XI
CROCE[1]
There are still in Italy a number of more or less youthful men of letters, many secondary professors in secondary schools, and a few journalists with a smattering of philosophy, who really attribute great importance to Benedetto Croce and his Æsthetics. That book, published ten years ago, has reached its fourth edition, and is considered, by those to whom I have referred, as the unbreakable table of artistic law, as the most refined and exquisite essence of European thought, as the eternal gospel of all criticism. In their eyes Croce is the one licensed guide of the present generation, the perpetual dictator of our culture, the high and mighty mas-
- ↑ Written à propos of Croce’s Breviario di estetica (“The Breviary of Æsthetic”), Bari, 1913.
The lectures composing this treatise were written for the opening of the Rice Institute (October, 1912). They appear, in an English translation by Douglas Ainslie, in The Book of the Opening of The Rice Institute, Vol. II, pp. 430–517, and in The Rice Institute Pamphlet (December, 1915), pp. 223–310. In the present translation the passages of Croce’s Italian text quoted by Papini are replaced by the corresponding passages of Ainslie’s translation. The page references in the footnotes are to that translation as it appears in The Rice Institute Pamphlet.
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