,,portraits ,,and ,,speculations        
,,by ,,the ,,same ,,author        ,a    
,,history ,,of ,,storytelling3 ,,studies
 ,,in ,,the ,,development ,,of          
,,narrative4        #aiji      ,,edgar  
,,allan ,,poe3 ,a ,,critical ,,study4   
#aiaj      ,,the ,,hoofmarks ,,of ,,the 
,,faun4 #aiaa      ,,oscar ,,wilde3 ,a  
,,critical ,,study4 #aiab               
,,portraits      ,,and                  
,,speculations      ,,by      ,,arthur  
,,ransome      ,,macmillan ,,and ,,co41 
,,limited    ,,st4 ,,martin',s ,,street1
 ,,london    #aiac          ,copyright  
,,to      ,,john ,,masefield            
,,note      ,of the ,essays in this     
book1 8,art for ,life's ,sake0 appeared 
in ,the  ,english ,review2 8,the ,poetry
 of ,yone ,noguchi10#a 8,remy de        
,gourmont10  and 8,aloysius ,bertrand0  
in ,the ,fortnightly ,review2 8,kinetic 
and  ,potential ,speech10 in ,the       
,oxford and ,cambridge ,review4 ,the    
papers  on ,daudet and ,coppe were      
prefixed to collections of stories by   

these  writers3 ,i thank the publishers1
 ,messrs4 ,t4 ,c4 and ,e4 ,c4 ,jack1 for
  permission to reproduce them here4    
,,contents                              
,,page    ,,art ,,for ,,life',s ,,sake  
#a      ,,aloysius ,,bertrand           
#ce      ,,alphonse ,,daudet            
#eg      ,,the ,,retrospection ,,of     
,,fran,,ois ,,copp,e                    
#ga      ,,friedrich ,,nietzsche        
#hg      ,,walter ,,pater               
#abi      ,,remy ,,de ,,gourmont        
#afa      ,,the ,,poetry ,,of ,,yone    
,,noguchi                               
#ahg      ,,kinetic ,,and ,,potential   
,,speech                                
#bjg          ,,art ,,for ,,life',s     
,,sake          ,,art ,,for ,,life',s   
,,sake      ,it is not yet fifty years  
since one or two men of genius1 followed
  presently by a score of men of talent1
 noisier1 shriller in voice than        
themselves1 preached a theory of art new
 in this country1 shocking to  our      
prejudices at that time1 and imported   

from some ,french artists and  from a   
,german philosopher4 ,this was the      
doctrine of art for art's sake4         
,baudelaire had written3 8,poetry 444   
has no other end than itself2 it  can   
have no other1 and no poem will be so   
great1 so noble1 so truly  worthy of the
 name of a poem1 as that which has been 
written solely  for the pleasure of     
writing a poem40 ,whistler1 that        
butterfly of  letters1 who had borrowed 
his sting from the wasp1 directed it    
with gay  despair against the granite   
face of the ,british public4 ,rossetti  
and1  with certain qualifications1      
,pater1 illustrated the theory in their 
practice1 as ,whistler did also2 and    
,wilde1 a little later than they1       
remarked3 8,all art is quite useless10  
and 8,there is no such thing as a  moral
 or an immoral book4 ,books are well    
written or badly written4 ,that  is     
all40    ,with this doctrine of art for 
art's sake we are now dissatisfied4 ,we 
object to it1 not for the sake of       

8morality10 against which it was  partly
 directed1 nor yet for the sake of      
8nature10 but for the sake of  art1     
whose function it limits rather than    
glorifies4 ,we have seen the  school of 
art1 if we may speak of a school of art1
 that carried the  banner on which those
 words were inscribed1 tire and fall    
away as the  nineteenth century drew to 
its close1 until now the tattered       
banner1  with words almost illegible1 is
 carried only by a schoolboy who joined 
the procession late and marches on1     
unconscious that the parade is  over1   
that he is marching alone1 and that     
nobody is looking at him4  ,yet the     
demonstration was successful2 its       
promoters1 who stitched  the banner with
 gaiety1 hope1 and defiance1 themselves 
painted and  wrote fine things1 and men 
are working to-day whose work would have
  been impossible if1 in the course of  
its march1 that small1 daring           
procession had not walked seven times   
round a city of ,jericho and blown      

silver trumpets under its walls4        
,some battle-cries are no more than an  
irrelevant but inspiriting noise4  ,most
 of them1 however1 are related to       
something fought for1 7,st4 ,george  and
 ,merry ,england671 something that1 it  
is hoped1 will superintend  the fight   
7,god with us671 or something that is   
fought against 7,a bas  ,marat674 ,the  
knight who shouted1 8,two red roses     
across the moon0 on a  sultry day when--
       8444 the battle was scattered    
from hill to hill      ,from the        
windmill to the watermill40    may have 
been incomprehensible to his enemies1   
but was not  incomprehensible to        
himself1 and 8,art for ,art's sake60    
forty and fifty  years ago1 a           
surprising1 rather ridiculous phrase in 
the ears of the  early ,victorians who  
then survived1 was something very       
different for  the men who were fighting
 to destroy a petrified mental attitude 
towards art in general4 ,we must first  
understand what they fought  against    

before we have the right to speak of the
 meaning of their  battle-cry4    ,they 
fought1 primarily1 against a moral      
valuation of art4 ,they fought1         
secondly1 against 8nature0 444 against1 
that is to say1 a crude  conception of  
the relation between nature and art2    
against1 to put  that crude conception  
in its crudest form1 the supposition    
that he  who looked at a picture could  
find something in the external world1   
by its resemblance to which the picture 
should be judged4 ,it would  be a       
fascinating task to show that the too   
faithful imitation of  external things  
is an impediment to the highest         
functions of art1 and1  on the other    
hand1 that imitation in some kind1 in   
some degree1 is  an essential part of   
that function4 ,but ,i do not wish to be
 tempted  into discussion of the true   
relation between art and nature1 though 
a  solution of that problem will1       
perhaps1 suggest itself to those who    
read this paper to its end4 ,i am here  

chiefly interested in art's  relation to
 ourselves4 ,nature for the moment is   
outside the discussion1  though1 in     
justice to the artists for art's sake1  
,i must point out  that their revolt was
 not against 8morality0 alone4 ,when we 
hear  ,wilde's gay proclamation that    
8,life imitates ,art far more than ,art 
imitates ,life10 we must take care to   
hear also1 from ,whistler1 more         
serious1 that 8,nature contains the     
elements1 in colour and form1 of all    
pictures1 as the keyboard contains the  
notes of all music10 and that  the      
artist 8in all that is dainty and       
lovable 444 finds hints for his  own    
combinations1 and thus is ,nature ever  
his resource and always at  his service1
 and to him is nought refused40 ,we must
 not imagine that  the revolt was merely
 playful4    ,against 8nature0 and      
against 8morality40 ,in an age when the 
painter of  8,derby ,day0 assisted      
,ruskin by saying that he could not 8see
 anything  of the true representation of

 water and atmosphere in the painting of
  8,battersea ,bridge10 they upheld the 
superiority of art to 8nature40  ,in an 
age when ,dickens was praised for his   
reforms of the workhouse  and blamed for
 his love of low life1 when novelists   
were judged by the  deeds1 no1 by the   
manners of the persons of their fiction1
 when poets  were judged by their       
private lives1 they protested the       
irrelevance  of all such things to the  
question at issue1 which was the        
goodness  or badness of the work of art 
to be judged4 ,we must not blame their  
formula1 but the ideas against which it 
was directed1 for the bad  manners1 the 
morality that they hoped would be       
regarded as immorality1  for the        
unpublishable private lives1 that were  
the excesses after  victory4 ,we may1   
perhaps1 smile as we observe how        
accurately they  balance those other    
excesses against which they were a      
reaction4    ,the question1 no longer   
how to conquer1 became how to use the   

victory1  and we had the common         
spectacle of veterans and retired       
camp-followers  trying to live up to the
 battle-cry of their youth1 and1 unable 
to  free themselves from the habit of   
their excesses1 committing these        
excesses with less and less gusto and   
more and more skill4 ,but skill1  even  
so acquired1 is not valueless4 ,the     
battle-cry1 after opening a  primrose   
path to charlatans1 after turning       
8morality0 into 8immorality0  as a      
spectre ruling over art1 remained the   
stimulus to an improved  technique1 a   
scrupulousness1 an economy of effect1 a 
delicacy in  the handling of material1 a
 care for melody and counterpoint1 an   
intolerance of careless workmanship1 for
 which for a long time it will  be our  
privilege to be grateful4    ,art1      
however1 cannot live by perfection of   
technique alone1 nor yet by  the        
repetition of remembered excesses4 ,a   
new generation of artists1  working in a
 new environment1 inspired by new aims1 

and threatened  by new dangers1 requires
 a new formula1 or a restatement of the 
old4  ,these artists of our own         
generation look at the faded banner with
 the  remains of reverence1 or1 in their
 dislike of the mistakes it made        
possible1 with a suspicion of contempt4 
,in the turbulence of valuations  in    
this century1 in the different1 sharply 
defined attitudes of men  on such       
questions as property1 labour1 capital1 
the position of women  in the ,state1   
marriage1 education1 or the ,church1    
they see a herd of  conflicting         
moralities4 ,involved in one or other of
 these conflicts1  perhaps in many of   
them1 they cannot but believe1 suspect1 
or hope that  art also must speak for or
 against1 as tribune or as patrician1 as
  ,churchman or as secularist1 and1 if  
the conflict be important to them1  the 
excellence of an artist must seem to be 
determined1 at least in  part1 by the   
views that he expresses4 ,how then can  
art 8have nothing to  do with morality08

 ,they are1 however1 sufficiently       
critical to see that  it is possible    
that a work of art may be good for a    
democrat1 bad for  an aristocrat1 and   
yet1 somehow1 good in itself4 ,was there
 something in  8,art for ,art's sake0   
after all8    ,of the men whose names ,i
 mentioned in the first paragraph of    
this essay  one had founded his views on
 those of a philosopher1 and so1        
whatever  may be his rank among those   
dogmatists1 we are able to examine the  
background of reasoning on which he saw 
his own dogmatic statements4 ,it  is in 
that reasoning1 and not in the cheerful 
taunts of the battlefield  that we are  
likely to learn how it was that the     
formula of 8,art for  ,art's sake0      
seemed to be justified1 and how it is   
that the formula is  fundamentally      
inadequate4 ,baudelaire's proclamation1 
,pater's practice1  ,whistler's         
blue-feathered1 silver-tipped darts     
point us to no analysis4  ,the analysis 
that made ,wilde's paradoxes possible is

 open to our view  in the pages of      
,kant4    ,now ,kant said that what was 
called beautiful was the object of a    
delight apart from any interest1 and    
showed that charm1 or intimate          
reference to our own circumstances or   
possible circumstances1 so far  from    
being a criterion of beauty1 was a      
disturbing influence upon our  judgment4
 ,upon our judgment of what8 ,the       
beautiful4 ,how many crimes  has that   
word committed1 how many discussions it 
has obscured1 how  many it has closed at
 the very moment of their fertility4    
,not the  least of its knaveries has    
been this substitution of a condition of
  art for the function of art1 which1 as
 ,i hope to show1 is life itself4  ,a   
work of art suggests the achievement of 
the beautiful4 ,that may be  its        
immediate object4 ,it is not its        
ultimate object4 ,it may be an          
essential condition4 ,it is not a       
function4 ,art for art's sake means the 
substitution of condition for function1 

and1 as the beautiful can never  be a   
function of anything1 the implicit      
denial that art has a function  at all4 
8,all art is quite useless40    ,but    
that is not what we believe4 ,and the   
reason why the theorists of  art for    
art's sake were both right and wrong was
 that they did not want  art for the    
sake of anything irrelevant to the      
artistic phenomenon1 but  were a little 
ungenerous in their interpretation of   
that phenomenon4  ,they saw that        
moralities1 private lives1 reforms1     
interests1 had  nothing to do with the  
attempted achievement of the condition  
of the  beautiful1 but1 having seen     
that1 forgot1 in their hurry for battle1
  that the work of art persists beyond  
this achievement or attempted           
achievement2 forgot that1 will he nill  
he1 the artist's work cannot  but bear  
the impress of his personality1 and     
forgot that through that  fact all the  
things they wished to rule out of the   
discussion had their  rightful place in 

it4    ,the question is1 what is their  
rightful place8 ,and to answer it we    
must  first satisfy ourselves as to the 
nature of the artistic phenomenon4    ,a
 work of art is a collaboration between 
two artists1 whom1 for  purposes of     
reference1 ,i shall call the speaker and
 the listener4 ,but1  before it is a    
collaboration1 a re-creation1 in which  
form we commonly  know it1 it is an     
independent act performed by the speaker
 alone4 ,he1  as first creator1 isolates
 some from the flux of impressions in   
which  he lives4 ,it is as if he were to
 arrest that flux1 and momentarily to   
stop its flow4 ,he holds back the sun   
and the moon in their courses1  and1 for
 a moment1 the world stands motionless  
before him1 embodied in  the dominating 
impressions given him by a single moment
 of its and his  existence4 ,this one   
moment he disentangles from all others2 
the world1  the universe1 at that       
moment1 for him1 he fashions into a     
memory1  clearer than life1 and owing   

its clarity to his refusal to allow it  
to  have a before or an after1 an above 
or a below1 other than those which      
itself implies4 ,he isolates that moment
 with its implications4 ,the  resulting 
clarity is as if he had suddenly stopped
 the cross-currents  of a stream1 and   
the stream1 losing the opaqueness of its
 tangled  motion1 had become crystal4   
,he isolates that moment by surrounding 
it with his own consciousness1 while    
other moments fly past taking  with them
 shreds of that tattered veil1 no       
more4444 ,there is a choice  of moments1
 and because the choice is not          
reasonable1 but determined  by the      
moment itself1 the speaker feels himself
 inspired4 ,that which  attracts him1   
seduces him1 compels him to catch it as 
it passes and  hold it fast1 instead of 
letting it break free and join the      
myriad  others with their worthless     
trophies of incomplete comprehension1 is
  a moment whose impressions present    
themselves as melody1 gesture1  words1  

shape1 or ordered colour1 or the promise
 of such4 ,two bars  are heard as it    
goes by1 a significant arm swings out of
 the flood1 a  jumble of words1 like    
those of a sleeper1 startle his mind1   
the ghost  of an unpainted picture wakes
 his eyes4444 ,these things are pledges4
  ,he seizes them and1 warily1 lest he  
lose them1 listens for the rest  of the 
melody1 watchfully draws out of the     
flood the figure whose  gesture had     
seemed to be the moment itself1 pieces  
the brittle words  together1 and shapes 
the picture in his brain4 ,he allows the
 moment  to redeem the pledge it has    
given1 his care being not to impede it  
by  forestalling its further appearance 
with something contradictory to  the    
original fragment1 something that the   
character of that fragment  has not     
determined4 ,he seeks only to be true to
 the original promise1  and the good    
artist is known by the fact that it is  
impossible to tell  with what he began1 
the bad artist by the fragment he has   

surrounded  with baser metal that does  
not ring with its note1 or the phantom  
whose  vitality he has blurred by       
clothing it with flesh uninformed by its
  peculiar vitality4    ,the process of 
the speaker in the first creation of a  
work of art is  a process of finding    
out4 ,he is engaged in knowing the      
uttermost  implications of the fragment 
of impression caught by him from the    
flux  of unconscious or semi-conscious  
life4 ,he is making the whole of that   
impression his own by his profound1 his 
complete consciousness of it4  ,that is 
why the artist can never understand     
those people1 not artists1  who ask him 
how he can prefer art to life2 imitation
 to the real thing4  ,he cannot believe 
that such people mean what they say4 ,in
 his humility  he assumes that they too 
have the modesty to admit to themselves 
that  their life is unconscious1 or     
semi-conscious1 and he believes that    
this  process of knowing1 of becoming   
conscious1 is the intensest form of     

living that there is4    ,then1 when the
 work of art is as we know it1 we1 the  
listener1  collaborate with that other  
artist1 the speaker1 and from what he   
has  said1 in stone1 music1 paint or    
words1 try to reconstruct the fragment  
of life that he has made his own and to 
share his consciousness of  it4         
,accurately speaking1 this is           
impossible4 ,we become conscious of a   
moment of life different from his4 ,we  
cannot give his words the precise       
atmosphere they had for him1 we cannot  
see with exactly his eyes1 or  hear with
 his ears1 we are without his private   
and individual memory4  ,we can but be  
inaccurate translators4 ,we can1        
however1 perceive1  uncertainly1 that he
 has been successful himself in allowing
 a moment  of life to redeem the pledge 
it had given him1 that his work does not
  contradict itself1 and so is true to  
the original inspiration bedded  in it  
or clothed by it4 ,and this perception  
suggests to us that1 if it  were        

possible1 we should find1 certainly1    
what we already believe1 that  his share
 in the collaboration is perfect4 ,we   
then say that a work of  art is         
beautiful2 the wistfulness with which we
 sometimes say it1 the  tears that      
sometimes dim our eyes as we close a    
book or turn from a  picture that we    
believe to be beautiful1 and the sadness
 that has often  been associated with   
the name of beauty1 are due to the      
half-conscious  knowledge that our share
 in the collaboration is imperfect1     
since we  can never stand exactly where 
he stood4    ,our judgment of the       
beautiful then depends on our belief    
that1 were  certain unalterable facts   
altered in the constitution of the      
universe  and of ourselves1 we should be
 sharing a perfect expression1 an       
expression1 that is to say1 in perfect  
unity with itself4 ,art then for  art's 
sake1 perfection of expression first4   
,but what is this expression  in perfect
 unity with itself1 but a moment of     

conscious living1  isolated from all    
else1 lifted from the unconscious flux  
and given  us--to live8    ,let us      
rewrite the half-obliterated formula4   
,let us write it now3 ,art  for ,life's 
sake1 and raise a party cry from its    
momentary usefulness  into a proud      
suggestion of the noble function of art4
 ,this function is  not merely to teach 
us how to act1 as was supposed by the   
old critics1  who recommended ,homer for
 the heroism of his heroes1 though1 as  
we  shall see1 they were not wholly     
wrong1 nor yet merely to teach us  how  
to order our lives1 though it may do    
that by suggestion4 ,art is  itself     
life4 ,its function is to increase our  
consciousness of life1  to make us more 
than wise or sensitive1 to transform us 
from beings  overwhelmed by the powerful
 stream of unconscious living to beings 
dominating that stream1 to change us    
from objects acted upon by life  to     
joyful collaborators in that reaction4  
,by its means we become  conscious      

gainers by life's procreative activity4 
,no longer hiding  our faces from that  
muddied storm that sweeps irresistibly  
from the  future to the past1 a medley  
of confused figures1 a babel of cries of
  joy1 of laughter1 of sorrow1 of pain1 
by its means we lift our heads1  and1   
learning from the isolation of moments  
in eternity1 to imagine  the isolation  
of all such moments1 we conquer that    
storm1 and accept  pain1 joy1 laughter  
or sorrow1 with equal gratitude1 in our 
continually  realised desire to feel    
ourselves alive4    ,let us examine from
 this point of view the fundamental     
quarrel between  the theorists of 8,art 
for ,art's sake0 and the moralists4     
,what are their  respective beliefs8    
,the ,moralist4--,the noblest end of    
being is to be good4 ,all human         
activities must serve this end or be    
pernicious4 ,art1 the most  eloquent1   
the most powerful of pleaders1 cannot1  
without violating the  trust that       
humanity puts in her1 turn devil's      

advocate4 ,let the artist  be as skilful
 an artist as he can1 but let him make a
 right use of his  excellence4 ,in peace
 we ask no more of a good shot than that
 he hit  the bull's eye of a target4    
,but we live in times of war between the
  hosts of good and of evil4 ,the fight 
is to the death1 and we admire the  good
 shot if he fire from among the ranks of
 angels1 and fear him if we  see that   
his skill is at the service of our      
opponents1 who in age-long  battle have 
shown themselves merciless and strong4  
,the ,artist for ,art's sake4--,morality
 in art is an accident of no            
importance4 ,we hear the battle of which
 you speak1 but do not take  part in it1
 though we listen sometimes to the music
 of its trumpets  far away1 and see the 
red glow it throws up to the sky4 ,but  
morality  concerns our circumstances or 
possible circumstances1 and so has      
nothing to do with the beautiful1 which 
is art's sole concern4 ,a work  of art  
that declares its sympathy with one or  

other party to your  battle is one whose
 creator has looked aside to ends other 
than beauty4  ,it is therefore a failure
 as a work of art4 ,art must not be     
limited to  edifying subjects4 ,there is
 nothing that may not become beautiful  
in  the hands of an artist4 ,church and 
lupanar1 angel and courtesan1 are of    
equal value in his eyes4 ,they are      
material1 no more1 and he will not      
tolerate that morality should hamper him
 by dictating the choice or  use of his 
material4 ,a work of art is independent 
of morality4    ,to these two we reply1 
believing that art is for life's        
sake4--,when  a man tells you that his  
work of art has nothing to do with      
morality1  ask him1 ,with whose morality
 has it nothing to do8 ,he will be      
compelled  to admit that the morality of
 which he is thinking is the morality he
  attributes to somebody else4 ,morality
 is a code of values1 differing in  each
 individual1 and dictated to each       
individual by his character and  his    

environment4 ,no artist1 no human being1
 escapes morality1 and the  code of     
values that is his will be one of the   
determining influences  on an artist's  
vision of life4 ,if1 perchance1 he is so
 uncritical as  to believe that he has  
nothing to do with morality1 that belief
 will  itself share in giving his work a
 moral value4 ,there is no escape  from 
morality in art4 ,if1 therefore1 we     
choose to consider ourselves  as one of 
a band of people whose moralities are   
more or less similar1  and to regard    
their average morality1 their average   
code of values as  important1 we shall  
be perfectly justified in judging art by
 what we  suppose to be its effect on   
that average morality4 ,but we must not 
forget that we are then regarding       
artists as a regiment from which we  are
 engaged in picking out the traitors and
 the loyalists--and that it  is a       
regiment whose immediate business is not
 war1 a regiment which  does not know   
that it is enlisted4    ,let us now     

consider the nature of the moral        
influence which the speaker  exerts upon
 the listener4 ,it will not be          
surprising if we find that it  has a    
direct bearing upon the point under     
discussion4    ,the artist whose act of 
conscious living is the work of art     
cannot  alter his personality without   
disloyalty to the moment of life that   
under his hands is simultaneously       
becoming conscious and becoming         
expression4 ,his personality1 and with  
it his morality1 is already  involved2  
any dishonesty blurs his vision1 and the
 crystal whose  increasing clarity was  
his delight becomes for ever opaque4    
,here and  nowhere else must we find the
 origin of the artist's distrust of     
morality4 ,he means by it not           
8morality10 but any morality other than 
his own at the time of artistic creation
 or knowing4 ,a work of art  is always  
the expression of a morality1 the       
morality of its creator  at the moment  
when he began its creation1 a morality  

that has ceased  to exist1 since its    
creator has been changed to a greater or
 less  degree by the very fact of its   
creation4 ,returning to our metaphor  of
 speaker and listener1 we may say that  
the listener1 who tries as  nearly as   
possible to share the moment of         
conscious life that was the  speaker's1 
to stand where he stood1 and think what 
he thought1 does1 in  contemplation of  
the work of art1 share to some extent in
 the morality1  that momentary morality 
we have described1 of another man4      
,besides this fundamental morality of a 
work of art1 it may hold other          
moralities which are also not without   
their influence4 ,codes of values  may  
themselves be the material of artistic  
creation4 ,a code of values  foreign to 
the speaker may enter into the moment of
 conscious life  that is his work of    
art4 ,plato and ,socrates were different
 men with  different moralities4 ,the   
,socrates of ,plato's ,dialogues1       
however  ,platonized1 is not ,plato1    

and1 as well as the fundamental morality
 of  those dialogues1 the morality of   
those speeches which are supposed  to be
 ,socratic has its separate influence   
upon us4 ,anatole ,france  plays with   
the ,abb ,jrme ,coignard1 and with      
,jacques ,tournebroche1  and beside the 
morality of ,la ,rtisserie de la ,reine 
,pdauque we are  offered these other    
moralities included in it and ruled by  
it4    ,there would seem to be little   
else but morality in art1 and its       
influence would seem to be so largely as
 to be almost exclusively  moral4 ,but  
observe what actually happens4 ,have you
 not noticed1  in reading a book1 that  
you insensibly pick out and offer to    
your  digestion those of the accidental 
moralities in it that seem to be        
cousins of your own4 ,you linger over   
the sayings of ,coignard1 if  you feel  
that in some mood or other you could    
have said them4 ,you  accept with       
gratitude the follies1 the humours of   
,m4 ,bergeret1 if  you recognise in him 

a kinship1 however distant1 with        
yourself4 ,in  listening to a play you  
side1 at least in simpler moods1 with   
the  character whose code of values     
approximates to that by which you are   
in the habit of weighing your actions   
and those of others4 ,these minor       
judgments are independent of your       
judgment of the work of art1 though     
here too a similar instinct bids you    
prefer those artists in whom you        
recognise1 let us say1 the full         
development of some one possibility     
that your personality contains4 ,and1   
since our temperament thus picks  and   
chooses among the moralities that art   
offers1 because it is like  ,paracelsus'
 alchemist1 situate in the stomach of   
man1 digesting the  food that is good   
for him and rejecting the poison1 art   
does not so  much alter our morality as 
increase our consciousness of it4 ,it is
  an individualising influence on       
morality1 essentially hostile to the    
averaging of codes of values4 ,it seeks 

uniqueness1 not uniformity1 and  so does
 not so much spread moralities abroad as
 cherish and grow to  their full        
strength the moralities it finds among  
its listeners4 ,in  this sentence the   
moralists and the artists for art's sake
 come to an  understanding4    ,leaving 
now the question of its moral influence1
 let me give an  example1 of the        
simplest nature1 to show what ,i mean by
 the conscious  living that is art4 ,i  
find one in the following exquisite     
poem1 8,the  ,happy ,child10 by ,william
 ,davies3       8,i saw this day sweet  
flowers grow thick1      ,but not one   
like the child did pick4        ,i heard
 the pack-hounds in green park1         
,but not one like the child heard bark4 
,i heard this day bird after bird1      
,but not one like the child has heard4  
,a hundred butterflies saw ,i1      ,but
 not one like the child saw fly4        
,i saw the horses roll in grass1        
,but no horse like the child saw pass4  
,my world this day has lovely been1     

