Note 240 — Chapter I

This analysis is rather surprising. Did Hegel, the robust Swabian, really think the above the finest type of art's presentations of the Magdalene? Does it not lean very closely to that soft sentimentalism which a Carlo Dolci gives us in its decadence? At any rate the idea that the Magdalene was not really a sinner flatly contradicts the original references to her in the gospels, and to my mind at any rate seems from the artistic point of view also to destroy half the rare beauty of her repentance. The principle of such an interpretation is surely the entirely pagan one, whether Greek or French, that a great passion is its own justification quite irrespective of moral considerations. She is the historical impersonation of the frailty of a love too dependent on the senses, not of one in which either nobility of bearing or extreme selflessness is conspicuous. Hegel's analysis may be true enough of certain pictures—but do they really present us the ideal; most assuredly not.