Let the blast
of the desert come! we shall be renowned in our day."
All Europe felt the power of that melancholy; but what I wish to point
out is, that no nation of Europe so caught in its poetry the passionate
penetrating accent of the Celtic genius, its strain of Titanism, as the
English. Goethe, like Napoleon, felt the spell of Ossian very
powerfully, and he quotes a long passage from him in his _Werther_.[263]
But what is there Celtic, turbulent, and Titanic about the German
Werther, that amiable, cultivated and melancholy young man, having for
his sorrow and suicide the perfectly definite motive that Lotte cannot
be his? Faust, again, has nothing unaccountable, defiant, and Titanic in
him; his knowledge does not bring him the satisfaction he expected from
it, and meanwhile he finds himself poor and growing old, and balked of
the palpable enjoyment of life; and here is the motive for Faust's
discontent. In the most energetic and impetuous of Goethe's creations,--
his _Prometheus_,[264]--it is not Celtic self-will and passion, it is
rather the Germanic sense of justice and reason, which revolts against
the despotism of Zeus.
Pages:
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320