We have
mistaken
the common livery of the age for the
vesture of the muses, and spent our days in the sordid streets and
hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside
with Apollo.
vesture of the muses, and spent our days in the sordid streets and
hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside
with Apollo.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
.
.
.
The Greeks with
their quick, artistic instinct understood this, and set in the bride's
chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children
as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her
pain. They knew that life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth
of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can
form herself on the very lines and colours of art, and can reproduce the
dignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles. Hence came this
objection to realism. They disliked it on purely social grounds. They
felt that it inevitably makes people ugly, and they were perfectly
right.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of
the intellect--simply a confession of failure.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid
that others might pick them up.
What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a
question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young
men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and
cannot--that is all one can say.
Modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter are entirely and
absolutely wrong.
We have mistaken the common livery of the age for the
vesture of the muses, and spent our days in the sordid streets and
hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside
with Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our
birthright for a mess of facts.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
senses but the soul.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is
something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Those who live in marble or on painted panel know of life but a single
exquisite instant, eternal, indeed, in its beauty but limited to one
note of passion or one mood of calm. Those whom the poet makes live have
their myriad emotions of joy and terror, of courage and despair, of
pleasure and of suffering. The seasons come and go in glad or saddening
pageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them.
They have their youth and their manhood, they are children, and they
grow old. It is always dawn for St Helena as Veronese saw her at the
window. Through the still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of
God's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from
her brow. On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers
of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon--of noon made
so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim, naked girl dip
into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long
fingers of the lute player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight
always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver
poplars of France. In eternal twilight they move, those frail,
diaphanous figures, whose tremulous, white feet seem not to touch the
dew-drenched grass they tread on.
their quick, artistic instinct understood this, and set in the bride's
chamber the statue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children
as lovely as the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her
pain. They knew that life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth
of thought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can
form herself on the very lines and colours of art, and can reproduce the
dignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles. Hence came this
objection to realism. They disliked it on purely social grounds. They
felt that it inevitably makes people ugly, and they were perfectly
right.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of
the intellect--simply a confession of failure.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid
that others might pick them up.
What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a
question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young
men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and
cannot--that is all one can say.
Modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter are entirely and
absolutely wrong.
We have mistaken the common livery of the age for the
vesture of the muses, and spent our days in the sordid streets and
hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside
with Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our
birthright for a mess of facts.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
senses but the soul.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is
something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Those who live in marble or on painted panel know of life but a single
exquisite instant, eternal, indeed, in its beauty but limited to one
note of passion or one mood of calm. Those whom the poet makes live have
their myriad emotions of joy and terror, of courage and despair, of
pleasure and of suffering. The seasons come and go in glad or saddening
pageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them.
They have their youth and their manhood, they are children, and they
grow old. It is always dawn for St Helena as Veronese saw her at the
window. Through the still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of
God's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from
her brow. On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers
of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon--of noon made
so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim, naked girl dip
into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long
fingers of the lute player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight
always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver
poplars of France. In eternal twilight they move, those frail,
diaphanous figures, whose tremulous, white feet seem not to touch the
dew-drenched grass they tread on.
