Buffalo and Ghosts

 In Ortega y Gasset's essay "In Search of Goethe from Within" occurs the passage

The Jena of that period [1790 through 1825] signifies a fabulous treasure of lofty mental incitements. Is it not a terrible symptom of Weimar's impenetrability that, though it is not a dozen miles from Jena, Jena never managed to affect Weimar in the slightest? I have never been able to imagine Fichte conversing with Frau von Stein, because I do not believe that a buffalo has ever  been able to converse with a ghost.

(Ortega takes Weimar to have petrified Goethe, to have separated him from his destiny.)

Penelope Fitzgerald's novel The Blue Flower mentions the uncanny effect Fichte had, without effort or intention intimidating students who intimidated everyone else. It appears that it was chiefly the novelty of his thought and the difficulty of grasping it that accounted for the effect. Having recently read a bit of Fichte, I sympathize with those students, and I wonder what Charlotte von Stein would have made of his conversation--quite a bit, perhaps, if she knew Kant inside and out, perhaps very little.

"In Search of Goethe from Within" is included in the collection The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture.