All of us, including crown princes, are democrats, inasmuch as we wish those above us to come down to our level; but when we ascend, we do not wish to be pulled down. The question is only whether that winch is "above" us is so in a spiritual sense, and whether it ought to be there. That was what John began to be doubtful of.
[CHAPTER XIII]
THE WINDING UP
(1872)
At the beginning of the spring term, John took up his quarters with an elder comrade in order to continue his studies. But when he had again the old books before him which he had already studied so long, he felt a distaste for them. His brain was full of impressions, of collected literary material, and refused to take in any more; his imagination and thought were busily at work and would not let memory be alone active; he had fits of doubt and apathy and often remained the whole day lying on the sofa. Then the desire would sometimes awake to be altogether free and to plunge into the life of activity. But the royal stipend held him fast in fetters and imposed on him obligations. Having received it, he was bound to go on studying for his doctor's degree, the course of reading for which he had half completed. So he applied himself to philosophy, but when he read the history of it, he found all systems equally valid or invalid, and his mind resisted all new ideas.
In the literary club there was disunion and lethargy. All their youthful poems had been read and no one produced any more, so that they only met together to drink punch. Is had exposed himself, and after a scene with another member, he had been thrown out. He drew his knife and got well thrashed. He saved himself from worse by affecting to treat the affair as a joke, and was now a mere laughing-stock, since it had been discovered that his wisdom consisted in quotations from the students' periodicals which the others had not had the wit to utilise. At the beginning of term an Æsthetic Society had been founded by the professor of Æsthetics, and this made their own literary society, the "Runa," superfluous.
At one of the meetings of the former, John's discontent with classical authorities broke out. He had been drinking that evening and was half-intoxicated. In conversation with the professor dangerous ground was touched upon and John was enticed so far out of his reserve as to declare Dante without significance for humanity and overestimated. John had plenty of reasons to allege for his opinion, but could not express them to advantage when the professor set upon him, and the whole company gathered round the disputants, who were squeezed into a corner by the stove. He wanted in the first place to say that the construction of the Divine Comedy was not original, but a very ordinary form which had already been employed shortly before in the Vision of Albericus. Furthermore his opinion was that in this poem Dante did not reflect the culture and thoughts of his period, because he was so uncultured that he did not even know Greek. He was not a philosopher, for he hampered thought by the fetters of revelation, and therefore he was no precursor of the Renaissance or the Reformation. He was no patriot, for he venerated the German empire as established by God. He was at most a local patriot of Florence. Nor was he a democrat, for he always dreamt of a union of the empire and the papacy. He did not attack the papacy, but only individual popes who lived immoral lives, as he himself had done in his youth. He was a monk, a truly idiotic child of his age, for he sent unbaptised children to hell. He was a narrow-minded royalist who put Brutus next to Satan in the deepest hell. He was entirely wanting in the power of selfcriticism;—while he reckons ingratitude to friends and betrayal of one's fatherland among the worst of crimes, he places his own friend and teacher, Brunetto Latini, in hell, and supports the German Emperor, Henry VII, against his native city Florence. He had bad literary taste, for he reckoned as the six greatest poets of the world Homer, Horace, Lucan, Ovid, Virgil and himself. How could modern critics who were so severe on all scandalous literature praise Dante, who in his poem cast dishonour on so many contemporary persons and families? He even scolds his own dear native city, exclaiming when he finds five nobly-born Florentines in Hell: "Rejoice! O Florence! for thy name is not only great over land and sea, but also in hell. Five of thy citizens are in thieves' company; my cheeks blush at the sight of them. But one thing I know; punishment will light upon thee, Florence, and may it happen soon!"
As is usual in such debates, the attacked and the attacker often changed their ground. John wished to prove to the professor that from his point of view the Commedia was a political pamphlet, but then the professor veered round, adopted the enemy's point of view and said that he should value it as such. Whereupon John answered that it was exactly as such that he designated it, but not as a magnificent poem of everlasting value, which the professor had declared it to be in his lectures. Again the professor changed his ground, and said that the poem should be judged by the standard of the period at which it was composed.