That which I called the _daemonic_ I had encountered for the first
time outside my own mind in Lermontof's hero. Petsjorin was compelled to
act in pursuance of his natural bent, as though possessed by his own
being. I felt myself in a similar manner possessed. I had met with the
word _Daimon_ and _Daimones_ in Plato; Socrates urges that by
_daemons_ the Gods, or the children of the Gods, were meant. I felt
as though I, too, were one of the children of the Gods. In all the great
legendary figures of the middle ages I detected the feature of divine
possession, especially in the two who had completely fascinated the
poets of the nineteenth century, Don Juan and Faust. The first was the
symbol of magic power over women, the second of the thirst for knowledge
giving dominion over humanity and Nature. Among my comrades, in Vilsing,
even in the hunch-backed fellow with the unsuccessful moustache, I had
seen how the Don Juan type which had turned their heads still held sway
over the minds of young people; I myself could quite well understand the
magic which this beautiful ideal of elementary irresistibility must
have; but the Faust type appealed to me, with my thirst for knowledge,
very much more. Still, the main thing for me was that in the first great
and wholly modern poets that I made acquaintance with, Byron and his
intellectual successors, Lermontof and Heine, I recognised again the
very fundamental trait that I termed _daemonic_, the worship of
one's own originality, under the guise of an uncompromising love of
liberty.
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