accepting them as our ideal; they have slandered our romantics, taking
them for the same transcendental sort as in Germany or France. On the
contrary, the characteristics of our "romantics" are absolutely and directly
opposed to the transcendental European type, and no European
standard can be applied to them. (Allow me to make use of this word
"romantic"--an old-fashioned and much respected word which has
done good service and is familiar to all.) The characteristics of our
romantic are to understand everything, TO SEE EVERYTHING AND TO SEE IT
OFTEN INCOMPARABLY MORE CLEARLY THAN OUR MOST REALISTIC MINDS SEE IT; to
refuse to accept anyone or anything, but at the same time not to despise
anything; to give way, to yield, from policy; never to lose sight of a useful
practical object (such as rent-free quarters at the government expense,
pensions, decorations), to keep their eye on that object through all the
enthusiasms and volumes of lyrical poems, and at the same time to preserve
"the sublime and the beautiful" inviolate within them to the hour of
their death, and to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious
jewel wrapped in cotton wool if only for the benefit of "the sublime
and the beautiful." Our "romantic" is a man of great breadth and the
greatest rogue of all our rogues, I assure you .... I can assure you from
experience, indeed. Of course, that is, if he is intelligent. But what am I
saying! The romantic is always intelligent, and I only meant to observe
that although we have had foolish romantics they don't count, and they
were only so because in the flower of their youth they degenerated into
Germans, and to preserve their precious jewel more comfortably, settled
somewhere out there--by preference in Weimar or the Black Forest.
I, for instance, genuinely despised my official work and did not openly
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