,but not like what the child has seen40 
,rossetti believed that 8,poetry should 
seem to the hearer to have  been always 
present to his thought1 but never before
 heard10 and  the statement that this   
has been accomplished 7so just1         
sometimes1  is popular instinct7 is the 
commonest praise accorded to individual 
works of art4 ,many of ,mr4 ,davies'    
readers must have said1 rightly1  but1  
critically speaking1 with imperfect     
accuracy1 8,now that expresses  what ,i 
have always felt40 ,they should have    
said1 8,that enables me  to feel what ,i
 always could have felt40 ,for they have
 never truly  felt it4 ,that wistful1   
regretful moment1 now articulate1 was   
carried  unhappily past them in the     
general flux of incompletely conscious  
life4 ,they suspected a possibility of  
feeling something1 of knowing  what they
 dimly felt1 but it eluded them in the  
tangled currents of  the stream1 and    
they did not detain it1 know it1 and    
make it part  of themselves4 ,mr4       

,davies has not so allowed it to escape2
 he warily  netted it in his            
consciousness1 learnt it accurately and 
fully1 and  wrote that poem1 thus       
isolating it for ever from              
unconsciousness4 ,and  we1 reading those
 words1 collaborate with him in the     
re-creation of  the work of art for     
whose notation they serve1 and1 with our
 memories  behind us1 not his1 ourselves
 win out of the river of unconsciousness
  such a moment1 different a little from
 his1 our own1 filled delicately  with  
our vitality1 and giving us1 for the    
vitality we have given it1  an increased
 consciousness of the life that is in   
ourselves4 ,the  conscious life of art  
does not imply what is known with       
contempt as  self-consciousness1 which  
means a hampering inability to forget   
not  self but other people's eyes4 ,it  
implies a new reading of the ,delphic   
command1  4 ,it does not mean ,know thy 
opinions only1 nor  yet1 ,know what are 
thy desires1 but ,know thy life1 not thy

 biography  but thy living1 thine       
innumerable acts of life4    ,i took my 
example from a short poem of extreme    
simplicity1 and1 as ,i  have again and  
again in this essay spoken of 8moments0 
of conscious  life1 a scrupulous reader 
might well conclude that ,i concerned   
myself  only with what is commonly known
 as lyrical art1 or that ,i should      
presently offer a proof of ,croce's     
theory that all art is essentially      
lyrical4 ,i agree with ,croce1 and      
perhaps go further than he in           
believing1 for reasons with which ,i    
will not burden this discussion1  that  
all lyricism in art is dramatic1 in that
 it involves a dramatic  conception of  
himself by the author4 ,his care is1    
that his creation  shall be wholly      
determined by one moment1 not by a      
series1 and for  this reason1 he is     
compelled as he works to refer          
continually to  himself as he was at    
that moment4 ,for if a work of art were 
to be  representative of more than one  

moment1 it would be representative  of  
more than one man4 ,it would not be     
homogeneous1 and could not be           
beautiful4 ,this applies not only to a  
song or a picture1 but to those  works  
of art which are in appearance the most 
elaborate1 the least  uniform1 the least
 determined by a single moment4 ,a play1
 whose reading  or performance may      
occupy hours1 during which a number of  
characters  whom we accept provisionally
 as human1 as separate entities1 live   
imaginary lives before us1 is1 no less  
than a song1 the result of  becoming    
completely conscious of a single moment4
 ,the duration of the  reading is in no 
way affected by the duration of the     
moment of life  that set the author     
playing with his marionettes4 ,a moment 
of life such  as would1 for a poet1     
become articulate in a song1 may require
 from a  playwright that he represent it
 to himself in persons talking1 a clash 
of personalities1 a breaking of         
personalities by destiny1 a series  of  

events explicable within itself1 not    
resembling any one moment of  his life1 
but in their totality representing his  
means of knowing a  moment1 and the     
means he offers us whereby1 as nearly as
 we may1 we  shall share that knowing4  
,when a play is not the artist's        
learning a  moment of his own life1 it  
is mere scaffolding1 resembling a       
building  at dusk1 or at a sudden first 
sight1 but presently found out to be    
empty and fraudulent1 when with contempt
 we leave it to oblivion4  ,passage of  
time1 intricacy of construction1        
apparent multiplicity of  imagined lives
 do not affect the question4    ,john   
,masefield did not by a sudden effort of
 genius conceive 8,nan10  scenes1       
persons1 and dialogue in a moment4 ,one 
moment1 however1  determined its        
conception1 and implied all that is in  
the play4 ,let me1  with deference1     
suggest what may have happened4 ,he     
heard a story that  affected him with a 
mixture of emotions4 ,if he had not been

 an artist1  he would probably have done
 no more than repeat the story to others
 as  it was told to him1 and wonder idly
 if it produced the same mixture of     
emotions in them4 ,instead1 he lingered 
with it1 and let the unconscious  flux  
flow on unobserved while he brooded over
 this one emotional  moment1 becoming   
more and more clearly conscious of the  
emotions it  contained as they1 in the  
formative processes of his mind1 came to
 be  represented by persons and actions 
and words4 ,his mind was not making  but
 discovering1 following the implications
 of the original emotional  moment1     
careful only to be true to that1 and    
rejecting proffered  representations    
solely on account of their inaccuracy4  
,his skill was  shown only in so dealing
 with the flood of representations that 
no  one particle of it should contradict
 another1 should hamper the full        
realisation of that moment4 ,his        
greatness was shown in the profundity   
with which he realised that moment1 and 

the depth to which he could  follow its 
implications4    ,therein1 by the way1  
is suggested the criterion of greatness 
that is  contained in the doctrine that 
art is for life's sake4 ,the theory of  
art for art's sake left its holders at a
 loss before the question 8,is  no man  
greater than another1 if his works are  
beautiful1 if he is an  equally skilful 
artist80 ,they knew that he was1 but    
their theory could  not tell them why1  
and they had to take refuge in cynicism4
 ,the theory  of art for 8morality's0   
sake was no more satisfying4 ,it        
suggested that  the greatest artist was 
he who preached the most good1 and so   
left its  holders in speechless         
difficulty before a comparison of       
,rossetti and  ,dr4 ,watts4 ,the theory 
of art for life's sake has a clear      
answer1 and  offers a valid test4 ,that 
man is the greatest artist who makes us 
the  most profoundly conscious of life4 
,shakespeare is set above ,herrick1  who
 was a better technician1 and ,leonardo 

above ,murillo1 who painted  more       
devotional subjects1 on grounds with    
which men1 neither as  artists nor as   
moralists1 need quarrel4    ,art for    
,art's sake was a battle-cry1 and1 to   
understand it1 we had  to understand    
what those who used it fought4 ,art for 
,life's sake is  also a battle-cry1     
though it includes in those four words a
 suggestion  not only of the function of
 art but of its nature4 ,let us review  
the  enemies we attack with those words 
upon our lips4 ,what do we fight        
against8 ,what are the misunderstandings
 which in our time encourage the        
production of false1 of secondary art1  
and obscure the excellence of  the      
finest8    ,we fight first against a    
political valuation of art1 that        
imagines  poetry1 pictures and music as 
auxiliaries in the reconstruction or    
conservation of the state1 and judges   
them by their efficiency as  political  
pamphlets4    ,we fight secondly against
 an educational valuation of art1 that  

judges  works of art by the accuracy of 
the facts they happen to embody1 the    
accuracy of the pictures they paint of  
this or that form of life1 the          
clearness with which they illustrate    
generalisations4    ,we fight thirdly   
against the valuation of art by its     
technical skill1  by the beauty that is 
a universal condition of its being4     
,these things  cannot afford a scale of 
comparison for works of art1 but only a 
guarantee that they are worthy of       
judgment4 ,we should not fight against  
this valuation if it showed itself in   
practice capable of so useful an        
office4 ,it is1 however1 not            
sufficiently selective1 but allows      
itself  to be tricked by things built in
 imitation of perfect building1 things  
whose form is not identical with their  
content1 things which manifest  more    
skill than vitality4 ,this1 our old     
ally1 since it made our battle          
possible1 is now our subtlest enemy4    
,our battle is far from being easy1 for 

we fight not to kill but to  make       
captive1 and it is easier and safer to  
fight to kill4 ,we fight  not to destroy
 those valuations1 but to destroy their 
pre-eminence4  ,recognising 7#a7 that a 
work of art has a political1 comparable 
to its  moral1 influence1 7#b7 that it  
always embodies knowledge1 7#c7 that it 
is nothing if it does not wake in us the
 feeling that we are near the           
achievement of the beautiful1 we wish to
 deny none of these facts1  but to      
prevent any one of them from being taken
 as the foundation  of a criterion of   
art4 ,we wish to set over them a        
criterion of art  that shall include    
them all4 ,above technique1 above       
opinion1 above  information1 we set     
life1 of the special kind that is here  
described1  whose conscious vitality is 
to unconscious vitality what living is  
to  existence4    ,what1 then1 do we ask
 ourselves after experiencing a work of 
art4    ,we ask one thing only1 though1 
perhaps1 in many forms3 ,has it given   

us an increased consciousness of life1  
or has it merely had in view  one or    
other of those valuations whose supreme 
authority we reject8  ,is its title to  
the name of art merely that it is an    
illustration of  a doctrine that has    
elbowed out the doctrine it illustrates1
 merely  that it gives us a clear idea  
how some people live1 merely that it    
has a skin-deep appearance of unity8 ,or
 is it a piece of conscious  life1      
separated watchfully from the flux of   
living1 a piece of  knowing carried out 
by the artist1 which we are allowed to  
share8  ,does it give us a new          
possession by making us aware of        
something we  possess4 ,we do not ask an
 artist for opinions1 for facts1 for    
skill1  alone4 ,we have the right to ask
 for more4 ,we ask him for ourselves2   
we ask him for life4 8,poetry enriches  
the blood of the world0 by the  practice
 it affords of living consciously4 ,vain
 learning1 opinion1  skill1 impoverish  
it4 ,we ask from an artist opportunities

 of conscious  living1 which1 taken as  
they come1 multiply the possibilities of
 their  recurrence1 turn us into        
artists1 and help us to contract the    
habit of  being alive4      #aiab4      
,,aloysius ,,bertrand3    ,a ,,romantic 
,,of #ahcj            ,,aloysius        
,,bertrand3    ,a ,,romantic ,,of #ahcj 
,in the preface to ,petits ,pomes en    
,prose1 ,baudelaire makes respectful    
reference to a little-known book3 8,j'ai
 une petite confession  vous  faire4    
,c'est en feuilletant pour la vingtime  
fois au moins1 le fameux  ,gaspard de la
 ,nuit1 d',aloysius ,bertrand 7un livre 
connu de vous1 de  moi et de            
quelques-uns de nos amis1 n'a-t-il pas  
tous les droits   tre appel fameux871   
que l'ide m'est venue de tenter quelque 
chose  d'analogue1 et d'appliquer  la   
description de la vie moderne1 ou       
plutot d'une vie moderne et plus        
abstraite1 le procd qu'il avait  appliqu
  la peinture de la vie ancienne1 si    
trangement pittoresque40  ,he speaks of 

,bertrand as 8mon mystrieux et brillant 
modle10 though1  remembering the        
teaching of ,poe1 he adds that he is    
ashamed to have  made something so      
different from ,gaspard de la ,nuit1    
since he holds  that the highest honour 
of a poet is to accomplish exactly what 
he  set out to perform4 ,a writer who   
wrote prose poems good enough to be     
read 8twenty times at least0 by         
,baudelaire1 good enough to suggest an  
imitation1 a writer but for whom the    
,petits ,pomes en ,prose would not  have
 been written1 or would have been       
written differently1 is more than  a    
literary curiosity4 ,i was led to       
examine his book1 and1 presently1 to    
find an interest in the man himself as  
well as in his accomplishment4  ,m4     
,anatole ,france was good enough to     
direct me in my search for  information4
 ,my friend1 ,m4 ,champion1 of the ,quai
 ,malaquais1 generously  put his        
bibliographical knowledge at my         
disposal4 ,the files of  forgotten      

magazines and newspapers and essays by  
,sainte-,beuve1 ,charles  ,asselineau1  
and ,m4 ,leon ,sch combined to build in 
my mind a portrait  of this picturesque 
and luckless ,romantic1 a portrait      
blistered here  and there1 obliterated  
in patches1 but not without vitality4   
99       99       99       99       99  
,louis-,jacques-,napoleon ,bertrand1 who
 took the name of ,ludovic and later    
preferred that of ,aloysius1 was born on
 ,april #bj1 #ahjg1 at ,cva1 in         
,piedmont4 ,hugo was born in #ahjb1 and 
,gautier in #ahaa4 ,he was a child  of  
that old grey-haired army of which      
,musset speaks in the ,confession  d'un 
,enfant du ,sicle4 ,his mother was an   
,italian1 his father a  ,frenchman of   
,lorraine1 an old soldier described by  
his son1 in a fiery  letter to a        
newspaper which had insulted him1 as    
8only a patriot of  #aghi1 only an      
officer of fortune1 who at eighteen     
rushed to pour out  his blood on the    
banks of the ,rhine1 and1 at fifty1     

counted thirty  years of service1 nine  
campaigns1 and six wounds40 ,at the age 
of seven  the young ,bertrand was       
brought to ,france4 ,he grew up at      
,dijon1 learned  in youth of the great  
things that were being done in ,paris1  
and read  ,hugo1 ,nodier1 ,hoffmann1 and
 ,scott1 all of whom helped him to turn 
the  modern ,dijon into a medival city  
of dreams4    ,early in #ahbh1 a few    
young men of ,dijon founded a newspaper1
 ,le  ,provincial1 to be a mouthpiece   
for their enlightened generation4 ,it   
endured for a few months1 and ,bertrand 
contributed prose and verse to  it1     
including a first draft of a prose poem 
that1 in a much altered  form1 was      
printed in ,gaspard de la ,nuit4 ,the   
paper was not unnoticed  in ,paris1 and 
when it died and ,bertrand left ,dijon  
for the capital1 he  found some doors   
already open to him4 ,he was twenty-one1
 penniless1  with rolls of manuscript in
 his pocket1 and a shy eagerness to read
  aloud from them4    ,two portraits of 

him remain1 one by ,sainte-,beuve and   
the other by  ,victor ,pavie4           
,sainte-,beuve describes him as 8444 a  
tall1 thin young  man of twenty-one1    
with a yellow and brown complexion1 very
 lively  little black eyes1 a face      
mocking and sharp without doubt1 rather 
wretched perhaps1 and a long1 silent    
laugh4 ,he seemed timid1 or rather      
uncivilised44440    ,victor ,pavie says3
 8,his awkward walk1 his incorrect and  
unsophisticated  costume1 his lack of   
balance and of aplomb1 betrayed that he 
had newly  escaped from the provinces4  
,one divined the poet in the            
ill-restrained  fire of his timid and   
wandering eyes4 ,as for the expression  
of his  face1 a lofty taste for beauty  
was combined in it with a somewhat      
uncivilised taciturnity44440    ,beside 
these pictures let me print ,bertrand's 
portrait of the imaginary  ,gaspard de  
la ,nuit3 8,a poor devil whose exterior 
announced nothing but  poverty and      
suffering4 ,i had already noticed in the

 garden his frayed  overcoat1 buttoned  
to the chin1 his shapeless hat that     
never brush had  brushed1 his hair long 
as a weeping-willow1 combed like a      
thicket1 his  fleshless hands like      
ossuaries1 his mocking1 wretched1 and   
sickly face2  and my conjectures had    
charitably placed him among those       
itinerant  artists1 violin-players and  
portrait-painters1 whom an insatiable   
hunger and an unquenchable thirst       
condemn to travel the world in the      
footsteps of the ,wandering ,jew44440   
,it is different from the portraits  of 
himself1 but not more different than    
would be such a ,germanicised           
caricature as might have been made by   
,hoffmann4    ,bertrand's life in ,paris
 was hidden from the celebrated men whom
 he  met at ,nodier's evening receptions
 and in ,sainte-,beuve's study4 ,he     
showed himself for a moment1 recited    
some of his verses 8d'une voix          
sautillante10 and disappeared4 ,he had  
no money1 and probably suffered  from   

that lack of confidence which can only  
be removed by a banking  account4       
,sainte-,beuve1 who saw him two or three
 times and gave him a  copy of the      
,consolations1 with the inscription     
8,mon ami ,bertrand10  speaks of him    
threading lonely streets with the air of
 ,pierre  ,gringoire1 the out-at-elbows 
poet of ,notre ,dame de ,paris4 ,he     
paints  what must be an imaginary       
portrait of the young and penniless     
genius  leaning on the window-sill of   
his garret1 8talking for long hours with
  the pale gilliflowers of the roof40   
,unable to earn a living in ,paris1 he  
went back to ,dijon in #ahcj1 where  he 
contributed to a ,liberal newspaper1 ,le
 ,patriote de la ,cte-d',or4  ,in spite 
of his poverty1 his blood was young and 
proud1 and as he  walked the streets of 
,dijon he must have felt himself a      
representative  of that exuberant young 
,parisian manhood that was putting      
,hernani  on the stage and sending      
,mademoiselle de ,maupin to the press4  

,a  rival paper jeered at him1 and he   
was able to reply3 8,je prfre vos       
ddains  vos suffrages10 and to quote a  
letter from ,victor ,hugo to  explain   
his independence4 ,hugo had written3    
8,je lis vos vers en cercle  d'amis1    
comme je lis ,andr ,chenier1 ,lamartine 
et ,alfred de ,vigny3 il  est impossible
 de possder  un plus haut point les     
secrets de la  facture40 ,with such a   
testimonial in his pocket he need not   
care for  the scorn or the approval of a
 provincial journalist4    ,at this time
 his ,liberalism was as ardent as his   
youth4 ,asselineau  quotes a fiery      
article praying for war1 bloody war1    
against the ,holy  ,alliance3 8,it is   
time to throw the dice on a drum2 and1  
should we all  perish1 the honour of    
,france and of liberty shall perish     
not40 ,but1 as  was not unnatural1 he   
presently left ,france and liberty to   
take care of  themselves1 and1 full of  
new plans for literary achievement1     
returned  hopefully to ,paris1 where he 

was joined by his mother and sister4 ,he
  was again unable to earn a living4    
,the last lines of a piteous letter     
written to ,antoine de ,latour in       
,september #ahcc1 show how miserable was
  his condition3        8,si je te      
disais que je suis au point de n'avoir  
bientt plus de      chaussures1 que ma  
redingote est use1 je t'apprendrais l le
      dernier de mes soucis3 ma mre et  
ma sur manquent de tout dans      une   
mansarde de l'htel des ,etats-,unis qui 
n'est pas paye4 ,qu'est      ce pour toi
 qu'une soixantaine de francs 7mon      
,dieu1  quelle      humiliation le      
malheur me contraint674 ,quelques pices 
d'argent      dans une bourse1 pour nous
 c'est un mois de loger1 c'est du pain6 
8,et je te dois dj cinquante francs6    
,j'en pleure de rage4        ,mon       
camarade de collge666     8,je cherche  
une place de correcteur d'preuves dans  
une imprimerie40    ,it is not known    
whether the money was sent him1 nor     
whether he found  employment as a       

proof-reader4    ,in such poverty1 in   
such dejection1 he put together the book
 that  preserves his memory1 dreaming1  
when he could forget his empty stomach  
and the holes in his shoes1 of the prose
 that ,baudelaire was to  imagine after 
him1 8une prose potique1 musicale sans  
rhythme et sans  rime1 assez souple et  
assez heurte pour s'adapter aux         
mouvements  lyriques de l'me1 aux       
ondulations de la rverie1 aux           
soubresauts de  la conscience40 ,he     
would not1 perhaps1 have thought of     
sudden starts  of conscience1 for his   
was a simpler soul than ,baudelaire's1  
and he  never felt that the portrait he 
was drawing might be only the portrait  
of a portrait4 ,he was born in #ahjg and
 not in #ahba1 and1 with the  ,romantic 
joy in colour and local colour1 he had  
more than the ,romantic  simplicity4    
,his fantasies are prefaced by          
quotations1 and these are  taken from   
,scott1 ,hugo1 ,byron1 folk-song1 the   
,fathers of the ,church1  ,scottish     

ballads1 ,charles ,nodier1 old          
chronicles1 ,lope de ,vega1  ,fenimore  
,cooper1 the cries of the night         
watchmen1 ,lamartine1 ,coleridge1       
,chateaubriand1 a medley of the         
,romantics and the writers and things   
that they admired4 ,they sometimes      
mistook the picturesque for the         
beautiful1 and so did ,bertrand4 ,he was
 a man who thought with his eyes4  ,he  
was not an analyst4    ,so far indeed   
did his visual conception of life carry 
him that he  represents1 better than any
 other ,french writer1 the tendency1 new
 at  that time1 to identify literature  
with painting4 ,hoffmann1 in ,germany1  
had written ,fantasy-pieces after the   
manner of ,callot4 ,leigh ,hunt1  in    
,england1 amused himself1 in            
,imagination and ,fancy1 by cutting     
little bits out of ,spenser and         
proposing them as subjects to the       
ghosts of ,titian and ,rubens4 ,bertrand
 used words like oil-colours1  and in   
,gaspard de la ,nuit3 fantaisies  la    

