Inquiries and Opinions by Brander Matthews
page 44 of 197 (22%)
page 44 of 197 (22%)
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novelist often fails as a dramatist, because he has the gift of the
story-teller only, and not that of the play-maker, but more often still because the writing of fiction has provided him with no experience in working beneath any law other than his own caprice. The modern sculptor, by the mere fact that he may now order marble of any shape and of any size, finds his work far easier and, therefore, far less invigorating than it was long ago, when the artist needed to have an alerter imagination to perceive in a given piece of marble the beautiful figure he had to cut out of that particular block and no other. Professor Mahaffy has suggested that the decay of genius may be traced to the enfeebling facilities of our complex civilization. "In art," he maintained, "it is often the conventional shackles,--the necessities of rime and meter, the triangle of a gable, the circular top of a barrel--which has led the poet, the sculptor, or the painter, to strike out the most original and perfect products of their art. Obstacles, if they are extrinsic and not intrinsic, only help to feed the flame." Professor Butcher has declared that genius "wins its most signal triumphs from the very limitations within which it works." And this is what Gautier meant when he declared that the greater the difficulty the more beautiful the work; or, as Mr. Austin Dobson has paraphrased it: Yes; when the ways oppose-- When the hard means rebel, Fairer the work outgrows,-- More potent far the spell. Not only has a useful addition to the accepted devices of the craft been the guerdon of a victorious grapple with a difficulty, but the |
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