Promethean impulsions (1908)
pp. 21-35
in: , Georg Lukács' Marxism alienation, dialectics, revolution, Berlin, Springer, 1964Abstract
The present chapter will examine young Lukács' significant initial pursuits and ambitions and locate them in the context of his time and cultural milieu. Among young Lukács' writings one essay in particular keynotes the dominant traits of his personality, his outlook, and is a characteristic of his times. Lukács' "Platonism, Poetry, and the Forms' is the first essay in his book The Soul and the Forms (1911). It discusses more explicitly the nature of his position then. It shows how Lukács' deep longings cannot find an appropriate medium of articulation, and how, in consequence of this, he is impelled to turn the essay into an instrument of his spiritual quest to such an extent that he transforms it from a form of literary expression into something else. Striving for goals which he could not attain, Lukács was to judge an entire society, nay culture, more radically and caustically than may seem appropriate. In so doing, he eventually removed himself emotionally and intellectually from where he might have been able to distinguish between what is possible as against what is not possible, what can be done here and now as against what can only be construed in one's dreams.