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12. v. 34
The first Iceman,1 but a glorious summer day; the garden in front of my window is truly a place in which ‘to die in
beauty’. I am wondering whether I should advise for or against the execution of your plan. I am much more clearly conscious of my inclinations against the project than the reasons for it. But no doubt it will not matter what I say. The poetic urge, if it's strong enough, will prove itself stronger.
It seems to me that we touch here on the problem of poetic licence versus historical truth. I know my feelings on this point are thoroughly conservative. Where there is an unbridgeable gap in history and biography, the writer can step in and try to guess how it all happened. In an uninhabited country he may be allowed to establish the creatures of his imagination. Even when the historical facts are known but sufficiently remote and removed from common knowledge, he can disregard them. Thus it cannot be held against Shakespeare that in about the year 1000 Macbeth was a just and benevolent king of Scotland. But on the other hand, where reality is firmly established and has become common property, the writer should respect it. When B. Shaw makes his Caesar stand and gape at a stony Sphinx just as though he were a Cook's tourist and forget to take leave of Cleopatra when he leaves Egypt, he proves to us what a clown he is and that a joke means more to him than anything. The historical Caesar summoned Cleopatra to Rome after the birth of her son Caesarion and there she remained till her flight after Caesar's murder. It's true, the poets usually fail to keep these rules, e.g. Schiller in Don Carlos, Goethe in Egmont and Goetz etc., but it's frequently not an advantage when they do fail to do so.
Now when it is a question of someone so near to us in time and whose influence is still as active as Friedrich Nietzsche's, a description of his character and his destiny should aim at the same result as a portrait does-that is to say, however the conception may be