'Auf eine Lampe'

‘Auf eine Lampe’, a poem in ten lines of antique trimeters, written by E. Mörike in 1846. It affirms the intrinsic value of a work of art. Its last line, ‘Was aber schön ist, selig scheint es in ihm selbst’, gave rise in 1951 to a critical controversy, in which, among others, E. Staiger and M. Heidegger were involved.

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