"He was a Swiss who inherited Goethe's free outlook on life, and wrote the best German novels, full of creative art, of racy humor, and of almost uncanny knowledge of human nature. He would give you much pleasure." "How? You say he inherits to some degree from Goethe. In that case my enthusiasm would be doubtful, for I cannot say I especially love that Goethe of yours." "Is it possible?" "There are some of his works I admire without reserve, which stand among the finest things that have ever been written: _Hermann and Dorothea_, for instance. I once knew his dedication by heart. Yet the lyrics of Heine, for instance, make a deeper impression upon me than Goethe's." "Pardon the remark, count, but in that case your knowledge of the German language is not sufficient for you to notice the difference in quality. Heine is a virtuoso, who plays with form. With Goethe, every word breathes the deepest spiritual experience and is uttered from inward necessity." "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."