The Beautiful and the Sublime in Schiller’s Wallenstein

Abstract

I propose a reading of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein as a staging (Darstellung) of the categories of the beautiful and the sublime, as well as other derived poetic categories, such as the naive and the sentimental, idyll and elegy or pathetic and festive satire. This artistic exercise allows Schiller to experiment and develop his own aesthetic and poetic ideas. In this way, there is an authentic dialogue between art and philosophy within the work of one of the German classics of modernity. One conclusion is that Wallenstein brings to an end an idealistic understanding of the world, since, as Villacañas expresses via Hegel, it does not end as a theodicy.