Laokoon (Lessing)

Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry is a theoretical treatise on art written by the dramatist, philosopher, theologian, poet, critic, and statesman Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and published in 1766 in Berlin. The main theme of the work is to establish the existing boundaries between painting and poetry. Also notable is the controversy between the author of the treatise and Winckelmann regarding the Laocoön sculpture and the period to which it belongs. Today, the essay is not preserved in its entirety.

Controversy surrounding the ''Laocoön''

The sculptural group Laocoön, attributed to the sculptors Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodoros, and the title of Lessing's work, was discovered in 1506 by Felice de Fredis in his vineyard on the Esquiline Hill in Rome, where the palace of Emperor Titus had previously been located and where the Roman writer Pliny the Elder had made a description of the sculpture. This discovery was received with great expectation by the public and was even praised by Michelangelo as a "prodigy of art." However, modern criticism of the 17th and 18th centuries labeled it as a work from the decadent period of Greek sculpture.
One of the first to write about this work of art was Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who referred to it for the first time in his work Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke, in which he expounded his demand for a new ideal based on "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur," concepts characteristic of Greek art. Later, he referred to the sculpture again in his main work Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums with a much more extensive and developed description.
In these works, where Winckelmann's judgments on the artistic value of the mentioned sculpture are not very positive, he also discusses the principle of the two arts called ut pictura poesis. In this way, modern critics tried to suppress the boundaries between the mentioned arts, but Lessing, on the contrary, sought to restore these boundaries by returning to and developing Winckelmann's idea about Greek art, especially with the Laocoön group, to present arguments about the difference between pictorial and poetic mimesis. From this arose the book Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie.
Lessing begins the first chapter with a paragraph from Winckelmann's Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works, in which he speaks about the expression of Laocoön, as a starting point to dismantle the principle of the arts and propose the difference between poetry and the plastic arts. In the last four chapters of the book, Lessing refers to various hypotheses of Winckelmann, such as the historical provenance of the sculptural group, the verbal conjugation of the inscriptions on the statues, or the lack of consultation of original sources and the citation of references, in addition to accusations of lapses of memory and faults concerning unimportant matters. This provoked a controversy, as Winckelmann was considered in the 18th century the "supreme theorist of the arts." Nevertheless, the central theme of the essay does not revolve around Winckelmann's description of Laocoön's facial expression in the sculptural group, as Lessing focuses much more broadly on other important questions of aesthetics, giving examples and demonstrations and mentioning artists of antiquity, ancient and modern poets and writers.
Nevertheless, the book presents a highly important 18th-century question about whether the sculpture preceded Virgil's Aeneid or whether the Laocoön was derived from this author's work. Lessing was very interested in this question, as his contemporaries claimed that the Roman poet was inspired by the sculptural work, something with which the author disagreed and demonstrated by exposing the lack of evidence confirming the theory. Furthermore, in the fifth chapter, he explains that there could have been a third possibility; it being very likely that neither the sculptor imitated the poet, nor the poet the sculptor, but that both could have drawn from a common earlier source. According to Macrobius, the common source would have been one of the lost works of Peisander of Camira, a resource much used in ancient Greek schools.
On the other hand, the author was also interested in knowing Winckelmann's opinion on the dating of the Laocoön sculpture. The art historian said it belonged to the period of decline of Greek art, during the reign of Alexander the Great. In this way, he refuted the opinion of Scipione Maffei because he relied solely on the statement about the flourishing of the artists of the group during the eighty-eighth Olympiad. Lessing, in contrast, did not accept Winckelmann's argument because he also added no more reasons than Maffei's on this question, although he also denies the latter author's argument. In chapter XXVI, Lessing argues various reasons that explain the difficulty of the chronological situation of this sculptural group based on the texts of the ancient Greeks, especially Pliny.
In the face of this controversy, other critics joined in, such as Wilhelm Heinse, who wrote a sarcastic criticism in Ardinghello about the sculptural group, in addition to expressing his dislike. Another figure was Goethe, who wrote in the first volume of Propyläen an article on Laocoön in which he also developed theories and descriptions, using Lessing's book as support. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer made a synthesis of this controversy in the third book of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, in which he criticized Winckelmann and also exposed the differential laws between sculpture and literature.

