The free Siegfried

Ever experienced this?

In Jane Austen's novel, Emma intends that Harriet Smith should have a happy life; but only the sort of happy life which Emma herself has planned for her. My own profession that of a university teacher is in this way dangerous. If we are any good we must always be working towards the moment at which our pupils are fit to become our critics & rivals. We should be delighted when it arrives, as the fencing master is delighted when his pupil can pink & disarm him. And many are.

But not all. I am old enough to remember the sad case of Dr. Quartz. No university boasted a more effective or devoted teacher. He spent the whole of himself on his pupils. He made an indelible impression on nearly all of them. He was the object of much well-merited hero-worship. Naturally, & delightfully, they continued to visit him after the tutorial relation had ended went round to his house of an evening & had famous discussions. But the curious thing is that this never lasted. Sooner or later it might be within a few months or even a few weeks came the fatal evening when they knocked on his door & were told that the Doctor was engaged.
After that he would always be engaged. They were banished from him forever. This was because, at their last meeting, they had rebelled. They had asserted their independence differed from the master & supported their own view, perhaps not without success. Faced with that very independence which he had laboured to produce & which it was his duty to produce if he could, Dr. Quartz could not bear it.

Wotan had toiled to create the free Siegfried; presented with the free Siegfried, he was enraged. Dr. Quartz was an unhappy man. -- The Four Loves, C S Lewis