manire de ,rembrandt et  de ,callot1    
wrote what1 if he had had a palette and 
brush1 he might  very well have painted4
 ,if he thought through his eyes1 his   
eyes had  been trained by the painters1 
and he was proud to offer his book as a 
series of engravings after imaginary    
pictures1 or etchings from plates  that 
had never been bitten4    8,art10 he    
says in his preface1 8has always two    
antithetical faces2 it  is a medal1 one 
side of which1 for example1 would       
suggest the image  of ,rembrandt1 and   
the other that of ,jacques ,callot4444  
,rembrandt is  the white-bearded        
philosopher who shuts himself up like a 
snail in his  retreat1 who absorbs his  
life in meditation and in prayer1 who   
closes  his eyes to gather himself      
together1 who converses with spirits of 
beauty1 of science1 of wisdom1 and of   
love1 and consumes himself in           
penetrating the mysterious symbols of   
nature4444 ,callot1 on the other  hand1 
is the jolly1 braggart soldier of foot1 

who peacocks in the  square1 makes a    
noise in the inn1 swears only by his    
rapier and his  carbine1 and has no     
other care than the waxing of his       
moustache4444  ,now1 the author of this 
book has envisaged art under this double
  personification1 but he has not been  
too exclusive1 and presents1  besides   
fantasies in the manners of ,rembrandt  
and of ,callot1 studies  after ,van     
,eyck1 ,lucas de ,leyde1 ,albert ,durer1
 ,peeter ,neef1 ,breughel  de ,velours1 
,breughel d',enfer1 ,van ,ostade1       
,gerard ,dow1 ,salvator ,rosa1          
,murillo1 ,fusely1 and many other       
masters of different schools40          
,bertrand's book is one of the documents
 that must be studied by any  historian 
of the grotesque who would trace the    
re-awakening of a spirit  in art that   
had dozed during the eighteenth century1
 a spirit quite  different from that of 
,hogarth1 with which it is sometimes    
confounded4  ,bertrand's was not the    
noble1 the sublime conception of the    

grotesque  that ruled the finer drawings
 and much of the poetry of ,william     
,blake4  ,it was akin to that whose love
 of a gargoyle brought it to life and   
sent ,quasimodo to haunt the dark and   
winding stairs of the towers of  ,notre 
,dame4 ,bertrand contrasts ,rembrandt   
and ,callot1 but does not see  that in  
the mind of the man 8who consumes       
himself in penetrating the  mysterious  
symbols of nature0 there is the essence 
of the feeling for  the grotesque1      
which1 in such men as ,callot1 having   
forgotten its  origins1 too often       
becomes mere sport1 shadows flung on a  
wall by a  will-o'-the-wisp instead of  
by a philosopher's lamp4 ,but in        
,gaspard  de la ,nuit this feeling is   
groping towards consciousness1          
recognising  its food in the etchings   
alike of ,rembrandt and of ,callot1 of  
,salvator  and of ,durer1 noticing the  
more obvious differences between them1  
but  as yet incapable of a more         
sensitive distinction4 ,it is           

interesting to  notice that he takes    
suggestions from the ,breughel#b whose  
wild and  energetic picture made        
,flaubert1 ten years later1 set to work 
on ,the  ,temptation of ,st4 ,anthony4  
,bertrand's book is made up of six      
series of fantasies1 labelled  8,flemish
 ,school10 8,old ,paris10 8,the         
,chronicles10 like the rooms in a       
picture-gallery4 ,the usual form of the 
pieces is that of a small number  of    
carefully balanced paragraphs1 mostly   
single sentences1 sometimes  linked by  
refrains of movement or meaning4 ,some  
have minute prologues  and epilogues4   
,some are like prose-ballades1 finished 
by an envoi4  ,few cover more than two  
or three pages in a small book of large 
type4  ,each one is complete in itself1 
and built of a firm1 noun-ful prose1    
richer in colour than in subtlety4      
,they were written by a man to whom     
sustained effort was impossible1  a man 
elusive1 fugace1 who could not settle in
 one place or in one  mood1 and perhaps 

found in these little scraps of         
goldsmithery the  nearest approach to   
permanence and solidity in his life4 ,he
 was a  hunter of the moment1 and these 
fantasies are the only trophies of his  
chase4 ,their form seems made for him   
and he for it1 and he needed no  models 
for the gait of his soul4    ,bertrand  
was not1 any more than ,leigh ,hunt1 a  
great and noble  personality4 ,like     
,leigh ,hunt1 he could write something  
quite charming  that owed at least part 
of its charm to its neglect of something
 else4  ,his was a poetical temperament 
rather than the temperament of a poet4  
,he felt things and saw things1 but     
never dominated them1 so that all  he   
could save in his difficult existence   
was a wonderful handful of  dreams4 ,he 
dreamt by day and by night1 and caught a
 few of his dreams  with their bright   
colours in two or three skilful         
paragraphs4 ,in a  cottage on the edge  
of a forest he read chronicles of monks 
and knights  while the snow froze on the

 ground1 or else1 in such a study as    
,faustus might have used1 pored upon    
,raymond ,lully4 ,he was surrounded in  
his dreams by ancient books1 and looking
 far beyond and through their  phantom  
leather backs1 saw a black gondola in   
the ,venetian night1 or a  ,messire     
,blasius with double chin and           
worldly-wise eye1 like a portrait  by   
,van ,eyck4 ,he saw the old ,paris of   
,hugo's reconstruction1 and the old     
,dijon that he rebuilt himself4 ,before 
his eyes the witches departed to  keep  
their ,sabbath with ,satan4 ,an ,undine 
of ,german fairy story offered  him her 
love1 but1 rich with dreams1 he         
preferred to watch the changes  of the  
moon4    ,this is perhaps one of the    
most characteristic of his reveries3    
8,,le ,,clair ,,de ,,lune4              
8#8,rveillez-vous gens qui dormez       
,et priez pour les trpasss4'            
--,le cri du crieur de nuit4    8,oh6   
qu'il est doux1 quand l'heure tremble au
 clocher1 la nuit1 de  regarder la lune 

qui a le nez fait comme un carolus d'or6
    8,deux ladres se lamentaient sous ma
 fentre1 un chien hurlait dans le       
carrefour1 et le grillon de mon foyer   
vaticinait tout bas4    8,mais bientt   
mon oreille n'interrogea plus qu'un     
silence profond4 ,les  lpreux taient    
rentrs dans leurs chenils1 aux coups de 
,jacquemart qui  battait sa femme4      
8,le chien avait enfil une venelle1     
devant les pertuisanes du guet  enrouill
 par la pluie et morfondu par la bise4  
8,et le grillon s'tait endormi1 ds que  
la dernire bluette avait  teint sa      
dernire lueur dans la cendre de la      
chemine4    8,et moi1 il me             
semblait1--tant la fivre est            
incohrente1--que la lune1  grimant sa   
face1 me tirait la langue comme un      
pendu60        8,,moonlight4            
8#8,wake1 men who sleep1                
,and pray for the dead4'                
--,cry of the night-watchman4    8,oh6  
how pleasant it is1 when the hour       
trembles in the belfry1 at  night1 to   

look at the moon1 whose nose is shaped  
like a golden  carolus6#c    8,two      
lepers were complaining under my window1
 a dog was howling at the  cross-ways1  
and the cricket on my hearth was        
prophesying in a whisper4    8,but soon 
my ear no longer questioned anything but
 a profound silence4  ,the lepers had   
gone back into their kennels1 at the    
sound of ,jacquemart  beating his       
wife4#d    8,the dog had fled away up an
 alley1 before the halberds of the      
watch1  rain-soaked1 and wind-frozen4   
8,and the cricket had fallen asleep1 as 
soon as the last spark had put  out its 
last glimmer in the ashes of the        
fire-place4    8,and1 as for me1 it     
seemed to me--fever is so               
incoherent--that the  moon1 wrinkling   
her face1 put out her tongue at me like 
a man who has  been hanged40    ,the    
moon put out her tongue at her faithful 
admirer1 and helped him  neither to     
honey-dew nor to the milk of ,paradise4 
,his biographers  do not agree as to the

 way he lived during his few remaining  
years4  ,sainte-,beuve says that he was 
a private secretary1 and that he wrote  
in various inconspicuous newspapers4 ,m4
 ,sch1 to whom we owe a great  deal of  
new information1 thinks that these      
employments are not likely  to have held
 ,bertrand for long4 ,about #ahce1 he   
found in ,eugne ,renduel  a publisher   
for ,gaspard de la ,nuit4 ,he sold the  
right to print  an edition of #hjj      
copies1 of which #cjj were to be called 
8,keepsake  ,fantastique10 for the sum  
of #aej francs4 ,the money was paid and 
the  manuscript was put into the        
publisher's desk1 where1 for some reason
  or other1 it remained for a very long 
time4 ,its publication was  promised    
from year to year4 ,in a letter written 
to ,david d',angers1 in  #ahcg1         
,bertrand says3 8,gaspard de la ,nuit1  
ce livre de mes douces  prdilections1 o 
j'ai essay de crer un nouveau genre de  
prose1  attend le bon vouloir d',eugne  
,renduel pour paratre enfin cet         

automne44440 ,bertrand did not make the 
gallant figure in poverty that  was     
made1 for example1 by ,richard ,steele1 
who turned bailiffs into  liveried      
footmen1 as ,whistler is said to have   
done more recently2 but  once1 at least1
 he showed a smiling face to misfortune1
 even if the  smile was a little awry4  
,in #ahdj1 the book being still         
unpublished1  he called on his publisher
 and left a sonnet on him1 as an        
ordinary  person might leave a          
visiting-card4 ,a more charming protest 
against  procrastination was surely     
never written3       8,quand le raisin  
est mr1 par un ciel clair et doux1      
,ds l'aube1  mi-coteau rit une foule    
trange3      ,c'est qu'alors dans la    
vigne1 et non plus dans la grange1      
,matres et serviteurs1 joyeux1          
s'assemblent tous4        ,a votre huis1
 clos encor1 je heurte4 ,dormez vous8   
,le matin vous veille1 veillant sa voix 
d'ange1      ,mon compre1 chacun en ce  
temps-ci vendange2      ,nous avons une 

vigne--eh bien1 vendangeons nous6       
,mon livre est cette vigne1 o1 prsent de
 l'automne1      ,la grappe d'or attend 
pour couler dans la tonne1      ,que le 
pressoir noueux crie enfin avec bruit4  
,j'invite mes voisins1 convoqus sans    
trompettes1      ,a s'armer promptement 
de paniers1 de serpettes4      ,qu'ils  
tournent le feuillet2 sous le pampre est
 le fruit40    ,six months later        
,bertrand was dead4 ,at least once he   
had known for  several months the inside
 of a public hospital4 ,he was attacked 
by  phthisis4 ,david d',angers obtained 
a grant of #cjj francs for him and the  
promise of a post as librarian2 but he  
was not to leave the hospital  again4   
,david1 who was himself ill1 did all    
that could be done for him1  sent him   
oranges1 and made portraits of him      
before and after death1  and saw to it  
that his grave-clothes were not of the  
coarseness deemed  fitting for the      
bodies of the poor4 ,david alone        
followed his bier1  and1 no doubt1      

supplied ,sainte-,beuve with the        
material for his picture  7in the       
introduction to the first edition of    
,gaspard de la ,nuit1  published in     
#ahdb by ,victor ,pavie1 who bought the 
rights from ,renduel  for the sum       
originally paid73--8,it was the eve of  
,ascension2 a terrible  storm was       
rumbling2 the ,mass for the dead had    
been spoken1 and the  funeral procession
 did not come4 ,the priest had ended by 
leaving2 the  only friend present       
watched the abandoned remains4 ,at the  
end of the  chapel a sister of charity  
was decorating an altar with garlands   
for  the next day's feast40    ,so ended
 a life that was like a thread blown in 
the wind1 swung this  way and that1     
without weight1 and at last torn from   
its weak hold and  whirled away over the
 edge of the world4 ,bertrand's life was
 that of  the real ,bohemian1 whose     
struggle is not the less difficult      
because his  head is high and his eyes1 
instead of seeing where he is going1 are

  full of magnificent things4 ,bertrand 
was like a man trying to speak  high    
poetry when his enemy has him by the    
throat4 ,he saw1 and wrote1  and        
wrestled1 in a breath2 his achievement  
was scarcely recognised  till he was    
overthrown4 ,and that achievement1 such 
as it was1 that  little flame he        
contrived to light before going out     
himself1 kindled a  greater1 and in its 
brighter luminosity almost became       
invisible4 ,but  when we look back from 
the ,petits ,pomes en ,prose to this    
little  book that suggested their       
creation1 we find that it is not without
 an  independent interest1 personal as  
well as historical4 ,bertrand himself   
was somebody1 and no book so well as his
 lets us share the day-dreams  of #ahcj4
      #aiaa4          ,,alphonse        
,,daudet          ,,alphonse ,,daudet   
,daudet's was the scintillant1 flamelike
 vitality that makes its  possessor the 
youngest in whatever company he may find
 himself4  ,anatole ,france writes of   

him that he believes no human creature  
ever  loved nature and art with a more  
ardent and more generous affection1  or 
enjoyed the universe with more delight1 
more force1 and more  tenderness4 ,even 
in old age and suffering1 he brought    
merriment with  him when he limped into 
the big room that ,edmond de ,goncourt  
called his  8grenier10 and kept for talk
 and friendship4 ,if the room had been  
sad  or silent1 it woke to laughter when
 this invalid came in and began to      
speak4 ,men felt themselves more alive  
in his presence4 ,this vitality  is     
different from the physical and mental  
momentum of a ,balzac4 ,it is  a lambent
 flame rather than a conflagration2     
light without heat4 ,it  scorched no    
one1 not even ,daudet himself1 who made 
it into a public  entertainer4 ,he could
 use it at will2 it did not impel him   
into a  restless activity4 ,i can       
imagine that indolent people felt ill at
 ease  with ,balzac in the room1 as if  
from a fear that he might go off like  a

 dynamite bomb4 ,daudet's vitality was  
gentle1 and insinuated itself  into his 
listeners' veins1 so that when they left
 they had the pleasant  sensation of    
having themselves been more than usually
 vivacious4 8,i  have missed my         
vocation10 he said2 8,i should have been
 a merchant of  happiness40 ,it was a   
vocation that he had not missed4 ,a     
merchant of  happiness was precisely    
what he was1 since one kind of happiness
 is a  childish enjoyment of everything 
that may occur4 ,children run about  all
 day1 without forethought1 and play at  
being all sorts of things1  and chatter 
and fall asleep1 still chattering1 in   
the middle of a  sentence4 ,they wake   
next morning to perform a variation ever
 so blithe  on yesterday's performance4 
,daudet lived just so1 and was able to  
share  his life with other people4      
,le ,petit ,chose is the story of his   
childhood4 ,it is the tale of a  little 
boy whose father is an unsuccessful man 
of business1 a little  boy with a parrot

 and a dream of ,robinson ,crusoe1 who  
is transplanted  from his south to a    
northern manufacturing town1 a child who
 becomes  an usher in a school where his
 youth and his poverty make him butt of 
boys and masters alike1 where he writes 
love-letters for a gymnastic            
instructor1 and suffers in his stead for
 their success1 a child who  goes to    
,paris at seventeen to join his brother 
in poverty and hope1  and to write a    
poem about blue butterflies4 ,the book  
is almost true  to history1 except that1
 unlike ,daudet1 le ,petit ,chose ends  
as  partner in a china shop1 regretfully
 resigning his blue butterflies to      
marry the daughter of the china shop's  
proprietor4 ,the real tale of  his      
shyness and pathetic adventures1 that   
,daudet was never tired of  telling1    
since it was his own1 goes on in other  
books4 ,there is in them  all a joie    
d'crire as much as joie de vivre4 ,he   
rejoices in every  misfortune of his    
childhood1 because1 in describing it1 he

 finds an  opportunity for life as a    
young man4 ,his life as a child had been
 told  to himself as a fairy tale4 ,he  
had told ingenious lies to excuse his   
truant days on the river1 killing off a 
,pope to hide1 in his family's          
excitement1 his lateness for a meal4 ,he
 told lies to himself to excuse  the    
sordid appearances of his existence1 and
 now he had a chance of  telling lies   
again1 and so living another romance4   
,daudet's writing  was always a means of
 living for him4 ,his own life could be 
multiplied  indefinitely by the glosses 
he put upon it4 ,he is not1 like ,coppe1
  a disillusioned man remembering       
dreams1 paining himself with the  memory
 of the boy he was4 ,daudet1 far from   
envying that boy of whom he  writes1    
seems to be still identical with him1   
and tells his escapades  as if they were
 yesterday's1 as indeed they might be4  
,even when he  tries to write           
disillusioned novels1 he sits in a rosy 
cloud1 and is  irrepressibly happy in   

spite of them4 ,he never knows whether  
pain or  pleasure is the more enjoyable4
 ,either is an aid to living1 and       
perhaps  the former gives life a keener 
taste4    ,men of this kind do not spend
 their vitality altogether for nothing4 
,more than others they need affection   
and applause4 ,a face of  disapproval in
 their audience is enough to wither     
their wings1 and they  ask for goodwill1
 if only to help them to continue the   
performance4  ,le ,petit ,chose1 like   
most of ,daudet's work1 like his life1  
and his  other representations of his   
life1 conversational or on paper1 is an 
appeal to be loved4 ,he asks to be seen 
as he sees himself1 and asks  very      
successfully4 ,it is this1 ,i think1    
that makes it easy to forgive  him his  
sins against pure art2 this that        
accounts for his friends' love  of him1 
and also for the popular success that   
made him feel a little  uncomfortable   
among them4 ,his greed of affection made
 him not very  fastidious2 he was glad  

to be loved by his baker as well as by  
,edmond  de ,goncourt4    ,daudet       
acquired the habit of being lovable4 ,he
 made his own life into  a fairy tale1  
and1 since it was the surest way to     
gratitude1 soon  found it difficult to  
see the lives of others in any different
 way4  ,he copied his men and women from
 nature1 as he said1 but each one  of   
them readily became le ,petit ,chose1   
and he his affectionate1                
rose-spectacled biographer4 ,when his   
novels are laid aside1 and we  look at  
their backs1 we forget their            
extraordinary observation1 and  see     
characters exaggerated by a man who is  
anxious to persuade2 and  when these    
characters have faded away into framed  
drawings like those  taken from back    
numbers of ,punch1 we remember little of
 the books  but a spirit that asks love 
and gives it1 is ready to understand    
more  than there is to be understood1   
and to make excuses for those who are   
without them4 ,we think of ,daudet as   

the tenderest possible biographer  for  
ourselves1 and at the same time feel a  
little shrinking from the  idea of being
 exhibited with such emphasis4 ,some of 
the novels1 with  which we are not here 
particularly concerned1 do their best to
 dispel  the atmosphere of rose-leaves  
and sunshine1 involving us in a swift   
and  keen analysis of unkind and        
unpleasant motives4 ,but when we close  
even  these1 little is left of them but 
their author's charm1 and the memory  of
 those incidents or descriptions1 in    
which1 freed from the burden of  an     
ambitious task1 he loosens the bridle of
 his romancing vitality4    ,his books  
are not so consistent as his character4 
,they are always most  satisfactory when
 most directly concerned with it4 ,this 
is partly  because he wrote of himself  
in anecdotes1 and his inspiration was   
facile and short-winded rather than     
persevering4 ,the effects he secures  in
 his writings are the same as those he  
won in conversation1 snatches  of colour

 and feeling1 like the studies in an    
artist's notebook1  often better than   
when repainted into pictures4 ,ambition 
perhaps  obstructed his talent in       
setting it to do other men's work1      
however  well he may have been able to  
do it4 ,he was not a novelist1 although 
he  made himself one4 ,his big books1 in
 which he describes many lives and      
kinds of life1 are already being sieved 
out by time1 and the work by  which his 
name will be remembered is reducing     
itself to his real and  imaginary       
reminiscences and his short stories4 ,in
 these he does not  mingle contradictory
 ingredients2 while his novels1 even the
 best1 are  too much like battle-grounds
 between ,queen ,mab and ,zola4    ,in  
his short stories he is perfectly at    
ease4 ,his talent was no eagle  for long
 flights1 but one of his own blue       
butterflies4 ,it flew far only  with    
effort1 and tired as it flew1 drooping  
its wings or flapping them  irregularly4
 ,but in the short tales no flight was  

so long as to tire  it4 ,it was happy   
and at ease1 opened its wings with      
grace1 and as it  dropped1 folded them  
with all imaginable delicacy4 ,in the   
,contes du  ,lundi he reconciled his    
powers and his ambition4 ,he was a      
romancer1 a  conteur1 a causeur1 and    
romantic anecdotes refuse to be fettered
  to a strict and steady veracity4 ,he  
wished to be a painter after  nature1 to
 be accurate1 to be real1 to be mistaken
 for reality4 ,there  are moments1 but  
only moments1 when the two kinds of     
truth1 that these  powers and this      
ambition severally suggest1 coalesce in 
a truth that  is charming and1 at the   
same time1 almost photographic4 ,in the 
novels  the truth disintegrated into    
opposing masses4 ,in short stories he   
was  able to combine them4 ,his brief1  
flashing sketches1 with their curious   
air of stereoscopic perspective1 are    
seldom in the least unreal4 ,yet1       
poignant little things1 unforgettable1  
however slight1 they are not  the       

probabilities of life but its           
possibilities4 ,they are the lies  that 
ought to be true4 ,the story of the     
,alsatian schoolmaster1 or that  of the 
siege of ,berlin1 with the old colonel1 
in his worn uniform1  standing on the   
balcony to welcome the victorious       
,french1 and seeing  instead the ,uhlans
 of the advance guard1 and hearing the  
triumphal  march of ,schubert1 as the   
,prussians enter ,paris2 all these      
minute  things are too dramatic1 too    
pathetic1 not to be allowed their moment
  of existence4 ,daudet writes them1 and
 they bring tears to our eyes1  tears   
that1 unfortunately1 we must submit to a
 rather cruel analysis4    ,tears1 and  
also laughter4 ,daudet with his firm    
belief in the ultimate  victory of all  
good and pleasant people1 and the       
corresponding  punishment of the bad and
 unkind1 enjoyed1 like many happy-minded
  men1 a highly developed faculty of    
pity4 ,it was one of his means of  being
 alive1 and this man1 who 8died of      

having loved life too well10  neglected 
none of the exercises that made his     
nerves tingle and his  heart beat4 ,he  
lived in being sorry for people and     
things1 and he  lived in being glad4    
,another group of his short stories is  
made up  of pure fairy tales that dance 
before the eyes1 their words running    
and tripping after each other1 like a   
band of elves on midsummer's  eve4 ,they
 are southern tales of old ,provence    
that he read in the  grasshopper's      
library under the blue sky1 where the   
librarians sing all  day1 and there are 
gossamers for bookmarks4 ,their         
heartsome feeling is  that of the old   
song3       8,sur le pont d',avignon    
,tout le monde danse en rond40    ,even 
when he brings the elves to town1 as in 
,un ,rveillon dans le  ,marais1 when1   
into the old courtyard of the mansion   
that has been  turned into a mineral    
water factory1 he introduces cavaliers  
and ladies  of the ancient time1 fairies
 now1 being dead so long1 he brings with

