The following is the outcome of translating § 634 of Alexander Baumgarten’s Aesthetica from Latin to English on Google Translate.
Aesthetic darkness will be the absolute lack of light in aesthetics. What can we call an aesthetic gloom, and a mere night, or only a comparative one, of the brightness of something and of an exceptional splendor, which will either be born again through an exception that is not inelegant, a defect that is only apparent, an aesthetic shadow, or it will be cut off really like this and a deprivation of the vividity required for true beauty, and given the kind of thinking that is completely horrible with an aesthetic fog. Nor will the night itself be horrified by the ugly beauty of which Aristarchus is graced, with some horrible ones, of course, but not at the end a spot that is comparatively little bright, will force it to give light, but shadows for the convenience of form will never grow, never run away. We are completed by the name of shadows, all those artifices, imitating nature, to which some things I give between widows to be known are not concocted in so much light, nor are they expanded with so much extenuating brightness, and it may be done, by the unconscious, of the perfume of perfumes, as when less connected themes are fomented as if from a far-off place, a scent of great magnitude, like an optical fig, decrescendent, whatever through a mist.
Obscuritas aesthetica vel erit defectus lucis in aestheticis absolutae. quam caliginem aestheticam dicamus, et meran noctem, vel comparatiuae tantum, nitoris alicuius ac speldoris eximii, quae denuo vel nascetur per exceptionem non inelegantem, defectus tantum apparens, umbra aeshteitca, vel erit desectus vere talis et priuatio viuiditatis ad veram pulcritudinem requisitae, dabitique genus cogitandi plane horridum cum aeshtetica caligine. neque folam ipsam noctam horrebit ubqiue fedulo pulcre quorum gratia fiat Aristarchus, horridulis quibusdam, dilucdis utique, sed non fine. macula comparatiue parum claris, lucem dare coget, umbras autem pro formae commodis nune fequeter, nune fugiet, umbrarum nomine completimur omnia illa arificia, naturam imianta, quibus quaedam dam inter veufte cognitandum non in tanta, luce conftituunntur, non tanta cum claritate extenfiua dilatantur, ac fieri poffet, ab ignaris venuftae parfimoniae, e.g. quando minus connexa themati velut e longinquo tatum fotenduntur, fenfim magnitudine, ficut optice, decretcentia, quafi per nebulam.
