He possesses all
psychical qualities--at least potentially--and one element after the
other regains life and becomes productive. We shall see this with
startling clearness when we come to examine the emotional life of
Richard Wagner. The intimate connection between the individual and the
entire evolutionary process of the race will then become evident.
It is remarkable that Dante, too, wrote a poem clearly expressive of the
fact that the beloved woman does not actually possess the qualities
ascribed to her, but that she has been endowed with them by the
imagination of her lover.
I shall discuss the emotional life of only one other poet in detail, and
that one is Michelangelo. For the most part the poets whose emotions
were akin to that of Dante and Goethe were men who created their ideal
woman because reality left them unsatisfied. In passing I will mention
Beethoven, and his touching letter to his "immortal love" ("My angel, my
all, my I!"), whose name, in spite of all the strenuous attempts to
discover it, is to this day not known with any certainty; even if it
should ever be discovered, Beethoven's "immortal love" will yet remain a
figment of his brain, based on a human woman.
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