"The same thing is said here of Pushkin—that his greatness can be appreciated only by those who are most deeply imbued with the spirit of the language. I haven't any too much faith in all that, however. To be sure, a translation is only the wrong side of the carpet; yet I believe really great works hold their own in translation, so the form of phrase cannot be the only test for the value of a writing. But what repels me in Goethe is precisely that play on form of which you accuse Heine. Goethe and Shakespeare are both artists in the sense in which you reproach the Moderns. They are bent only upon æsthetic play, and create only for enjoyment, and not with the heart's blood."
"I could not admit that, count, without repudiating everything I have ever thought and felt. Not for Shakespeare, in whom, through all the dramatic conventions of the greater part, we hear the heartbeat often enough. As for Goethe, whose poems are partly painful confessions, written only for the reason he himself gives,
"Warum sucht' ich den Weg so sehnsuchtsvoll
Wenn ich ihn nicht den Brüdern zeigen soll?"[15]
"I find much more of this feeling for humanity in Schiller."
"He is more rhetorical, appeals more directly to the middle class and contemporaries. But, like the overbearing political tribune he was, he has hardly entered into the joy and sorrow of the human soul."
"And it is exactly this that brings him nearer to me than Goethe and Shakespeare. He is filled with a sacred sense of purpose in his work. He had not the cold ambition of the artist to be merely faithful to his model. He was full of longing that we should be carried away with him. Of the three requirements I make of the great artist—technical perfection, worthiness of subject, and self-identification with the matter—the last is the most important. One may be a great writer even when technical perfection, complete mastery of the tricks of the trade, is lacking, as, for instance, in the case of Dostoyevski. But unless a man writes with his heart's blood he cannot be a great artist."
"I believe the heart's-blood doctrine would rule out all cheerful genre, and that meets perhaps best of all the fundamental purpose of art."
"You say that because you yourself see in art only a means of enjoyment, only play."