  them half a memory of the farandole1  
and makes them drunk with seltzer4      
,laughter and tears2 it is by these that
 we remember ,daudet4 ,his art  is that 
of wearing his heart on his sleeve4     
8,here10 he seems to say1  8is a sad    
tale to make you cry 7,i cried myself in
 making it71 and  here is a merry one to
 make you laugh 7my pen quivered with   
merriment  as ,i wrote it down for      
you740 ,laughter and tears tempted him  
perhaps  too strongly4 ,he was          
accustomed to tell his stories many     
times before  he wrote them4 ,they      
shaped themselves1 like folktales1 in   
successive  recitations1 until the      
inessentials fell away from them and    
they won  economical and immediate      
effects4 ,the danger of such a manner of
  composition is a confusion of ends4   
,the only safe audience for a writer  is
 that undiscoverable and absolute judge1
 who1 from his niche in our             
consciousness1 signs now and again his  
knowledge that such and such  an        

expression is truly expressed1 is really
 expression and not an  incomplete and  
muffling mask4 ,that other audience1    
whose lips open1  whose eyes smile or   
weep as we read to them1 is not a judge 
of art4  ,its values are not aesthetic4 
,its most obvious criticisms are those  
of  laughter and tears1 and these are   
written too clearly not to become  more 
important to us than they should4 ,how  
can the jocund tale be bad  that made   
you laugh8 ,how can that sad one fail   
that sent your kerchief  to your eyes8  
,there may be imperfections in them2    
yes1 but by removing  them1 ,i must be  
careful not to lose that laughter or    
those tears4 ,and  so1 almost           
inevitably1 the tears and laughter come 
to seem the ends of  art instead of its 
by-products4 ,and they are not the      
wistful tears that  dew the eyelashes   
before a perfect work1 nor the          
impersonal laughter  that rings out like
 a spring song because some man has made
 a new thing  well for the eternal gods 

to see4    ,most ,frenchmen are         
performers2 and the ,frenchman from the 
south is he  who wins the greatest joy  
from his performance4 ,i remember a big 
bare  studio in the ,boulevard          
,vaugirard1 where a crowd of students1  
poets1  sculptors1 painters1 and their  
women1 used to be merry together and    
drink coffee 7if there was coke for the 
stove71 and eat ,olibet biscuits  7if   
there was money to buy them74 ,among us 
were two curly-headed  ,provenals1 whose
 voices had a more persuasive abandon   
than ours to  whatever they wished to   
say4 ,there was a balcony in the studio 
with a  ladder fastened to it1 so that  
the artist might climb to his bed4 ,one 
of the ,provenals used to stand up1     
leaning on the ladder1 and sing us  old 
songs of his country1 while his friend  
sat on the lower steps and  dropped the 
deeper notes of a silver flute into     
their proper places  in the melody4 ,the
 songs were sometimes joyful1 sometimes 
sad4 ,more  than once1 when some        

pathetic tune or words made his audience
 weep1 ,i  have seen the flute-player1  
unable to restrain his happiness1 caper 
about the studio with his instrument4   
,something of ,daudet was in the        
flute-player and something of the       
flute-player in ,daudet4      #aiji4    
,,the ,,retrospection ,,of ,,fran,,ois  
,,copp,e          ,,the ,,retrospection 
,,of ,,fran,,ois ,,copp,e      ,some    
writers seem to represent single moods  
of life4 ,most men grow  from childhood 
to old age1 passing from illusion to    
disillusion 7in  which illusion does no 
more than turn its coat71 then to       
resignation  7a kind of agnostic        
attitude towards their own sensations71 
and1  finally1 perhaps1 end in the most 
obstinate illusion of all4 ,but there   
are writers who seem to stop at this or 
that point in the road1 to  take up     
their stand there1 and to date from that
 resting-place all  the monologues that 
they allow humanity to overhear4 ,the   
work of the  greatest artists is sent   

off from every post-office on the       
journey1 or1  if their work is done in  
age1 it holds proof that they have      
travelled  all the way4 ,coppe hesitates
 on the brow of that hill from which    
can be seen for the last time the sunlit
 country of youth4 ,already             
disillusioned1 he looks back1 and spends
 his life in regretting the  past4 ,all 
his work has a retrospective glamour1   
and where he writes  joyously of the    
present1 it is easy to feel that the joy
 is a religious  joy1 and that his work 
is a memorial rite1 re-enacting         
something that  has long since faded    
away4    ,he took this attitude when    
very young4 ,there are1 indeed1 men     
whose  eyes have always been turned     
back1 men whose earliest memory is a    
regret for the memory earlier still that
 they have lost4 ,in the  prologue to   
,le ,reliquaire1 published in #ahff1 he 
wrote3       8,et de mme que1 tous les  
soirs1      ,ils font autour du         
reliquaire      ,fumer les lgers        

encensoirs4      ,ddaignant le douleur  
vulgaire      ,qui pousse des cris      
importuns1      ,dans ces pomes je veux 
faire      ,a tous mes beaux rves       
dfunts1      ,a toutes mes chres        
reliques1      ,une chapelle de parfums 
,et de cierges mlancoliques40    ,in    
building for his fair dead dreams a     
chapel of sad perfumes and  melancholy  
candles1 he spent the better part of his
 life4 ,his prose  was written later    
than his verse1 but years did not alter 
the object of  his architecture4    ,he 
was sometimes assailed by other moods1  
but did not allow himself  to yield to  
them4 ,he had succeeded young2 it is    
possible that having  charmed already1  
he was half afraid of losing by any     
change the odour  and the essence       
impossible to analyse1 in which he knew 
that he could  trust1 and which1 once at
 any rate1 had been personal to himself4
 ,there  remain1 however1 the           
indications of occasional faith in      
mutability4  ,sometimes he flung himself

 boldly in the direction whither life   
would  have taken him4 ,but the feeling 
of boldness1 of experiment1 that        
pervades1 for example1 ,le ,coupable1 is
 enough to show that he was ill  at     
ease4 ,the story is that of a man who   
leaves his mistress1 a ,parisian        
grisette4 ,she has a child1 who1 born in
 the gutter1 grows up among the  vicious
 and finds his way to a penitentiary1   
and1 at last1 committing a  serious     
crime1 is brought for judgment before   
his father4 ,the father1  learning his  
identity1 tells the whole story1 and    
asks whether he  himself1 rather than   
his son1 is not the true coupable4      
,coppe finds  in it an opportunity for a
 study of society from below1 for much  
close  and accurate description1 and for
 a very searching account of the        
reformatory system4 ,it is a clever     
book1 but somehow ,coppe has dropped    
out of it4    ,i do not mean that all   
,coppe's best work is to be known by an 
atmosphere of sentimental yearning for  

the past4 ,his mood is much more        
delicate4 ,he writes as a man whose     
illusions are gone1 but he does not     
often cry aloud1        8,hlas6 les     
beaux jours sont finis40    ,he only    
says that there have been fine days4 ,by
 fine days he means days  of enthusiasm 
and of a simple heart4 ,he has once     
walked with the world  far below his    
feet2 but1 now that its wisdom has risen
 over his head1  he cannot recover that 
old enthusiasm by pretending to be      
ignorant4  ,knowing too much1 his only  
care is to preserve as a touchstone the 
memory of his lost unwisdom4 ,he does   
not often more directly express  his    
regret4 ,but it is a recognition of his 
regretfulness that makes his  stories   
bitter to the very young1 half-conscious
 of their youth1 and  pained by all that
 helps to waken them to simultaneous    
knowledge and  loss of it4    ,in ,toute
 une ,jeunesse he confesses that his    
hero1 8personnage  imaginaire dans une  
action imaginaire1 sent la vie comme je 

la sentais  quand j'tais un enfant1 et  
quand j'tais un jeune homme40 ,much of  
the imaginary action follows very       
closely the course of his own life1  and
 it is possible in reading it to watch  
the fine days and then the  gradual     
realisation that they had been fine4    
,amde ,violette1 born in  a little flat 
in the rue ,notre ,dame des ,champs1    
behind the gardens of  the ,luxembourg1 
the son of a government clerk1 loses his
 mother very  young1 and grows up in    
loneliness1 except for the little girls 
next  door4 ,he goes to school in the   
rue de la ,grande ,chaumire1 turning out
  of the other4 ,there is a plane-tree  
in the schoolyard1 which allows  the    
schoolmaster to offer a garden on his   
prospectus4 ,the assistant  masters are 
grotesque and wretched4 ,the head of the
 principal is like  the terrestrial     
globe that stands on the desk in his    
study to impress  his pupils' parents4  
,amde grows up1 spending fine evenings  
in long  walks through ,paris with his  

father1 the widower1 who takes gradually
  to absinthe for the sake of           
forgetfulness4 ,he grows up in the      
quarter1  studies at the university1    
solitary in the midst of its gregarious 
frivolity1 partly from poverty1 partly  
from love of the child with  whom he    
used to play4 ,he leaves the university 
with a degree1 and is  taken on in the  
same office as his father1 as a         
supernumerary clerk4  ,so many hours a  
day disappear from his life1 and he     
wakens only in the  evenings1 which he  
spends in rhyming1 and on ,sundays when 
he writes  all day without leaving his  
room4 ,he has a few friends who count   
him  almost a hermit4 ,a young actor    
takes him to the ,caf de ,sville in the 
,boulevard ,montmartre1 where he        
introduces him to ,paul ,sillery1 a poet
  and editor of an unpopular            
review--,catulle ,mends1 perhaps4 ,the  
caf is  full of men with beards1        
politicians1 and men with hair1 poets4  
,sillery  recognises a poet in him1 and 

when the actor recites one of his poems 
with success at a charity performance in
 a theatre1 sends him to a              
publisher--no doubt ,lemerre1 who       
published the ,parnassians4 ,his first  
volume is printed and successful4 ,he   
has come so far when his youth is  taken
 from him4 ,his nearest friend betrays  
him1 and he has to compel  him to marry 
the girl he has so long loved himself4  
,he passes through  various more or less
 empty adventures4 ,the                 
,franco-,prussian war leaves  the girl a
 widow with a boy1 and his friend's last
 wish is that they  should marry4 ,the  
wish is fulfilled3 ,amde1 married to a  
woman he has  loved from childhood1 has 
a wife whose heart is buried with his   
friend4  ,it is all so different from   
its promises4 ,the poet is left with the
  consolation of his art1 and the book  
ends3 8,hlas6 ta jeunesse est  finie1   
pauvre sentimental6 ,les feuilles       
tombent6 ,les feuilles tombent60    ,the
 leaves fall on the paper as ,coppe     

writes4 ,it is always autumn in  his    
books1 because he is always thinking of 
spring4 ,but ,toute une  ,jeunesse lets 
us into more of his secrets than this4  
,it is full of  love for ,paris1 and    
obsessed by the contrast between rich   
and poor1 or  rather between appearances
 and the other appearances they hide4   
,life  is very much like one of those   
,japanese nests of coloured boxes2 you  
open the little round scarlet wooden    
cylinder1 and there is a green one      
inside4 ,you open that and find a blue4 
,within the blue is a scarlet  one      
again4 ,it is so with life4 ,no state of
 disillusionment is final4  ,there is   
always another behind it which will turn
 what seemed to be an  unemotional      
acceptance of life as it is into a      
regretted and fantastic  dream4 ,coppe  
is less conscious of the infinite       
endurance of mutability  than of his    
regret for particular yesterdays4 ,he   
must put all he writes  of in the       
scarlet box4 ,paris for him is always   

the ,paris of #ahff4 ,he  felt1 he said1
 like ,madame de ,stal1 8la nostalgie de
 son cher ruisseau  de la rue du ,bac10 
but the gutter he yearned for flowed in 
the days  when he was young4 ,it is this
 that gives some of his work an appeal  
that has nothing to do with its merit4  
,for there are many to whom ,paris      
represents the days when they were      
young1 many to whom the names tune  the 
pulses to a quick and joyous march1     
names like the rue ,notre ,dame  des    
,champs1 twisting grey street1 whose    
pavements still beat with the  airy     
tread of new generations of dreamers4   
,it is the same throughout4  ,when he   
talks of buying books at the ,odon1 we  
do not watch an old man  choosing what  
he wishes1 and paying for it from a     
pocketful of money  that he has not     
counted4 ,we see the ,coppe of #ahfd1 or
 ourselves of  ten years ago2 boys1 with
 the price of the book1 and perhaps ten 
sous  for dinner1 spending nevertheless 
an hour in looking at all the other     

books on the stalls1 and then buying the
 one for which we had come with  the    
swift manner of those who have walked   
straight to the bookshop1  and1 having  
got what they want as expeditiously as  
possible1 are going  straight off again4
 ,we see that dead ,coppe1 or ourselves1
 sitting  among the nurse-maids in the  
gardens opposite1 cutting the leaves    
with  a clasp-knife from a fair4 ,the   
,caf de ,seville1 once a meeting-place  
for men of beards and men of hair1 is   
made a tryst for ,coppe and his  dead   
youth4 ,and when he says that for the   
,parisian the seasons come to  town1 and
 that1 in a green and rose sunset1 he   
can find the autumn's  morbid           
melancholy1 and1 in a sunny morning in  
the ,luxembourg gardens1  all the divine
 joyousness of spring1 we know of what  
,parisian he is  speaking4    ,his      
obsession by the contrast between rich  
and poor reduces to the  same sentiment4
 ,he does not hate the rich because they
 are rich2 he is  only sorry for them if

 money has taken away from them         
something they  might have had in       
poverty4 ,he is not sorry for the poor  
because they  are poor1 but only if     
their poverty expresses the lack of     
something  that1 with money1 they think 
they might have had4 ,he has come to    
regard  illusions as the only sterling  
coin4 ,in the two contrasted tales of   
8,the ,italian ,organ0 he seems to weigh
 rich and poor in opposite scales1  and 
to find a balance between them4 ,one    
tune of the organ reminds a  poor       
clerk's wife of the days before she     
married1 when she was the  prettiest    
girl at the cheap dances1 and ,monsieur 
,fred1 amusing himself1  filled her head
 with dreams4 ,riches have carried him  
away from her1  and she has grown paler1
 and married ,jules with the stiff      
collar and  the india-rubber-cleaned    
gloves4 ,it is very sad4 ,another tune  
reminds  the ,countess of the days      
before she married1 when as la ,belle   
,adah of  the ,american ,circus1 she    

reigned in her own place4 ,the ,count   
fell in  love with her1 pursued her1    
married her1 and trained her to be a    
lady4  ,she spends her mornings in      
visiting institutions1 and there is a   
vicar  waiting on her in the            
drawing-room4 ,it is very sad4 ,but the 
sorrow  of both these women is not for  
their riches or their poverty4 ,it is   
mourning for a life that can never be   
lived4 ,coppe's love for the poor  is   
unlike ,daudet's4 ,daudet loves the poor
 because they are brave and             
picturesque4 ,coppe sees in them the    
simpleness of heart and the power  of   
dreaming that were his when he was poor 
himself1 that is to say1  when he was   
young4 ,the poor invented ,christianity4
    ,very little happens in ,coppe's    
short stories4 ,in some of them nothing 
happens at all4 ,things are remembered  
and set down1 and from those  notes     
rises less a tale than the suggestion of
 a story that might have  been told4    
,now it is old ,mother ,bernu1 who saw  

,marie ,antoinette carried  to the      
guillotine in a white shirt1 and is     
thrown up by a careless  ,time to take  
the little ,coppe out for walks4 ,now it
 is a couple of  old bachelors talking  
of might-have-beens4 ,now1 8,mon ,ami   
,meurtrier10  a swaggering athletic     
clerk1 is discovered to be the mildest  
of men1  attending to his mother's      
lap-dog1 and mixing good coffee4 ,in    
most of  the stories it is more than    
usually evident that the author is the  
real  hero4 8,the ,white ,frock0 is the 
tale of a lame child whose only white   
dress is worn at her first communion4   
,all her friends wear a second  on their
 wedding days1 and she will never be    
married4 ,it is really  the tale of a   
man who passes daily through a little   
street1 and1 in  watching the street    
change1 beards whiten1 and children     
marry1 sees his  own youth passing from 
him1 and1 in the little lame girl1 a    
melancholy  piece of childhood's jetsam 
whose dream will never be realised1     

never  be destroyed4 ,there was a little
 boy who lived near the gardens of the  
,luxembourg1 and walked there in the    
spring1 when the trees were caught  in a
 net of fluttering green1 and in the    
summer heat1 when those long  walks were
 patterned black and white with         
sun-thrown shadows1 and in  the autumn1 
when the leaves were rusty gold1 and    
fell to the ground to  make a pleasant  
trampling place for children's feet1 and
 in the winter1  when1 over the round   
steel pond1 the grey stone ,queens of   
,france looked  mournfully at the       
straight-fronted palace4 ,he walked     
there1 intimate  with all the moods of  
the garden1 his eyes awake with         
possibilities1  rhyming verses that     
perhaps would never be published1 and   
finding the  world a fairy-tale with so 
many ends from which to choose that it  
was  fortunate it would not finish soon4
 ,he was always alone there1 in the     
midst of the students1 girls and        
nurse-maids4 ,he and the sparrows       

seemed to have the garden to themselves4
 ,the others did not seem to  matter4   
,and this boy never left the study of   
,franois ,coppe4 ,if ,coppe  looked up  
from his desk he was there1 almost      
reproachful1 a ghostly  boy with clear  
and truthful eyes1 walking under the    
trees1 in ragged  clothes1 rhyming      
verses for himself4 ,the wisdom of the  
world turned to  dross beside his golden
 ignorance1 and the man who had grown up
 felt1  like the loiterer along the     
quays1 a continuous pride and pain in   
thinking of the days when the sunset had
 shone for him alone4      #aiji4       
,,friedrich ,,nietzsche                 
,,friedrich ,,nietzsche    ,,an ,,essay 
,,in ,,comprehension    ,to ,i4 ,c4 ,r4 
,philosophy in the hands of philosophers
 tends always to hide the  tremors of   
its exciting conception in the dried    
abstract statements of  dialectic4 ,a   
philosopher's pride is in the impersonal
 nature of his  thought4 ,it must stand 
by itself1 and work like a piece of     

machinery1  on which the maker's name is
 the only sign that it was once a       
daring1  personal adventure of the      
intellect1 the instincts and the senses 
of  the body of a man4 ,its maker1 when 
it is finished1 would wish to wipe  the 
filings and the oil from his hands with 
a piece of cotton waste1  and1 folding  
his arms1 to watch it in independent    
activity4 ,the reason  of this ambition 
is to be found neither in modesty1 nor  
yet in vanity1  but in a ruling         
intellectual concept1 the concept of    
absolute truth4  ,if the true is        
universally true1 if a thing either is1 
or is not1  then the personality of the 
thinker either is grit in the wheels1   
or1  by the necessity of its presence   
and assistance1 betrays the weakness  of
 the thought whose truth or untruth can 
in no way be affected by the  existence 
or non-existence of its discoverer4     
,this ,nietzsche resolutely  denied1 and
 denied in two ways4    ,first1 he      
denied the absolute nature of truth1    

asserting that the  word 8true0 was     
merely a title given by men to opinions1
 and that  the justice of its           
application was1 in a broad sense1 to be
 judged  pragmatically4 ,a pragmatist   
before ,william ,james1 he said3 8,the  
falseness of an opinion is not for us   
any objection to it3 it is  here1       
perhaps1 that our new language sounds   
most strangely4 ,the  question is1 how  
far an opinion is life-furthering1      
life-preserving1  species-preserving1   
perhaps species-rearing2 and we are     
fundamentally  inclined to maintain that
 the falsest opinions 7to which the     
synthetic  judgments a priori belong7   
are the most indispensable to us2 that  
without a recognition of logical        
fictions1 without a comparison of       
reality with the purely imagined world  
of the absolute and immutable1  without 
a constant counterfeiting of the world  
by means of numbers1  man could not     
live--that the renunciation of false    
opinions would be a  renunciation of    

life1 a negation of life40#e            
,secondly1 he denied that the           
personality of the thinker was a        
disturbing factor in his thought4 ,it   
was1 on the contrary1 the  guarantee    
that once at least that thought had been
 true4 8,now  philosophical systems are 
absolutely true only to their founders2 
to  all later philosophers they are     
usually a single big mistake1 and  to   
feebler minds a sum of mistakes and     
truths4444 ,therefore many  disapprove  
of every philosopher1 because his aim is
 not theirs4444  ,whoever1 on the       
contrary1 finds any pleasure at all in  
great men  finds pleasure also in all   
such systems1 be they ever so erroneous1
  for they all have in them one point   
which is irrefutable1 a personal  touch 
and colour2 one can use them in order to
 form a picture of the  philosopher1    
just as from a plant growing in a       
certain place one can  form conclusions 
as to the soil4 ,that mode of life1 of  
viewing human  affairs at any rate1 has 

existed once1 and is therefore          
possible40 ,he  wrote that quite early  
in his career in his little book on     
early ,greek  philosophy1 a history like
 the dawn setting on fire the tips of   
the  distant mountains1 then the nearer1
 and at last throwing on the ground     
behind him the shadow of the observer4  
,for ,nietzsche1 the mountain  peaks are
 those fragments of the crumbled systems
 which are personal  to their authors1  
and1 even if refutable as philosophy are
 irrefutable  as particular and         
individual revelations4 ,it is a        
delightful little  gathering of         
philosophers and1 perhaps1 more         
important than has yet  been admitted1  
in its promise of ,nietzsche's habit of 
thought1 his  impatience of dialectic1  
his dislike of the ,parmenidean mind1   
his trust  in the poetic1 the           
particular4 8,what verse is to the      
poet10 he says1  8dialectic thinking is 
to the philosopher2 he snatches at it in
 order  to hold fast his enchantment1 in

 order to petrify it40 ,from this view  
he never departed4 ,in ,beyond ,good and
 ,evil he repeats his belief in  the    
personal character of thought3 8,in each
 cardinal problem there  speaks an      
unchangeable #8,i am this'2 a thinker   
cannot learn anew about  man and woman1 
for instance1 but can only learn        
fully--he can only  follow to the end   
what is #8fixed' about them in himself40
 ,and again in  ,zarathustra3 8#8,this  
is now my way--where is yours8' ,thus   
did ,i answer  those who asked me #8the 
way4' ,for the way--it doth not exist40 
,and so1 for ,nietzsche1 truth is       
infinitely variable1 minted afresh  by  
each man and dependent upon his image   
and superscription for a  guarantee of  
its particular validity4 ,it was for    
this reason that  he despised the       
elaborate stage-play of reasoning4 ,he  
believed that  to exhibit ideas in a    
white light and at a mean temperature1  
when  they offered themselves in the    
glow of the morning or in the heat of   

noon1 was to strip them of their        
credentials4 ,he insisted that his  own 
thoughts were true in relation to       
himself1 and preserved their            
concreteness by way of preserving the   
conditions of their truth4 ,he  refused 
the step from the concrete to the       
abstract as a step into  annihilation1  
and in this way identified himself with 
the poets4 ,to  misunderstand him here  
is to misread him everywhere4    ,we are
 examining1 then1 in ,friedrich         
,nietzsche a man whose view of  truth   
demanded the personal presence of the   
thinker as guarantee of  the thought4   
,consequently1 though for reasons ,i    
have already given it  is usual on the  
part of philosophers and their critics  
to rule the  personality of a thinker   
out of a discussion of his thought1     
here1  at least1 we are justified in    
glancing at a man's character before  we
 examine the ideas that will help us to 
fill it out to approximate              
verisimilitude4    ,nietzsche was born  

