Selected Prose Works of G. E. Lessing - Softcover

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

 
9783337982645: Selected Prose Works of G. E. Lessing

Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. ...called 'Julia, or the Conflict between Love and Duty.' Herr Heufeld of Vienna is the author. He tells us that two plays of his have already met with the approval of the Viennese audience. I do not know them, but to judge by this one, they cannot be wholly bad. The main points of the fable and a greater part of the situations are borrowed from Rousseau's 'Nouvelle Heloise.' I wish that Herr Heufeld, before setting to work, had read and studied the criticism of this novel in the 'Letters concerning Contemporary Literature.'1 He would have worked with a more just comprehension of the beauties of the original, and would perhaps have been more felicitous in various points. From the point of view of invention, the worth of the 'Nouvelle Heloise' is very slight, and the best parts in it are by no means adapted to dramatic purposes. The situations are commonplace or unnatural, and the few good ones so far apart, that they cannot be constrained into the narrow limits of a drama of three acts without violenca It was impossible that the stury should end on the stage as it does not end, but rather loses itself in the novel. The lover of Julia had to be happy here, and Herr Heufeld lets him be happy. He gets his pupil. But has Herr Heufeld considered that his Julia is now no more the Julia of Eousseau? But Julia of Rousseau or no, who cares, if only she be a person who interests? But just that she is not, she is nothing but a little enamoured fool, who at times chatters prettily enough whenever Herr Heufeld remembers a fine passage in Rousseau. "Julia," say the critics whom I have before named, "plays a twofold role in the story. At first she is a weak and even a seductive maiden, then at last she becomes a woman who surpasses all ever...

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