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‹Better GutenbergGoethe’s Literary EssaysDefinition of Poetry — Definition of Beauty · 84 of 107Contents›

Goethe’s Literary Essays

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

84 of 107 · Contents · Download EPUB

Definition of Poetry

What need of much definition? Lively feeling of situations, and power to express them, make the poet.

Definition of Beauty

I cannot help laughing at the æstheticians, who torment themselves in endeavoring, by some abstract words, to reduce to a conception that inexpressible thing to which we give the name of beauty. Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.

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