Margaret Fuller

“ Sadness is always deepest at this hour of celestial calmness. The soul realizes its wants, and longs to be in harmony with itself far more in such an hour than when any outward ill is arousing or oppressing it.
"Weak, fond wretch that I am!" cried he. "I, the bard of the Messiah! To what purpose have I nurtured my soul on the virtues of that sublime model, for whom no renunciation was too hard? Four years an angel sojourned with me: her presence vivified my soul into purity and benevolence like her own. Happy was I as the saints who rest after their long struggles in the bosom of perfect love. ”

“ I had heard of this class not without envy, for I had been told pretty tales of the gay poverty of the Frenchman—how he will live in garrets, on dry bread, salad, and some wine, and spend all his money on a single good suit of clothes, in which, when the daily labor of copying music, correcting the press, or writing poems or novels, is over, he sallies forth to enjoy the theatre, the social soirée, or the humors of the streets and cafés, as gay, as keenly alive to observation and enjoyment, as if he were to return to a well-stocked table and a cheerful hearth, encompassed by happy faces. ”

“ I love thee, fallen seraph, but thou shouldst not have sold thy birthright.
"All for love and the world well lost." That sounds so true! But genius, when it sells itself, gives up, not only the world, but the universe.
Yet does not love comprehend the universe? The universe is love. Why should I weary my eye with scanning the parts, when I can clasp the whole this moment to my beating heart?
But if the intellect be repressed, the idea will never be brought out from the feeling. ”

“ Bach, Handel, Hadyn, Mozart, were corner-stones of the glorious temple. Who shall succeed Beethoven? A host of musicians, full of talent, even of genius, live now he is dead; but the greatest among them is confessed by all men to be but of Lilliputian size compared with this demigod. Indeed, it should be so! As copious draughts of soul have been given to the earth, as she can quaff for a century or more. Disciples and critics must follow, to gather up the gleanings of the golden grain. ”

“ ITALY.—CARY'S DANTE.
TRANSLATING Dante is indeed a labor of love. It is one in which even a moderate degree of success is impossible. No great Poet can be well translated. The form of his thought is inseparable from his thought. The births of his genius are perfect beings: body and soul are in such perfect harmony that you cannot at all alter the one without veiling the other. The variation in cadence and modulation, even where the words are exactly rendered, takes not only from the form of the thought, but from the thought itself, its most delicate charm. ”

“ Apart also from good that is public and many-voiced, does not each of us know, in private experience, much to be thankful for? Not only the innocent and daily pleasures that we have prized according to our wisdom; of the sun and starry skies, the fields of green, or snow scarcely less beautiful, the loaf eaten with an appetite, the glow of labor, the gentle signs of common affection; but have not some, have not many of us, cause to be thankful for enfranchisement from error or infatuation; a growth in knowledge of outward things, and instruction within the soul from a higher source. ”

“ Each is thrown before us fresh, deep in its impress as if just snatched from the forge. We admire not less his vast flow, his sustained flight. His is a rich and spacious genius; it gives us room; it is a palace home; we need not economize our joys; blessed be the royalty that welcomes us so freely.
In simple transposition of the thought from the mind to the paper, that wonder, even rarer than perfect,—that is, simple expression, through the motions of the body, of the motions of the soul,—we dare to say no writer excels him. ”

“ If you want a moral enthusiast, is not there Schiller? If piety, of purest, mystic sweetness, who but Novalis? Exuberant sentiment, that treasures each withered leaf in a tender breast, look to your Richter. Would you have men to find plausible meaning for the deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature, well painted and dotted on its proper roller,—there are the Schlegels. Men of ideas were numerous as migratory crows in autumn, and Jacobi wrote the heart into philosophy, as well as he could. Who could fill Gœthe's place to Germany, and to the world, of which she is now the teacher? ”

“ We doubt if it is any worse in the sight of God to drain France of her best blood by the conscription, than to tear the flower of Genius from the breast of Italy to perish in a dungeon, leaving her overwhelmed and broken-hearted. Leaving all this aside, and granting that Napoleon might have done more and better, had his heart been pure from ambition, which gave it such electric power to animate a vast field of being, there is no reason why we should not prize what he did do. ”

“ The most perfect specimens of this style with which we are acquainted are the Filippo, the Saul, and the Myrrha of Alfieri; the Wallenstein of Schiller; the Tasso and the Iphigenia of Gœthe. England furnishes nothing of the sort. She is thoroughly Shakspearian.
There is no higher pleasure than to see a genius of a wild, impassioned, many-sided eagerness, restraining its exuberance by its sense of fitness, taming its extravagance beneath the rule its taste approves, exhibiting the soul within soul, and the force of the will over all that we inherit. ”

“ Forced by the magic wand of genius into the stifling precincts of this mind, horror-struck that we must sympathize with such a state as possible to humanity, we rush from the contemplation of the picture, and would gladly curtain it over in our hall of imagery forever. Yet stigmatize not our poet as a dark master, courting the shade, and hating the glad lights which love and hope cast upon human nature. ”

“ Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be struck by a peculiar force with which all things worked together to prepare him for his office of artist-critic to the then chaotic world of thought in his country. What an unusually varied scene of childhood and of youth! What endless change and contrast of circumstances and influences! Father and mother, life and literature, world and nature,—playing into one another's hands, always by antagonism! Never was a child so carefully guarded by fate against prejudice, against undue bias, against any engrossing sentiment. ”

“ The best or the worst occasion in man's life is precisely that misused in Werther, when he longs for more love, more freedom, and a larger development of genius than the limitations of this terrene sphere permit. Sad is it indeed if, persisting to grasp too much at once, he lose all, as Werther did. He must accept limitation, must consent to do his work in time, must let his affections be baffled by the barriers of convention. Tantalus-like, he makes this world a Tartarus, or, like Hercules, rises in fires to heaven, according as he knows how to interpret his lot. ”

