Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
At the beginning of our century a man was still living in Weimar, Julius Stötzer by name and schoolmaster by calling, who, as a sixteen-year-old student, had dwelt under the same roof with Dr. Eckermann and only a few steps away from Goethe’s door. Young Stötzer and a schoolma...
At the beginning of our century a man was still living in Weimar, Julius Stötzer by name and schoolmaster by calling, who, as a sixteen-year-old student, had dwelt under the sam...
2. Part 2“I felt the need,” writes Tolstoy of his youthful period, “to be known and loved of all the world; to _name my name_, the sound of which would greatly impress everybody, so that...
3. Part 3Tolstoy, in his _Confessions_, remarks that as a small child he knew nothing of nature, he had not even noticed her existence. “It is not possible,” he says, “that I was given n...
4. Part 4Compared with Eduard and Charlotte, the lovers in the _Wahlverwandtschaften_, Vronsky and Anna are like a fine strong stallion and a noble mare. The comparison is not mine; it h...
5. Part 5Count Leo Tolstoy came, as we know, from one of the oldest and finest of Russian families. When we read his books, _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_, or _Anna Karenine_, that picture...
6. Part 6Obviously I am not speaking here of the comparatively harmless conflict between the Faustian “two souls,” the battle between the impulses of a strong animal constitution and the...
7. Part 7A close observer like Gorky, or a shrewd critic like Merezhkovsky, felt at once and keenly the patriarchal and sensual quality, the life-bound animalism, which lay beneath the s...
8. Part 8I confessed in the beginning my tendency to make a matter of intrinsic value out of the matter of size. The greatest German poet must also be the most German one--that is an ass...
9. Part 9Goethe somewhere calls Wilhelm Meister his “beloved likeness (_sein geliebtes Ebenbild_).” In what sense? Does a man love his own likeness? Unless he suffer from hopeless self-c...
10. Part 10Tolstoy in all pious simplicity once declared that the world can find salvation simply by no longer doing anything which does not seem inherently reasonable: that is to say, any...
11. Part 11Consider: here is a young man, boyish of feature, elegantly built, if rather plump, “the nicest little creature in the kingdom,” a stranger said of him; fresh-coloured, chubby-c...
12. Part 12The army, the administration, service at home and abroad. That was not all. He “mixed into” other matters too, and did not stop with “mixing.” He was his own finance minister (o...
13. Part 13Well, and did Frederick know of these things? Oh, yes, one thing and another did come to his ears in the course of these years, if more by way of a trickle than in a steady stre...
14. Part 14It was a great deal that Frederick had in his hands; quite enough to afford him the moral possibility which he was supposed to give the good Maria Theresa by attacking. It is no...
15. Part 15So now they got their forces together, bodies of troops, armies, in almost ridiculous superfluity, to overcome him and carve him up in the shortest possible time at the least ex...
16. Part 16Full though this world is of problems--moral, social, intellectual, artistic--weighty problems, the treatment of which must redound to the credit of any writer, shedding reflect...
17. Part 17A chorus of friendly shouts welcomed us. The old hands hailed their Willy in his professional disguise. It was a merry masquerade, and Willy himself, in his talar and priestly b...
18. Part 18“Not like that,” says the Baron. “You don’t understand. Let me show you. There, that’s how it’s done.” He strikes the button. “The circle,” whispers Willy, quivering, against my...