It is a question of temperamental antecedent
motive in the artist, and nothing more.
Realist--Romanticist! Enlightenment--Delight! That is the true
apposition. To make a revelation--to tell a fairy-tale! And either of
these artists may use what form he likes--naturalistic, fantastic,
poetic, impressionistic. For it is not by the form, but by the purpose
and mood of his art that he shall be known, as one or as the other.
Realists indeed--including the half of Shakespeare that was realist not
being primarily concerned to amuse their audience, are still
comparatively unpopular in a world made up for the greater part of men of
action, who instinctively reject all art that does not distract them
without causing them to think. For thought makes demands on an energy
already in full use; thought causes introspection; and introspection
causes discomfort, and disturbs the grooves of action. To say that the
object of the realist is to enlighten rather than to delight, is not to
say that in his art the realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is
the teller of a fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to
do so; he is amusing, too, a large part of mankind. For, admitted that
the abject, and the test of Art, is always the awakening of vibration, of
impersonal emotion, it is still usually forgotten that men fall, roughly
speaking, into two flocks: Those whose intelligence is uninquiring in the
face of Art, and does not demand to be appeased before their emotions can
be stirred; and those who, having a speculative bent of mind, must first
be satisfied by an enlightening quality in a work of Art, before that
work of Art can awaken in them feeling.
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