“ Such is the practice of the author of Festus, whenever he is truly great. When he shows to us the end and plan of all things, we feel that he only hides them from us. He speaks only his wishes. But when he tells us of what he does really know, the moods and aspirations of fiery youth to which all things are made present in foresight and foretaste,—when he shows us the temptations of the lonely soul pining for knowledge, but unable to feel the love that alone can bestow it,—then he is truly great, and the strings of life thrill oftentimes to their sublimest, sweetest music. ”

“ Now, when I think of Gœthe, I seem to see his soul, all the variegated plumes of knowledge, artistic form "und so weiter," burnt from it by the fires of divine love, wingless, motionless, unable to hide from itself in any subterfuge of labor, saying again and again, the simple words which he would never distinctly say on earth—God beyond Nature—Faith beyond Sight—the Seeker nobler than the Meister. ”

“ We need a life of our own, and a literature of our own. Those writers who are dearest to us, and really most interesting, are those who are at least rooted to the soil. If they are not great enough to be the prophets of the new era, they at least exhibit the features of their native clime, and the complexion given by its native air. But Mr. Willis is a son of Europe, and his writings can interest only the fashionable world of this country, which, by imitating Europe, fails entirely of a genius, grace, and invention of its own. ”

“ Sadder and more ominous still, we have seen the good man—in many impulses and acts of most pure, most liberal, and undoubted goodness—yet have we noted a spot of base indulgence, a fibre of brutality canker in a vital part this fine plant, and, while we could not withdraw love and esteem for the good we could not doubt, have wept secretly in the heart for the ill we could not deny. We have observed two deaths; one of the sinner, early cut down; one of the just, full of years and honor—both were calm; both professed their reliance on the wisdom of a heavenly Father. ”

“ Sylvain wanted to go into the world, or let it into his house. Mariana consented; but, with an unsatisfied heart, and no lightness of character, she played her part ill there. The sort of talent and facility she had displayed in early days were not the least like what is called out in the social world by the desire to please and to shine. Her excitement had been muse-like—that of the improvisatrice, whose kindling fancy seeks to create an atmosphere round it, and makes the chain through which to set free its electric sparks. ”

“ Society has moulded them, body and soul; the youngest children are more social and Chinese than human; and we doubt not the infant, with its first cry, shows its capacity for self-command and obedience to superiors.
Their great man, Confucius, expresses this social genius in its most perfect state and highest form. His golden wisdom is the quintescence of social justice. He never forgets conditions and limits; he is admirably wise, pure, and religious, but never towers above humanity—never soars into solitude. There is no token of the forest or cave in Confucius. ”

“ The intellect soars, the heart clasps; from putting "a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," thou wouldst return to thy own little green isle of emotion, and be the loving and playful fay, rather than the delicate Ariel.
Then most persons are plants, organic. We can predict their growth according to their own law. From the young girl we can predict the lustre, the fragrance of the future flower. It waves gracefully to the breeze, the dew rests upon its petals, the bee busies himself in them, and flies away after a brief rapture, richly laden. ”

“ The attitude of Sue is at this moment imposing, as he stands, pen in hand,—this his only weapon against an innumerable host of foes,—the champion of poverty, innocence, and humanity, against superstition, selfishness, and prejudice. When his works are forgotten,—and for all their strong points and brilliant decorations, they may ere long be forgotten,—still the writer's name shall be held in imperishable honor as the teacher of the ignorant, the guardian of the weak, a true tribune for the people of his own time. ”

“ We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so slippery and indolent a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem the time. Time flows on steadily, whether he regards it or not; yet unless he keep time, there is no music in that flow. The sands drop with inevitable speed, yet each waits long enough to receive, if it be ready, the intellectual touch that should turn it to a sand of gold.
Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power; Power is the father of Genius and Wisdom ”

“ The Marguerite of Godwin, no less, is all refinement and the purest tenderness; but she is also the soul of honor, capable of deep discernment, and of acting in conformity with the inferences she draws. The Man of Brown and Godwin has not eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and been driven to sustain himself by the sweat of his brow for nothing, but has learned the structure and laws of things, and become a being, natural, benignant, various, and desirous of supplying the loss of innocence by the attainment of virtue. ”

“ Dirt, confusion, shabby expedients, living to live,—these are what make poverty terrible and odious, and in these Balzac would seem to have been steeped to the very lips.
These French writers possess the art of plunging at once in medias res, and Balzac places you, in the twinkling of an eye, in one of the lowest boarding-houses of Paris. At first all is dirt, hubbub, and unsavory odors; but from the vapors of the caldron evolves a web of many-colored life, of terrible pathos, and original humor, not unenlivened by pale golden threads of beauty, which had better never been. ”

“ It closed, and Meta stood before him. A long veil of silvery whiteness fell over her, through which might be seen the fixed but nobly-serene expression of the large blue eyes, and a holy, seraphic dignity of mien. Klopstock knelt before her: his soul was awed to earth. "Hast thou come, my adored!" said he, "from thy home of bliss, to tell me that thou no longer lovest thy unworthy friend?"
"O, speak not thus!" replied the softest and most penetrating of voices. "God wills not that his purified creatures should look in contempt or anger on those suffering the ills from which they are set free. ”

“ It contained a labyrinth which, when threaded by aid of the clew of Faith, presented, re-viewed from its centre, the most admirable harmony and depth of meaning in its design, and comprised in its decorations all the symbols of permanent interest of which the mind of man has made use for the benefit of man. Such was to be our church, a church not made with hands, catholic, universal, all whose stones should be living stones, its officials the cherubim of Love and Knowledge, its worship wiser and purer action than has before been known to men. ”