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XXII
Concerning Giants
nothing shows the way in which fame concentrates itself on certain leading figures more effectually than an inspection of book catalogues.
For instance, the British Museum catalogue gives fifty-eight folio pages —with double columns and small type—to its
Dante entries, the forthcoming catalogue of the Dante collection in the Harvard College Library will include about eleven hundred titles; this being just about the size of the great collection of ‘Petrarch Books’ lately catalogued by its owner,
Prof. Willard Fiske, formerly of Cornell University.
The whole body of Dantean literature, it is estimated by experts, must extend to between two and three thousand titles; and the Napoleonic literature has been estimated, or rather guessed, at five thousand.
The
Barton Shakespearean collection in the
Boston Public Library includes about a thousand titles under
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the ‘works’ of
Shakespeare, and fifteen hundred more under ‘Shakespeareana.’
It is certain that all these special collections are very incomplete, and it is altogether probable that all these estimates are too scanty.
If they are not, they soon will be, since all these special literatures are increasing all the time.
More than a hundred titles have been added to the Dante list, for instance, during the past year; and the Petrarch quinquecentennial called forth one hundred and twenty-five new works about that poet in
Italy alone.
If anything is certain, it is that, when the world has once definitely accepted a man as among the elect, his fame and his lead over his contemporaries go on increasing with the passing years.
It is possible that the
Academie Francaise may yet be chiefly remembered because it rejected
Moliere, as the mighty Persian conqueror had a place in fame simply as one who knew not the worth of Firdousi.
‘Literature,’ it has been said, is ‘attar of roses: one distilled drop from a million petals.’
Those who learned their
Italian nearly half a century ago will remember that the favorite
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text-book was named, ‘The Four Poets’ (I
Quattro Poeti). But
Ariosto and
Tasso are now practically dropped out of the running; and those who still read
Petrarch are expected to treat rather deferentially those for whom
Italian literature means
Dante only.
Yet
Voltaire wrote of
Dante, only a century and a half ago, that although occasionally, under favorable circumstances, he wrote lines not unworthy of
Tasso or
Ariosto, yet his work was, as a whole, ‘stupidly extravagant and barbarous.’
‘The
Italians,’ he says, ‘call him divine, but it is a hidden divinity; few people understand his oracles.
He has commentators, which is perhaps another reason for his not being understood.
His reputation will go on increasing, because scarce anybody reads him.’
How little he was known in
England a hundred years ago may be seen from the fact that
Dr. Nathan Drake, who had quite a name as a critic a century ago, spoke of
Dr. Darwin's placid and pedantic poem, ‘The Botanic Garden,’ as showing ‘the wild and terrible sublimity of
Dante.’
A hundred years from this have ended in
Ruskin's characterization of
Dante as ‘the
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central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their highest.’
When we consider that this was said of a man born more than six centuries before the words were written, it certainly illustrates the concentration of fame upon a single name.
With scarcely less superb exclusiveness,
Goethe described
Napoleon as ‘a compendium of the world’ (
Dieses Compendium der Welt).
In allusion to such instances as these,
Goethe expressed to
Eckermann the conviction that the higher powers had pleased themselves by placing among men certain detached figures, so alluring as to set everybody striving after them, yet so great as to be beyond all reach (
Die so anlockend sind, das jeder nach ihnen strebt, und so gross das niemand sie erreicht). ‘
Mozart,’ he said, ‘represents the unattainable in music, and
Shakespeare in poetry.’
He instanced also Raphael and
Napoleon; and the loyal
Eckermann inwardly added the speaker himself to the list.
‘I refer’
Goethe said ‘to the natural dowry, the inborn wealth’ (
Das Naturell, das grosse Angeborene der
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Natur).It will be a theme for never-ending discussion how far this concentration is really due to the exceptional greatness of the subject, and how far to the tendency of genius to draw to itself all the floating materials of the time, to drain its best intellects, to reflect its best impulses.
Dante, of all great writers, is the least explainable in this way; but in the case of
Shakespeare, of
Voltaire, of
Goethe, it is obvious enough.
The last named was always ready to admit his own obligations, not merely to his own fellow-countrymen, as
Schiller, but to Englishmen and Frenchmen; and was profoundly moved on receiving the first French version of his ‘Faust,’ from the thought of the profound influence exercised by
Voltaire and his great contemporaries over him as over the whole civilized world.
Humbler men are constantly obliged to recognize how they themselves have been fed and nourished by those lowlier still; and we may be very sure that the greatest are formed in the same way, and draw from many obscure and even inexplicable sources, as
Heine claims that he learned all the history of the
French Revolution through the drumming of an old French drummer.
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It is obvious enough that the relative proportions of printed matter do not precisely reflect absolute merit, because they are liable to be influenced by trivial considerations, apart from personal qualities.
The Man in the
Iron Mask was not necessarily a great man because he occasioned an extensive literature; and
Junius fills the library as an inexhaustible conundrum, whereas plain
Sir Philip Francis might never have elicited even a biography.
Had
Shelley been the contented husband of one wife, or had
Poe selected any one city to dwell in and dwelt there, it is certain that the Shelley literature and the
Poe literature would have been far slenderer in dimensions, though the genius of the poets might have remained the same.
It is the personal qualities, in such cases, that multiply the publications, though it is quite true, on the other side, that
Poe might have lived unnoticed in more cities than claimed
Homer had it not been for ‘The Raven,’ and that
Shelley might have had as many wives as a Mormon but for ‘The
Skylark.’
As time goes on, it is the thought of the poet more than the gossip about his life which holds and creates literature,
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and there are always a dozen who wish to unlock the mystery of Hamlet for one who demands positive evidence as to
Shakespeare's wedded bliss.
But, however we explain it, there is such a tendency of study and criticism toward concentration on single figures, that no nation in the course of centuries can furnish more than two or three; and it is much for any people if it can furnish one.
The growing proportions of the Emerson literature leave little doubt who is to provide for
America—if, indeed, any one is to supply it—that central and controlling figure.
