: Ricordi d'infanzia e di scuola seguìti da Bambole e marionette Gente minima Piccoli studenti Adolescenti Due di spade e due di cuori by De Amicis Edmondo - De Amicis Edmondo 1846-1908 IT Biografie

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THE OLD FAUST LEGEND 9

GOETHE'S 'FAUST' 56

GOETHE'S 'FAUST' 109

THE OLD FAUST-LEGEND

All of us have probably experienced the fact that it is possible to have been familiar for a long time with some great work of imagination--some poem or picture--to have learnt to love it almost as if it were a living person, to imagine that we understand it and appreciate it fully, even to fancy that it has a special message, a deeper meaning, for us than for almost any one else, and then to come across somebody--some commentator perhaps--who informs us that our uncritical appreciation is quite worthless, mere shallow sentiment, and that until we can accurately analyze and formulate the Idea which the artist endeavoured to incorporate in his work, and classify the diverse manifestations of this Idea as subjective, objective, symbolical, allegorical, dramatical-psychological or psychological-dramatical, we are not entitled to hold, far less to express, any opinion on the subject.

Goethe describes his own philosophy as the philosophy of action. He believed in impulse, in inspiration, in action, rather than in reflexion, analysis and logic. 'Reflect not!' he makes Iphigenie exclaim--'Reflect not! Grant freely, as thou feel'st!' And in one of his Epigrams he says:

Yes, that's the right way, When we cannot say How we think. True thought Comes as a gift, unsought.

Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, All various, each a perfect whole From living Nature, fit for every mood And change of my still soul.

And wonderfully true are those other lines of Tennyson--but rather bitter, as perhaps was to be expected of Tennyson when he was describing a great character with which he had so little sympathy:

I take possession of man's mind and deed. I care not what the sects may brawl. I sit as God holding no form of creed, But contemplating all.

For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine ... do set the word Against the word.

Goethe accepted not without a certain amount of pride the title given him by some of his contemporaries--that of 'the last of the Heathen.' But which of us will doubt the sincerity or fail to be touched by the humility of his words: 'And yet perhaps I am such a Christian as Christ Himself would wish me to be.'

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