There is the man, in him and in these pages, who
would be "the man of disillusion," only that he has never really been
"the man of desires"; and who seems, therefore, to have a double
weariness about him. He is akin, of course, to Obermann, to Rene,
even to Werther, and, on our first introduction to him, we might
think that we had to do only with one more of the vague
"renunciants," who in real life followed those creations of fiction,
and who, however delicate, interesting as a study, and as it were
picturesque on the stage of life, are themselves, after all,
essentially passive, uncreative, and therefore necessarily not of
first-rate importance in literature. Taken for what it is worth, the
expression of this mood--the culture of ennui for its own sake--is
certainly carried to its ideal of negation by Amiel. But the
completer, the positive, soul, which will merely take [25] that mood
into its service (its proper service, as we hold, is in counteraction
to the vulgarity of purely positive natures) is also certainly in
evidence in Amiel's "Thoughts"--that other, and far stronger person,
in the long dialogue; the man, in short, possessed of gifts, not for
the renunciation, but for the reception and use, of all that is
puissant, goodly, and effective in life, and for the varied and
adequate literary reproduction of it; who, under favourable
circumstances, or even without them, will become critic, or poet, and
in either case a creative force; and if he be religious (as Amiel was
deeply religious) will make the most of "evidence," and almost
certainly find a Church.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41