DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.32873#0042
XXX
INTRODUCTION
himself is not merely the central figure, but appropriates
the entire stage: all other persons of whatsoever quality
and merit being but puppets, set up or swept aside as they
assist or oppose the development of the hero's career.
Mr. Arthur Symons, in a brilliant introductory essay
to 71%<? c/* S7. draws a striking
parallel between those two celebrated Italian autobio-
graphers, Cellini and Casanova, which is worth quoting
in this connection. " Cellini," says Mr. Symons, " wrote
his autobiography because he heard within him such
trumpeting voices of praise, exultation, and the supreme
satisfaction of a violent man who has conceived himself
to be always in the right, that it shocked him to think
of going down into the grave without having made the
whole world hear those voices. He hurls at you this
book of his own deeds that it may smite you into
acquiescent admiration. Casanova, at the end of a long
life, in which he had tasted all the forbidden fruits of
the earth, with a simplicity of pleasure in which the
sense of their being forbidden was only the least of
their abounding flavours, looked back upon his past self
with a slightly pathetic admiration, and set himself to
go all over those successful adventures, in love and in
other arts, firstly, in order that he might be amused by
recalling them, and then because he thought that the
record would do him credit. He neither intrudes him-
self as a model, nor acknowledges that he was very often
in the wrong. Always passionate after sensations, and
for their own sake, the writing of an autobiography was
the last, almost active, sensation that was left to him,
* The Scott Library. The Walter Scott Publishing Company,
Limited, London and New York.
INTRODUCTION
himself is not merely the central figure, but appropriates
the entire stage: all other persons of whatsoever quality
and merit being but puppets, set up or swept aside as they
assist or oppose the development of the hero's career.
Mr. Arthur Symons, in a brilliant introductory essay
to 71%<? c/* S7. draws a striking
parallel between those two celebrated Italian autobio-
graphers, Cellini and Casanova, which is worth quoting
in this connection. " Cellini," says Mr. Symons, " wrote
his autobiography because he heard within him such
trumpeting voices of praise, exultation, and the supreme
satisfaction of a violent man who has conceived himself
to be always in the right, that it shocked him to think
of going down into the grave without having made the
whole world hear those voices. He hurls at you this
book of his own deeds that it may smite you into
acquiescent admiration. Casanova, at the end of a long
life, in which he had tasted all the forbidden fruits of
the earth, with a simplicity of pleasure in which the
sense of their being forbidden was only the least of
their abounding flavours, looked back upon his past self
with a slightly pathetic admiration, and set himself to
go all over those successful adventures, in love and in
other arts, firstly, in order that he might be amused by
recalling them, and then because he thought that the
record would do him credit. He neither intrudes him-
self as a model, nor acknowledges that he was very often
in the wrong. Always passionate after sensations, and
for their own sake, the writing of an autobiography was
the last, almost active, sensation that was left to him,
* The Scott Library. The Walter Scott Publishing Company,
Limited, London and New York.