The late nineteenth century craved greatness emptied of specific achievements

Evidence

No other man among his contemporaries corresponded to Cariyle’s heroes as well as Disraeli, with his concept of greatness as such, emptied of all specific achievements; no other man fulfilled so exactly the demands of the late nineteenth century for genius in the flesh as this charlatan who took his role seriously and acted the great part of the Great Man with genuine naïveté and an overwhelming display of fantastic tricks and entertaining artistry. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 233

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt defines the nineteenth-century ideal of ‘genius in the flesh’ — greatness as pure form detached from concrete accomplishment — useful for the scaffold on how political charisma operates in mass society.
• XREF: connects to: Late-nineteenth-century music traded structural working-through for sheer instrumental expressiveness. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 95