on ,october #ae1 #ahdd1 went mad in     
,january #ahhi1 and  died on ,august    
#be1 #aijj4 ,his father was a country   
parson1 simple1  upright1 patriotic and 
monarchical4 ,he found joy in the       
coincidence of  his son's birthday with 
that of ,king ,friedrich ,wilhelm ,,iv1 
and this  circumstance gave ,nietzsche  
his names4 ,his mother was a young woman
 of  high spirits and great physical    
energy1 so exuberant and so lovable  as 
to be described as 8a gorgeous savage0  
by her mother-in-law4 ,his  father1     
8preordained to pay only a flying       
visit--a gracious reminder  of life     
rather than life itself10 died in his   
six and thirtieth year1  before         
,nietzsche was five4 ,a grandmother1 two
 aunts and his mother  presided over a  
pious happy childhood1 from which he    
emerged as a model  schoolboy1 laughably
 virtuous1 walking slowly home in a     
rainstorm  in spite of his mother's     
frenzied urging1 and rebuking this      
urging  with pained austerity3 8,but1   

mamma1 in the rules of the school it is 
written1 #8,on leaving school boys are  
forbidden to jump and run about  in the 
streets1 but must walk quietly and      
decorously to their homes4'0  ,this     
sedateness persisted with him1 although 
he could so completely  forget himself  
in playing with children1 that when he  
was twenty-six  and a professor1 he was 
laughed at and told he was only         
fourteen4 ,he  always dressed with      
notable nicety4 ,though he said1 with   
pride1 that  he would rather be a satyr 
than a saint1 he had a dignity that     
belongs  rather to holiness than to     
lust4 ,children and old women loved him4
 ,the  fruit-sellers in the ,turin      
market-place hurried to pick out for him
  their finest grapes4 ,he had gentle   
manners1 a beautiful voice1 and a       
profound sense of the politeness that an
 aristocrat owes to himself4  ,he clung 
to the legend that he was the descendant
 of ,polish noblemen1  and was proud of 
being mistaken by ,poles for a ,pole1   

that ,frenchman  among the ,slavs4 ,his 
favourite books were the courteous      
unruffled  ,french moralists of the     
seventeenth century1 and the works of   
,stendhal1  who resembled them in       
wearing a sword and in his love of fine 
manners4    ,his precarious health gave 
him extreme sensitiveness to his        
physical  condition4 ,he believed that  
clear thinking was only possible in dry 
air  and on hills4 ,his highest praise  
for his work was that it was mountain   
thought4 ,he composed in the open air   
and in motion1 and advised other  people
 to follow his example4 8,remain seated 
as little as possible1  put no trust in 
any thought that is not born in the     
open1 to the  accompaniment of free     
bodily motion--nor in one in which even 
the  muscles do not celebrate a feast4  
,all prejudices take their origin in    
the intestines40    ,he seized on       
,flaubert's 8,on ne peut penser et crire
 qu'assis10 with a  cry3 8,here have ,i 
got you1 you nihilist8 ,a sedentary life

 is the real  sin against the ,holy     
,spirit4 ,only those thoughts that come 
by walking  have any value40    ,he     
defended himself against the charge of  
decadence1 claiming that  8apart from   
the fact that ,i am a decadent1 ,i am   
also the reverse of  such a creature40  
,a decadent1 he said1 was one attracted 
by what was  detrimental to him1 8as the
 cabbage attracts the vegetarian40 ,a   
healthy  man1 on the other hand1 enjoys 
what is good for him1 possesses 8the    
will to health10 and 8is strong enough  
to make everything turn to his  own     
advantage40 ,he found in convalescence  
8a pale delicate light and  a sunshine  
happiness10 8a feeling of bird-like     
freedom1 prospect1  and haughtiness40   
,from the combination of his ill-health 
and his  healthiness 7he was in youth at
 least physically robust71 ,nietzsche   
learnt1 he says1 8to look upon healthier
 concepts and values from the           
standpoint of the sick1 and conversely  
to look down upon the secret  work of   

the instincts of decadence from the     
standpoint of him who is  laden and rich
 with the richness of life40 ,he        
mentions 8the sweetness  and            
spirituality which is almost inseparable
 from extreme poverty of  blood and     
muscle10 and remembers the unusual      
dialectical clearness he  enjoyed while 
suffering from headache and nausea4 ,he 
was more conscious  than most men that  
his body shared in the adventures of his
 brain4  ,when the idea of ,eternal     
,recurrence came into his mind by the   
lake of  ,silvaplana1 high in the       
mountains1 it was perhaps with some     
recognition  of this that1 after        
scribbling it down on a sheet of paper1 
he added  the exultant postscript3      
8#fjjj feet beyond man and time60       
,such1 sketched as briefly as possible1 
is the physiological background  on     
which we must set his work4    ,the     
greater part of that work 7which fills  
seventeen volumes in the  ,english      
translation7 is made up of short        

numbered paragraphs1 arranged  under    
general headings4 ,the lectures and     
poems are1 indeed1 the only  exceptions1
 for though ,the ,birth of ,tragedy1 and
 the essays called  ,thoughts out of    
,season1 are less disintegrated than    
later books1  we can perceive1 in their 
numbered sections1 the promise of       
sections  shorter and continually       
shortening to the brief 8,maxims and    
,missiles0  at the beginning of ,the    
,twilight of the ,idols4 ,even ,thus    
,spake  ,zarathustra was built in a     
similar manner1 though disguised by  the
 rush of prophecy and a more definite   
general scheme4 ,nietzsche  allowed such
 constructive power as he had to        
atrophy4 ,he was never a  systematic    
thinker1 but1 because his paragraphs are
 not such separate  and individual      
observations like those of ,chamfort or 
,vauvenargues2  because they were often 
written in swift succession1 one after  
another1  there is a dangerous          
possibility that in reading them we may 

feel we  are reading notes for a book   
which the author has not troubled to    
piece  together into the superficial    
form to which we are accustomed4 ,we may
  resent this1 but we are more likely to
 grow weary of the constant  change of  
subject1 of the staccato iteration of   
ideas without prologues  or epilogues to
 awaken slowly and lull again to repose 
our sluggish  brains4 ,it is well to    
remember that we have learnt to read too
 fast1  and that ,nietzsche foresaw our 
discomfort4 8,he that writeth in blood  
doth not want to be read but learnt by  
heart4444 ,it is no easy task  to       
understand unfamiliar blood4 ,i hate the
 reading idlers40 ,we cease  to feel the
 superficial confusion and inconsistency
 of those ten  thousand paragraphs when 
we become better aware of the half-dozen
  ideas that were the parents of that   
numerous family4 ,we are then able  to  
trace a paragraph's pedigree1 and to    
place it in a larger scheme  than that  
of the volume in which it happens to be 

printed4 ,no reader  of ,nietzsche can  
have failed to notice that his books1   
different in  detail1 different in      
application1 yet often seem coincident  
with each  other4 ,nor is this due to   
chance repetitions that would betray an 
uncritical improvisation4 ,it is an     
accurate indication of ,nietzsche's     
habit of mind4 ,his books were          
gleanings1 and1 after his mature work   
began1 they were gleanings from fields  
almost uniformly sown4 ,the  seasons    
varied and the sower's arm was irregular
 in its swing1 but  the harvest was     
always from a field that had been       
fertilised by a  fairly uniform mixture 
of ideas4 ,the ideas of the pragmatic   
nature of  truth1 of ,eternal           
,recurrence1 of the ,will to ,power1 of 
the ,superman1  and of master and       
servant morality1 yield in book after   
book a new  crop of lesser ideas1       
applied1 amplified1 restricted or       
illustrated in  psychological           
observation4 ,for this reason ,i do not 

intend1 in what can  but be a short     
essay1 any detailed criticism of        
,nietzsche's books1  but rather to note 
the results of such criticism4 ,the     
reading of his  books1 unless it be     
impatient1 careless1 and unworthy1 is a 
process of  discovering what were those 
half-dozen ideas that separated         
,nietzsche  from the thinkers of his    
time1 stimulated his brain until at last
 it  broke1 and during many years kept  
him in the lonely joyful ecstasy of     
continual exploration4    8,the first   
adherents of a creed do not prove       
anything against it10  but they often so
 obscure it as to postpone its eventual 
utility4  ,some of the half-dozen ideas 
,i have mentioned have been so often    
caricatured that it is extremely        
difficult to recognise them without  the
 exaggeration with which we have been   
made familiar4 ,it is not  easy to state
 another man's ideas4 ,to fail is to do 
him an injury4 ,to  succeed is not      
unlike taking the words out of his      

mouth1 which is rude4  ,but ,i am       
neither a translator of ,nietzsche nor  
an opponent4 ,i wish to  understand1 not
 to persuade4 ,and1 for understanding1  
such statement is  desirable4           
,nietzsche neither escapes nor attempts 
to escape the contradictions  in the    
form of thought that make logic and life
 battledores to toss  laughter at each  
other like a shuttlecock4 ,he is a      
determinist and  yet gives advice1 the  
giving of which presupposes a belief in 
free  will and a possible choice4 ,he   
seeks to influence others1 and1 in his  
manner at least1 forgets that the       
logical determinist should only allow   
himself to say3 8,circumstances compel  
me to make certain statements1  which1  
in the form of circumstances1 may or may
 not share in the sum of  circumstances 
that compel you to actions and thoughts 
which in their  totality ,i cannot      
conceive40 ,that is not the view of his 
own activity  which dictates the eager  
vivid combination of argument and       

incantation  that makes ,nietzsche's    
books4 ,he is free1 in that he has the  
illusion  of freedom4 ,the illusion of  
freedom is one of the determining       
circumstances4 ,its effect is to make it
 unnecessary to remember in  practice   
that circumstances determine4    ,we    
need not therefore hesitate over the    
inconsistency apparent between  some of 
,nietzsche's ideas4 ,we do better to    
notice it as characteristic  of his     
thought1 and simply to state his ideas1 
remembering1 if we will1  that they     
belong to different circles of          
consciousness2 some to that  wider      
circle that includes the universe and   
with it determinism1 and  some to that  
smaller circle1 concentric with the     
first1 and including  only the area of  
practical activity4 ,let us be          
determinists first and  examine the     
,nietzschean universe4    ,the idea of  
,eternal ,recurrence seems to have had  
for ,nietzsche  something of the        
hypnotic character of those ideas that  

made ,poe write  of his ,eureka3 8,what 
,i here propound is true3 therefore it  
cannot  die2--or if by any means it be  
now trodden down so that it die1 it will
  #8rise again to the ,life             
,everlasting4'0 ,indeed the idea itself 
is not  unlike that of ,poe1 who1       
untrained alike in philology and        
philosophy1  expressed himself in a     
manner that would have given ,nietzsche 
exquisite  pain3        8,guiding our   
imagination by that omniprevalent law of
 laws1 the      law of periodicity1 we  
are not1 indeed1 more than justified in 
entertaining a belief--let us say1      
rather1 indulging a hope--that      the 
processes we have ventured to           
contemplate will be renewed for         
ever1 and for ever1 and for ever2 a     
novel ,universe swelling into           
existence1 and then subsiding into      
nothingness1 at every throb of      the 
,heart ,divine80 7,poe's ,eureka47      
,now ,nietzsche would not have spoken of
 a 8,heart ,divine10 even  explaining1  

as ,poe did1 that this heart was our    
own2 but he did  contemplate a          
perpetually self-renewing ,universe4    
,only--and herein  lay the importance of
 his idea to himself--he saw it renewing
 itself  in every detail1 in every      
minutest action of the minutest of its  
individual parts1 at every moment of its
 cycle4 ,every moment of the  future    
being dependent upon and involved in the
 present moment1 sooner  or later in the
 course of time there would come a      
moment similar in  every detail to a    
moment that had already existed1 thus   
guaranteeing a  similar series of       
moments till it should recur1 and so on4
 ,he said3        8,if the ,universe may
 be conceived as a definite quantity of 
energy1      as a definite number of    
centres of energy--and every other      
concept      remains indefinite and     
therefore useless--it follows therefrom 
that      the ,universe must go through 
a calculable number of combinations     
in the great game of chance which       

constitutes its existence4 ,in          
infinity1 at some moment or other1 every
 possible combination must      once    
have been realised2 not only this1 but  
it must have been      realised an      
infinite number of times4 ,and inasmuch 
as between      every one of these      
combinations and its next recurrence1   
every      other possible combination   
would necessarily have been undergone1  
and since every one of these            
combinations would determine the        
whole series in the same order1 a       
circular movement of absolutely         
identical series is thus demonstrated2  
the ,universe is thus shown      to be a
 circular movement which has already    
repeated itself      an infinite number 
of times1 and which plays its game for  
all      eternity40    ,nietzsche1      
hypnotised by this idea1 believed it    
new1 but there is a  clear suggestion of
 it in the third book of ,lucretius'    
poem3       8,nam cum respicias immensi 
temporis omne      ,praeteritum spatium1

 tum motus materiai      ,multimodis    
quam sint1 facile hoc adcredere possis1 
,semina saepe in eodem1 ut nunc sunt1   
ordine posta      ,haec eadem1 quibus e 
nunc nos sumus1 ante fuisse3      ,nec  
memori tamen id quimus reprehendere     
mente3      ,inter enim jectast vitai   
pausa1 vageque      ,deerrarunt passim  
motus ab sensibus omnes40    ,lines     
which ,mr4 ,cyril ,bailey in his        
translation of ,lucretius#f  admirably  
renders as follows3 8,for when you look 
back over all the  lapse of immeasurable
 time that now is gone1 and think how   
manifold are  the motions of matter1 you
 could easily believe this too1 that    
these  same seeds1 whereof we now are   
made1 have often been placed in the same
  order as they are now2 and yet we     
cannot recall that in our life's        
memory2 for in between lies a break in  
life1 and all the motions have  wandered
 everywhere far astray from sense40     
,the character of ,nietzsche's thinking 
appears in his application of  this     

idea4 ,it is for him 8the great         
disciplinary thought10 and he  leaps the
 gulf between determinism and free will 
in the most careless  manner1 to remark3
 8,the question which thou shalt have to
 answer before  every deed that thou    
doest--,is this such a deed as ,i am    
prepared to  perform an infinite number 
of times8--is the best ballast40 ,it    
does  not matter to him at all that a   
determinist idea is to be used as a     
standard of choice by a being whose free
 will he assumes4 ,his thoughts  are all
 thoughts for himself to live with4 ,he 
is conscious of them not  as            
abstractions1 but particularly1 as      
concrete things1 combinations of  ideas 
with their effects4 ,he is able to speak
 of ,eternal ,recurrence as  8the most  
oppressive thought10 and to consider    
8the means of enduring  it40 ,i cannot  
imagine ,kant or ,berkeley speaking so  
of their ideas4    ,moving now in a     
smaller circle of consciousness1 let us 
examine  ,nietzsche's view of the world 

and man and man's activity within this  
eternally recurring universe4 8,the     
world10 he says1 8as we know it1 is     
representation and erroneous            
representation3 the world1 if we could  
know it1 might well give us a sensation 
of disillusion1 #8so full of  meaning1  
so deep1 so wonderful1 bearing happiness
 and unhappiness in  its bosom1' is the 
world that we unconsciously create40 ,in
 ,nietzsche's  world we come at once to 
the third of his ruling ideas 7the first
  being his idea of truth1 the second1  
,eternal ,recurrence74 ,a regiment  of  
artillery1 galloping to war1 filled     
,nietzsche 7who was at the  time serving
 as assistant to the field surgeon7 with
 disgust at the  conception of a dull   
struggle for life that dictated most    
nineteenth  century thought4            
,schopenhauer1 at that time still his   
master1 had  supposed that the motive of
 man was the will to live4 ,but1 as the 
regiment of artillery thundered to      
battle1 ,nietzsche answered1 ,no2 the   

will to power1 in which that other will 
may or may not be included4  ,men are   
willing to risk existence2 they are not 
ready to risk power1  unless in hope of 
increased intensity of power1 or of an  
increased area  over which to exercise  
it4    ,but the ,will to ,power is to be
 found in races as well as in           
individuals2 it is the motive not of    
races only but of humanity4  ,humanity  
wills to power1 wills to the continual  
re-creation of itself  as a species ever
 more powerful2 wills1 as ,nietzsche    
puts it1 the  creation of the ,superman4
 ,this is the fourth of his ideas4      
,here1 again1  ,nietzsche's concrete    
habit of thought exposed him to         
misunderstanding1  not only by his      
disciples1 but also by himself4 ,he did 
not at first  imagine the ,superman as a
 suddenly appearing demi-god whose path 
was to be made smooth by the human      
sacrifices of the 8down-goers40  ,he saw
 him as the result of a long continued  
and conscious will to  power1 working   

through many generations1 and gradually 
evolving a  superior type4 ,much of his 
writing is devoted to making conscious  
this  particular application of the     
will4 ,but the idea of a superior type  
shone with such effulgence as to dazzle 
his eyes1 and to blind him to  the slow 
evolution which he would never have     
denied4 ,he could say with  ,seannchan1 
the poet3       8,the stars had come so 
near me that ,i caught      ,their      
singing4 ,it was praise of that great   
race      ,that would be haughty1       
mirthful and white-bodied1      ,with a 
high head1 and open hand1 and how1      
,laughing1 it would take the mastery of 
the world40    ,supermen were no longer 
men1 but something different4 ,the long 
series  of gradually improving types    
vanished in the conception of their     
result1 itself to be improved upon1 and 
it became possible for him to  speak of 
,man and ,superman as two distinct      
beings1 forgetting the series  of beings
 no less distinct implied by the        

development of one into the  other4     
,here1 too1 it is profitable to notice  
how ,nietzsche translated an idea  from 
speculation into life4 ,the hypothesis  
of the future ,superman  allowed him a  
noble view of friendship4 ,he has often 
been compared  to ,whitman1 partly1 no  
doubt1 because the rhythmical           
,zarathustra  reminded his readers of   
the triumphant1 unrhymed movement of the
  sooth-saying ,leaves of ,grass4 ,but  
his friendship is very different  from  
,whitman's4 ,whitman's the hand-grip1   
the smile at meeting1 the  large        
tolerance1 the collaboration in simple  
things2 ,nietzsche's a  friendship more 
exacting4 ,he would have thought        
,whitman's friend a  neighbour1 and he  
said1 8,not the neighbour do ,i teach   
you1 but the  friend4 ,let the friend be
 the festival of earth to you1 and a    
foretaste  of the ,superman10 and 8,let 
the future and the farthest be the      
motive of  thy to-day2 in thy friend    
shalt thou love the ,superman as thy    

motive40  ,a friend for ,nietzsche was  
one who fulfilled desires that he could 
not  realise himself4 ,not the least    
profound of his observations was this3  
8,our faith in others betrayeth wherein 
we would fain have faith in  ourselves40
 ,his own friendship with ,wagner       
provides a commentary of  fact4 ,begun  
in the belief that ,wagner was bringing 
to earth such an  art as that of which  
,nietzsche dreamed1 and ended in the    
disillusion  confirmed by 8the          
preponderance of ugliness1              
grotesqueness1 and strong  pepper0 in   
the first performances at ,bayreuth1 it 
was at once the  greatest inspiration   
and the greatest disappointment of his  
life4  ,nietzsche1 who had published    
,the ,birth of ,tragedy to serve        
,wagner1  wrote ,the ,case of ,wagner to
 destroy him1 or1 perhaps1 to cleanse   
himself of a mistaken admiration4 ,but  
listen to his clear-sighted  comment3   
8,i gained an insight into the injustice
 of idealism1 by  noticing that ,i      

avenged myself on ,wagner for the       
disappointed hopes ,i  had cherished of 
him40    ,nietzsche's fifth ruling idea 
is most clearly expressed in the book   
that he wrote for his friend4 ,he summed
 it up in the words ,amor ,fati1  the   
acceptance of life1 be it what it might1
 a joyful 8yea-saying0  to all its      
pronouncements1 written in the most     
cruel facts though  they might be4 ,now 
this1 as he pointed out1 is the attitude
 of the  tragic artist1 whose work is   
the expression not of pity but of a     
proud acquiescence1 an acquiescence that
 is an intellectual conquest4  ,he      
wished men to be artists in their       
attitude towards life1 and  this desire 
brought his writings on art nearer to   
8the business and  bosoms of men0 than  
the discreet distance from these things 
usually  preserved by aesthetic theory4 
,his ,birth of ,tragedy was not merely  
an historical speculation1 but offered  
for the criticism of life  words that   
,nietzsche applied for the moment to the

 criticism of art4  ,these words were   
8,apollonian0 and 8,dionysian40 ,the    
latter word has  been persistently      
applied to ,nietzsche himself1 though he
 saw 8in the  fraternal union of ,apollo
 and ,dionysus the climax of the        
,apollonian  as well as of the          
,dionysian artistic aims40 ,what does he
 mean by this  antithetical conception8 
,let me answer by two quotations3       
#a4 8,it is in connection with ,apollo  
and ,dionysus1 the two      art-deities 
of the ,greeks1 that we learn that there
 existed in      the ,grecian world a   
wide antithesis1 in origin and aims1    
between      the art of the shaper1 the 
,apollonian1 and the non-plastic art of 
music1 that of ,dionysus3 both these so 
heterogeneous tendencies      were      
parallel to each other1 for the most    
part openly at variance1      and       
continually inciting each other to new  
and more powerful      births1 to       
perpetuate in them the strife of this   
antithesis1 which      is but seemingly 

bridged over by their mutual term       
#8,art'2 till      at last1 by a        
metaphysical miracle of the ,hellenic   
will1 they      appear paired with each 
other1 and through this pairing         
eventually      generate the equally    
,dionysian and ,apollonian art-work of  
,attic      tragedy40        #b4 8,in   
contrast to all those who are intent on 
deriving the arts      from one         
exclusive principle1 as the necessary   
vital source of      every work of art1 
,i keep my eyes fixed on the two        
artistic deities      of the ,greeks1   
,apollo and ,dionysus1 and recognise in 
them the      living and conspicuous    
representatives of two worlds of art    
which      differ in their intrinsic    
essence and in their highest aims4      
,apollo      stands before me as the    
transfiguring genius of the principium  
individuationis through which alone the 
redemption in appearance      is to be  
truly attained1 while by the mystical   
cheer of ,dionysus      the spell of    

individuation is broken1 and the way    
lies open to the      ,mothers of       
,being1 to the innermost heart of       
things40    ,he conceives these as 8the 
separate art-worlds of dreamland and    
drunkenness10 and makes for himself a   
parable about the ,apollonian  artist in
 dreams and the ,dionysian artist in    
ecstasies1 comparable to  ,blake's poem 
of 8,the ,mental ,traveller10 in which  
there is just such an  alternation of   
conquest and captivity3       8,and if  
the babe is born a boy        ,he's     
given to a woman old1      ,who nails   
him down upon a rock1        ,catches   
his shrieks in cups of gold4        ,she
 binds iron thorns around his head1     
,she pierces both his hands and feet1   
,she cuts his heart out at his side1    
,to make it feel both cold and heat4    
,her fingers number every nerve1        
,just as a miser counts his gold2       
,she lives upon his shrieks and cries1  
,and she grows young as he grows old4   
,till he becomes a bleeding youth1      

,and she becomes a virgin bright2       
,then he rends up his manacles1         
,and binds her down for his delight40   
,it is a fine pictorial expression of   
the formative processes of              
consciousness1 the domination of the    
unconscious flux by the shaping of  the 
knowing intellect1 and the escape of    
that flux1 the overbalancing  of the    
intellect by the onrush of unrealised   
impressions4 ,i do  not think it has or 
can have any deeper significance in     
aesthetic  criticism4 ,it was1 however1 
of considerable service to ,nietzsche in
 the  criticism of life4 ,in life1 he   
would be1 for the moment1 a worshipper  
of ,dionysus1 seeking less to control   
life than to live--because  ,dionysus1  
he felt1 was being a little neglected4  
,in a 8,dionysian age0  he would have   
left ecstasy below him and worshipped   
the placid ,apollo1  shaping dreams     
untroubled by the turmoil in the        
valleys4 ,in such an age  as that for   
which he hoped1 such an age as that of  

