Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry Reviews

• 
  Lisa

  It is exciting to realise how little of what we call modern thinking actually is MODERN (another reflection would be to think about how little of it actually is THINKING, but that is an oxymoron I will leave to days when my brain is brighter - which probably means it is a euphemism for never).
  
  As you can detect from my less than catchy introductory catch-phrase, I have spent some hours reading German Enlightenment theory on intermediality and intertextuality. As is always the case when you spend time with the arts, you can feel the influence upon your own mind, and you start adapting your thoughts and your expressions to the artwork that interested you in the first place, thus perpetuating the dialogue between art and reception.
  
  This is both the case with me with regards to Lessing and the topic of his essay Laocoon, widely quoted for its definition of art and literature as different media using their own specific tools to create story. While painting focuses on finding the fruitful moment in time to condense action into a transitory painting full of subtext and unspoken meaning, literature is a sequence of episodic action.
  
  Every work of art communicates with other creative processes, and each time there is a transformative movement from one medium to another, the scaffold of creation is made visible.
  
  I find that incredibly stimulating, and sometimes I feel grumpy to the point of despair that our quick-paced modern lifestyle makes us lose the connection to the deep roots of references between arts and times. If we don't recognise the sculpture of Laocoon in a political caricature of contemporary problems anymore, what is the use of all our fancy modern words for the ancient paragone of the arts? If we don't connect a delicious sub-clause in Forster's Howards End to the Kipling poem that inspired it (White Man's Burden, as the case happened to be), how are we going to enjoy the depth and the width of Art as a whole?
  
  Lessing's erudite essay forces me to read all the footnotes, as he cites happily from Greek and Latin sources that to me look pretty (but) meaningless, and he leads me into the jungle of cultural references that lay dormant in each text and each painting. I am quite in awe of all the things I don't know. And I dare not even say yet that I KNOW that I don't know. That would be an exaggeration of my knowledge.
  
  Still, it fills me with joy that it exists, out there, for me to explore if my life - an episodic sequence of actions - gives me enough contemplative space to find a fruitful moment!
• 
  BAM the enigma

  I totally forgot to get around to my Ancient Greek lessons. Better do that before my visit to the continent. What’s that? I’m broke? Oh well then…
• 
  Markus

  Laokoon
  G.E.Lessing (1729-1749)
  
  Lessing was a successful German author of the eighteenth century. His “Minna von Barnhelm”, “Nathan der Weise” and “Emilia Galotti” are fictions well known to readers of German classics.
  “Laokoon”, first published in 1766, is a work aiming to establish parallels and cross-over relations between Poetry, Paintings and Sculptures.
  Scenes from the Illiad of Homer serve as background to his analysis.
  The scene “Laokoon” is the moment when the Greek assailants of the city of Troy fain to abandon their ten-year siege, leaving behind a ‘gift’ to the Trojans, a gigantic wooden Horse.
  Laokoon, son of Priam and high priest of Apollo warned the Trojans of this imposture and advised them to rather burn the horse. No one would listen to Laokoon, the horse was taken into the city sealing its fate.
  Instantly Laokoon and his two sons were attacked by two ferocious sea snakes, biting, crushing, and suffocating them.
  A famous marble sculpture of this scene has been created by an association of three Greek artists: Hagesandre Polydore and Athenodore likely in AD 1.
  Several points of this sculpture lead Lessing into elaborations about the physical aspect of Laokoon, as it represents a victim of terrible aggression and pain close to death. He should be screaming, yet his face expresses less suffering than it should.
  Ancient Greek philosophy of art aims at creating a feeling of pleasure in the mind of the observer or reader. Ugliness is therefore excluded. An excessive pain would result in an ugly distorted face resulting in a difference between reality and mimesis, the copy of reality.
  Lessing further elaborates on the difference between poetry, painting, and sculpturing. Paintings and sculptures are limited to an expression of an instant in time. The poet alone can take the reader into the motions of nature in action. Poetry is therefore likely to create an enhanced feeling of pleasure in the mind of the reader.
  Lessing's viewpoints are not exactly shared by his contemporary academic college of art critics. Our author confronts differences with polemic and ridicule.
  Style and language are of an author who has read all classical literature in Greek and Latin. He refers to most poets and artists from Homer to Virgil throughout the work.
  Half-page footnotes in small print in German French English Greek and Latin complete the picture when his writing seems incomplete. The attentive reader will make slow progress.
  This book can be recommended to readers who like roaming in Greek mythology and are at ease with languages.
  
