Три лица класичног
Three Faces of the Classical

Summary/Abstract: The article examines three crucial implications of the term “classical”. The first meaning is defined as epochal, and it is primarily presented in view of the brief history of the concept of classicus, but also considering the Baudelaire’s idea of “universal beauty”. The characteristics of the classical art are confronted with Friedrich Schlegel’s criticism of the romanticism, which reminds that the idea of a time-resistant art form is nothing realistic, but rather a mere fantasy or a chimera of abstraction. For a romanticist, being out of touch with the present no longer had a particular merit, but rather was a symptom of the absence of awareness what the crucial sense of the works of art really is. If the classical divulged the cosmic harmony, the integrity of the natural order, the romanticism prefers to be the art of mediation, the dynamic transition, the unstoppable process. In the second part of the article, the author analyzes the motives of anti-classical tendencies in the European art, demonstrating that onslaught on the classical could have primarily been expected in the environment where it was neither too strong nor too weak.

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