,greek tragedy1 he  would have stormed  
,olympus at the head of the ,dionysian  
revellers1 and  conquered the ,dionysian
 ecstasy to bind it captive in the      
service of  ,apollo4    ,there remains  
,nietzsche's distinction between good   
and evil and good  and bad4 ,his        
conception of morality resembles his    
conception of  truth4 ,morality and     
truth1 like the ,sabbath1 were made for 
man1 not  man for them4 ,he goes        
further1 believing that they were made  
and  are continually being re-made by   
man4 8,there is no such thing as  moral 
phenomena1 but only a moral             
interpretation of phenomena10 which     
interpretation a free and healthy man   
should make in accordance with  his own 
nature4 ,the morality generally current 
in his time ,nietzsche  believed to be  
slave morality1 as opposed to           
aristocratic or ruler  morality1 and he 
attributed its prevalence to the        
spreading of the  ,christian religion4  
,he believed that good was invented by  

those who  possessed it4 8,the judgment 
#8good' did not originate among those to
  whom goodness was shown4 ,much rather 
has it been the good themselves2  that  
is1 the aristocratic1 the powerful1 the 
high-stationed1 the  high-minded1 who   
have felt that they themselves were     
good1 and that  their actions were good3
 that is to say of the first order1 in  
contradistinction to all the low1 the   
low-minded1 the vulgar1 and the         
plebeian40 ,the code of honour1 the list
 of deeds that a gentleman  forbids     
himself1 would1 ,i suppose1 be          
considered by ,nietzsche as a  survival 
of this original morality4 ,he weighs   
8moral interpretations0  of phenomena in
 the same scale as he weighs 8truths10  
asking1 8,have  they up to the present  
hindered or advanced human well-being80 
,his  hostility to ,christianity may be 
traced to his answer to this question4  
,the replacement of the aristocratic    
judgment of actions done1 by the        
plebeian judgment on actions suffered1  

the substitution of the slave's  point  
of view for that of the ruler1 and its  
half-hearted adoption  by those who     
should rule were impediments to that    
ruling1 and checks  to the will to power
 in which he recognised the mainspring  
of human  activity4 ,he found then that 
the common morality was hostile to the  
highest development of humanity1 a      
frustration of its highest hopes  by    
hampering the will to power of 8the     
highest men10 and proceeded  to call    
those who had ears to listen 8beyond    
good and evil10 begging  them to make   
their own interpretation of phenomena1  
and not to accept  that of men whose    
submission to themselves should be part 
of their  natural ambition4 ,the        
morality of 8the small0 is1 he says1 a  
handicap  to greater men1 because       
8virtue for them is what maketh modest  
and  tame3 therewith have they made the 
wolf a dog1 and man himself man's  best 
domestic animal40 ,he delights          
accordingly in using as terms for       

praise the words that 8the small0 use in
 condemnation4 ,he speaks1 for  example1
 of the 8widespread heaven of clear     
wicked spirituality10 a  spirituality   
beyond the good and evil of the tame4   
,yet he would not  abolish the tame1 nor
 lighten their shackles4 8,for must     
there not be  that which is danced over1
 danced beyond8 ,must there not1 for the
  sake of the nimble1 the nimblest--be  
moles and clumsy dwarfs80 ,it is  not   
,nietzsche's fault that his books have  
stimulated 8moles and clumsy  dwarfs0 to
 the grotesque exercise of trying to    
dance over themselves4  ,he did not     
write for them1 and told them so4 ,he   
insisted at all times  that he wrote    
8for higher ones1 stronger ones1 more   
triumphant and  merrier1 for such as are
 built squarely in body and soul40 ,and 
his  writings are intended to teach such
 8laughing lions0 to 8become what  they 
are10 unimpeded by the morality that a  
thousand hands offer them  from below4  
,he has not the vain1 foolish hope of   

doing away with  moralities1 but asks   
each of his 8higher men0 to be true to  
his  own4 ,if he goes 8beyond good and  
evil10 he is to carry with him his      
private scale of good and bad1 with     
which he is to measure his deeds in     
accordance with the will to power that  
leads him and his descendants to  a     
higher1 a more laughing perfection4     
,after the brief statement of these     
ideas1 we can examine with better  hope 
of understanding the general character  
of ,nietzsche's thought4 ,it  was not   
8systematic0 in the usual sense1 but it 
seems to me foolish to  describe as     
8unsystematic0 a method of thinking     
whose formula was as  simple as his4 ,he
 used the ideas ,i have catalogued      
precisely as the  alchemists hoped to   
use the philosopher's stone for the     
transmutation  of metals4 ,applying them
 severally or together to a very large  
number  of statements he noted the      
resulting reactions1 and found that they
  turned truisms into popular fallacies4

 ,his books accordingly became          
corrections of ,pseudodoxia4 ,he saw1   
for example1 that if the ,will  to      
,power be substituted for the ,will to  
,live1 and ,ruler for ,slave  ,morality1
 the common judgments of men on         
everything in the world that  is capable
 of moral interpretation are in some way
 changed4 ,he was  not content to leave 
others to find out in what way4 ,he     
called this  change a 8transvaluation of
 values10 and wished thus to            
transvaluate  all values1 and so to     
offer to other men and to himself a new 
representation of the world in the light
 of his own ideas1 a task so  ,sisyphean
 that it is in itself a sufficient      
explanation of the collapse  of his     
brain4 ,his madness was not promised by 
his work1 any more than a  broken neck  
is promised by riding to hounds4 ,nor   
did the vivid summer  lightning of his  
mind destroy him or even threaten       
destruction4 ,his  madness was a        
catastrophe1 not the culmination of a   

disease4 ,his method  of thought1 the   
continual endless application of his    
ideas1 allowed him  to think too fast4  
,no sedate erection of a system kept his
 brain to a  normal speed4 ,its disaster
 was like that of an engine which       
8races10  as engineers say1 breaks its  
crankshaft1 or so whirls its flywheel as
  to allow it to satisfy its            
centrifugality4 ,all men build worlds   
for  themselves1 but they borrow from   
each other1 and are content to fill     
with hasty scene-painting the gaps in   
their construction4 ,no man is  capable 
of building in innumerable fragments a  
world complete and  homogeneous4        
,nietzsche's mind1 working with         
frenzied1 unchecked speed  in this      
perilous attempt1 ran suddenly amok1 and
 snapped1 and with its  snapping his    
life ends4 ,the automaton that fed and  
slept and was not  sure if it had       
written books1 was not ,nietzsche1      
though it prolonged  his physical       
existence4 ,for us ,nietzsche died in   

,january #ahhi2 the  ten years through  
which he lived unconscious of himself   
were like the  months of ,m4 ,valdemar4 
,he was a dead man1 who felt the cold   
and the  heat1 and drank tea with the   
living4 ,it is usual for his enemies to 
explain his work by his madness2 it is  
wiser to consider his madness  as the   
result of too much working1 to count his
 life as ended when he  lost his sanity1
 and1 remembering the clarity of his    
last writings1 to  refuse so easy an    
escape from the task of appreciation4   
,nietzsche's applications of his ideas  
in book after book are not frigid       
illustrations1 but sentences1 maxims1   
aphorisms1 and observations  of great   
psychological subtlety1 earning a place 
beside those of  ,la ,rochefoucauld1    
,vauvenargues1 or ,stendhal by the      
guarantee of a  scale of values peculiar
 to their author4 ,i think it not       
impossible  that ,nietzsche will one day
 be remembered chiefly as a psychologist
  and moralist1 a late nineteenth       

century representative of a great       
tradition1 and that the ideas which are 
now a noise in men's ears1  and1        
misunderstood1 obscure our views of him1
 will then be remarked  merely as       
explanatory of his psychology's private 
and individual tone4  ,the ,superman    
will be mentioned in a note appended to 
his observations  on friends and        
friendship1 and his theory of the ,will 
to ,power tucked  away in small print   
for those who wish more clearly to      
understand his  remarks on              
self-development or war4    ,i have not 
spoken of ,nietzsche as an artist4 ,that
 prose1 now  hammer-welded1 now silver  
filigree1 dancing1 walking1 running in  
time with his ideas and moods1 is not   
the least of his achievements4  ,when he
 wrote3 8,one day it will be said of    
,heine and me that we were  by far the  
greatest artists of the ,german language
 that have ever  existed1 and that we   
left all the efforts that mere ,germans 
made in  this language an incalculable  

distance behind us10 he was not far     
from the truth4 ,thus spake             
,zarathustra1 that ,ossianic poem of a  
hero of thought1 ,ecce ,homo1 in the    
self-assertion of which is not  only    
pride1 but pride a little hurt that it  
should have so to assert  itself1 those 
paragraphs of witty and profound        
psychology1 the noble  essays on        
,schopenhauer and ,history1 the muddled 
processional triumph of  ,the ,birth of 
,tragedy2 whatever be our view of his   
ideas1 we cannot  but admire the artist 
who made these things4 ,his very thought
 has an  aesthetic value1 as he saw     
himself1 due1 no doubt1 to its          
concreteness2  in reading his books we  
are translated to the tops of mountains1
 where  there is a dry wind1 a warm sun1
 and snow not yet melted4 ,far below us 
are valley and vineyard and a sea with  
no haze4 ,our lungs are so full  that we
 cannot commit 8the sin against the     
,holy ,spirit02 we cannot sit  still4   
,there is dancing1 there is singing in  

the air1 and1 as we turn  to more sedate
 philosophy1 it is as if we were        
suddenly to leave sun1  wind1 and valley
 for the cloistered dust of a dark room4
    ,in his own eyes1 however1          
,nietzsche the artist1 like ,nietzsche  
the  thinker1 was the humble1 reverent  
servant of ,nietzsche the educator4  ,in
 childhood he made respectful           
word-portraits of his schoolmasters4    
,when he went to the universities1 he   
said he was spending his time in        
discovering the best means of teaching  
instead of in learning what was  usually
 taught in such places4 ,his            
professorship was a symbol of his  life1
 and he only resigned it to sit on      
mountain tops and teach4 ,no  man since 
,plato has had such a boundless dream of
 education4 ,milton  desiring his pupils
 to be good for peace and for war1      
strong men behind  their bows1 skilful  
with the lute1 learning to 8repair the  
ruins of  their first parents by        
regaining to know ,god aright10 until   

8they  have confirmed and solidly united
 the whole body of their perfected      
knowledge1 like the last embattling of a
 ,roman legion03 ,ascham with his       
longer list of exercises1 8not only     
comely and decent1 but also very        
necessary for a courtly gentleman to    
use10 and his more detailed scheme  of  
learning3 neither of these looked so far
 as he1 neither of them  hoped to       
educate more than men of a city or of a 
nation1 and for the  service of that    
limited community4 ,nietzsche dreamed of
 the education  of mankind in its       
highest men1 and1 where ,milton and     
,ascham feared for  lack of teachers1 he
 feared nothing so much as the scarcity 
of worthy  pupils4 8,companions did the 
creating one seek1 and children of his  
hope1 and lo1 it turned out that he     
could not find them1 except he  himself 
should first create them40    ,in his   
early dissatisfaction with the          
educational methods of the ,german      
universities1 there was more than a mere

 pedagogic discontent4 ,in his  attack  
on the pseudo-culture of such men as    
,strauss1 in his exposure of  the abuse 
of history1 in his farewell to          
8,schopenhauer as ,educator10 he  learnt
 more and more clearly what it was that 
he was seeking4 ,he sought  to educate  
8higher men0 to be themselves1 to free  
them from impediments  to their growth1 
and failing that1 to let them perceive  
the impediments  and attack them1 and so
 weaken the enemies long trained to     
devour them  should they show           
themselves4 ,for his 8higher men10 and  
for no others1  he found the ballast of 
the idea of ,eternal ,recurrence1 to    
replace  the misleading strings of the  
morality of the downtrodden4 ,for their 
sakes he destroyed the divine right of  
the judgments of good and of  evil2     
theirs was to be the ,amor ,fati1 the   
cheerful acceptance of life1  theirs the
 ,dionysian ecstasy1 and theirs the     
,apollonian calm4 ,for them  he invented
 his watchword3 8,man is something that 

is to be surpassed40  ,he did not expect
 to find such pupils1 but only to make  
their advent  possible1 to prevent them 
from being strangled at birth4 ,in the  
meantime he spoke on to the empty       
benches1 and1 however extravagant1      
daring1 impossible his dream may have   
been1 it is yet a privilege for  us to  
sit and listen in that school of phantom
 ,titans4    ,i shall close this essay  
with a quotation that seems to me to sum
 up  in its final sentences all that is 
best in ,nietzsche's teaching1 the      
ultimate advice on which all his work is
 a commentary3        8,ah6 ,i have     
known noble ones who lost their highest 
hope4 ,and then      they disparaged all
 high hopes4        ,then lived they    
shamelessly in temporary pleasures1 and 
beyond the      day had hardly an aim4  
#8,spirit is also voluptuousness1' said 
they4 ,then broke the wings      of     
their spirit2 and now it creepeth about 
and defileth where it      gnaweth4     
,once they thought of becoming heroes2  

but sensualists are they now4      ,a   
trouble and a terror is a hero to them4 
,but by my love and hope ,i conjure     
thee3 cast not away the hero in      thy
 soul6 ,maintain holy thy highest hope60
    ,the man who wrote this has been    
called irreverent1 because his choice   
of things to revere was not identical   
with his accuser's4 ,but in  these      
sentences there is proof of his         
reverence for something more  profound1 
more important to mankind1 than         
churches1 than submissions  to          
authority1 a thing that men are not     
accustomed openly1 if at all1  to       
reverence1 that quest of the ,holy      
,grail on which all men set out1  though
 most turn back1 and very few pursue it 
till they die4 ,it is a  quest whose    
goal is in each moment of seeking4 ,of  
this he was indeed  reverent1 of the    
glowing cheek and kindled eye of        
intellectual youth1  of unsoiled        
ambition1 of the flame alight before the
 altar of the  potential hero1 who is   

alive for a little while in every man1  
and whose  continuance of life is the   
measure of each man's nobility4         
#aiab4          ,,walter ,,pater        
,,walter ,,pater      ,walter ,pater was
 brought up at ,enfield1 where he was   
near ,london1 and  knew from his        
earliest years 8those quaint suburban   
pastorals0 that  gather 8a certain      
quality of grandeur from the background 
of the great  city1 with its weighty    
atmosphere1 and portent of storm in the 
rapid  light on dome and bleached stone 
steeples40 ,something of that weighty   
atmosphere1 and with it something of    
that rapid light1 ,i find in his  work1 
whether he is writing of the ,italians  
of the ,renaissance1 of  ,montaigne1 of 
the ,greek philosophers1 of the ,dutch  
van ,storck1 or the  ,german ,carl of   
,rosenmold4    ,the external facts of   
his life may be shortly dismissed4 ,he  
8was fond10  as a child1 8of organising 
little processional pomps10 and a       
meeting  with ,keble strengthened for a 

time his boyish resolve to enter the    
,church4 ,that part of his temperament  
which sought satisfaction in  such a    
course found it1 perhaps1 in the        
hieratic character of his  prose4 ,he   
read ,ruskin when he was nineteen1 but  
his appreciations were  too independent 
of ,ruskin's sanction to allow us to    
recognise the  deep influence that is   
popularly attributed to the older man4  
,ruskin  believed that he had           
8discovered0 ,botticelli1 but he first  
spoke of him  in the ,oxford lectures of
 #ahga1 and ,pater's essay had been     
published in  the ,fortnightly ,review  
the year before4 ,pater went from the   
,king's  ,school at ,canterbury to      
,queen's ,college1 ,oxford1 took a      
,second ,class in  the ,final ,classical
 ,schools1 and1 in #ahfd1 was elected to
 a fellowship  at ,brasenose4 ,he lived 
at ,oxford thenceforward1 with only     
occasional  periods of residence in     
,london4 ,in different long vacations he
 knew  ,heidelberg1 ,dresden1 and       

various parts of ,france1 and1 in #ahfi1
 four  years before the publication of  
,the ,renaissance1 travelled in ,italy4 
,he died at ,oxford after a life of     
unhurried labour on ,july #cj1 #ahid4   
,there are some words that one would    
never use in speaking of him4 8,joy0  is
 one of them2 8despair0 is another4     
,they would be represented by the  less 
exuberant 8pleasure10 and the less      
violent 8regret40 ,his was a            
personality in half tones1 lit by the   
pallid glow of a heavy sky1 or by  the  
8peculiar daylight0 he noticed in the   
church at ,canterbury1 that  daylight   
which 8seemed to come from further than 
the light outside40  ,yet his mind was  
not without intensity1 though this was  
expressed  more by its freedom of       
invasion than by any obvious hardness of
 line  or brilliance of colour4 ,when he
 said1 8,i should be afraid to read     
,kipling1 lest he should come between me
 and my page next time ,i sat  down to  
write10 he was confessing an unnecessary

 carefulness4 ,but his  very fear was   
not due to uncertainty of himself4 ,it  
was that of the  jealous acolyte who    
will not expose the sacred glimmer of a 
votive  lamp to even momentary          
comparison with a flash of limelight1   
sure as  he may be of the lamp's        
superior persistence1 dignity1 and1 for 
him1  significance4 ,pater set a high   
value on his own personality1 which in  
a world of relative truth1 was perhaps  
the only thing that he could  trust4 ,he
 tended it1 protected it from undue     
disturbance1 even from  the contagion of
 others1 fed it from time to time with  
victories 444  his essays are the       
carefully prepared conquests of other   
personalities  by his own 444 and       
strengthened it always in the habit of a
 private  supremacy1 a supremacy that   
neither sought nor needed external      
acknowledgment4    ,it would be         
difficult to exaggerate the influence of
 his work1 or1  more exactly1 of the    
mental attitude reflected in his work1  

on the  literature of the end of the    
last century and of the beginning of our
  own4 ,he was a landmark in the history
 of consciously rhythmical prose1  the  
first ,english preacher 7though very    
quietly7 of the doctrine of  art for    
art's sake1 the exponent of an unusually
 precise technique1  the first example  
of a man whose life was consciously     
lived for art's  sake2 a man who1 though
 he disguised the fact by many          
professions of  hedonism1 found in art  
the finest means of living1 and         
preferred1  with something of his       
childish love for processional pomps1 to
 meet  life only when it came to him1   
decorous1 arranged1 unified to single   
purposes1 instead of with the medley of 
motives from which the artist           
disentangles it4    ,his ideas have come
 to be more noticeable in other books   
than in his  own4 ,he seemed to         
deprecate too exuberant agreement4 ,he  
did not like to  stir his audience to an
 unbecoming enthusiasm4 ,this is1       

perhaps1 one  reason why he has seldom  
been considered as a thinker4 ,but      
another  reason was more potent4 8,the  
sensible vehicle0 of his expression     
almost  annulled his abstract thought4  
,pater is the best illustration of the  
way in which ideas can be obliterated by
 the personality of which they  were a  
part4 ,he has never been compared to    
,nietzsche4 ,yet no student of  ,pater's
 ideas could avoid such a comparison1   
fantastic as it may seem  to those to   
whom it has not occurred to refuse1 for 
critical purposes1  to adopt his        
attitude towards thought2 to refuse1    
that is1 8to assign  very little to the 
abstract thought and much to its        
sensible vehicle or  occasion40 ,even   
this attitude1 if we examine it closely1
 is not unlike  the ,nietzschean demand 
for the personal touch in a theory      
before the  theory itself4 ,elsewhere   
the resemblance is clearer4 ,in ,plato  
and  ,platonism he says3 8,still in the 
discussion even of abstract truths it   

is not so much what he thinks as the    
person who is thinking1 that after  all 
really tells40 ,in smaller things he    
offers a parallel1 strange from  one who
 lived as he lived1 to ,nietzsche's     
outburst against sedentary  thinking3   
8,it might seem that movement1 after    
all1 and any habit that  promoted       
movement1 promoted the power1 the       
successes1 the fortunate  parturitions  
of the mind40 ,in more important        
things--things more  important to       
,nietzsche--,pater offers a similar     
aloof parallel1 as if  from another     
planet4 ,before ,the ,birth of ,tragedy 
was written1 ,pater  had distinguished  
,apollo and ,dionysus1 for his own      
purposes and in his  own way1 as the    
particular deities of opposed artistic  
tendencies4  ,at one with ,nietzsche in 
his conception of the relative nature of
  truth1 though he shrank from carrying 
it to battle  l'outrance1  he says      
almost what ,nietzsche says of the evil 
influence of 8the  ideal10 8the         

absolute10 on ,european thought1 though1
 more eclectic1  incapable of           
partisanship1 he does not let it disturb
 his admiration  of ,plato4 ,mildly1 as 
if it did not matter1 he murmurs what   
,nietzsche  shouted3 8,the ,european    
mind will never be quite sane again44440
 ,and  he traces its insanity1 as       
,nietzsche might have traced it1 through
  the ,neo-,platonists1 ,the ,imitation1
 ,spinoza1 ,descartes1 ,malebranche1    
,leibnitz1 ,berkeley4 8,by one and all  
it is assumed1 in the words of  ,plato1 
that to be colourless1 formless1        
impalpable1 is the note of  the superior
 grade of knowledge and existence1      
evanescing steadily1  as one ascends    
towards that perfect 7perhaps not quite 
unattainable7  condition of either1     
which in truth can only be attained by  
the  suppression of all the rule and    
outline of one's own actual experience  
and thought40 ,and1 in his criticism of 
the ,sophists1 he shows that he  is     
aware1 smilingly perhaps1 of the theory 

of two moralities1 one of  the ruler and
 another of the ruled4 ,he says of the  
,sophists3 8,and if  old-fashioned      
principle or prejudice be found in the  
way1 who better  than they could        
instruct one1 not how to minimise1 or   
violate it--that  was not needed1 nor   
perhaps desirable1 regarding what was so
 useful for  the control of others--not 
that2 but1 to apply the intellectual    
solvent  to it1 in regard to one's self8
 #8,it will break up--this or that      
ethical  deposit in your mind1 ah6 very 
neatly1 very prettily1 and disappear1   
when exposed to the action of our       
perfected method4 ,of credit with the   
vulgar as such1 in the solitary chamber 
of the aristocratic mind such           
presuppositions1 prejudices or          
principles1 may be made very soon to    
know their place4'0 ,this may seem like 
ironic criticism of ,nietzsche  before  
the fact1 but it has not been noticed as
 such1 even by  ,nietzscheans1 and that 
is a proof of the completeness with     

which ,pater  made negligible what he   
said1 beside the manner1 the personal   
quality1  of himself saying it4    ,yet 
these and many other neglected ideas    
were of real importance to  the         
personality that obscures them now4     
,pater owed much of the slow  rhythm of 
his mind to his careful observation of  
his own philosophic  attitude4 ,it is   
easy to talk of a battle in his mind    
between metaphysic  and art2 but no such
 battle was fought4 ,pater never lost   
his interest  in philosophies1 and that 
interest never interfered with his      
interest  in art1 but was rather its    
ally1 an essential element in the mental
  temper of all his work4 ,he shared    
,nietzsche's dislike of dialectic1      
because in approaching the condition of 
mathematical speculation  philosophy    
denudes itself of personality4 ,he      
disliked1 for example1  ,spinoza's      
,euclidean demonstrations1 8the dry     
bones of which rattle in  one's ears10  
but was enabled to use finely1 in       

