Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie
Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing · 1729 – 1781
Librarian’s score8.8Claude · AI
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Starting from why the Laocoön statue's priest does not scream as Virgil's does, Lessing argues that painting works with bodies in space and poetry with actions in time, so each must do what the other cannot. The argument is lucid and lively, and it ended a long habit of treating poems as pictures in words.