August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767–1845) was a German poet, literary critic, scholar, and Orientalist. One of the most influential disseminators of the ideas of the German Romantic movement, he was the most exceptional German translator of Shakespeare.
Born in Hanover, the brother of poet Friedrich Von Schlegel, August Wilhelm studied theology at Göttingen, but soon turned to literature. In 1798, he became a professor of literature and fine art at Jena, and founded with his brother the literary journal Das Athenaeum—it became a vehicle for their shared ideas about Romantic art and literature.
From 1801–04 Schlegel lectured at Berlin. He spent the next 14 years in the house of Madame de Staël at Coppet, while he taught on Dramatic Art and Literature (English translation 1815) at Vienna in 1808, and was the secretary to the Crown Prince of Sweden (1813–14.) From 1818 until his death, he was a professor of literature at Bonn.
Schlegel translated 17 plays of William Shakespeare—his translations instituted a standard for precision, thoroughness, and poetic sensitivity unrivaled to this day. Schlegel also translated works by Dante Alighieri, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes, and Luís de Camões.
An Orientalist, Schlegel was the first professor of Sanskrit in Continental Europe and produced a translation of the Bhagavad Gītā (1823; with a Latin translation) and the Rāmāyaṇa (1829.) His major work was Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808; ‘On the Language and Wisdom of India.’) Schlegel’s view of world literature as an organic whole influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
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In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first step forward in faith.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel
There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than admiration of the beautiful.—All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste, without respect to the object.—They purify the thoughts, as tragedy purifies the passions.—Their accidental effects are not worth consideration; for there are souls to whom even a vestal is not holy.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel
Topics: Art, Beauty
Authorship, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, is an infancy, a pastime, a labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, or a virtue.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel
Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the pangs that attend their waking.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel
Topics: Love
Literature is the immortality of speech.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel
Topics: Speech, Immortality, Books, One liners, Literature
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