Art and criticism. The magic hat

Forside
Jenson society. Printed for members only, 1903

Inni boken

Vanlige uttrykk og setninger

Populære avsnitt

Side 110 - O just, subtle, and all-conquering opium! that, to the hearts of rich and poor alike, for the wounds that •will never heal, and for the pangs of grief that "tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm — eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, pleadest effectually for relenting pity, and through one night's heavenly sleep callest back to the guilty...
Side 115 - I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point ; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race...
Side 117 - Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished...
Side 111 - ... bringest an assuaging balm ; — eloquent opium ! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, pleadest effectually for relenting pity, and through one night's heavenly sleep callest back to the guilty man the visions of his infancy, and hands washed pure from blood ; — O just and righteous opium ! that to the chancery of dreams summonest, for the triumphs of despairing innocence, false witnesses ; and confoundest perjury ; and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous...
Side 115 - I could sooner live with lunatics, with vermin, with crocodiles or snakes. All this, and much more than I can say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical...
Side 111 - ... upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles— beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos, and "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep...
Side 113 - With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
Side 50 - ... which makes us consider the world and its pageants as a glimpse of, a correspondence with, Heaven. The insatiable thirst for everything beyond, which life reveals, is the liveliest proof of our immortality. It is at once by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music that the soul...
Side 48 - Poetry, however little one descends into oneself, integrates one's soul, recalls one's memories of enthusiasm, has no object but itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of Poem as that which has been written solely for the pleasure of writing the poem.
Side 51 - ... the food of reason. For passion is natural, too natural not to introduce an offensive, discordant tone into the domain of pure beauty, too familiar and too violent not to scandalize the pure Desires, the gracious Melancholies and the noble Despairs which inhabit the supernatural regions of poetry.

Bibliografisk informasjon