ABSTRACT
The ideas of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Proust, or Joyce do not demand our attention due to their intrinsic religious, political, or philosophical merits, but because they constitute the necessary foundation for literary works of exceptional value, even when the ideas themselves show little conceptual originality. In such cases what is of more interest than the ideas is the way in which an author uses them to construct the work in question. The greatness of these creations does not reside simply in what tends to be termed 'form' or 'style', but rather, to borrow Hjemslev's phrase, the form of the content. This is applicable also to certain essays, memoirs, and other works of non-scientific thought. What draws us to St Augustine's Confessions lies not in his beliefs, which few share today, but in his intellectual programme, his search for answers, which is itself not exempt from contradictions and debatable claims. Don Quijote, stripped of its narrative splendour and human depth, is surprising in the limited vision which Cervantes shows of the problems of his times. Seneca's treatises and epistles simplified many ideas already present in the works of other writers, yet move readers through their personal tone and their original variations on a small number of moral notions. Montaigne's unsystematic scepticism has received some ironical comments, but will always be praised for its personal tone, so familiar and commonplace, this despite the fact that in itself it does not open up new avenues to science or logic. It is probably the case, then, that what really draws us to the great writers of the past is the way in which they tried to explain themselves to themselves, and the degree to which this was a self-sustaining process.
