The master of
this school grows blind; Winckelmann becomes his famulus. The old man
would have had him study theology. Winckelmann, free of the master's
library, chooses rather to become familiar with the Greek classics.
Herodotus and Homer win, with their "vowelled" Greek, his warmest
enthusiasm; whole nights of fever are devoted to them; disturbing dreams
of an Odyssey of his own come to him. "He felt in himself," says Madame
de Stael, "an ardent attraction towards the South." In German
imaginations even now traces are often to be found of that love of the
sun, that weariness of the North (cette fatigue du nord), which carried
the northern peoples away into those countries of the South. A fine sky
brings to birth sentiments not unlike the love of one's Fatherland.
To most of us, after all our steps towards it, the antique world, in
spite of its intense outlines, its perfect self-expression, still remains
faint and remote. To him, closely limited except on the one side of the
ideal, building for his dark poverty "a house not made with hands," it
early came to seem more real than the present.
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