The meaning of the work of art, for schlegel, is incomplete and it is the task of the critic to complete it as far as possible The critic has to draw out and invent new meanings in the face of the work of art. When this is no longer possible, the work of art has exhausted its inner life. The critic can only mourn this loss by reflecting on the work of art as a torso of what it once was. Instead, for goethe, the meaning of the work of art, once present at the moment of creation, is lost through the passage of time.