How comes it that, to every tolerably cultivated taste, imitations of
the so-called Actual, even though carried to deception, appear in the
last degree untrue--nay, produce the impression of spectres; whilst a
work in which the idea is predominant strikes us with the full force
of truth, conveying us then only to the genuinely actual world? Whence
comes it, if not from the more or less obscure feeling which tells us
that the idea alone is the living principle in things, but all else
unessential and vain shadow?
On the same ground may be explained all the opposite cases which
are brought up as instances of the surpassing of Nature by Art. In
arresting the rapid course of human years; in uniting the energy of
developed manhood with the soft charm of early youth; or exhibiting
a mother of grown-up sons and daughters in the full possession of
vigorous beauty--what does Art except to annul what is unessential,
Time?
If, according to the remark of a discerning critic, every growth in
Nature has but an instant of truly complete beauty, we may also say
that it has, too, only an instant of full existence. In this instant
it is what it is in all eternity; besides this, it has only a coming
into and a passing out of existence. Art, in representing the thing
at that instant, removes it out of Time, and sets it forth in its pure
Being, in the eternity of its life.
After everything positive and essential had once been abstracted from
Form, it necessarily appeared restrictive, and, as it were, hostile,
to the Essence; and the same theory that had reproduced the false and
powerless Ideal, necessarily tended to the formless in Art.
Pages:
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170