possession of the faith which alone gives salvation.
He who desires something infinite knows not what he desires; but the converse of this proposition is not true.
In the ordinary kind of fair or even good translation it is precisely the best part of a work that is lost.
It is impossible to offend a man if he will not be offended.