Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Poetry Quotations

Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation ofthe necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion.

The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy.

In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.

In many a poetic work, one gets here and there, instead of representation merely a title indicating that this or that was supposedto be represented here, that the artist has been prevented from doing it and most humbly asks to be kindly excused.

There is so much poetry, and yet nothing is more rare than a poetic work. This is what the masses make out of poetical sketches, studies, aphorisms, trends, ruins, and raw material.

In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.

Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.