,sebastian van ,storck1  that one of    
,spinoza's sayings in which the man     
seems to be epitomised3  8,whoso loveth 
,god truly must not expect to be loved  
by him in return40  8,philosophic       
truth10 for him1 8consists in the       
philosophic temper40  ,he finds that    
8perhaps the chief offence in ,coleridge
 is an excess of  seriousness1 a        
seriousness arising not from any moral  
principle1 but  from a misconception of 
the perfect manner4 ,there is a certain 
shade  of unconcern1 the perfect manner 
of the eighteenth century1 which  may be
 thought to mark complete culture in the
 handling of abstract  questions4444    
,humanity cannot afford to be too       
serious about them40  ,that was said in 
the first of his printed papers4 ,in the
 last book  of his that was published in
 his lifetime1 he says of the essay3    
8,it  provided him 7,montaigne7 with    
precisely the literary form necessary   
to a mind for which truth itself is but 
a possibility1 realisable  not as a     

general conclusion1 but rather as the   
elusive effect of a  particular personal
 experience2 to a mind which1 noting    
faithfully  those random lights that    
meet it by the way1 must needs content  
itself  with suspension of judgment1 at 
the end of the intellectual journey1 to 
the very last asking3 ,que scais-je8    
,who knows8--in the very spirit of  that
 old ,socratic contention1 that all true
 philosophy is but a refined  sense of  
one's ignorance40 ,the essay1 we must   
not forget1 was the form  chosen by     
himself4    ,nowhere does he better     
illustrate his conception of philosophic
 truth1  of the philosophic temper1 than
 in that harmony of essays1 written for 
delivery as lectures1 and printed as    
,plato and ,platonism4 ,philosophy      
clothes herself with humanity1 or rather
 retains the clothes of which  dialectic
 would deprive her1 and we watch her as 
a human being1 are  nervous for her in  
the difficult places1 as she threads her
 way through  the lives of men and the  

history of a nation4 ,pater is engaged  
in  portraiture1 not in exposition1 so  
humane has his subject become4 ,the     
three philosophers whose images are     
impressed upon the theories of  8the    
flux10 of 8the one10 and of 8number10   
,heraclitus1 ,parmenides1  ,pythagoras1 
are no longer outline drawings1 like    
illustrations in a  classical           
dictionary1 but coloured and modelled   
with something of  ,blake's enthusiastic
 vision1 softened and quieted1 till the 
enthusiasm  is like summer lightning    
behind the hills1 clear and bright but  
without  menace for his general         
intention4 ,their portraits1 inset in   
the 8,plato0  like the vignettes that   
encircle the central picture in those   
old  engraved frontispieces1 are        
curiously suggestive of paragraphs of   
,nietzsche's ,early ,greek ,philosophy4 
,they are ruled by just such a          
conception of truth1 but are without the
 spirit of proselytism1 so  inconsistent
 with it1 and yet so characteristic of  

the man who preached  rather than       
denounced his version of the ,eternal   
,recurrence4 ,it is  hard to know which 
is most admirable--the delicate         
disentangling of  ,socrates from ,plato1
 the clearly visualised picture of the  
,sophists  7there never was a book on   
philosophy so full of concrete vision71 
the synthesis of ,plato's personality1  
lover1 seer1 observer1 8who has         
lingered too long in the brazier's      
workshops0 to be able to speak of  8dumb
 matter10 or the beautiful appreciation 
of the method of the  dialogues and of  
the often travestied aims of ,socratean 
talk1 which  represent both the 8demand 
for absolute certainty1 in any truth or 
knowledge worthy of the name10 and      
,plato's method of learning and         
teaching1 the essential quality of these
 conversations with himself  being their
 endlessness4 ,then there is the dream1 
to the making of  which has gone so much
 knowledge content to be hidden by the  
perfection  of its service1 of the city 

of ,lacedaemon in ,sparta1 so necessary 
a  prelude to the account of ,plato's   
dreamed republic4 ,finally1 perhaps     
because dearest to himself1 there is the
 chapter on ,plato's aesthetics1  which1
 to ,pater1 were not what some have made
 them1 but of immediate  import to men  
living their lives1 and suggested a     
purpose1 a hope 8to  get something of   
that irrepressible conscience of art1   
that spirit of  control1 into the       
general course of life1 above all into  
its energetic  or impassioned acts40 ,it
 is1 in a sense1 a white heat of decorum
  for which he asks1 a scrupulousness1 a
 patience which is 8quite as  much as   
fire1 of the mood of all true lovers40  
,he is really asking  for self-conscious
 life1 for the kind of life that is only
 given by  art1 whether by the          
contemplation of the work of artists or 
by the  private acts of artistic        
creation1 which we all perform1 more or 
less  often1 and which are indeed       
processes of becoming conscious acts of 

scrupulous1 observant and comprehensive 
living4 ,i can think of no book  better 
fitted to lead a student into           
philosophy1 and ,i am not sure that  it 
is not also the best book with which to 
begin the study of ,walter  ,pater4 ,it 
is certainly the book that made the most
 various demands upon  his personality4 
,more than any other writer of his time 
he was justified in speaking  of 8the   
irrepressible conscience of art40 ,for  
many he is1 ,i suppose1  chiefly        
interesting as the man who brought into 
,english literary  workshops the        
craftsman's creed of ,flaubert4 ,this   
importation of his  was not a mere      
translation and expansion of the few    
sentences from  ,flaubert that appear in
 his essay on 8,style40 ,those sentences
 and his  comments upon them1 do but    
form1 in the structure of that essay1 a 
pendant to1 an illustration of1 ,pater's
 original remarks1 which are  themselves
 a complete1 if resolutely              
non-technical1 exposition of  his own   

clearly comprehended methods4 ,it is    
possible that ,pater saw1  a little more
 circumspicuously than he1 what it was  
that ,flaubert  believed4 ,at any rate  
that belief is here unified with the    
suggestions  of earlier writers1 and    
given corollaries whose implication in  
it  ,flaubert never troubled to see4    
,the theory is1 briefly stated1 as      
follows3 ,literature will fulfil the    
condition of all good art 8by  finding  
its specific excellence in the absolute 
correspondence of the  term to its      
import40 ,its first1 indeed1 accurately 
speaking1 its only  object is truth1 the
 exact fitting of words to meaning1     
which involves  the watchfulness over   
the whole that will guard details from  
being made  inexact by the reflected    
light of other details2 and this        
involves  also a loving scholarship in  
the precise meanings and implications of
  the words used4    ,he accepts ,de    
,quincey's distinction between 8the     
literature of power  and the literature 

of knowledge10 with the comment1 8in the
 former  of which the composer gives us 
not fact1 but his peculiar sense of     
fact1 whether past or present40 ,in the 
fine art of literature1 the  identity   
sought between words and meaning is an  
identity between words  and the thing   
they represent in its private           
atmosphere1 with its  particular meaning
 to the particular mind that thinks it4 
,throughout  his works is scattered     
evidence of the importance that ,pater  
attributed  to this particularity of    
thought1 dependent on the thinker and   
his  circumstances1 the personality of  
thought which is really the guarantee   
of its uniqueness1 and in a sense1 not  
only of its truth but of its  artistic  
rightness4 ,in ,the ,child in the       
,house1 for example3        8,in later  
years he came upon philosophies which   
occupied him much      in the estimate  
of the proportion of the sensuous and   
the ideal      elements in human        
knowledge1 the relative parts they bear 

in it2      and1 in his intellectual    
scheme1 was led to assign very little to
      the abstract thought1 and much to 
its sensible vehicle or occasion40      
,and1 in the essay on 8,style0 we are   
considering3        8444 just in        
proportion as the writer's aim1         
consciously or      unconsciously1 comes
 to be the transcribing1 not of the     
world1 not      of mere fact1 but of his
 sense of it1 he becomes an artist1 his 
work fine art44440        8,literary    
art1 that is1 like all art which is in  
any way imitative      or reproductive  
of fact--form1 or colour1 or            
incident--is the      representation of 
such fact as connected with soul1 of a  
specific      personality1 in its       
preferences1 its volition and power40   
,let me attach to these another         
quotation from the same essay1 to       
illustrate his use of the word 8soul10  
the keyword of his belief3        8,mind
 and soul2--hard to ascertain           
philosophically1 the distinction      is

 real enough practically1 for they often
 interfere1 are sometimes      in       
conflict1 with each other4 ,blake1 in   
the last century1 is an      instance of
 preponderating soul embarrassed1 at a  
loss1 in an era      of preponderating  
mind4 ,as a quality of style1 at all    
events1 soul      is a fact1 in certain 
writers--the way they have of absorbing 
language1 of attracting it into the     
peculiar spirit they are of1      with a
 subtlety which makes the actual result 
seem like some      inexplicable        
inspiration40    ,when we talk of words 
it is1 if possible1 better to talk in   
terms of  speech than thus indirectly in
 terms liable to debate1 of the nature  
of man1 which1 in this case at least1   
have led a careful writer into          
inaccuracy4 ,blake was neither          
embarrassed nor at a loss4 ,he thought  
all the rest of the world was4 ,a sort  
of diffidence would not allow  ,pater to
 admit that he was thinking neither of  
soul nor of mind but  of a quality in   

,blake's language1 a quality markedly   
less evident in  the work of his        
contemporaries4 ,whenever ,pater uses   
the word soul in  this sense he is      
thinking of the magical power in        
contradistinction  from the practical   
power of words4 ,blake's words say more 
by what  they carry with them in        
suggestive atmosphere1 than by what they
  say4 ,his speech is highly potential2 
and when ,pater talks of soul  in       
literature he is talking of the         
potential element in the language  of   
literature1 the element so noticeable in
 the language of his own  works4 ,his   
insistence on truth1 not only in the    
merely kinetic speech1  the thing said1 
but also in the potential speech that   
gives the thing  said its atmospherical 
particularity1 distinguished his own    
work1 and  deeply influenced the writers
 who followed him--,wilde1 ,dowson1     
perhaps  ,mr4 ,yeats1 at least in his   
prose1 certainly ,mr4 ,arthur ,symons4  
,it was  an indigenous spring of the    

tendency that1 in ,france1 has been     
called  ,symbolist1 with which the last 
of the younger writers ,i have mentioned
  definitely allied himself4 ,pater's   
expressed admirations for modern        
,french books are only such as suggest  
his ignorance of the best writers  in a 
later generation than that of ,flaubert1
 who was1 of course1 not  twenty years  
his senior4 ,he does not seem to have   
read those younger  men whose ideas so  
closely resembled his own1 so closely   
that ,frenchmen  often claim ,pater's   
most obvious disciple#g for a pupil of  
the school  of ,mallarm4    ,with his   
care in the use of words1 he had also a 
care for structure1  and for similar    
reasons4 ,he says1 as in a cruder way   
,poe had said long  before1 but not with
 such close significance3        8,the  
term is right1 and has its essential    
beauty1 when it becomes1      in a      
manner1 what it signifies1 as with the  
names of simple      sensations4 ,to    
give the phrase1 the sentence1 the      

structural      member1 the entire      
composition1 song1 or essay1 a similar  
unity      with its subject and with    
itself3--style is in the right way when 
it tends towards that40    ,those words 
embody in technical wisdom the          
profoundest understanding of  the aims  
of art and of the nature of artistic    
creation4    ,his practice was not quite
 on the level of his theory4 ,his       
details  sometimes fail to preserve a   
unity of tone and rhythm with the whole 
of which they are a part4 ,sometimes    
too1 the effort to preserve that  unity 
compels the whole to a chafing monotone4
 ,an over-zealous pursuit  of accuracy  
sometimes allowed those careful         
sentences to encumber  themselves with  
adjectival burs1 and a too visual method
 of composition  sometimes cost them    
their harmony with the music it was     
their business  to maintain1 and even   
brought that music to an abrupt stop4   
8,pater10  ,mr4 ,benson says1 who knew  
him1 8when he had arranged his notes1   

began  to write on ruled paper1 leaving 
the alternate lines blank2 and in  these
 spaces he would insert new clauses and 
descriptive epithets4 ,then  the whole  
was re-copied1 again on alternate lines1
 which would again  be filled2 moreover1
 he often had an essay at this stage set
 up at his  own expense in print1 that  
he might better be able to judge of the 
effect44440 ,such a method1 however     
careful the writer might be to make     
continual appeal to his ear1 could not  
but allow the eye to assume too  great a
 share in that collaboration in which   
ear should be the sole  dictator and eye
 the ear's obedient servant4 ,it would  
make it difficult  to reject pleasant1  
exact phrases put in on those alternate 
lines1 even  if they made the sentences 
top-heavy with their own distinguished1 
highly specialised meaning4 ,they would 
make this top-heaviness hard to         
perceive1 and1 if perceived1 erroneously
 attributable to the visible  crowding  
and elaboration of the written page4    

,the setting up in print1  while useful 
as a guide to the general outline1 would
 only confirm  these sentences in their 
condition4 ,nobody who has tried to read
 ,pater  aloud can be without instances 
when the reading became difficult1      
breathless1 impossible1 even while the  
words demanded admiration for  their    
subtle accuracy and perfect choice4 ,let
 me give no more than two  examples of  
the awkward constructions ,pater allowed
 himself4 ,i shall  take them from the  
least decorative of his works1 from a   
book actually  written for oral         
delivery4 ,on page #ce of ,plato and    
,platonism#h there  is this sentence3   
8,from ,xenophanes1 as a critic of the  
polytheism of the ,greek      religious 
poets1 that most abstract and arid of   
formul1 ,pure      ,being1 closed in    
indifferently on every side upon itself1
 and      suspended in the midst of     
nothing1 like a hard transparent crystal
      ball1 as he says2 #8,the          
,absolute'2 #8,the ,one'2 passed to his 

fellow-citizen ,parmenides1 seeking1    
doubtless in the true spirit of         
philosophy1 for the centre of the       
universe1 of his own experience      of 
it1 for some common measure of the      
experience of all men40    ,now there   
are #cg words in #h clauses1 needing #e 
commas and #c semi-colons  to make up   
the subject of that sentence4 ,the      
underlining of the words  ,pure ,being  
seems to me a manifest concession to the
 eye4    ,on page #cb of the same book  
there is a characteristic construction  
partly due to a wish to preserve in his 
writing1 tapestried as it might  be1 a  
flavour of conversational speech1 and1  
for all that1 dependent on  the         
visibility of print1 demanding a swift  
review of the beginning of  the sentence
 as the reader arrives at its end3      
8,that which is1 so purely1 or          
absolutely1 that it is nothing      at  
all to our mixed powers of              
apprehension3--,parmenides and the      
,eleatic ,school were much preoccupied  

with the determination of the           
thoughts1 or of the mere phrases and    
words1 that belong to that40    ,such   
sentences are blemishes1 not because of 
inaccuracy1 for their  accuracy is their
 excuse1 but because they trouble our   
reception of  the whole1 as a whole1 by 
drawing too much attention to           
themselves4    ,with all his care for   
shapely building1 for unity of          
impression1  he could not avoid         
occasional over-insistence on details1  
rather  pleasant than otherwise1 unlike 
the troubling halts of his failures  in 
sentence-making4 ,indeed1 ,i am not sure
 that we can describe as a  fault what  
was characteristic of a whole manner of 
vision1 and due  not to carelessness but
 to the peculiar gift of a rare intimacy
 of  imagination4 ,in his imaginary     
portraits 7which include not only the   
book of that name1 but 8,emerald        
,uthwart10 8,the ,child in the ,house10 
8,apollo in ,picardy10 8,gaston de      
,latour10 8,marius the ,epicurean10     

and1 less obviously1 most of his        
critical work7 we can observe his  way  
of laying hold of small1 separate facts1
 and expanding them1 as  ,gaston        
expanded the poems of ,ronsard1 8to the 
full measure of their  intention40 ,his 
was never a sweeping1 large-rhythmed1   
narrative  imagination2 ,i fancy1 even1 
that ,pater felt a danger of losing     
himself  when he had to say that        
something happened1 and more than once1 
when  his characters were compelled to  
significant1 visible action1 he did     
indeed lose himself 444 for a sentence  
or two it is as if not ,pater  spoke but
 another4 ,there was a danger of things 
happening in ,gaston  de ,latour1 the   
most lovable of his books4 ,for seven   
chapters ,pater  put them off1 and then1
 as they crowded up on the horizon1 and 
became  imminent1 he laid the story     
aside before they could overwhelm him   
and  carry him off his feet4#i          
,pater's imagination loved not action   
but intellectual circumstance1  and the 

significance not of deeds but of the    
promise of deeds yet  unperformed4 ,the 
story of ,marius1 the story of ,gaston1 
as far as it  had been carried1 was the 
story of exceptional character in       
particular  intellectual environment2   
and for us1 perhaps1 the interest lies  
as  much in the one as in the other4    
,when ,i think of the second of those   
two books1 ,i think less of that        
scrupulous1 finely strung youth than of 
,montaigne1 whose portrait1 in the old  
tower above his open house1 seems  to me
 at least equally important4 ,now to    
offer the reader a choice  between the  
part and the whole is not the way of the
 perfect artist4  ,again1 it is idle to 
say that the narrative of 8,marius the  
,epicurean0  is broken by the inclusion 
of that lovely rendering of the tale of 
,cupid and ,psyche4 ,it is idle to point
 to that tale as an interruption1  when 
there is nothing for it to interrupt1   
nothing that is not already  in repose4 
,in ,pater's books it is the reader who 

moves from one  contemplation to        
another1 and1 in 8,marius10 quite       
naturally1 from ,pisa  and the boy's    
education there1 and his friendship with
 ,flavian1 to the  tale they read       
together on hot ,italian afternoons4    
,in a way the inclusion of that tale is 
an illustration on a large  scale of    
,pater's invariable manner of using     
detail4 ,it was the work of  another    
man1 and1 before placing it in his book1
 ,pater made it his own  by translating 
it into a prose which1 if purposely and 
also necessarily  a little different    
from that of the rest of the book1 was  
yet his4  ,just so smaller details1     
fragments of observation of external    
nature1  for example1 are not directly  
set upon the page1 with no more than the
  imprint of the hands that plucked them
 to give them a spurious unity  with the
 rest4 ,they are all translated1        
idiomatically1 until they are  so wholly
 his that it seems he has looked within 
for them and not  without4 ,the light   

through the arched windows of the old   
church1 the  spires of ,london1 the     
burial vault of the ,dukes of           
,rosenmold3 these  things are so        
intimately imagined1 so completely      
veiled in ,pater's mood  that when we   
recognise them in life we accuse        
ourselves of plagiarism  because we     
cannot see them other than as he saw    
them1 and they come to  us1 almost1 as  
remembered sentences4    8,the ,golden  
,book0 takes its place in 8,marius0 as a
 single touch in the  portrait of a     
time3 a fragment1 carefully chosen1 of  
the local colour  of ideas4 ,just so    
,pater uses details more minute4        
,irrelevant as they  may seem1 to a     
careless observer1 irrelevant as perhaps
 they were  before he had translated    
them1 they help in the painting of the  
mood of  a man1 as that story in the    
painting of a mood of the ancient world1
  in each case a mood of ,pater's own1  
half borrowed from1 half lent to1  man  
or world4 ,this mutual creation is like 

that which happens in the  contemplation
 of a work of art4 ,it is criticism1    
and1 even when ,pater  is not           
criticising what are known as works of  
art1 he is criticising  not the world1  
or a period or a man1 but works of art  
he has already  made1 privately1 for    
himself4 ,he used 8the finer sort of    
memory1  bringing its object to mind    
with a quiet clearness1 yet1 as         
sometimes  happens in dreams1 raised a  
little above itself1 and above ordinary 
retrospect40 ,he believed that criticism
 was a form of creation3 for him  it was
 often a second stage of creation1 for  
he had given artistic form  to his      
material before1 in contemplation of it1
 he began the criticism  that he offers 
us in its place4 ,i do not know that    
this is1 accurately  speaking1 possible1
 but it is at least a fable that very   
fairly  represents the process whereby1 
in ,pater's books1 life comes to seem at
  once so ordered1 so tapestried1 so    
aloof and yet so intimately known4    ,i

 speak there of life in general1 of the 
flux without1 a turmoil  until it has   
been arrested by one of those personal  
acts of artistic  creation which it is  
the function of art to make more        
frequent1 more  habitual4 ,the turbulent
 nature of the flux itself is disguised 
alike  in his critical and his more     
obviously imaginative work4 ,for his    
critical essays tend always to become   
imaginary portraits1 no less  than his  
studies in ,greek mythology4 ,they are  
not portraits of men  as ,pater believed
 them to be1 but reproductions of their 
aspect in  sudden side-lights that      
change them1 specialise them1 and for   
those  readers who are vainly looking   
for a general view1 simplify them a     
little too far4 ,but what sometimes     
seems to be the reduction of a  complex 
personality to a simple                 
formula--,michelangelo1 for example1 to 
the repeated ex forti dulcedo--is not so
 intended4 ,it is rather the  reduction 
of a personality to the expression of a 

single mood4 ,there is  warp and woof in
 ,pater's essays1 and the shuttle must  
thread parallel  lines and not a maze as
 it weaves what is meant less as the    
portrait  of a man than as the pattern  
of a mood4 ,pater never sacrificed his  
own personality to his nominal subject4 
,he sacrificed his sitter1 not  himself4
 ,nothing is more remarkable in ,marius 
the ,epicurean 7where it  would have    
been easier to disclaim the writer's own
 time1 to waive the  centuries that     
separated him from his supposed         
material7 than ,pater's  resolute       
modernity4 ,he will not allow us to     
forget the distinction in  circumstances
 that makes so subtle the relation      
between subject and  object4 ,he will   
strip off nothing that has been brought 
him by the  years between ,marius and   
himself4 ,deliberately1 he sees ,marius 
with  eyes enriched by those centuries1 
and1 with the later knowledge that  can 
compare ,apuleius to ,swift or to       
,thophile ,gautier1 takes pleasure  in a

 reference to ,wilhelm ,meister and     
remarks that ,marius thinks in  the vein
 of ,st4 ,augustine4 ,and so1 caring    
more for the point of view  from which  
he sees them than for the actual        
objects1 that can be seen  a thousand   
ways1 he has no wish to 8say the last   
word0 on ,lamb1 on  ,pico1 on ,sir      
,thomas ,browne4 ,he does say it1       
however1 on those men in  those moods1  
or1 more truly1 on the moods in which he
 saw them4 ,we  often leave an essay of 
,pater's with a new appreciation of     
someone  else2 but that is not because  
,pater has told us anything1 but        
because1  in reproducing the mood of his
 essay we have given ourselves a mood   
in which that other1 ,botticelli1       
,ronsard1 ,giorgione1 can be more than  
usually significant4    ,thus1 though it
 is as a critic that ,pater lives and   
will live1 it is  as a critic of a kind 
that he may almost be said to have      
invented4  ,his criticism is aesthetic  
and personal4 ,though compelled to offer

 a  profusion of theories1 he is        
impatient of them1 submits himself to a 
work of art1 and criticises that work   
not by showing what he feels1  but by a 
reproduction of the mood which that work
 induces in him4 ,his  criticism1 always
 indirect1 is always creative1 since the
 reproduction  of a mood1 unlike the    
recording of opinions1 is itself a work 
of art4  ,it has the validity of his own
 temperament and circumstances1 lyrical 
as opposed to abstract truth4 ,we can   
never say of him that he was  wrong1    
unless in the theories that he could not
 avoid but considered  unimportant4 ,we 
can only say that he was different--from
 ourselves1  from someone else4 ,we read
 this critic as we read a poet1         
collaborating  with him in the          
reproduction of a mood1 in the searching
 knowledge of  the fragment of life that
 was coloured for him by this or that   
book  or picture4 ,the book or picture  
becomes a secondary matter1 and the     
first is the rapid light1 the weighty   

atmosphere that he had made his  own4   
,after reading him ,i remember his words
 on ,montaigne3 8,a mind for  which     
truth itself is but a possibility1      
realisable not as a general  conclusion1
 but rather as the elusive effect of a  
particular personal  experience40       
#aiab4          ,,remy ,,de ,,gourmont  
,,remy ,,de ,,gourmont      ,i    ,m4 de
 ,gourmont lives on the fourth floor of 
an old house in the ,rue  des           
,saints-,pres4 ,a copper chain hangs as 
bell-rope to his door4 ,the  rare       
visitor1 for it is well known that for  
many years he has been a  solitary and  
seldom receives even his friends1 pulls 
the chain and  waits4 ,the door opens a 
few inches1 ready to be closed          
immediately1  by a man of middle size1  
in a monk's brown robe1 with a small1   
round1  grey felt cap4 ,the robe is     
fastened with silver buckles1 in which  
are  set large blue stones4 ,the        
admitted visitor walks through a passage
  into a room whose walls are covered   

with books4 ,in the shadow at the  back 
of the room is a loaded table4 ,another 
table1 with a sloping  desk upon it1    
juts out from the window4 ,m4 de        
,gourmont sits in a big  chair before   
the desk1 placing his visitor on the    
opposite side of  the table1 with the   
light falling on his face so that he can
 observe  his slightest expression4 ,in 
conversation he often disguises his face
  with his hand1 but now and again looks
 openly and directly at his  visitor4   
,his eyes are always questioning1 and   
almost always kindly4  ,his face was    
beautiful in the youth of the flesh1 and
 is now beautiful  in the age of the    
mind1 for there is no dead line in it1  
no wrinkle1  no minute feature not      
vitalised by intellectual activity4 ,the
 nose  is full and sensitive1 with      
markedly curved nostrils4 ,there is a   
little satiric beard4 ,the eyebrows lift
 towards the temples1 as in  most men of
 imagination4 ,the eyes are weighted    
below1 as in most men  of critical      

thought4 ,the two characteristics are1  
in ,m4 de ,gourmont1  as in his work1   
most noticeable together4 ,the lower    
lip1 very full1  does not pout1 but     
falls curtain-like towards the chin4 ,it
 is the lip  of a sensualist1 and yet of
 one whose sensuality has not clogged   
but  stimulated the digestive processes 
of his brain4 ,omar might have had  such
 a lip1 if he had been capable not only 
of his garlands of roses1  but also of  
the essays of ,montaigne4    ,he was    
born in a chteau in ,normandy on #dth   
,april #aheh4 ,among his  ancestors was 
,gilles de ,gourmont1 a learned printer 
and engraver of  the fifteenth century4 
,he has himself collected old woodcuts1 
and in  ,l',ymagier amused himself by   
setting the most ancient specimens of   
the craft1 among which he is proud to   
show some examples of the work  of his  
family1 side by side with drawings by   
,whistler and ,gauguin4 ,he  came to    
,paris in #ahhc1 when he obtained a post
 in the ,bibliothque  ,nationale4       

