[70] "Yesterday's snow" was nowhere, a surprising sunlight
everywhere; through which, after gratefully bidding adieu to the
great poet, almost on their knees for a blessing, our adventurers
returned home. Gaston, intently pondering as he lingered behind the
others, was aware that this new poetry, which seemed to have
transformed his whole nature into half-sensuous imagination, was the
product not of one or more individual writers, but (it might be in
the way of a response to their challenge) a general direction of
men's minds, a delightful "fashion" of the time. He almost
anticipated our modern idea, or platitude, of the Zeit-geist. A
social instinct was involved in the matter, and loyalty to an
intellectual movement. As its leader had himself been the first to
suggest, the actual authorship belonged not so much to a star as to a
constellation, like that hazy Pleiad he had pointed out in the sky,
or like the swarm of larks abroad this morning over the corn, led by
a common instinct, a large element in which was sympathetic trust in
the instinct of others.
Pages:
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103