Everything could be a dream.

The free-thinkers seem to be saying that there is no transcendence, that there is nothing but Nature.

LAOCOON BY MICHAEL HOLDER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 118

It seems he had a bone to pick with Winckelmann. Can, or should, great suffering and pain be rendered explicitly in art? Can a scream be accurately depicted in marble or paint without destroying the possibility, and indeed, the requirement, that art represent beauty? Is the hideousness of suffering, after all, completely incompatible with the lofty purposes of art?

I may only be a servant, but I have ears. I hear them, L. and Herr M., in the drawing room discussing these things with heat and passion. Herr M. is taking the side of Winckelmann; that art must be “distanced”, that it must express a noble simplicity and a quiet grandeur, like the depths of the sea that remain calm no matter what sort of storm is brewing on the surface. L. cites numerous examples from Homer and Sophocles where anguish, despair, and horrible pain are des…