• 
  Nahed Rahel

  حاول الناقد الإلماني ليسنج في كتابه "لاؤوكون" أن يرد الشعر إلى فلسفة زمانية، والتصوير إلى فلسفة مكانية في محاولة لرصد أوجه الاختلاف بينهما، وقد دفعه ذلك إلى اختيار اسم لاؤوكون عنوانا لكتابه، ولاؤوكون هو أحد كهنة طروادة اليونانيين للإله أبولو غضبت عليه الالهة "فسلطت عليه أفاعي ضخمة قتلته هو وأولاده، وقد أثارت هذه الأسطورة خيال المثالين والشعراء من اليونان والرومان، فصنعوا تماثيل تصور عذاب لاؤوكون والأفاعي تطوقه، ثم جاء فرجيل شاعر الرومان فصور جزعه في شعره" . ومن ثم التقط ليسنج الخيط من التمثال واللوحة والشعر؛ ليوضح الفرق بين التصوير والشعر، محاولا الفصل بين مجال الشعر ومجال الفنون الأخرى
  
  ونجد أن ليسنج هو من أضاف فكرتي الزمان والمكان في تصنيفه للفنون فقد ميز بين الفن التشكيلي المكاني الثابت والفن الشعري الزماني الحركي
  
  وتتلخص نظرية ليسنج في قوله إذا كان صحيحا أن التصوير يستخدم، في محاكاته، وسائل أو إشارات مختلفة تماما عن تلك التي يتعامل بها الشعر، هي الأشكال والألوان في المكان، بينما يتكون الشعر من أصوات تنطق في الزمان، وإذا كان ثابتا أن الإشارات تربطها بالضرورة صلة الملاءمة بما تدل عليه، فإن الإشارات التي تنتظم الواحدة إلى جانب الأخرى لا تعبر إلا عن أشياء متتابعة أو ذات أجزاء متتابعة ويعرف ليسنج المكان بإنه تزامن الأشياء ضمن نظرة شاملة، هي الشكل المتجانس للرؤية. فالأشياء المكانية هي تلك التي تراها العين دفعة واحدة؛ إذ إن المكان هو وحدة الأشياء ضمن شريحة من الزمن وتعايشها في رؤية خاطفة. وهنا يؤكد ليسنج مبدأ الارتباط بين المكانية وحاسة البصر، وبسبب هذا المفهوم للمكان أمكنه الجمع بين النحت والتصوير وكأنه ليس من فارق أساسي بينهما
  
  ويرى ليسنج أن "العناصر التي توجد بجوار بعضها البعض، أو الأجزاء المكونة لها، التي تأتي في تتابع - هذه الأشياء- يمكن أن نطلق عليها أجساما، وبالتالي فإن هذه الأجسام المرئية هي جوهر الرسم، أما الموضوعات التي تتوالى تباعا، أو أجزاء منها تتوالى وراء بعضها البعض فنسميها أحداثا، وبالتالي فإن هذه الأحداث المتتابعة المتتابعة هي ما نسميها جوهر الشعر"
  
  ولذلك تكمن عبقرية التصوير في تجميد لحظة معينة وتثبيتها في مكان ثابت، أما عبقرية الشعر ففي إبراز النشاط الحركي وفاعليته الذي ينساب على سلسلة من اللحظات المتعاقبة. وهذا ما عناه ليسنج بقوله "إن للشعر لحظات في الزمان وللتصوير لحظة في المكان"
  فالرسام لا يستطيع إلا أن يستخدم لحظة واحدة من الحدث ويصورها بإيجاز قدر إستطاعته وينفذها بكل الحيل والوسائل الفنية، لكن من الناحية الأخرى فهناك الكثير من العناصر اللانهائية التي يمكن لأن يعبر عنها الشاعر في هذا الموضوع بالكلمات، مستخدما الأدوات الخاصة بفن الشعر، وهي حرية تناول اللحظة الماضية أو التالية لها، على أن يقدم لنا ليس فقط ما يمكن أن نراه عند الرسام، بل ما يمكن أن نخمنه
  
• 
  Josh

  Fairly interesting. In some ways, this responds to Winckelmann's assertions in his essay on Greek art. Quite similar in content, involving lengthy discussion of ancient Greek art. Has a somewhat more polemical style, however.
• 
  Castles

  Surprisingly communicative for a book for that era, way better than today’s books about art theory.
  
