| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: What lands, what realms his tributaries be:
If his forefathers in the graves that dwell,
Were honored like thine that live, let see:
Oh how dares one so mean aspire so high,
Born in that servile country Italy?
XX
Now, if he win, or if he lose the day,
Yet is his praise and glory hence derived,
For that the world will, to his credit, say,
Lo, this is he that with Gernando strived.
The charge some deal thee haply honor may,
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: the play was brought upon the stage at Constantinople a few years
ago, the Turkish audience was similarly affected. There is in the
story that quiet, stealthy humour which is characteristic of many
mediaeval apologues, and in which Lessing himself loved to deal.
It is humour of the kind which hits the mark, and reveals the
truth. In a note upon this passage, Lessing himself said: "The
opinion of Nathan upon all positive religions has for a long time
been my own." Let him who has the genuine ring show it by making
himself loved of God and man. This is the central idea of the
poem. It is wholly unlike the iconoclasm of the deists, and,
coming in the eighteenth century, it was like a veritable
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
