Excerpt from The Life and Works of Friedrich Hebbel No apology need be offered for presenting to the English-reading public an account of the life and works of Friedrich Hebbel. The only apology in place is for the errors in fact and judgment that no doubt have been made in the course of the work. Hebbel still remains a much debated writer. Even his enemies concede a certain unique grandeur to his efforts, while his adherents believe that these efforts were, in large measure if not completely, crowned with success. We see him now against the background of a largely discredited philosophy, the systems of Schelling and Hegel. What seems, however, to connect him with those systems is far less important than the original intensity of his own nature. He did not draw his teaching from books. He stands, it is fair to assert, at the beginning of modern dramatic literature. Apparently without direct influence on Ibsen, he none the less anticipated Ibsen. He is the profound and lonely forerunner, more comprehensive and constructive than Ibsen and all who have come after him. The value of the person is indeed a leading motive in all his work, but he does equal justice to the power of vital conservatism. The Individual and the Universal - these are the two extremes between which he endeavors at every moment to establish a true relation. To him the very existence of the individual is a never ending problem, and this, together with the search for that upon which the individual can find assured rest, makes up the general elements of his tragedy. The individual has no license for ruthless expansion, while the social order, always the ultimate factor in any crisis, cannot become tyrannical without dissolution and subsequent rebirth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.