Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism, p. 20:
The ultimate roots of romanticism and the romantic phneomenon lie in the private priesthood. If we consider the situation from aspects such as these, then we should not always focus only on the good natured pastoralist. On the contrary, we must also see the despair that lies behind the romantic movement -- regardless of whether this despair becomes lyrically enraptured with God and the world on a sweet moonlit night, utters a lament as the world-weariness and the sickness of the century, pessimistically lacerates itself, or frenetically plunges into the abyss of instinct and life. We must see the three persons whose deformed visages penetrate the colorful romantic veil: Byron, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche, the three high priests, and at the same time the three sacrificial victims, of this private priesthood.
This passage may explain my recent Baudelaire jag. On p. 45 of Intimate Journals I found: "What is not a priesthood these days?"
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