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Cafes become tedious with their card-games, cowboy politics and persistent allusions to "la femme," that protean fetich which dominates and saturates the Gallic mind, oozing out, so to speak, at every pore of their social and national life. They never seem to grow out of the Ewig-weibliche stage.
We have not yet progressed quite so far as that. Instead of saying that Lisa is a type of the Russian girl of 1850, I should say that she is a type of the Ewig-weibliche.
They are curiously oracular, like the whisperings of those fabled Dodonian oaks of his fatherland; they heave with a darkly-virile mysticism. He shares Blake's ruggedness, his torrential and confused utterance, his benevolence, his flashes of luminous inspiration, his moral background. He resembles that visionary in another aspect: he was a consistent and passionate adorer of the Ewig-weibliche.
He yearned towards her, as he sat there in the semi-darkness seeking the ewig-weibliche in the sweetness of her face without a touch of passion as a Catholic might yearn towards his Madonna. Her slight and haughty farewell showed that he had tried her patience had behaved like an ungenerous cur. But he must and would propitiate her win her friendship for himself and Phoebe.
He was twice married, but that is not greatly to the purpose; for the Turk, who thinks even more meanly of women than John Knox, is none the less given to marrying. What is really significant is quite apart from marriage. For the man Knox was a true man, and woman, the ewig-weibliche, was as necessary to him, in spite of all low theories, as ever she was to Goethe.
Seeing that it was addressed to her, she waited until everybody had gone, and sat under the pepper-tree in the deserted playground, where she might read it in solitude. 'DEAR MISTRESS MARY, it said, 'do you care to hear of my life? "Pas Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan," and I am growing olives.
His wife, Elizabeth Farnese, lies under the same gravestone with him, as if unwilling to forego even in death that tremendous influence which her vigorous vitality had always exercised over his wavering and sensual nature. "Das Ewig-Weibliche" masters and guides him still.
The enthusiasm which acts is perhaps an enlightening force, but the enthusiasm which accepts is very like blindness. For this latter enthusiasm confuses the value of things, ignores their shades of difference, and is an obstacle to all sensible criticism and all calm judgment. The "Ewig-Weibliche" favors exaggeration, mysticism, sentimentalism all that excites and startles.
Let us read together the third part of Faust; for I understand it at last." "Hush, man," he said, half rising with an expression of alarm. "Control yourself." "Do not let tears mislead you. I am calm and strong. Quick, let us have Goethe: Das Unbeschreibliche, Hier ist gethan; Das Ewig-Weibliche, Zieht uns hinan." "Come, come. Dry your eyes and be quiet. I have no library here."
"Why?" asked several voices simultaneously. "Why, because she drew him out so easily," was the reply. "You think, in fact," said the Romancer, "that however little its victim was aware of it, there was a touch of the Ewig-weibliche in her fascination?" "Precisely." It was oppressively warm. The sun had long disappeared, but seemed to have left its vital spirit of heat behind it.
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