  I skipped the vast chapter of notes, as the line of understanding got a little too off hand, and I’m not sure if it’s the edition I’ve read or the book itself, but bringing the text in the original Greek language didn’t quite help. I see no reason why not translate it in the spot.
• 
  Samuel

  This treatise is a raw undertaking- it comprises a struggle much like that depicted in the cover: namely, to be the Solon giving laws to the wild tribe of artists and intellectuals. Doomed to failure, I read as if it were me wrestling against the monster snakes with my family.
• 
  Ermina

  čovjek zvani digresija u sve ikad.
• 
  David Goshadze

  As an artist, I learned lots of things from this book. It's great for people who're interested in philosophy and aesthetic theories.
• 
  Valorie

  Though this book is very much a product of the eighteenth century, Lessing's thoughts and musings on the differences between painting and poetry are still relevant today. Scholars interested in all the various art mediums, including television/film, painting, sculpture, performance art, plays, novels, poetry, and etc., will find use and interesting musings in Lessing's work. Here, he charges poetry and painting with the task of depicting beauty, using the Laocoön statue as his main lens. Because it is written in a more meandering way than a nonfiction book with the same idea would be written today (I suspect the same prompt would be answered in an essay no longer than something that would end up on Longreads) it's hard to figure out which exactly Lessing decides is the "better" art form. His long digressions and considerations of other thinkers mean that each possible side is considered however.
  
  It should be noted that Lessing mostly defines 'beauty' in a way that we might describe as emotionally moving, and 'ugly' as art that makes us uncomfortable. However, he also uses those terms to rate and describe physical beauty.
  
  There are three big problems with Lessing's essay, however:
  

  1. He conflates sculpture and painting into the same thing: A visual art. So he uses both to contrast with poetry, ignoring that sculpture and painting are totally different art forms and as such have different strengths and weaknesses. A comparison of the strengths of all three separately, that is painting v. sculpture v. poetry would be an interesting follow up.
  2. Similarly, Lessing conflates poetry and prose into the same thing. Ironically, he is generally disparaging of prose. Again, this totally ignores the differences between poetry and prose.
  3. He is a white guy from the 18th century in northern Europe, and so his definition of physical beauty is narrow and...unfortunate, shall we say. While people within the body positivity movement might find his acceptance of different body types okay, he largely only supports fat up to a certain point. White is the only skin color that's beautiful. Perfectly symmetrical faces, long hair, voluptuous breasts, simple metal adornments, and luminous eyes are requirements for beauty in women. Men, too, have to fit certain criteria of fitness and attractiveness. Art that does not depict subjects this way are lesser in Lessing's writing. On a related note, he does argue that an early version of photoshopping might have been happening in statuary, however: He believes that early statues made their subjects more beautiful in order to accentuate their importance. Of course, this belies his belief that beauty = good morality and ugliness = bad morality, a logical fallacy we're really only getting past today.

  
  Unfortunately, Lessing never finished this project. He intended to write two or three more volumes, but died before he could. It would be fascinating to hear where he intended to go with this, and to see a further treatment of his opinions on music, plays, and performances, which he mentions only in passing in Laocoön.
  
  This copy is the ideal one--it is a definitive translation of Lessing's writing and contains a lovely biography of Lessing and his education. It also includes biographical information for people mentioned, long chapter notes to illuminate the references Lessing makes (which probably would have been easily understood by an eighteenth century audience), and translations of the long sections of non-English and non-German writings that he quotes.
• 
  Richard Thompson

  This is a brilliant book by a man who was both ahead of his time and a captive of the age in which he lived. Just as Lessing shows us the limits of painting and poetry, their strengths and weaknesses as media of artistic expression, he also shows us the strengths and weaknesses of the Enlightenment -- rational, smart, analytical, discarding the prejudices of prior eras, but at the same time limited by an excessive faith in reason and unable to see its limits, sometimes harsh and lacking in humanism and heart, missing a sense of wonder, enchantment and spirituality. It would have been nice if he could have understood that art has value far beyond simple mimesis and portrayal of beauty, and if he could have had appreciation of cultures beyond Greco-Roman and Western European. But Lessing was no dope, and I think that if I could send him a time machine to transport him to the present day, he would quickly develop a broader perspective that would fit within his theories easily.
  
