"
The pantheistic idealism which resulted pleased the citizen-fancy;
the notion of "evolution succeeded to that of revolution"; one said
civilization, progress, culture, instead of liberty. "Louis Philippe
realized the citizen ideal.... The problem was solved, the skein
untangled. God might rest.... The supernatural was not believed, but
it was explained and respected. One did not accept Christ as divine,
but a human Christ was exalted to the stars; religion was spoken of
with earnestness, and the ministers of God with reverence."
A new criticism arose, and bade literature draw from life, while a
vivid idealism accompanied anxiety for historical truth. In Italy,
where the liberals could not attack the governments, they attacked
Aristotle, and a tremendous war arose between the Romanticists and
the Classicists. The former grouped themselves at Milan chiefly, and
battled through the Conciliatore, a literary journal famous in Italian
annals. They vaunted the English and Germans; they could not endure
mythology; they laughed the three unities to scorn. At Paris Manzoni
had imbibed the new principles, and made friends with the new masters;
for Goethe and Schiller he abandoned Alfieri and Monti. "Yet if the
Romantic School, by its name, its ties, its studies, its impressions,
was allied to German traditions and French fashions, it was at bottom
Italian in accent, aspiration, form, and motive.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153