Main ideas of the work

This section explains and analyzes the key theme of Lessing's work, the limits in painting and poetry. Thus, three fundamental concepts in the book will also be discussed: beauty, ugliness, and mimesis.

Poetry ''versus'' painting

Just as in Aristotle's Poetics action prevails, in Laocoön poetry prevails over painting. The work is fundamentally a reflection on the different means available to the arts on the one hand—Lessing designates them with the generic name of painting—and poetry on the other—understanding here by poetry the epic and the dramatic. The book should be inscribed within a comparative essay on the different condition of spatial arts and temporal arts. Painting, to imitate reality, uses means completely different from those used by poetry: painting does so with figures and colors arranged in space while poetry does so with articulated sounds that succeed one another over time.
There are two passages in Horace's Epistola ad Pisones in which one can speak of a paragone between poetry and painting. Horace speaks of the similarity in the various ways poems and paintings can reach their recipients.
In a sculpture, or in a painting, a shout does not involve an excessively open mouth, a gesture that disfigures the beauty of a face; in poetry, on the other hand, a narrated shout does not imply this deformation of the human face or the immediate presence of a contracting face. From this stems Lessing's reflection on painting and poetry, the particular conditions of each of these arts, as well as the laws to which they are subject.
Poetry can imitate painting, and vice versa. Painting can imitate corporeal objects by resorting to the narration of the history of these bodies; painting can imitate actions by resorting to what Lessing calls "the most fecund moment" and "the most pregnant moment" of the action, that is, the one in which the figure in motion, subjected to the stillness of the spatial conditions of painting, is in a position that allows the spectator to guess the instant that precedes this moment and the one that follows it.
The human faculty that apprehends the work of art, both painting and poetry, is the inner gaze, fantasy; in painting, the inner gaze must recreate the object represented by the painting; in poetry, fantasy must allow itself to be fertilized by the images presented by the arbitrary signs of language. The "most pregnant moment" is the one capable of awakening associations in the inner gaze. The superiority of poetry over painting consists in the fact that the field that the arbitrary signs of language open to human fantasy is incomparably wider than that which the natural signs of painting can open, which consists in reproducing within itself the represented reality seen in the painting.
Lessing says that the sculptor did very well not making Laocoön shout, just as the poet was right to make him shout. The limitations of the plastic arts are clearly seen considering the different arrangement of the snakes, how they envelop Laocoön and his sons in the poetic work and in the sculptural work. Virgil, in the work of the Aeneid, makes the snakes coil twice around the body and head of Laocoön, and he remains protruding. The poet, however, avoids the arms being trapped and leaves the hands free to act, since nothing gives more expression and life to the body than the movement of these. The most expressive of faces says nothing if not accompanied by the hands.
The ancient sculptors immediately realized that, in this point, their art demanded a total change. The coils that the poet places on the neck and torso, they displace to the feet and thighs. These bonds also arouse the idea of the impossibility of escape and a type of immobility very appropriate for the perpetuity that art imposed on this scene. This difference highlights the sculptors' skill. We must speak of clothing, as it is also different in the two works. Virgil's Laocoön is dressed in priestly ornaments, while in the sculptural group, like his sons, he appears completely nude. The sculptors were forced to sin against the truth before reproducing the garments poorly.
Lessing criticizes the idea of Joseph Spence, a British historian who believes that, among the ancients, painting and poetry were so closely linked that they always went hand in hand. Spence also postulates that the poet never lost sight of the painter, nor the painter the poet. Lessing argues that the gods and spirits that the artist represents are not exactly the same as those the poet uses. In the case of the artist, they are personified abstractions that, to be recognized, need to keep the same attributes in a stable manner. In the case of the poet, on the other hand, they are real beings that act and who, above their general character, possess other qualities and feelings that, according to circumstances, can stand out over that character.
Lessing, in his work, also clarifies a very important issue: when one wants to compare, based on particular cases, the painter with the poet, the first thing to do is to examine whether both have had full and total freedom, whether they have been able to work without external coercion of any kind. For artists of antiquity, very frequently this external coercion was religion. Their work, destined for worship and praise, could not always be as perfect as it would have been if its author had pursued only the pleasure of the spectator. Religion paid more attention to symbolism than to beauty.
When the poet personifies abstractions, he characterizes them sufficiently with the name he gives them and the actions he attributes to them. The artist lacks these means. Hence, in the personified abstractions, he needs to assign them symbols that can be recognized as such. These symbols, by being one thing and meaning another, make these abstractions allegorical figures. When the artist adorns the figure with certain symbols, he elevates it to the rank of a superior being; on the other hand, when the poet makes use of these adornments of the plastic arts, what he does is convert a superior being into a puppet.
On the one hand, objects juxtaposed called bodies and their visible properties constitute the proper object of painting. On the other, successive objects are called actions and these are the proper object of poetry. However, all bodies exist both in space and in time. Painting can also imitate actions, but only allusively, by means of bodies. Actions do not have an independent existence, but are actions of certain beings.
In its compositions, painting can only use a single moment of the action; hence it must choose the most pregnant of all, the one that allows one to best understand the moment that precedes it and the one that follows it. Similarly, poetry, in the imitation of what happens in time, can only use a single quality of bodies; hence it must choose the one that most plastically arouses in the mind the image of the body from the point of view that, for its purpose, interests this art.
The signs that poetry uses are arbitrary and are also capable of expressing bodies in the way they exist in space. Given that the signs of discourse are arbitrary, it is perfectly possible that, through them, one can parade, one after another, the elements of a body that in nature are found juxtaposed. This is a property of language and its signs.
Thus, temporal succession is the domain of the poet, just as space is the domain of the painter. To unite in a single painting two necessarily distant moments supposes an intrusion of the painter into the field of the poet, something that good taste will never approve. To enumerate for the reader, one after another, different parts or different things is an incursion of the poet into the field of the painter. In large historical paintings, the unique and unrepeatable moment that the author has chosen is almost always somewhat expanded in the dimension of time, and perhaps we will not find any work very rich in figures in which each one is in a dynamic attitude and in the position corresponding to the moment of the main action.

