Coup de Lance

Goethe's remark may be given narrower and more extensive meanings. It may be taken to assume some underlying norm for art in a restrictive academic way, or to be intimating that our perceptiveness with regard to a particular work involves our reflection upon art in general and its role within the mind’s education. There is no reason to believe that Goethe was here concerned to distinguish the two. But it is a distinction which becomes crucial for the critical historians, for it involves the …