hostile to him. Several of the most illustrious were not Germans at all.
Among the younger men who resist, while they betray, his spell, is the
most considerable lyric poet of the present generation in Germany.
Richard Dehmel's vehement inspiration from the outset provoked
comparison with Nietzsche, which he warmly resented.

He began, in fact, as a disciple of Verlaine, and we may detect in the
unrestraint of his early erotics the example of the French poet's
_fureur d'aimer_. But Dehmel's more strongly-built nature, and perhaps
the downright vigour of the German language, broke through the tenuities
of _la nuance_. It was not the subtle artistry of the Symbolists, but
the ethical and intellectual force of the German character, which
finally drew into a less anarchic channel the vehement energy of Dehmel.
Nietzsche had imagined an ethic of superhuman will 'beyond good and
evil'. The poet, replied Dehmel, had indeed to know the passion which
transcends good and evil, but he had to know no less the good and evil
themselves of the world in and by which common men live. And if he can
cry with the egoism of lawless passion, in the _Erlösungen_, 'I will
fathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not
pleasure, it waters power',--he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe
and of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn
it into the stuff of duty!'

If Nietzsche provoked into antagonism the sounder elements in Dehmel, he
was largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius
of Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality
of a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go along with a Roman
tenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all
their luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid
sentiment, has become the apostle of Italian imperialism, and more than