Beauty

During this work, Lessing reasons about the idea of beauty and its antonym, ugliness. However, he does so with certain limitations, as the author reflects on the concept of beauty in the context of Greek and Latin antiquity.
The author begins by claiming that the ultimate purpose of representation in the plastic arts is beauty par excellence, since it is a purely leisurely activity and, therefore, dedicated to pleasure. Furthermore, ugliness is even legally punished. Therefore, the imposition of beauty as a canon of representation implies, according to Lessing, multiple and varied limitations.
One of the most evident limits, and in which the author shows particular interest, as he exemplifies it through the Laocoön, is the representation of emotions in a plastic work, specifically, pain. At this point, Lessing investigated the boundaries between painting and poetry, establishing clear differences. For poetry, it was feasible to present a Laocoön shouting, as it does not interfere with any law of poetry. As for sculpture, this fact interferes with the canon of beauty and therefore the character from the Aeneid is not represented with a shout, but through extreme tension that suppresses the shout. If a shout had been represented on Laocoön's mouth, hypothetically, Lessing maintains that the beauty of the work would have been considerably compromised.
Beauty in painting represents the possibility of reproducing elements that cause pleasant sensations in the viewer, through material beauty, which in Lessing's words "arises from the harmonious and concordant effect of distinct parts that the eye encompasses at once as a whole." Furthermore, Lessing establishes a dividing line between the beauty created by painting and charm, the creation proper to poetry, which is beauty in motion, affirming that the latter is capable of causing a notably greater impact on the viewer.
The reflection on beauty leads the author to question the role of ugliness. He does not deny painting's ability to depict this concept, but maintains that classical artists were not interested in representing it. Thus, ugliness was accepted in poetry, according to Lessing, to create contrasts, completely the opposite compared to painting, since its static nature makes this concept endure in the effect it produces and, as a consequence, break the harmony and beauty of the work.
On the other hand, classical beauty, unlike poetry, had as an indispensable requirement the elimination of any artifice, since artists preferred to take the form that best suited their own art.

