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Athenaeum Fragments

1798 · by Friedrich Schlegel

Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry – and a fragment must be complete in itself like a hedgehog.

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Introduction

The Athenaeum was the journal of the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, published in Berlin from 1798 to 1800. Its second issue, in 1798, contained a sequence of 451 fragments, most by Friedrich Schlegel, others by his brother, Schleiermacher and Novalis, printed without names. The fragments range from a single line to several pages and treat poetry, philosophy, irony and contemporary culture. Fragment 116 describes romantic poetry as progressive universal poetry, number 206 asks for the fragment to be closed off like a hedgehog, and number 216 names the French Revolution, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister” as the greatest tendencies of the age.

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