This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: ...there still remain certain attitudes from which' a tendency may be gathered. Among these may be classed the hearty anthropomorphism, the almost exuberantly vivid materialization of the spiritual, which seems to be native to the good artist. John Davidson, for example, being the child of Victorian scepticism, tried to ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: ...there still remain certain attitudes from which' a tendency may be gathered. Among these may be classed the hearty anthropomorphism, the almost exuberantly vivid materialization of the spiritual, which seems to be native to the good artist. John Davidson, for example, being the child of Victorian scepticism, tried to write a poem in praise of the Darwinian biological theory; moreover, he had much more of bitterness and despair than the healthy virility of such a man as Huxley could know. But when Davidson wrote his ' Ballad in Heaven'--and it was his finest poem, just as his excursion into versified science was his worst--he had, in order to imagine Heaven at all, to imagine it as monstrously solid and full of gorgeous music and the thundering tramp of a host whom no man could number. One can almost see in it the shape and colour of evil: The slow adagio begins; The winding sheets are ravelled out That swathe the minds of men, the sins That wrap their rotting souls about. To Davidson, in his dull and doctrinaire moments, Heaven might be utterly non-existent; to Davidson, when the divine inspiration held him, Heaven had to be alive and charged with apocalyptic splendours. To the faith of the Middle Ages these things were taken for granted, equally by the austere Dante and by the dissolute Villon. They shared the same vantage spot and saw Paradis peint, oil sont harpes et luths, Et un enfer ou damn6s sont boullus. To them 'the city lieth four-square... the length and the height and the breadth thereof are equal'--surely the acme of solidity! But even the moderns, looking up from their desolation, picture Heaven hardly less vividly; and though they are pnly able to set the conscious effort of a picture against the casual certainty of a vision, the fact that th...
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Publisher:
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1918 First Edition. Hardback. No Dustjacket
Published:
1918
Language:
English
Alibris ID:
16419678741
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Seller's Description:
Very good. 8vo. Original publisher's green cloth with linen spine. Printed title label onset to cover and spine. Pages uncut and unopened. Date misprinted on title page (1818). Neat name on front endpaper. Slight surface wear to spine area, slight rubbing otherwise sound VG with clean text.