  The most interesting part of this book for me was the discussion of how painting and sculpture, on the one hand, and poetry, on the other, have different capabilities and limitations that make each form of expression best at different types of artistic works. Because sculpture and painting give us a frozen moment they are stronger when they show a moment of anticipation to spur the imagination as to what comes next. They are also limited in space so they need to show people and things in proximity to one another. On the other hand, they provide a complete scene that can be apprehended all at once so there is an opportunity for the viewer to experience a sort of parallel processing that that makes the whole more than the sum of its parts. Poetry on the other hand has the characteristic of moving forward in serial form, so that its great strength is action over time and its greatest weakness in comparison to the visual arts is in providing descriptions of beauty, which it can only provide either in limited generality that leaves the reader to rely on his imagination or by finding ways to express beauty through action. Poetry also excels at presenting the unknown and invisible which in the visual arts can only be suggested by metaphor. And there is a lot more. This is good stuff that provides a lot of food for thought and that can be easily transposed into a more modern context where we now have movies, television and digital media, which each have their own strengths and limitations that shape the way that great artists use them in their creative process.
  
  There were times when I disagreed with Lessing. For example he says that religious art is always inferior to secular art, because religious art is in service to the requirements of religion, but that misses the extra dimension that religion can also give to art, so more properly he should have talked about strengths and limits of religious vs secular art just as he did in comparing painting and poetry. And he should have considered how painting and sculpture are themselves different, how poetry is different from prose and how drama is different from all of them. But even if he was blind to some of these implications of his own thinking, he managed to get me going. I'll be thinking about his ideas for weeks, and they will come back to haunt me again the next time that I go to an art museum. It's hard to expect more than that from a book.
• 
  Samson Blackwell

  This is incredibly incisive.
• 
  Pavel

  Essential, perhaps the most important book for anyone who's going to direct either on-stage or in cinema or to become professional artist.
• 
  Mike

  I have recently taken a renewed interest in German literature, of which I was briefly obsessed in my mid-twenties, so I'm revisiting some texts from Lessing that I browsed years ago, now with a better understanding of both his place in late Enlightenment critical discourse and in German literary history. I had read portions of Laocoon previously in my years doing media studies, but this is first time I've read the entire book.
  
  Lessing's book-length essay, which he rather humbly describes as a collection of "notes," is one of the first modern examinations of ekphrastic theory, setting in motion discussions of media specificity that continue into the 21st century, even as the lines between the verbal and the visual continue to blur in the digital age. Lessing himself opens the door for his work to be read in these terms, as he claims that his ideas apply not only to words and images, but all things beautiful -- that is to say, any artistic aesthetic. His ultimate goal is not to rob the verbal (i.e. poetry) of its power to express, but rather to suggest that as an art, it has certain modes of expression that are exclusive to its medium, and that its power (like that of any art) lies not in its imitative ability, but in its unique formal constraints. In that sense, Lessing's theory looks ahead to everything from Oulipo to New Criticism to digital art. It's an essential text for understanding the written word in its relation to visual theory.
• 
  James Violand

  This is far more interesting than I had expected. Lessing begins this dissertation with examining the renowned statue of Laocoon – an event frozen in time – with Virgil’s description of the event during the Trojan War from the The Aeneid. Each art has its strengths and weaknesses. Then he compares the Iliad of Homer and Philoctetes of Sophocles with sculpture and painting to establish a foundation in criticism. The distinctions and advantages found in these arts are lessons for any lover of the humanities.
• 
  Jon Ciliberto

  I am working on a more thorough write-up. This was a vexing book. One must remove oneself as a reader to a wholly different aesthetic culture, in order to make sense of the author's argument. However, it is hard to avoid frequently wondering if Lessing had a very narrow sense of what visual art can do...
• 
  Lucky

  莱辛在阐述自己关于诗与造型艺术的美学观点时，并非像赫尔德所批评的那样缺乏历史观念，第一章里他就提到不同文明之间相异的教养标准可能会导致艺术表达上的区别，并且也注意到了古代某些律法对于艺术创作所施加的限制，然而不可否认的是，他也确实没有就这些历史文化如何影响艺术领域的发展进行更深入的探究，主要论证仍然集中在诗和画的差异。
  
