But not only does Signor Papini utilize biographic data, he even creates it. For like a spoilt child he is unwilling to limit himself to a technique, but continually allows his emotions to over-reach it and express themselves in rank and disordered growth. Thus do we find him so overcome by Hamlet's moral turpitude as to compose a lovely speech, assuring us that in the mouth of Hamlet it would have deterred Ophelia from her watery climax.
Though this sort of creative-criticism-with-a-vengeance is merely vulgar when applied to art, it is something more when it is applied to philosophy. For with philosophic criticism the technique is everything, a sine qua non. But even here Papini's sly little ego creeps out to wilfully twist and tear.
Space allows me to mention only one example of this critical perversion, and I quote the following sentence from the attack on Croce. It is a sentence in which Papini, in an attempt to prove that Croce writes sheer nonsense, paraphrases and quotes direct a passage from Croce's Breviario.
"Foscolo, after the writing of a certain famous ode, is 'a poet who has utterly achieved his task, and is therefore no longer a poet.'"
The meaning of this passage is clear enough in Croce, however, and has been correctly translated by Ainslie as follows; "Foscolo the poet, having achieved his task and therefore being no longer poet, now wishes to know his real condition." But not only Papini has wilfully perverted the meaning of this sentence, his translator Mr Wilkins seems to consider it wiser in this case to follow his note that "the passages of Croce's Italian text quoted by Papini are replaced by the corresponding passages of Ainslie's translation," Mr Wilkins seems to consider it wiser in this case to follow his master's footsteps rather than his own foot-notes.
So does the volume run on to its last chapter, where Papini having placed the other twenty-three ingredients into his pie, with a final autobiographic essay crawls in himself and pulls the crust over. And so far as English translations are concerned let us hope he stays there.
