There must be a
reason for the uniformity of feeling in the case of the two greatest
subjective poets of Europe (Shakespeare was greater than either, but he
was quite impersonal), for the logical possibility that Goethe imitated
Dante, and borrowed his supreme values from him, cannot be maintained
for a moment. Their mutual characteristic is the longing for
metaphysical love. When these great lovers experienced for the first
time the sensation of love, their hearts were thrown open to the
universe, they had the first powerful experience of eternity, and they
became poets. The first love and the cosmic consciousness of genius were
simultaneously present, they were one in their inmost soul. (With the
philosopher it is a different matter, for to him the love of woman is
not fraught with the same tremendous significance.) This experience of
first love, awakening the consciousness of eternity, remained to them
for all time interwoven with religion and metaphysics--interwoven, that
is to say, with all transcendent longing.
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