Benedetto Croce

moments, intuitive or aesthetic, the apprehension or tasting of the work of art, and intellective, the critical and historical judgment,—a difference wrongly disputed from one point of view by sensationalists and from another by intellectualists,—stands out so

but to say whence comes that particular form of enchantment, to determine that is to say, the character of the inspiration that moved Ariosto, his dominant poetical motive, the peculiar effect which became poetry in him, is a very different undertaking and one of no small difficulty

allegory, contained in a moral judgment as to Italian life at the time of the Renaissance, lost in its pursuit of love, like the Christian and Saracen knights in their pursuit of Angelica (Canello

the Furioso Ariosto has no subjective content to express, no sentimental or passionate motive, no idea become sentiment or passion, but pursues the sole end of art, singing for singing's sake, representing for

how the truth has been improperly symbolised in the formulas of "mere imagination," of "indifferent objectivity" and of "art for art's sake."

but love for that past, love for some one or other historical age of art

he was obliged to associate with greedy, violent, unscrupulous men, but he did not allow himself to be stained by their contact, preserving the attitude of an honest employee towards his patrons, attentive to the formal duties with which he was charged. He is discreet, but pure and dignified, refraining from taking part whatever in the secret plots and machinations of those whose orders he obeys. H

Ariosto is held to have allowed to pass in defile within him the chain of romantic figures of knights and ladies and the stories of their arms and audacious undertakings, of their loves and their love-making, with the one object of delighting the imagination.

It is further to be noted that Ariosto never wished to publish, and certainly never would have had published a great number of them, with the exception of the comedies, even after his death, except perhaps the satires; but since the minor works are nevertheless the expression of his feelings in real and ordinary life, it follows that if we wish to discover the inspiration of the Furioso, the passion which informed and gave to it its proper content, we must seek for this beyond his ordinary life, not in the heart which we know as that of a son, a brother, a poor man, a lover: it is something hidden yet more deeply within him, the heart of his heart.

his spirit towards the past, he always draws the past towards his spirit, and there is no observable trace in it of Latin-Augustan archaism, or of the archaism of medieval chivalry. For this reason, the view that he had Art itself as his content must be taken as applicable without doubt in the other sense to him and to