Ugliness

The concept of ugliness is closely related to that of beauty, they go hand in hand.
Winckelmann observed that the Laocoön expressed pain in a measured way, with "a contained and anguished murmur." Lessing, on the other hand, attributed the difference between poetic and sculptural representation to the fact that poetry expresses itself by describing an action, in the course of which repugnant facts can be evoked, while sculpture can only represent an instant, and in fixing it cannot show a face unpleasantly contorted because the deforming violence of physical pain could not be reconciled with the beauty of the representation. Lessing, to defend his arguments, elaborates a complex phenomenology of ugliness, analyzing its different expressions in the different arts and reflecting on the difficulty of artistically representing what provokes repulsion.
Lessing in the work speaks of the law of the Thebans, which obliged artists to beautify the object they copied and prohibited them, under penalty, from making it uglier than it was. In other words, caricature was condemned, that is, achieving resemblance to the model through what was ugly and unpleasant in it.
In the case of the poet, ugliness becomes a less repulsive manifestation of bodily imperfection and, from the point of view of its effect, ceases to be ugliness; precisely for this reason, it is usable by the poet; what he does not employ for itself, he does as an ingredient to intensify certain complex relations such as the ridiculous or the terrible.
Lessing comments on an example in which he refers to Homer's representation of one of his characters, Thersites. The author of Laocoön says that Homer makes this character ugly to make him ridiculous. However, Thersites is not ridiculous simply for being ugly. Ugliness is an imperfection, and to be ridiculous a contrast between perfection and imperfection is needed. The opposites must merge with each other.
Painting as an imitative capacity can express ugliness; painting as a fine art does not want to express it; in the first condition, all visible objects that arouse pleasant sensations belong to it. Ugliness offends our sight, repulses our sense of order and harmony and awakens in us aversion, regardless of whether the object we perceive exists or not. Lessing, to clarify his arguments, speaks to us again of Thersites. He tells us that we do not want to see him either in reality or in a painting; and if his portrait displeases us less, it is not because in artistic imitation the ugliness of forms ceases to be ugliness, but because we possess the capacity to abstract from this ugliness and limit ourselves to enjoying the artist's skill.
Painting is not in exactly the same case as poetry. In poetry, the ugliness of forms loses almost all its repulsive effect; in this aspect, we could say, it ceases to be ugliness and, therefore, can enter more intimately into connection with new appearances, thereby producing a new and special effect. In painting, on the other hand, ugliness contains all its forces united and does not act much more weakly than in reality itself.

