August Wilhelm Schlegel - Evaluations

Evaluations

In the opinion of the anonymous author of the Schlegel article in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

As an original poet Schlegel is unimportant, but as a poetical translator he has rarely been excelled, and in criticism he put into practice the Romantic principle that a critic's first duty is not to judge from the standpoint of superiority, but to understand and to “characterize” a work of art.

Traugott Böhme, in his article for the 1920 Encyclopedia Americana, gives the following thoughts:

As a critic carried on the tradition of Lessing and Herder. Without possessing Lessing's power of style and personality, commanded a wider range of artistic susceptibility. His unerring linguistic and historical scholarship and the calm objectivity of his judgment enabled him to carry out, even more successfully than Herder himself, Herder's demand that literary criticism should be based on a sympathetic penetration into the specific individuality of each poetic production rather than on the application of preconceived aesthetic standards.

Schlegel established models for the new method of analytical and interpretative criticism in his essays on Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea and on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. His Vienna lectures On Dramatic Art and Literature were translated into most of the languages of Europe and stand as a permanent contribution to critical literature; his definition of the terms “classic” and “romantic” met with general recognition; his views on the so-called “three unities” and on the “correctness” of Shakespeare evoked an especially strong echo in England and finally made the Johnsonian attitude toward Shakespeare appear obsolete.

Formal perfection of language is the chief merit of his poems, which suffer from a lack of originality. In his drama Ion, he vainly attempted to rival Goethe's Iphigenie. He prided himself on being “model and master in the art of sonnets” among the Germans. He is at his best in sparkling literature parodies such as Ehrenpforte und Triumphbogen für Kotzebue (1801).

The 1905 New International Encyclopedia, in its article on Schlegel, gives the following opinions:

The Schlegel-Tieck translation is universally considered better than any other rendering of Shakespeare in a foreign language. Thanks to Schlegel and Tieck, Shakespeare has become a national poet of Germany.

. . .

Spanisches Theater (1803-09), consisting of five pieces of Calderon's, admirably translated, . . . that poet a favorite with the German people, and his Blumensträusse der italienischen, spanischen und portugiesischen Poesie (Berlin, 1804), a charming collection of southern lyrics, the appearance of . . . the naturalization in German verse of the metrical forms of the Romanic races.

. . .

Schlegel was quarrelsome, jealous, and ungenerous in his relations with literary men, and did not even shrink from slander when his spleen was excited.