Maxims and Reflections Part 18

401

How many years must a man do nothing before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

402

Duty: where a man loves what he commands himself to do.

LITERATURE AND ART

403

When Madame Roland was on the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, to note the peculiar thoughts that hovered about her on the last journey.

It is a pity they were refused, for in a tranquil mind thoughts rise up at the close of life hitherto unthinkable; like blessed inward voices, alighting in glory on the summits of the past.

404

Literature is a fragment of fragments: the least of what happened and was spoken, has been written; and of the things that have been written, very few have been preserved.

405

And yet, with all the fragmentary nature of literature, we find thousand fold repet.i.tion; which shows how limited is man's mind and destiny.

406

Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it as you will.

407

It is not language in itself which is correct or forcible or elegant, but the mind that is embodied in it; and so it is not for a man to determine whether he will give his calculations or speeches or poems the desired qualities: the question is whether Nature has given him the intellectual and moral qualities which fit him for the work,--the intellectual power of observation and insight, the moral power of repelling the evil spirits that might hinder him from paying respect to truth.

408

The appeal to posterity springs from the pure, strong feeling of the existence of something imperishable; something that, even though it be not at once recognised, will in the end be gratified by finding the minority turn into a majority.

409

When a new literature succeeds, it obscures the effect of an earlier one, and its own effect predominates; so that it is well, from time to time, to look back. What is original in us is best preserved and quickened if we do not lose sight of those who have gone before us.

410

The most original authors of modern times are so, not because they produce what is new, but only because they are able to say things the like of which seem never to have been said before.

411

Thus the best sign of originality lies in taking up a subject and then developing it so fully as to make every one confess that he would hardly have found so much in it.

412

There are many thoughts that come only from general culture, like buds from green branches. When roses bloom, you see them blooming everywhere.

413

Lucidity is a due distribution of light and shade.' _Hamann_.

414

A man who has no acquaintance with foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

415

We must remember that there are many men who, without being productive, are anxious to say something important, and the results are most curious.

416

Deep and earnest thinkers are in a difficult position with regard to the public.

417

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

418

An author can show no greater respect for his public than by never bringing it what it expects, but what he himself thinks right and proper in that stage of his own and others' culture in which for the time he finds himself.

419

The so-called Nature-poets are men of active talent, with a fresh stimulus and reaction from an over-cultured, stagnant, mannered epoch of art. They cannot avoid commonplace.

420

Productions are now possible which, without being bad, have no value.

They have no value, because they contain nothing; and they are not bad, because a general form of good-workmans.h.i.+p is present to the author's mind.

421

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

422

A romance is a subjective epic in which the author begs leave to treat the world after his own ideas. The only question is, whether he has any ideas; the rest will follow of itself.

423

Subjective or so-called sentimental poetry has now been admitted to an equality with objective and descriptive. This was inevitable; because otherwise the whole of modern poetry would have to be discarded. It is now obvious that when men of truly poetical genius appear, they will describe more of the particular feelings of the inner life than of the general facts of the great life of the world. This has already taken place to such a degree that we have a poetry without figures of speech, which can by no means be refused all praise.