Three Pessimists

The three are victims of the romantic illusion, and they are especially victims because none of them had the romantic temperament. All three were destined to be classicists, and, in their manner of writing, Leopardi always was, Vigny almost always, Quental only so in the perfect cast of his sonnets. The sonnet is non classical, however, though, owing to its epigrammatic basis, it should be so.

All three were thinkers, Quental most of all, for he had real metaphysical ability, Leopardi afterwards, Vigny last, but still far ahead in that respect of the other French romantics, with whom, naturally, he should be compared in that respect.

The romantic illusion consists in taking literally the Greek philosopher’s phrase that man is the measure of all things, or sentimentally the basic affirmation of the critical philosophy, that all the world is a concept of ours. These affirmations, harmless to the mind in themselves, are particularly dangerous, and often absurd, when they become dispositions of temperament and not merely concepts of the mind.

The romantic refers everything to himself and is incapable of thinking objectively. What happens to him happens to the universality of things. If he is sad, the wrong not only seems, but is, wrong.