Abstract

One of the forgotten "small masters" of German Romanticism is the aesthetician Solger. Besides his famous Erwin, his only major writing is the Lectures on Aesthetics. It displays a coherent and original theory of the beautiful and of art, even though a continuous polemical relationship to Schelling, Fichte and Hegel is ever present in its pages. Solger's sensitive theorizing reconciles the norms of classicism with the aims of romanticism and at the same time points beyond them towards the fundamental principles and attitudes of the coming realistic aesthetic. This book is a posthumous one, based upon lectures which Solger never intended to publish. As a matter of fact, he strongly opposed the practice of printing university courses as such. Yet, these texts are perhaps most representative of the subtle and harmonious thought of this man who died at the height of his creative life. Their reprinting is an important literary event.—M. J. V.