  虽然这是一本美学著作，但在阅读时还必须考虑到莱辛本人的德国启蒙运动领袖身份与三十年战争后德法两国之间的微妙关系，因此这本书绝不仅仅是为了批判将造型艺术的“静穆”应用到诗和文学这么简单，更是为了反对德国接受法国新古典主义观念，而法国新古典主义又继承了矫揉浮华的罗马传统，所以莱辛则要推崇多以英雄形象为题材的希腊古典文艺，从而为德国自己的民族文学铺路，同时也是希望为德国新兴的资产阶级社会塑造一种英雄理想。
• 
  Stefán Þór

  ég veit ekki alveg hvort mér fannst efni bókarinnar sem slíkt eitthvað sérstaklega áhugavert eða relevant - en það gefur mér samt svo mikla ánægju að lesa svona old school mælskulist og fræðimennsku.
• 
  Theelmo26

  
  excellent book the truth is that you have a structure in the book that goes out of the ordinary
• 
  Egor Sofronov

  Peak hellenophilia.
• 
  Raquel Pedro

  Lido até ao final do capítulo XVI.
• 
  Tinka

  „Der Endzweck der Wissenschaft ist Wahrheit. Der Endzweck der Künste hingegen ist Vergnügen.“
  
  Ein weiteres Buch auf der langen Liste der „Die Uni wollte es so“ – Bücher. Trotz eines Ratings von gerade mal zwei Sternen muss ich sagen ich fand Laokoon an sich nicht wirklich schlecht, ich hab ganz einfach nur nicht alles so richtig verstanden.
  
  Lessings Schreibstil ist recht flüssig und angenehm, ins Besondere für ein Sachbuch und es hat sich recht schnell gelesen, besonders im Vergleich zu so manch anderen Büchern die ich bereits von der Schule oder Uni aus lesen musste.
  
  Mein wirkliches Problem liegt in der Thematik, die so gar nicht meinem Interesse entspricht.
  
  Es geht um einen Vergleich zwischen Malerei und Poesie, angefangen in der Antike. Nun, ich hatte zwar Kunst in der Schule, aber dieser Unterricht bestand mehr aus Bilder malen und Wasserfarben mischen, sprich von Malerei hab ich so überhaupt keinen Schimmer. Poesie ist in gewisser Weise ein Teil meines Studiums, wohl bemerkt ein sehr kleiner Teil, aber auch hier handelt es sich nicht gerade um eines meiner Spezialgebiete.
  
  Ich konnte zwar Ansätze von Lessing nachvollziehen und hoffe doch sehr dass ich einigermaßen verstanden habe was der Mann genau sagen wollte, aber sicher bin ich mir nicht. Das ganze Thema war also einfach ausgedrückt so gar nicht meins und ich glaube ich hätte eine bessere Bewertung abgegeben wenn mein Interesse größer gewesen wäre.
  
  Ich bin nur froh, dass ich mich für griechische Mythologie interessiere und wenigstens die meisten Verweise diesbezüglich verstanden habe.
  
  Fazit: Nicht mein Thema, sorry.
  
  Empfehlung: Klar, wenn man sich gerne mit dem Thema befasst ist es bestimmt interessant.
• 
  Jessica

  Very clear, accessible presentation of a worthwhile argument. Laocoon might seem a little obsolete in its eponymous subject, drawn from ancient Greek statuary, and Lessing’s distinction between painting and poetry uneventful in light of today’s (mixed) media – with Lessing’s expository voice an artifact in its own right, – but contemporary thought has rather fostered than outgrown the spatiotemporal dialectic in art. I will admit that Lessing straggles occasionally over the course of 29 chapters; Chapter 16 is really the pith of the text, and some passages read discursive, or at least arbitrarily long.
• 
  Rosemary

  A fascinating disquisition on the practices of visual and verbal arts and in what ways their capacities for representation differ (if you're not interested in the intricacies of the dating of the specific Laocoön statue, though, take my advice and skip the last couple of chapters - the aesthetic essay that makes up the rest of the book stands on its own perfectly well without it).
• 
  PMP

  Michel Chaouli taught us about the silent scream, which can also be seen in _The Godfather III_, using Laocoon.
• 
  Jennifer Chin

  I liked this one. But I suck at philosophy (who knew it was possible).
• 
  Thomas

  For people interested in aesthetic theory this is a must read. People who aren't will still find this essay engaging and easy to read.
• 
  Jamie

  Ok, so I only had to read chapters 1-17, but still. It's crossed off the Master's list, it's crossed off of Goodreads...
• 
  Jen

  This isn't a light read, babies.
  But I highly recommend this for those who study the Greek classics, poetry, art history or any happy combination of the few!