Excerpt: ... he makes a nation wealthy and contented. We have no intellectual ideals, no ideals of beauty. Our idea of poetry is that people should fall in love, and our idea of art is the depicting of rather obvious allegories. These things are good in their way, but they are very elementary. Our men of intellect become scientific researchers, historians, erudite persons. How few living writers there are who unite intellect with emotion! The truth is that we do not believe in emotion; we think it a thing to play with, a ...
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Excerpt: ... he makes a nation wealthy and contented. We have no intellectual ideals, no ideals of beauty. Our idea of poetry is that people should fall in love, and our idea of art is the depicting of rather obvious allegories. These things are good in their way, but they are very elementary. Our men of intellect become scientific researchers, historians, erudite persons. How few living writers there are who unite intellect with emotion! The truth is that we do not believe in emotion; we think it a thing to play with, a thing to grow out of, not a thing to live by. If a person discourses or writes of his feelings we think him a sentimentalist, and have an uneasy suspicion that he is violating the canons of good taste. The result is that we are a sensible, a good-humoured, and a vulgar nation. When we are dealing with art, we have no respect for any but successful artists. If the practice of art results in fame and money, we praise the artist in a patronising way; when the artist prophesies, we think him slightly absurd until he commands a hearing, and then we worship him, because his prophecies have a wide circulation. If the artist is unsuccessful, we consider him a mere dilettante. Then, too, art suffers grievously from having been annexed by moralists, who talk about art as the handmaid of religion, and praise the artist if he provides incentives for conduct of a commercial type. It would be better for art if it were frankly snubbed rather than thus unctuously encouraged. We look upon it all as a matter of influence, for the one thing that we desire is to be felt, to affect other people, to inspire action. The one thing that we cannot tolerate is that a man should despise and withdraw from the busy conventional world. If he ends by impressing the world we admire him, and people his solitude with ugly motives. The fact is that there was never a more unpromising soil for artists than this commonplace, active, strenuous century in which we live. The...
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Add this copy of The Silent Isle to cart. $71.33, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2004 by IndyPublish.
