The name is absent

The Breviary of Aesthetic 55
another” in us (I shall avail myself again on this occasion of
Dante’s words), but the one soul, which first is all collected
in one single “virtue,” and which “seems to obey no longer
any power,” satisfied in that virtue alone (in the artistic im-
age), finds in that virtue, together with its satisfaction, its
dissatisfaction: its satisfaction, because it gives to the soul all
that it can give and is expected from it; its dissatisfaction, be-
cause, having obtained all that, and having satiated the soul
with its ultimate sweetness,—“what is asked and thanked for,”
—satisfaction is sought for the new need caused by the first
satisfaction, which was not able to arise without that first
satisfaction. And we all know also, from continual experience,
the new want which lurks behind the fOimation of images.
Ugo Foscolo has a love-affair with the Countess Arese; he
knows with what sort of love and with what sort of woman
he has to do, as can be proved from the letters he wrote,
which are to be read in print. Nevertheless, during the mo-
ments that he loves her, that woman is his universe, and he
aspires to possess her as the highest beatitude, and in the
enthusiasm of his admiration would render the mortal wo-
man immortal, would transfigure this earthly creature into
one divine for the time to come, achieving for her a new
miracle of love. And indeed he already finds her rapt to the
empyrean, an object of worship and of prayers :

And thou, divine one, living in my hymns,
Shalt receive the vows of my Insubrian descendants.

Tlie ode All’ arnica Tisanaia would not have taken shape in
the spirit of Foscolo unless this metamorphosis of love had
been desired and longed for with the greatest seriousness
(lovers and even philosophers, if they have been in love, can
witness that these absurdities are seriously desired); and the

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