Third Lecture

Certainly, one can refer to something Voltaire wrote in a letter from 1768: “I have always believed, I believe, and I will always believe that Athens, as far as tragedies and comedies are concerned, is surpassed by Paris in every respect. I boldly assert that all Greek tragedies look like schoolboy's work compared to the magnificent scenes of Corneille and the perfect tragedies of Racine.” This could also be compared to a letter from Schiller to Goethe, in which he says something like: Since you were not born a Greek or an Italian, since you were born in this cold Nordic nature, you had to create an ideal Greece within yourself. - But nevertheless, one must not believe that Greek culture has emerged in Central Europe in such an adequate manner as it has in France. If one takes “Iphigenia,” one sees that the longing for Greek culture lives on in it. Goethe believed he understood art differently after experiencing it in Italy—and yet, something quite different lives in Goethe's “Iphigenia” than in a Greek work of art. I could say a lot about the way things are artistically designed, but I only want to hint at these things in these lectures.