Devil's influence on the
Romantic School was so strong and so sustained that soon it was named
after him. The terms Romantic and Satanic came to be wellnigh
synonymous. The interest which the French Romanticists showed in the
Devil, moreover, passed beyond the boundaries of France and the limits
of the nineteenth century. The Symbolists, for whom the mysteries of
Erebus had a potent attraction, were simply obsessed by Satan. But
even the Naturalists, who certainly were not haunted by phantoms,
often succumbed to his charms. Foreign writers turning for inspiration
to France, where the literature of the last century reached its
highest perfection, were also caught in the French enthusiasm for the
Devil.

Needless to say that this Devil is not the evil spirit of mediaeval
dogma. The Romantic Devil is an altogether new species of the _genus
diaboli_. There are fashions in Devils as in dresses, and what is a
Devil in one country or one century may not pass muster in another. It
is related that after the glory of Greece had departed, a mariner,
voyaging along her coast by night, heard from the woods the cry:
"Great Pan is dead!" But Pan was not dead; he had fallen asleep to
awake again as Satan. In like manner, when the eighteenth century
believed Satan to be dead, he was, as a matter of fact, only
recuperating his energies for a fresh start in a new form. His new
avatar was Prometheus. Satan continued to be the enemy of God, but he
was no longer the enemy of man. Instead of a demon of darkness he
became a god of grace. This champion of celestial combat was not
actuated by hatred and envy of man, as Christianity was thought to
teach us, but by love and pity for humankind. The strongest expression
of this idea of the Devil in modern literature has been given by
August Strindberg, whose Lucifer is a compound of Prometheus, Apollo
and Christ. However, this interpretation of the Devil, whatever value
it may have from the point of view of originality, is aesthetically as
well as theologically not acceptable. Such a revaluation of an old
value offends our intellect while it touches our heart. All successful
treatment of the Devil in literature and art must be made to
correspond with the norm of popular belief. In art we are all
orthodox, whatever our views may be in religion. This new conception
of Satan will be found chiefly in poetry, while the popular concept
has been continued in prose. But even here a gradual evolution of th