Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West. An abridged edition by
Helmut Werner. English abridged edition prepared by Arthur Helps
from the translation by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York:
oxford University Press c199 [1926, 1928, 1932]. xxxx,415, xvix
V Makrokosmos: Apollinian, Fautian and Magian Soul
ARCHITECTURE AND DIVINITIES [p 97]
Henceforth we shall designate the soul of the Classical Culture,
which chose the sensuosly0present individual body as the ideal
type of the extended, by the name (familiarized by nietzsche) of
the Apollinian. In opposition to it we have the
Faustian soul, whose prime symbol is pure and limitless
space, and whose "body" is the Western Culture that blossomed
forth with the birth of the Romanesque style in the Tenth century
on the Northern plain between the Elbe and the Tagus.
"Space" - speaking now in the Faustian idiom - is a
spiritual something, rigidly distinct form the momentary sense-
present, which Could not be represented in an Apollinian
language whether Greek or Latin. The Classical... A landscape
of Claude Lorrain, on the contrary, is nothing but space,
every detail being made to subserve its illustration. All bodies
in it possess an atmospheric and perspective meaning purely as
carriers of light and shade. The extreme of this disembodiment
of the world in the service of space is Impressionism.
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