Chapter VII.

From the Book to the Reader.


The study which has found its material and its reward in Dante's
"Divine Comedy" or in Goethe's "Faust" is the best possible evidence
of the inexhaustible interest in the masterpieces of these two great
poets. Libraries of considerable dimensions have been written in the
way of commentaries upon, and expositions of, their notable works.
Many of these books are, it is true, deficient in insight and
possessed of very little power of interpretation or illumination; they
are the products of a barren, dry-as-dust industry, which has expended
itself upon external characteristics and incidental references.
Nevertheless, the very volume and mass of these secondary books
witness to the fertility of the first-hand books with which they deal,
and show beyond dispute that men have an insatiable desire to get at
their interior meanings. If these great poems had been mere
illustrations of individual skill and gift, this interest would have
long ago exhausted itself. That singular and unsurpassed qualities of
construction, style, and diction are present in "Faust" and the
"Divine Comedy" need not be emphasised, since they both belong to the
very highest class of literary production; but there is something
deeper and more vital in them: there is a philosophy or interpretation
of life. Each of these poems is a revelation of what man is and of
what his life means; and it is this deep truth, or set of truths, at
the heart of these works which we are always striving to reach and
make clear to ourselves.

In the case of neither poem did the writer content himself with an