He had friends whose
names he had never heard, and enemies, too, ready to attack him on the
one side and to defend him on the other. Some praised his modesty, and
others called it affectation. His experience of the wider world was
short, so far, and he did not understand that it had taken people a
year to appreciate his success. He had hoped for immediate recognition
of his great services to archaeology, and had been somewhat
disappointed because that recognition had not been instantaneous. Like
most men of superior talent, in the same situation, when praise came
in due time and abundantly, he did not care for it because he was
already interested in new work. To the man of genius the past is
always insignificant as compared with the future. When Goethe, dying,
asked for "more light," he may or may not have merely meant that he
wished the window opened because the room seemed dark to his failing
eyes; the higher interpretation which has been put upon his last words
remains the true one, in the spirit, if not in the letter. He died, as
he had lived, the man of genius looking forward, not backward, to the
last, crying for light, more light, thinking not of dying and ending,
but of living, hoping, doing, winning.
Besides the general body of students and archaeologists, the Italian
government was exceedingly interested in Malipieri's explorations.
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