It
improves on the old methods, while missing little of their excellence. No
one can read a great novel without feeling that, from its outwardly
prosaic pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and anon reached his
ears. It does not obtrude itself; it is not there for him who has not
skill to listen for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the music of
a bird, denning itself amidst the innumerable murmurs of the forest.
So, the ideal novel, conforming in every part to the behests of the
imagination, should produce, by means of literary art, the illusion of a
loftier reality. This excludes the photographic method of novel-writing.
"That is a false effort in art," says Goethe, towards the close of his
long and splendid career, "which, in giving reality to the appearance,
goes so far as to leave in it nothing but the common, every-day actual."
It is neither the actual, nor Chinese copies of the actual, that we demand
of art. Were art merely the purveyor of such things, she might yield her
crown to the camera and the stenographer; and divine imagination would
degenerate into vulgar inventiveness. Imagination is incompatible with
inventiveness, or imitation.
Pages:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40