This original concept of Friedrich Schlegel needs to be understood precisely. In "Lucinda" there is a whole chapter under the characteristic title "The Idyll of Idleness". The author wants to prove that only idleness, that is, only freedom from all petty affairs, is the highest state of man, and that Prometheus prevents this.

"Greatness in tranquility," say the artists, "is the highest object of fine art; and, without being fully aware of it, I built and created our immortal essences in a similarly worthy style." "With extreme displeasure I now thought about bad people who would like to take sleep out of life. They evidently never slept and (223) never lived. For why are gods gods, if not because they consciously and intentionally do nothing, knowing a lot about it and showing skill in it?" "This empty and restless vanity is nothing but the disorder peculiar to the north and can cause nothing but boredom, one's own and others'." "Only in calm and peace, in the sacred silence of true passivity, can one remember one's self and surrender to the contemplation of the world and life."58 "In fact, it would not be so criminal to neglect the study of idleness, but it would be necessary to elevate it to an art, to a science, even to a religion! Embracing everything in one: the more divine a man or a human deed, the more they are likened to a plant; among all forms of nature, it is the most moral and the most beautiful. Thus the highest and most complete life would be nothing but pure growth."59 Thus, leaving aside the humorous terminology and deliberately ironic style of this kind of statement by Fr. Schlegel, it can be said that here the idea of the deepest calm and tranquility of the human spirit is put forward, which is devoid of all desires and all necessity of petty affairs and which values only complete concentration in itself. This is where it turns out that Prometheus is an obstacle to this. In his novel, Fr. Schlegel draws a whole scene where Prometheus appears in this very unsightly form.

It depicts Prometheus, who prepares people "with great haste and effort." Some young people are constantly urging him to work and castigating him for any delay. There is also glue and other tools of production, and immediately there is a fire in the brazier. On the other side of the stage is Hercules, who, although he always killed monsters, always had as his ideal "noble idleness", for which he is now taken to heaven and also lives idly among the Olympians. In contrast to Hercules, Prometheus is constantly working on the creation of people, and his people are petty, evil and have various passions that make them look like Satan. Hercules spends time in the sky in noble idleness. "This Prometheus, the inventor of education and enlightenment, is not at all like that. To him you owe the fact that you can never be calm and are in constant bustle; Hence the consequence is that you, even when you have nothing really to do, have a senseless effort to develop a character, or try to observe and justify the character of someone else. Such a beginning(224) is simply vile. But due to the fact that Prometheus seduced people to work, he now has to work himself, whether he wants it or not. He will still have enough of this boredom, and he will never free himself from his chains."60

What did Fr. Schlegel with such a symbolism of Prometheus? It is clear that here too the idea of artistic creation remains in the foreground. However, Fr. Schlegel wants to consider artistic creation, as well as human labor in general, with all the extremes that it contains. Perhaps artistic creativity that creates this or that joy instills this or that consolation in a person and gives him hope for a better future. But, according to Fr. Schlegel, it is also possible to create an artistic creation that is devoid of these joys, these hopes, and this inspiration, and is limited to the mechanical creation of works of the same type, capable of instilling only boredom and disgust and destroying that deepest self-sufficiency of the spirit concentrated in itself, which, it seemed, and should have become the true object and task of all creativity. Let us recall that we encounter the same kind of criticism of Prometheus in the Roman literature of Fr. Schlegel does not at all deny that artistic creation is capable of leading us to blissful self-sufficiency. But he warns that creativity of the opposite nature is also possible. Thus, we would not say that the symbolism of Prometheus in Fr. Schlegel contradicts the artistic interpretation of it that went back to Shaftesbury. But it essentially clarifies this typically modern European symbolism of Prometheus.

Nor is there any rebelliousness or revolution in Goethe's Pandora (1808), where the too practical Prometheus is contrasted with his aesthetically enthusiastic brother Epimetheus, who in the ancient tradition was famous for his narrow-mindedness, if not outright stupidity. In this work of Goethe, which also remained unfinished, the reconciliation of the practical technique of Prometheus and the aesthetic delights of Epimetheus is preached. The symbolic essence of the image of Prometheus is also undoubtedly present here, but the infinite distances of symbolism are interpreted in the spirit of conciliation of the later Goethe.

Prometheus in this later Goethe knows well that the people created by him grasp at every new trifle, forget the old and cannot unite the past and the present into one single whole. He does not like this, but he considers the instructions of people in this sense to be vain and ineffective.62

I am not happy with the new, with an abundance

This kind is adapted to the earthly,

Only the present day he serves,

He rarely thinks about yesterday.

What he endured, what he endured, he lost everything,

Even a moment is enough indiscriminately,

Grabbing the oncoming thing, he takes for himself