 To be sure, if art is seen as the embodiment of an eternal truth, of absolute beauty, this implies that art is not Beauty itself. This is also why, according to Schlegel, each work of art is the expression of a certain longing, a craving for the recreation of that very unity experienced through the “spiritual feeling or intuition (geistige Anschauung) of Nature” (SW: III, 307). For Schlegel, it is only through art and through everything that art signifies, that man is capable of attaining (even if not absolutely) such a wholeness, i.e., to recover what is felt as a ‘lost’ unity. The idea of longing or Sehnsucht is indeed essential in Schlegel’s account of Romanticism and must be understood in relation to the difference between ancient and modern art, which also was the structuring principle and, in a sense, constituted the real object of Schlegel’s analysis in his Lectures on Dramatic Art. This opposition may be summarized as follows: whereas ancient poetry is plastic, sensual, harmonious, and, overall, a poetry of enjoyment of the present; modern poetry is a poetry of desire and longing (Sehnsucht), hovering between the idealizations of a remote past and an unknown future (LDA: 9). According to Schlegel, these differences encompass every sphere of reality and every form of art, and are on the whole the result of a historical event, namely the establishment of Christianity.