The inequality of human races

by comte de Arthur Gobineau

By COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU

Translated by Paul V. Cohn, with an Introductory Essay on Count Gobineau’s Life and Work, by Dr. Oscar Levy

One Volume, Demy 8vo, Illustrated, 10s net

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

These five historical dramas cover the flowering time of the Italian Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the last days of Michael Angelo (about 1560). While grouped round the leading figures who provide the titles—Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, and Michael Angelo—the plays introduce almost every interesting character of the period. Nor are we only concerned with the great names; the author aims at catching the spirit of the people, and the thoughts and feelings of soldier, artisan, trader, and their womenfolk find ample voice in his pages.

The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in history: even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much—or at any rate so much that has survived-to the world of politics, art, and thought. Now while this interest is amply reflected in contemporary literature, from the monumental work of Symonds down to the flotsam and jetsam of everyday fiction, there is one kind of man who more than an historian would show insight into this age, and that is a poet.

It is as a poet’s work that Gobineau’s “Historical Scenes” recommend themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets; there is the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and sub-moral kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral kind. Only the last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise with such mighty figures as Cesare Borgia and Julius II—the religious poet being inclined to paint them as monsters, the sub-religious as freaks and neurotics. Similia similibus: equals can only be recognised by their equals, and Gobineau was himself a type of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an age of low bourgeois and socialist ideals. In a century swayed by romanticism and democracy, Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He is a forerunner of Nietzsche (“the only European spirit I should care to converse with,” said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is peculiarly fitted to deal with one of the few periods that was not dominated by the moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to attract the large and evergrowing circle of students of Nietzsche in this country and America.

“I can only add that this is a volume of serious import, worth reading from cover to cover, a book which even a jaded reviewer closes with a sigh of regret that he has not got to read it all over again.”—G. S. Layard in the Bookman.

“We scarcely know whether to be more struck with the truth or liveliness of these portraits. Savonarola, for example, is something more than the Savonarola of history and tradition. Not only is the character of the man subtly brought out; not only are we made aware, for the first time, adequately, of that devouring egotism which could see nothing but self as God’s instrument, self as the scourge of Florence, self as the inspired prophet; but beneath all this and vouching for it is the consciousness of the reality of the man, the consciousness that his cries of distress are real cries, and his moments of fierce aspiration and black despair genuine experiences. More touching and even more lifelike is the figure of Michael Angelo, a figure in the main familiar to us, but endowed with advancing years with a peace of mind, a lucidity of intelligence, and a breadth of sympathy such as were foreign to its young and stormy epoch. The last scene between Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna is a noble one, and can be read more than once with pleasure.”—The Morning Post.

“A debt is due to Dr. Oscar Levy for bringing before English readers this translation of that great work of Count Gobineau, in which, through the medium of the drama, he reveals his reverence for the spirit that inspired the Italian Renaissance. The plays constituting the book are five in number, ‘Savonarola,’ ‘Cesare Borgia,’ ‘Julius II,’ ‘Leo X,’ and ‘Michael Angelo,’—and nothing more brilliant has appeared in recent times. In scope we can only compare with it Mr. Hardy’s ‘Dynasts,’ but no more striking contrast could be conceived than the creations of these two geniuses. Through the pages of these plays moves the whole glittering pageant of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a mob of soldiers, priests, artists, men and women, slaying, plundering, preaching, poisoning, painting, rioting, and loving, while out of the surgent mass rise the figures of the splendid three, Borgia, Julius, and Michael Angelo, dominating all by the sheer greatness of their ideas and their contempt for other men’s opinions. They are the great aristocrats of their time, and the five plays—really one in conception—are an assertion of the saving grace of aristocracy, of the glory of race, at a time when the democratic flood, whose source is Christianity, was beginning to pour over Europe, to the overwhelming of all greatness of thought and art. The translation, which is excellent, is by Paul V. Cohn.”—Glasgow Herald.