Mimesis

Art has always been seen as an activity dependent on nature, as a way of creating a kind of second reality, since mimesis is understood as the imitation of reality as it is, or as the copy of nature from a selection of the elements that compose it.
This concept appears in Lessing's book when the author starts from the problem of whether Virgil was inspired by the sculptural group or vice versa, and explains that the plastic arts cannot imitate the poetic recital trait by trait, and in the case that the Roman poet had imitated the sculptural work, Lessing assures that he would only have imitated a part of it, because the whole does not totally identify with his poem. Therefore, to affirm that the poet imitates the sculptor or the contrary can lead us to understand two different things: that one makes the other's work the real object of imitation or that both imitated the same object. For this reason, the author showed interest in this question and wanted to discuss and argue the relationship it had since then with the ut pictura poesis principle of the two arts. Also, however, he spoke about the limits of both arts when imitating an object, depending fundamentally on the limitations that governed the laws.
The different condition of the arts and their signs is what will determine the type of reality that must be imitated.
In chapter XVI, he clearly states that the means or signs that painting uses to imitate are forms and colors, the domain of which is space, and that those of poetry are articulated sounds the domain of which is time. Painting can represent objects or their parts in space, while poetry can only express successive objects or objects of successive parts. That is, actions are the object of poetry and bodies constitute the purpose of the plastic arts. Later, he definitively establishes in chapter XVIII that time is the domain of the poet and space of the painter. Furthermore, he states that the artist can only represent a single point of view and a single instant, unlike poetry, although it must be a moment from which the spectator, upon observing the plastic work, imagines the following sequence. In other words, the artist must capture the precise moment so that the receiver can stimulate the imagination in order to conceive what happened before the determined moment and what can happen after.
The limits of modern art, compared to those of ancient art, expanded. This time visible nature was imitated, of which beauty formed an infinitesimal part. But, even so, it was subject to the law of truth and expression, as in the case of Greek art with beauty. This means that both arts, regardless of the chronological situation, were limited by laws that distinguished their different branches according to the mode of imitation.

