Part 6 (1/2)

[14] _Ibid_., xxviii.

[15] _Inferno_, iii. 124-26:

E p.r.o.nti sono a trapa.s.sar lo rio, Che la divina giustizia gli sp.r.o.na Si che la tema si volge in disio.

[16] _Purgatorio_, xxi. 61-69:

Della mondizia sol voler fa prova, Che, tutta libera a mutar convento, L' alma sorprende, e di voler le giova....

Ed io che son giaciuto a questa doglia Cinquecento anni e piu, pur mo sentii Libera volonta di miglior soglia.

[17] _Inferno_, xiv. 63-66:

”O Capaneo, in ci che non s' ammorza La tua superbia, se' tu piu punito: Nullo martirio, fuor che la tua rabbia, Sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito.”

[18] Alfred de Musset, _Poesies Nouvelles, Souvenir_:

Dante, pourquoi dis-tu qu'il n'est pire misere Qu'un souvenir heureux dans les jours de douleur?

Quel chagrin t'a dicte cette parole amere, Cette offense au malheur?

... Ce blaspheme vante ne vient pas de ton cur.

Un souvenir heureux est peut-etre sur terre Plus vrai que le bonheur....

Et c'est a ta Francoise, a ton ange de gloire, Que tu pouvais donner ces mots a p.r.o.noncer, Elle qui s'interrompt, pour conter son histoire, D'un eternel baiser!

[19] _Paradiso_, iii. 73-90:

”Se disia.s.simo esser piu superne, Foran discordi li nostri disiri Dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne,...

E la sua volontate e nostra pace; Ella e quel mare al qual tutto si move Ci ch' ella crea, e che natura face.”

Chiaro mi fu allor com' ogni dove In cielo e Paradiso, e s la grazia Del sommo ben d' un modo non vi piove.

[20] _Paradiso_, xxii. 133-39:

Col viso ritornai per tutte e quante Le sette spere, e vidi questo globo Tal, ch' io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante; E quel consiglio per migliore approbo Che l' ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa Chiamar si puote veramente probo.

IV.

GOETHE'S FAUST

In approaching the third of our philosophical poets, there is a scruple that may cross the mind. Lucretius was undoubtedly a philosophical poet; his whole poem is devoted to expounding and defending a system of philosophy. In Dante the case is almost as plain. The _Divine Comedy_ is a moral and personal fable; yet not only are many pa.s.sages explicitly philosophical, but the whole is inspired and controlled by the most definite of religious systems and of moral codes. Dante, too, is unmistakably a philosophical poet. But was Goethe a philosopher? And is _Faust_ a philosophical poem?

If we say so, it must be by giving a certain lat.i.tude to our terms.

Goethe was the wisest of mankind; too wise, perhaps, to be a philosopher in the technical sense, or to try to harness this wild world in a brain-spun terminology. It is true that he was all his life a follower of Spinoza, and that he may be termed, without hesitation, a naturalist in philosophy and a pantheist. His adherence to the general att.i.tude of Spinoza, however, did not exclude a great plasticity and freedom in his own views, even on the most fundamental points. Thus Goethe did not admit the mechanical interpretation of nature advocated by Spinoza. He also a.s.signed, at least to privileged souls, like his own, a more personal sort of immortality than Spinoza allowed. Moreover, he harboured a generous sympathy with the dramatic explanations of nature and history current in the Germany of his day. Yet such transcendental idealism, making the world the expression of a spiritual endeavour, was a total reversal of that conviction, so profound in Spinoza, that all moral energies are resident in particular creatures, themselves sparks in an absolutely infinite and purposeless world. In a word, Goethe was not a systematic philosopher. His feeling for the march of things and for the significance of great personages and great ideas was indeed philosophical, although more romantic than scientific. His thoughts upon life were fresh and miscellaneous. They voiced the genius and learning of his age. They did not express a firm personal att.i.tude, radical and unified, and transmissible to other times and persons. For philosophers, after all, have this advantage over men of letters, that their minds, being more organic, can more easily propagate themselves. They scatter less influence, but more seeds.