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But if the Borrovian is to lose temper with every one who girds at Borrow he will lead a not very comfortable life. Dr. Knapp has no doubt whatever that ‘Lavengro’ is in the main an autobiography. We have none. The only question is how much Dichtung is mingled with the Wahrheit.

But I suppose the dramatic impression which then affected me with the greatest and most vivid pleasure was an experience which I have often remembered, when reading Goethe's "Dichtung und Wahrheit," and the opening chapters of "Wilhelm Meister."

Now, though it be undoubtedly true from one point of view that what a man has to say is of more importance than how he says it, and that modern criticism especially is more apt to be guided by its moral and even political sympathies than by aesthetic principles, it remains as true as ever that only those things have been said finally which have been said perfectly, and that this finished utterance is peculiarly the office of poetry, or of what, for want of some word as comprehensive as the German Dichtung, we are forced to call imaginative literature.

The mass of literature pertaining to Schiller has now grown so great that an exhaustive bibliography would fill a good-sized volume. All that can be attempted here is a selection of the more important works. The fullest bibliography thus far is that contained in the fifth volume of Goedeke's Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd edition, Dresden, 1893.

At the present time, I suppose, there is no one who doubts that histories which appertain to any other people than the Jews, and their spiritual progeny in the first century, fall within the second class of the three enumerated. Like Goethe's Autobiography, they might all be entitled "Wahrheit und Dichtung" "Truth and Fiction."

Otto Rank in his book, "Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage," furnishes a beautiful and convincing example of such repression: It comes from a second drama based on a king's murder, "Julius Cæsar." I quote from the author's words: "A heightened significance and at the same time an incontrovertible conclusiveness is given to our whole conception and interpretation of the son relationship of Brutus to Cæsar by the circumstance that in the historical source, which Shakespeare evidently used and which he followed almost word for word, namely in Plutarch, it is shown that Cæsar considered Brutus his illegitimate son. In this sense Cæsar's outcry, which has become a catch-word, may be understood, which he may have uttered again and again when he saw Brutus pressing upon his body with drawn sword, 'And you too my son Brutus? With Shakespeare the wounded Cæsar merely calls out, 'Et tu Brute! Then fall, Cæsar! Shakespeare has set aside this son relationship of Brutus to Cæsar, though doubtless known to the poet, in his working out of the traditional sources. Not only is there deep psychic ground for the modifications to which the poet subjects the historical and traditional circumstances and characters or the conceptions of his predecessor, but also for the omissions from the sources. These originate from the repressive tendency toward the exposure of impulses which work painfully and which are restrained as a result of the repression, and this was doubtless the case with Shakespeare in regard to his strongly affective father complex." Rank has in the same work demonstrated that this father complex runs through all of Shakespeare's dramatic work, from his first work, "Titus Andronicus," down to his very last tragedy. I cannot go into detail on this important point for my task here is merely to explain Lady Macbeth's sleep walking, but any one who is interested may find overwhelming abundance of evidence in Rank's book on incest (Chapter

This is his own statement inDichtung und Wahrheit.” That Herder’s enthusiasm for Sterne was generous has already been shown by letters written in the few years previous to his sojourn in Strassburg. Whatever the exact time of Goethe’s first acquaintance with Sterne, we know that he recommended the British writer to Jung-Stilling for the latter’s cultivation in letters.

As, for instance, my Jung-Stilling. It caught my eye in Holywell Street; the name was familiar to me in Wahrheit und Dichtung, and curiosity grew as I glanced over the pages. But that day I resisted; in truth, I could not afford the eighteen-pence, which means that just then I was poor indeed. Twice again did I pass, each time assuring myself that Jung-Stilling had found no purchaser.

Altogether, the most important part of an individual's life is that of development, and mine is concluded in the detailed volumes of Dichtung and Wahrheit. Afterwards begins the conflict with the world, and that is interesting only in its results. "And then the life of a learned German what is it?

This idea reigns in the Dichtung und Wahrheit, and directs the selection of the incidents; and nowise the external importance of events, the rank of the personages, or the bulk of incomes.