Lessing

Poetry can access the underlying forces that give rise to outward manifestations

Visual art must choose moments that leave the imagination free to explore further possibilities.

Art's purpose is to allow the free play of mental powers, not merely to represent truth.

Choosing a moment of anticipation over culmination serves the imagination regardless of whether truth is art's primary aim.

Poetry employs artificial rather than natural signs

Poetry can bring us closer to the underlying reality of objects than other arts

Even if truth and expression were art's first law, visual art would still be constrained to choose moments that give free rein to the imagination.

A moment of anticipation leaves the imagination free to play with further possibilities.

Depicting the moment of greatest pain and a full scream would foreclose the free play of the imagination of the audience.

Shakespeare was doing fundamentally the same thing as Sophocles despite producing superficially different drama.

The constraint on depicted moments follows from the nature of visual art as presenting a single instant, not solely from art's ultimate purpose.

Poetry reaches not only wider but also deeper than painting and music

A moment of culmination leaves nothing further to the imagination.

The sculptor of the Laocoön group was correct not to depict Laocoön at the moment of his greatest pain and full scream.

The visual arts present objects in a single moment.

Visual arts must choose a depicted moment that gives free rein to the imagination rather than the moment of culmination of an action.

Artificial signs can reach beneath the superficial features of objects captured by natural signs

Other arts such as painting and music capture only outward or superficial features of objects

Poetry employs artificial rather than natural signs

Artificial signs can reach beneath the superficial features of objects captured by natural signs

Force underlies the outward manifestations (energy) that appear in change or motion

Force underlies the outward manifestations (energy) that appear in change or motion

Shakespeare was doing fundamentally the same thing as Sophocles despite producing superficially different drama.