Synopsis of chapter contents

; Prologue
Distinction between the amateur, the philosopher, and the critic in the mode of appreciating the relations between painting and poetry, concluding that the critic's valuations are the most just, as he understands that there are various general rules that predominate in painting and others in poetry and that, as a consequence, through the first norms, painting can help poetry, and also vice versa.
; Chapter I
Analysis of the expression of Laocoön, linking it with the Greek ideal and comparing the treatment given to it in literature. Clarification of the virtues of the Greek soul, in order to explain the why of Laocoön's expression and comparison with other works, thus criticizing Winckelmann.
; Chapter II
Beauty as the indisputable purpose of the plastic arts in antiquity and its limitations in the representation of emotions with the analysis of Laocoön's expression. Furthermore, ugliness as a type of rejection in a plastic representation and the limitations, even legal, of ancient artists for the representation of this concept.
; Chapter III
Faced with the impossibility of complete narration on the part of a painting, Lessing analyzes the resources used for the legibility of the work, which is the representation of the fecund act, understood as the representation of the climax of an action. That is, the representation of this moment must be capable of transmitting to the spectator, through the movement achieved by the artist, an idea about what has happened before and predict the subsequent sequence.
; Chapter IV
Reflection on the limits of painting as a static artistic expression, in contrast to narration as a changing element, as well as the differences and limitations in the representation of emotions, specifically pain, in poetry and painting. The canons that prevail in the plastic arts should not be subjected to poetry, nor vice versa, since both have different languages.
; Chapter V
Study of the origins of Laocoön; comparison between the sculptural work and Virgil's description, in order to dissipate the imitator's creative genius, as well as the exposition of the differences in treatment depending on whether it is a plastic or literary art. Deduces the probability that the poet served as inspiration for the sculptors and not the opposite, as his contemporaries said.
; Chapter VI
Comparison of the effect of plastic and literary arts, contrary to Chapter V, starting from Lessing's theory, which establishes Virgil as the creator of the scene and later interpreted by the sculptors. Differentiation of the distinctive purposes of the mentioned arts through exemplification with the sculptural work.
; Chapter VII
Process of imitation, elimination of elements and incorporation of others, and proposal of a possible accidental convergence regarding composition. Highlights the importance of differentiating the creative genius from the mere imitator.
; Chapter VIII
Analysis of the similarities between painting and poetry, with special interest in attributes as distinctive elements, and indication of the greater capacity of poetry to use various resources compared to painting. Analysis of the close relationship in antiquity between both arts.
; Chapter IX
Observation of the limits of beauty imposed by religion. The symbol as a frequent resource in painting in the face of the inability of clarification, just the opposite of poetry; and analysis of the religious repercussion on beauty, interpreted as an indisputable objective of a work in the ancient world.
; Chapter X
The symbol as an indispensable element in painting for its capacity for characterization, which is the indispensable attribute for the understanding of the work, unlike poetry, in which the object is likely to end up being an artifice.
; Chapter XI
Analysis of the complexity in the creative process of the plastic arts and poetry and comparison between the two, from which Lessing draws two conclusions: the superiority of painting over poetry in that the material is much more complex to manipulate than with words, and the preeminence of imagination in literary representation, as a requirement when creating, compared to the plastic.
; Chapter XII
The capacity of poetry to show what is invisible through narration, contrary to painting, which is only capable of doing so with symbols. Therefore, Lessing concludes by considering poetry superior.
; Chapter XIII
Incapacity of painting to have movement in spacetime like poetry, and presentation of the "musicality of words" as a characteristic nontransferable to painting, which further highlights the superiority of poetic art.
; Chapter XIV
Proposal of the existence of poems with more pictorial possibilities and debate on whether this fact should dignify the work, something to which Lessing opposes the opinion of Count Caylus, and concludes that, if so, it does not make the work better.
; Chapter XV
Presentation of poetry as an art in motion, capable of introducing the idea of multiple spaces and different times, in contrast to painting, which is a static art, capable only of representing a specific place, time, and action.
; Chapter XVI
Differentiation of the means and objectives between painting and poetry. Explanation of the spatiality and temporality of bodies in poetry and the use of the attribute as a means of differentiation of spaces and times.
; Chapter XVII
Poetic painting as a resource of the poet to transport the reader to a specific environment without falling into the literal description of objects, since, according to Lessing, describing objects breaks the reader's illusion.
; Chapter XVIII
The resources used in painting to give the illusion of prolongation in time and those used in poetry to gain spatial fidelity. That is, the use by painting of a dynamic composition in order to appear an extension in spacetime and the use of description by poetry to enhance the reader's imagination.
; Chapter XIX
Capacity of painting to generate and establish fixed elements in contrast to poetry, which is only capable of enumerating, taking into account the absence of perspective in ancient art. He does all this with the example of Achilles's shield described by Homer.
; Chapter XX
Impossibility of a common objective between painting and poetry, due to the use of different tools, of which poetry uses the word and painting forms and colors. According to Lessing, the search for a common purpose would not result in a quality work.
; Chapter XXI
As a resource to equate painting, the author maintains the use of charm as a beauty in motion; in the case of poetry, he argues that it has a greater impact on the viewer than the material beauty of painting.
; Chapter XXII
Elaboration of the theory of the incapacity of poetry to show beauty, finally resorting to its effects, unlike painting, which shows it without any artifice. That is, although the features are common, poetry can only cause an effect or an impression of beauty, precisely the opposite of painting.
; Chapter XXIII
Ugliness in poetry as a complement to highlight other elements, not as a sole motif. Generally, used by the poet to cause ridicule, and in some cases compassion, which according to Lessing is an important element to capture interest.
; Chapter XXIV
Ugliness as an element discarded in the representation of the plastic arts, contrary to poetry, which is transitory, while painting, being static, the effect it can produce will endure in the spectator, and Lessing assures that it can be unpleasant.
; Chapter XXV
The use of forms capable of showing emotions, not necessarily beautiful, as a means to satisfy the soul, except for disgust, which is considered by Lessing as a reaction to avoid when creating, since it does not have the capacity to enrich the soul.
; Chapter XXVI
Alternative proposal by Winckelmann on the realization of Laocoön as an independent representation between poetry and sculpture. Dispute over the chronological dating of the work, and the mentioned author is in favor of considering the work from the Hellenistic period and Lessing from the Imperial period.
; Chapter XXVII
Affirmation by Lessing of the provenance of the work from the Imperial period due to the inscription on the sculptural group and authorship.
; Chapter XXVIII
Criticism of Winckelmann for the incorrect analysis of the Borghese Gladiator, sculpture made by Agasias.
; Chapter XXIX
Criticism of Winckelmann for having used Franciscus Junius as a main source without verifying it.

