DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.32873#0041
INTRODUCTION
7E have dealt in our preface with the reasons for
V V the issue of this new translation of Cellini's
and it may perhaps seem idle to give any-
thing like an elaborate dissertation respecting the char-
acter, qualities, or aims of the strongly versatile and
forcible personage with whose career we have to deal. It
is, however, desirable that some sort of introduction
should refer to Cellini himself and to the manuscript,
the subject of these pages. It would be indeed super-
fluous to attempt to offer any new portrait of a man
who has painted his own likeness so unmistakably and
so vigorously, as to have secured for all time the at-
tention and imagination of successive generations of
readers in every civilized land. Cellini, by his famous
far more than by his own much-vaunted artistic
qualities, has won for himself undying fame after a
manner such as he himself little dreamed of; and has
acquired a host of admirers to whom his artistic aims
could have made no sort of appeal. Whatever be the
opinion that each one of us may have formed regarding
his personality from this self-revealing work, there can
be no question as to the vivid display of force with which
he has contrived to inspire a composition that carries the
reader away into a realm of fancy, wherein the hero
XXIX
7E have dealt in our preface with the reasons for
V V the issue of this new translation of Cellini's
and it may perhaps seem idle to give any-
thing like an elaborate dissertation respecting the char-
acter, qualities, or aims of the strongly versatile and
forcible personage with whose career we have to deal. It
is, however, desirable that some sort of introduction
should refer to Cellini himself and to the manuscript,
the subject of these pages. It would be indeed super-
fluous to attempt to offer any new portrait of a man
who has painted his own likeness so unmistakably and
so vigorously, as to have secured for all time the at-
tention and imagination of successive generations of
readers in every civilized land. Cellini, by his famous
far more than by his own much-vaunted artistic
qualities, has won for himself undying fame after a
manner such as he himself little dreamed of; and has
acquired a host of admirers to whom his artistic aims
could have made no sort of appeal. Whatever be the
opinion that each one of us may have formed regarding
his personality from this self-revealing work, there can
be no question as to the vivid display of force with which
he has contrived to inspire a composition that carries the
reader away into a realm of fancy, wherein the hero
XXIX