Note 55 — Chapter I · CONCERNING THE TWO KINDS OF THINKING

490Compare J. Burckhardt’s letter to Albert Brenner (pub. by Hans Brenner in the Basle Jahrbuch, 1901): “I have absolutely nothing stored away for the special interpretation of Faust. You are well provided with commentaries of all sorts. Hark! let us at once take the whole foolish pack back to the reading-room from whence they have come. What you are destined to find in Faust, that you will find by intuition. Faust is nothing else than pure and legitimate myth, a great primitive conception, so to speak, in which everyone can divine in his own way his own nature and destiny. Allow me to make a comparison: What would the ancient Greeks have said had a commentator interposed himself between them and the Oedipus legend? There was a chord of the Oedipus legend in every Greek which longed to be touched directly and respond in its own way. And thus it is with the German nation and Faust.”