Influences

To understand Lessing's work, one must take into account the aesthetic conceptions present in his thought.
The most ancient authors that exert an influence within his work are Aristotle and Horace. From Aristotle he acquires two fundamental elements: mimesis and the primacy of action, that is, the protagonism that reflection on tragedy has in the Poetics. In Lessing's essay, we will find the imprints of Aristotle's aesthetics: the clear and decided way in which in Laocoön poetry prevails over painting. As for Horace, we must say that, in reality, he is the guiding thread of Lessing's thought throughout the essay.
The closest antecedents of Lessing's aesthetics are, on the one hand, in the linguistic and cultural sphere Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten and Mendelssohn and, on the other, some of the French and English aesthetic treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite being linguistically and culturally influenced by the aforementioned authors, Lessing distances himself from the reflections on art and beauty that they have; he is contrary to Baumgarten, to whom he dedicates two not very kind references in his work.
However, we must say that he does not depart from Moses Mendelssohn, of whom Lessing was a personal friend. Lessing and Mendelssohn wrote together the work Pope, a Metaphysician and some of the central ideas of Laocoön are found there, together with his theory of arbitrary and natural signs, as well as the superiority that the former have over the latter for their power to conjure a much broader realm of reality, undoubtedly had a great influence on Lessing's essay.
Referring to the French and English aesthetic treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries, we must mention the priest Du Bos who, in his Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture, already raises the theory of natural signs and arbitrary signs and speaks of the superiority of poetry over painting, ideas that play a central role in Lessing's book. We also find in Diderot interesting reflections on the different means available to the arts, on language as a hieroglyph, on the educational power of art, and on the beautiful instant that the painter must choose to somehow approximate the poet and be able to reproduce the action. James Harris, author of Three Treatises, proclaims in his work that poetry is distinguished from painting by the different effects they can cause in the human being: poetry, the energy of rhythm; painting, only the beauty of imitation. Other authors, such as Batteux, vindicate the rights of imitation, equating painting with poetry.
It is within these aesthetic ideas that Laocoön is born. Winckelmann was responsible for the title of Lessing's essay.

Publication and editions

Lessing began working on the idea of drafting this work from his sudden departure, in 1760, from the place that was then his home, to move to a much more primitive place, Breslau, where he was aware that his cosmopolitan and intellectual way of life would be affected. This information is provided by a local historian very close to Lessing, Benjamin Klose.
The library he obtained thanks to his work in Breslau consisted of 6,000 volumes and was decisive in the development and foundation of his thought. As a notable antecedent of this publication, the project of the Hérmicas should be mentioned, a term derived from Greek that refers to things that unite by chance; this perfectly defines the character of this work, a character that the Laocoön work would inherit.
The first incitement Lessing received to write this work was given by a letter that is still preserved from his friend Mendelssohn in 1756, in which glimmers of the unease about the main themes of the future work begin to be discerned. However, it was not until Lessing read Winckelmann's book in Breslau that he decided to write the work; for which the book can be seen as a belated response to his friend Mendelssohn's letter.
There were three projects of the same work; the first, completed at the end of 1762, contains the fundamental ideas that constitute an essay on the boundaries between poetry and painting. The later drafting of this first project consists of thirteen chapters and none alludes to Winckelmann or the sculptural group. The second project, he wrote thinking especially of Nicolai and Mendelssohn, who were to make observations on the blank pages that the author had expressly left. The difference between the first two drafts and the final work resides in the method used by Lessing, following in the definitive work an inductive method. This definitive work was published in Berlin by Christian Friedrich Voß in 1766.
It should also be noted that, after the publication of the book, he moved in 1769 to Hamburg, where he obtained the position of literary director of the theater of that city. As spokesman, he founded the magazine Hamburg Dramaturgy, a collection of essays and theatrical criticism considered one of the great milestones of German, even European, dramatic criticism during the 18th century. Here he also developed, through examples, his aesthetic theories previously exposed in his main and outstanding work, Laocoön.
From here, we can take a look at the following series of different editions of Lessing's book, both national and international:

LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Du Laocoon; ou Des limites respectives de la poesie et de la peinture. Paris: Chez Antoine-Augustin Renouard, 1802.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoon: or, The limits of Poetry and Painting ''. London: Ridgeway, 1836.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoon. An essay upon the limits of painting and poetry: With remarks illustrative of various points in the history of ancient art. Boston: Little Brown, 1904.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoon. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1905.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoon, Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnhelm. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sobre los límites de la pintura y la poesía seguido de las Cartas sobre Literatura Moderna y sobre Arte Antiguo. Madrid: Sáenz Hermanos, 1934.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sobre los límites de la pintura y de la poesía; Cartas sobre la literatura moderna y sobre el arte antiguo. Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1946.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte. Buenos Aires: Argos, 1946.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: Prima versione integra. Firenze: Sansoni, 1954.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1960.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoon: an essay on the limits of painting and poetry. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sobre los límites en la pintura y poesía. Madrid: Rústica Editorial, 1977.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sobre los límites de la poesía y la pintura. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o los límites en la pintura y la poesía. Madrid: ORBIS, 1984..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte o sobre los límites en la pintura y la poesía. Barcelona: Ediciones Orbis, S.A., 1985..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte. Madrid: Tecnos, S.A., 1990..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: ovvero sui limiti della pittura e della poesia. Roma: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1994.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sobre los límites de la pintura y la poesía. Barcelona: Colección Biblioteca de Filosofía, 2002.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sia dei limiti della pittura e della poesia. United States: BiblioLife, 2009..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte. United States: Nabu Press, 2010..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte: o sia dei limiti della pittura e della poesia. United States: Kessinger Publishing, 2010..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim; BERGUA, Juan Bautista. Laocoonte: o sobre los límites de la pintura y de la poesía; Cartas sobre la literatura moderna. United States: La Crítica Literaria, 2012..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte - Primary Source Edition. United States: Nabu Press, 2013..
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoonte''. Miami: Nabu Press, 2013..

Reception

The publication of the book was received positively and was welcomed with enthusiasm among the most prominent writers and critics of his time. In fact, it was one of the writings that most influenced the generation of the most outstanding German writers of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Grillparzer, Richter, Hoffmann and Novalis. Even so, in some spheres it caused a certain irritation due to the constant criticisms that Lessing directed at Winckelmann. In this way, a polemical discussion originated between both authors, which caused the division of public opinion and the formation of opposing groups in which each defended the hypotheses of the mentioned authors. This meant that they were the most outstanding representatives of modern German aesthetics. On the other hand, this book not only left a mark within the history of aesthetics, but also liberated poetry from painting, from the ut pictura poesis, and uncovered Winckelmann's idealized vision of Greece.
During the last third of the 18th century, all the criticisms indicated the compilatory and disordered character of this work, as in the case of Friedrich Schlegel, who stated that all of Lessing's works -especially Laocoön- were like labyrinths, of which "the entrance is easily found but it is very difficult to get out." Among the criticisms, the presence of the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz stands out, who expressed in his book Ueber den Nutzen und Gebrauch der alten geschnittenen Steine his doubts about the ideas developed in Lessing's essay. Another notable author is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote in the eighth book of his work Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit his admiration for Lessing's treatise, called a ray of light on the field of German thought, as it refuted the principle of the two arts, which are the plastic and the rhetorical, thus affirming that they are different but start from a similar basis. Furthermore, he exposes the difference of the mentioned arts through the example that explains that the artist must remain within the limits of beauty but that, on the other hand, the poet can extend a little further.
Lessing was a rather prominent polemicist who usually responded to negative criticisms of his work with extensive arguments, and addressed any author, whether foreign or compatriot, without giving importance to reputation. In fact, one of the criticisms he made against his contemporaries said: "Invoke Aristotle when you have not read him or have not understood him; the philosopher of Stagira never said what you pretend to make him say Call the barbarian Shakespeare! Why? Because you believe you have equaled him, what am I saying?, surpassed Sophocles. Error, error. You are as far from Sophocles as Shakespeare is close."