“‘Euphorion,’ replied Goethe, ‘is not a human but an allegorical being. In him is personified Poetry, which is bound neither to time, place, nor person. The same spirit, who afterwards chooses to be Euphorion, appears here as the Boy Charioteer, and is so far like a spectre that he can be present everywhere and at all times.’”
The episode of Plutus and the Boy Charioteer is a double allegory. The first and most direct interpretation is that which belongs to the characters as a portion of the masquerade. The Boy is not only Poetry, but the poetic element as it is manifested in all Art; and we may therefore say that he represents the highest intellectual possessions, as Plutus represents material possessions. Further on, we shall see the manner in which the gifts of both are received by the multitude.
33. And only gives what golden gleams.
Although Poetry and Profusion are one, and the Poet (Artist) is rich in proportion as he spends his own best goods—although Art and Taste esteem themselves wealthier than Wealth itself, since they bestow all which the latter can never of itself possess—nothing is less appreciated by the mass of mankind than the gifts which they freely scatter. Pearls become beetles, and jewels butterflies, and even the vision of the courtly Herald (possibly a type of the wholly artificial society of Courts) sees nothing beyond the external appearance.
The “flamelets” which the Boy also scatters, and which he afterwards describes as leaping back and forth among the crowd of masks, lingering awhile on one head, dying out instantly on others, and very seldom rekindled into a temporary brilliancy, need not, now, be further interpreted to the reader.
Have I not them with hand and fancy braided?
The appeal of the Boy Charioteer to Plutus brings us to the second and more carefully concealed allegory, which lies
