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‹Better GutenbergGoethe’s Literary EssaysIn Histrionic Art · 22 of 107Contents›

Goethe’s Literary Essays

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

22 of 107 · Contents · Download EPUB

In Histrionic Art

Caricature of one’s own faulty individuality.

Incapacitates the mind for all occupation, through the illusion of a fantastic mode of viewing objects.

Expense of interest and passion, without fruit.

Eternal circle of monotonous, ever repeated, ineffectual activity.

(There is nothing so attractive to Dilettanti as rehearsals. Professional actors hate them.)

Special forbearance and pampering of theatrical Dilettanti with applause.

Eternal stimulation towards a passionate condition and behavior, without balance.

Feeding all hateful passions, with the worst results for civic and domestic existence.

Blunting the feeling for poetry.

Use of exalted language for commonplace sentiments.

A rag-fair of thoughts, commonplaces, and descriptions in the memory.

Pervading affectation and mannerism, reaching also into life.

Most injurious indulgence towards the indifferent and faulty, in a public and quite personal case.

The general tolerance for the home-made becomes in this case more pronounced.

Most pernicious use of amateur comedies for the education of children, where it turns into caricature. In the same manner, the most dangerous of all amusements for universities, &c.

Destruction of the ideality of art, because the Dilettante, not being able to raise himself through the appropriation of artistic ideas and traditions, must do all through a pathological reality.

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