Goethe's 'Zueignung' and Benivieni's 'Amore'

When it falls to the present-day historian to record the dependence of a great man on the work of a predecessor it is fortunately no longer necessary for him to assert apologetically that this fact "in no way diminishes the greatness of his genius" : as though the task of the literary critic were merely to detect who was 'copying,' and to award appropriate marks. The curiously romantic conception of genius in the nineteenth century allowed of the incorporation into the critical work of the period of every biographical experience, while denying that cultural experience could legitimately be used in creation. Thus, it has long since been agreed that the figure of Truth who in Goethe's 'Zueignung' hands him the veils of poesy was in private life known by the name of Charlotte von Stein ; but no voice in the massed chorus of Goethe literature seems to have asked whether there is any relationship between this figure of Truth and a certain 'leggiadra e bella donna' whose glamour and grace are celebrated in the allegorical neo-platonic stanzas of Girolamo Benivieni, the friend of Lorenzo de' Medici and Politian, who later became the disciple of Savonarola. Benivieni's poem was an attempt in the style of Lorenzo's Selve d'amore.1 It begins with a beautiful description of nature :