,huysmans was 8sous-chef de bureau  la  
direction de la  ,sret gnrale10 and ,m4 
de ,gourmont1 who made his acquaintance 
through  the dedication of a book1 used 
to call for him between four and five   
of the afternoon1 and walk with him     
across the river to a caf1 that  has    
since disappeared1 where he listened to 
the older man's rather  savage          
characterisations of men1 women1        
movements and books4 ,a few  years later
 he was held to be lacking in           
patriotism1 and relieved of  his post on
 account of an article urging the       
necessity of ,franco-,german  agreement4
 ,he wrote incessantly4 ,merlette1 a    
rather nave and awkward  little novel1  
published in #ahhf1 did not promise the 
work he was to  do4 ,it was no more than
 an exercise1 well done1 but no more1   
the  work of a good brain as yet        
uncertain of its personal impulse4 ,but 
about this time he was caught in the    
stream of a movement for which  he had  
been waiting1 for which1 indeed1 the art

 of his time had been  waiting1 the     
movement that was introduced to ,english
 readers by ,mr4  ,arthur ,symons's     
admirable series of critical            
portraits4#aj ,in #ahij he  published   
,sixtine1 dedicated to ,villiers de     
l',isle ,adam1 who had died  the year   
before4 ,in #ahib appeared ,le ,latin   
,mystique1 a book on the  ,latin poets  
of the ,middle ,ages4 ,he has always    
been 8a delicate amateur  of the        
curiosities of beauty10 though the      
character that ,mr4 ,symons  gave him   
has since become very inadequate4 ,he   
edited ,grard de ,nerval1  ,aucassin et 
,nicolette1 and ,rutebeuf's ,la ,miracle
 de ,thophile1  and wrote ,lilith1      
#ahib1 and ,thodat1 a dramatic poem in  
prose  that was produced by my friend   
,m4 ,paul ,fort at the ,thtre d',art on 
,december #aath of the same year4       
,several other curious works of this    
period were united later in ,le ,plerin 
du ,silence4 ,i extract from the        
bibliography by ,m4 van ,bever1 printed 

in ,potes d'aujourd'hui1 a  list of the 
more important books that have followed 
these very various  beginnings3 ,le     
,livre des ,masques1 #ahif2 ,les        
,chevaux de ,diomde1  #ahig2 ,le ,,iime 
,livre des ,masques1 #ahih2 ,esthtique  
de la langue  franaise1 #ahii2 ,la      
,culture des ,ides1 #aijj2 ,le ,chemin  
de ,velours1  #aijb2 ,le ,problme du    
,style1 #aijb2 ,physique de l',amour1   
#aijc2  ,une ,nuit au ,luxembourg1      
#aijf2 besides four volumes of literary 
and  philosophical criticism1 and four  
volumes of comment on contemporary      
events4    ,all this mass of work is    
vitalised by a single motive4 ,even the 
divisions of criticism and creation     
7whose border line is very dim7  are    
made actually one by a desire common to 
both of them1 a desire not  expressed in
 them1 but satisfied1 a desire for      
intellectual freedom4  ,the motto for   
the whole is written in ,une ,nuit au   
,luxembourg3  8,l'exercice de la pense  
est un jeu1 mais il faut que ce jeu soit

  libre et harmonieux40 ,i am reminded  
of this sentence again and again  in    
thinking of ,m4 de ,gourmont and his    
books4 ,there must be no loss of        
self-command1 none of the grimaces and  
the awkward movements of the  fanatic1  
the man with whom thought plays4 ,the   
thinker must be superior  to his        
thought4 ,he must make it his plaything 
instead of being sport  for it4 ,his    
eyes must be clear1 not hallucinated2   
his arms his own1  not swung with the   
exaggerated gestures of the preacher    
moved beyond  himself by his own words4 
,m4 de ,gourmont seems less an artist   
than a  man determined to conquer his   
obsessions1 working them out one by one 
as they assail him1 in order to regain  
his freedom4 ,it is a fortunate         
accident that he works them out by      
expressing them1 twisting into  garlands
 the brambles that impede his way4      
,,ii    ,m4 de ,gourmont almost         
immediately left the half-hearted       
realism  of ,merlette1 and1 just as in  

his scientific writings he is more      
profoundly scientific than the men of   
science1 so in his works of  this period
 he carried to their uttermost limits   
the doctrines of  the symbolists4 ,in   
his critical work the historian must    
look for the  manifestoes and polemics  
of the group that gathered in ,mallarm's
  rooms in the ,rue de ,rome4 ,the      
theories are in ,idalisme1 published  in
 #ahic1 and in such essays as his       
defence of ,mallarm1 written  in #ahih1 
and included in the ,promenades         
,littraires4 ,of their  practice he     
supplies plenty of examples4 8,nommer un
 objet1 c'est  supprimer les trois      
quarts de la jouissance du pome qui est 
faite du  bonheur de deviner peu  peu2  
le suggrer voil le rve40 ,mallarm  wrote
 that in #ahia1 and during the 'nineties
 ,remy de ,gourmont was  publishing     
mysterious little books of poetry and   
prose1 of which  small limited editions 
were issued on rare paper1 in curious   
covers1  with lithographed decorations  

as reticent as the writing4 ,there is   
the ,histoire tragique de la ,princesse 
,phnissa explique en quatre  pisodes1 a 
play whose action might be seen through 
seven veils1 a  play whose motive1 never
 stated directly1 is1 perhaps1 the      
destruction  of the future for the sake 
of the present4 ,there is ,le ,fantme1  
the  story of a liaison between a man   
and a woman if you will1 between the    
intellect and the flesh if you will1    
that begins with such an anthem  as     
might have been sung by some of those   
strange beings whom ,poe took  8into the
 starry meadows beyond ,orion1 where1   
for pansies and violets  and heartsease1
 are the beds of the triplicate and     
triple-tinted suns40  ,the man--is it a 
man8--who tells the story1 ends with a  
regret for  something too real to be    
visible1 something that is seen because 
it is  not visible3 8,je me sentais     
froid1 j'avais peur--car je la voyais1  
sans  pouvoir m'opposer  cette          
transformation doloureuse--je la voyais 

s'en  aller rejoindre le groupe des     
femmes indcises d'o mon amour l'avait   
tire--je la voyais redevenir le fantme  
qu'elles sont toutes40 ,there  is ,le   
,livre des ,litanies1 with its elaborate
 incantation1 from which  ,i take the   
beginning and end3        8,fleur       
hypocrite1        8,fleur du silence4   
8,rose couleur de cuivre1 plus          
frauduleuse que nos joies1 rose         
couleur de cuivre1 embaume-nous dans tes
 mensonges1 fleur      hypocrite1 fleur 
du silence4           99       99       
99       99       99        8,rose      
amthyste1 toile matinale1 tendresse     
piscopale1 rose      amthyste1 tu dors  
sur des poitrines dvotes et douillettes1
 gemme      offerte  ,marie1  gemme     
sacristine1 fleur hypocrite1 fleur du   
silence4        8,rose cardinale1 rose  
couleur du sang de l',eglise romaine1   
rose      cardinale1 tu fais rver les   
grands yeux des mignons et plus d'un    
t'pingla au nud de sa jarretire1 fleur  
hypocrite1 fleur du      silence4       

8,rose papale1 rose arrose des mains qui
 bnissent le monde1 rose      papale1   
ton cur d'or est en cuivre1 et les      
larmes qui perlent sur      ta vaine    
corolle1 ce sont les pleurs du ,christ1 
fleur hypocrite1      fleur du silence4 
8,fleur hypocrite1        8,fleur du    
silence40      ,,iii    ,these1 and     
other things like them1 made it possible
 for ,m4 de ,gourmont  to proceed in the
 discovery of himself4 ,he drank his    
mood to the dregs1  leaving no untried  
experiment to clog his mind with a      
regret as he  moved on4 8,i have always 
been excessive10 he says2 8,i do not    
like to  stop half-way40 ,he follows    
each impulse as far as it will take him1
  lest1 by chance1 he should leave some 
flower untasted in a bypath he  has seen
 but not explored4 ,unlike most authors1
 he never has to copy  himself1 and does
 not feel bound1 because he has written 
one book whose  prose is malachite      
green1 to produce another of the same   
colour4 8,un  artiste10 said ,wilde1 8ne

 recommence jamais deux fois la mme     
chose  444 ou bien c'est qu'il n'avait  
pas russi40 ,the surest way to fail in  
an experiment is to make it with a faint
 heart4 ,m4 de ,gourmont always  burns  
his boats4    ,some preoccupations1     
however boldly attacked1 are not to be  
conquered  at a blow4 ,the preoccupation
 of sex is unlike that of a theory of   
art4 ,conquered again and again by      
expression1 it returns with a new  face1
 a new mystery1 a new power of building 
the intellect1 a new  ,gorgon to be seen
 in the mirror of art and decapitated4  
,as the man  changes so does ,medusa    
vary her attack1 and so must he vary the
 manner  of her death4 ,now he will     
write a ,physique de l',amour1 and1 like
  ,schopenhauer1 relieve himself of the 
problem of sex by reducing it to  its   
lowest terms4 ,now he will conquer it by
 the lyrical and concrete  expression of
 a novel or a poem4 ,sex continually    
disturbs him1 but  the disturbance of   
the flesh is always1 sooner or later1   

pacified by  the mind4 ,all his later   
novels are1 like ,sixtine1 8romans de la
 vie  crbrale40 ,sixtine is the story of
 a writer's courtship of a woman  no    
more subtle than himself1 but far more  
ready with her subtlety4 ,it  displays  
the workings of a man's mind and the    
states of emotion through  which he     
passes1 by including in the text1 as    
they were written1 the  stories and     
poems composed under the influence of   
the events4 ,the man  is intensely      
analytic1 afterwards4 ,emotion blurs the
 windows of his  brain1 and cleans hers 
to a greater lucidity4 ,he always knows 
what  he ought to have done4 8,nul      
n'avait  un plus haut degr la prsence   
d'esprit du bas de l'escalier40 ,more   
than once the woman was his1 if  he had 
known it before he left her4 ,finally1  
she is carried off by a  rival whose    
method he has himself suggested4 ,the   
book is a tragedy  of                   
self-consciousness1 whose self-conscious
 heroine is a prize for  the only man   

who is ignorant of himself1 and1 in the 
blindness of  that ignorance1 is able to
 act4 ,but there is no need to analyse  
the  frameworks of ,m4 de ,gourmont's   
novels4 ,frameworks matter very little4 
,they are all vitalised by an almost    
impatient knowledge of the subtlety  of 
a woman's mind in moments of pursuit or 
flight1 and the impotence of  a man     
whose brain seeks to be an honest       
mediator between itself and his  flesh4 
,his men do not love like the heroes of 
ordinary books1 and are  not in the     
least likely to suggest impossible      
ideals to maidens4 ,they  are unfaithful
 in the flesh nearly always4 ,they use  
one experience  as an anaesthetic for   
the pain they are undergoing in another4
 ,they  seek to be masters of themselves
 by knowledge1 and are unhappy without  
thinking of suicide on that account4    
,unhappiness no less than joy is  a     
thing to be known4 ,they fail1 not      
getting what they want1 and are         
victorious in understanding1 with       

smiling lips1 their non-success4        
,,iv    ,one afternoon1 in the ,rue des 
,saints-,pres1 ,m4 de ,gourmont         
confirmed  the impression already given 
me by his books and his eyebrows4 8,i   
have always been both romanesque and    
critique40 ,side by side he  has built  
separate piles of books4 ,while writing 
the curiosities  of symbolism that are  
collected in ,le ,plerin du ,silence1 he
 was  preparing the ,livres des         
,masques1 two series of short critical  
portraits of the writers of his time1   
which1 in the case of those  who        
survive1 are as true to-day as when they
 were written4 ,it has  been so         
throughout4 ,in the one pile are little 
volumes of poetry like  ,les ,saintes du
 ,paradis1 and such romances as those we
 have been  discussing2 in the other are
 works of science like the ,physique de 
l',amour1 books benevolently polemical  
like ,le ,problme du ,style1 and        
collections of criticism in which an    
agile intelligence collaborates  with a 

wakeful sense of beauty4    ,in this    
critical work1 as in what is more easily
 recognised as  creative1 ,m4 de        
,gourmont builds for freedom4 ,he will  
be bound  neither by his own            
preoccupations nor by other men's       
thoughts4 ,it is  characteristic of him 
that his most personal essays in        
criticism are  8,dissociations of       
,ideas40 ,the dissociation of ideas is a
 method of  thought that separates the  
ideas put into double harness by        
tradition1  just as the chemist turns   
water into hydrogen and oxygen1 with    
which1  severally1 he can make other    
compounds4 ,this1 like most questions of
  thought1 is a question of words4      
,words are the liberators of ideas1     
since without them ideas cannot escape  
from the flux of feeling into           
independent life4 ,they are also their  
gaolers1 since they are terribly        
cohesive1 and married words cling       
together1 binding in a lover's  knot the
 ideas they represent4 ,all men using   

words in combination  abet these        
marriages1 though in doing so they are  
making bars of  iron for the prisons in 
which they speculate on the torn        
fragment of  sky that their window lets 
them perceive4 ,nothing is easier than1 
by taking words and their associations  
as they are commonly used1  to          
strengthen the adherence of ideas to    
each other4 ,nothing needs a  more      
awakened intelligence than to weaken the
 bonds of such ideas  by separating the 
words that bind them4 ,that is the      
method of ,m4 de  ,gourmont4 ,he        
separates1 for example1 the idea of     
,stphane ,mallarm  and that of          
8decadence10 the idea of glory and that 
of immortality1  the idea of success and
 that of beauty4 ,it is1 too1 a         
dissociation of  ideas when he inquires 
into the value of education1 these two  
ideas of  worth and knowledge being     
commonly allied4 ,the method1 or rather 
the  consciousness of the method1 is    
fruitful in material for discussion1    

though this advantage cannot weigh much 
with ,m4 de ,gourmont1 whose  brain     
lacks neither motive power nor grist to 
grind4 ,it is1 for him1 no  more than a 
recurrent cleaning of the glasses       
through which he looks at  the subjects 
of his speculation4    ,he speculates   
continually1 and1 if questions are      
insoluble1 is not  content until he has 
so posed them as to show the reason of  
their  insolubility4 ,he prefers a calm 
question mark to the more emotional     
mark of exclamation1 and is always happy
 when he can turn the second  into the  
first4 ,he is extraordinarily thorough1 
moving always in mass  and taking       
everything with him1 so that he has no  
footsteps to retrace  in order to pick  
up baggage left behind4 ,unlike         
,theseus1 he unrolls no  clue of thread 
when he enters the cavern of ,minotaur4 
,he will come out  by a different way or
 not at all4 ,the most powerful         
,minotaur of our  day does not dismay   
him4 ,confident in his own probity1 he  

will walk  calmly among the men of      
science and bring an ,esthtique de la   
langue  franaise1 or a ,physique de     
l',amour1 meat of unaccustomed richness1
  to lay before their husk-fed deity4   
,in criticism1 as in creation1 he does  
not like things half-done4 ,the  story  
of the origin of one of these books is  
the story of them all4  ,there is a     
foolish little work by ,m4 ,albalat1    
which professes to teach  style in      
twenty-seven lessons4 ,m4 de ,gourmont  
read it and smiled2 he  wrote an        
article1 and still found something to   
smile at2 he wrote a  book1 ,le ,problme
 du ,style1 in which1 mocking ,m4       
,albalat through a  hundred and         
fifty-two courteous pages1 he showed1   
besides many other  things1 that style  
is not to be taught in twenty-seven     
lessons1 and1  indeed1 is not to be     
taught at all4 ,then he felt free to    
smile at  something else4    ,m4 de     
,gourmont is careful to say that he     
brought to the ,esthtique de  la langue 

franaise1 8ni lois1 ni rgles1 ni        
principes peut-tre2 je  n'apporte rien  
qu'un sentiment esthtique assez violent 
et quelques  notions historiques3 voil  
ce que je jette au hasard dans la grande
  cuve o fermente la langue de demain40 
,an aesthetic feeling and some          
historical notions were sufficiently    
needed in the fermenting vat  where the 
old ,french language1 in which there is 
hardly any ,greek1 is  being horribly   
adulterated with brainless translations 
of good ,french  made by ,hellenists of 
the dictionary4 ,m4 de ,gourmont is in  
love with  his language1 but knows that 
she is rather vain and ready to wear all
  kinds of borrowed plumes1 whether or  
not they suit her4 ,he would take  from 
her her imitation ostrich feathers1 and 
would hide also all  ribbons from the   
,london market1 unless she first dye    
them until they  fall without discord   
into the scheme of colour that centuries
 have made  her own4 ,why write 8high   
life10 for example1 or 8five o'clock10  

or  8sleeping08 ,why shock ,french and  
,english alike by writing 8,le ,club de 
,rugby0 on a gate in ,tours8 ,a         
kingfisher in ,england flies very       
happily  as martin-pcheur in ,france1   
and the language is not so sterile as to
  be unable to breed words from its own 
stock for whatever needs a name4        
,physique de l',amour2 ,essai sur       
l'instinct sexuel1 8qui n'est qu'un     
essai1 parce que la matire de son ide   
est immense1 reprsente  pourtant une    
ambition3 on voudrait agrandir la       
psychologie gnrale de  l'amour1 la faire
 commencer au commencement mme de       
l'activit mle  et femelle1 situer la vie
 sexuelle de l'homme dans le plan unique
 de  la sexualit universelle40 ,it is a 
book full of illustration1 a vast       
collection of facts1 and throws into    
another fermenting vat than that  of    
language some sufficiently valuable     
ideas4 ,it lessens the pride  of man1   
and1 at the same time1 gives him a      
desperate courage1 as it  shows him that

 even in the eccentricities of his      
love-making he is not  alone1 that the  
modesty of his women is a faint         
hesitation beside the  terrified flight 
of the she-mole1 that his own           
superiority is but an  accident1 and    
that he must hold himself fortunate in  
that nature does  not treat him like the
 male bee1 and toss his mangled body    
disdainfully  to earth as soon as he has
 done her work4 ,m4 de ,gourmont's books
 do not  flatter humanity4 ,they clear  
the eyes of the strong1 and anger the   
weak  who cannot bear to listen to      
unpalatable truths4      ,v    ,m4 de   
,gourmont's most obvious quality is     
versatility1 and though1 as ,i  have    
tried to point out1 it is not difficult 
to find a unity of cause  or intention  
in his most various expressions1 his    
lofty and careless  pursuit of his      
inclinations1 his life of thought for   
its own sake1 has  probably cost him a  
wide and immediate recognition4 ,that   
loss is not  his1 but is borne by those 

who depend for their reading on the     
names  that float upward from the crowd4
 ,even his admirers complain3 some  that
 he has not given them more poems2      
others that his ,physique de  l',amour  
stands alone on its shelf2 others that a
 critic such as he  should have spent   
time on romances2 others1 again1 that a 
writer of  such romances should have    
used any of his magnificent power in    
what  they cannot see to be creative    
work4 ,m4 de ,gourmont is indifferent to
  all alike1 and sits aloft in the ,rue 
des ,saints-,pres1 indulging his  mind  
with free and harmonious play4    ,in   
one of his books1 far more than in the  
others1 two at least of  his apparently 
opposite activities have come to work in
 unison4  ,all his romances1 after and  
including ,sixtine1 are vitalised by  a 
never-sleeping intellect2 but one in    
particular is a book whose  essence is  
both critical and romantic1 a book of   
thought coloured like  a poem and moving
 with a delicate grace of narrative4    

,une ,nuit au  ,luxembourg#aa was       
published in #aijf1 and is the book that
 opens most  vistas in ,m4 de           
,gourmont's work4 ,a god walks in the   
gardens behind the  ,odon1 and a        
winter's night is a summer's morning1 on
 which the young  journalist who has    
dared to say 8,my friend0 to the        
luminous unknown in  the church of      
,saint-,sulpice1 hears him proclaim the 
forgotten truth  that in one age his    
mother has been ,mary1 and in another   
,latona1 and  the new truth that the    
gods are not immortal though their lives
 are  long4 ,flowers are in bloom where 
they walk1 and three beautiful girls    
greet them with divine amity4 ,most of  
the book is written in dialogue1  and in
 this ancient form1 never filled with   
subtler essences1 doubts  are born and  
become beliefs1 beliefs become doubts   
and die1 while  the sun shines1 flowers 
are sweet1 and girls' lips soft to kiss4
  ,where there is ,god he will not have 
,love absent1 and where ,love is he     

finds the most stimulating exercise for 
his brain4 ,ideas not new but  gathered 
from all the philosophers are given an  
aesthetic rather than a  scientific     
value1 and are used like the tints on a 
palette4 ,indeed1 the  book is a        
balanced composition in which each      
colour has its complement4  ,epicurus1  
,lucretius1 ,st4 ,paul1 ,christianity1  
the replenishment of the  earth by the  
,jews2 it is impossible to close the    
book at any page  without finding the   
mind as it were upon a springboard and  
ready to  launch itself in delightful   
flight4 ,there are many books that give 
a  specious sensation of intellectual   
business while we read them4 ,there  are
 very few that leave1 long after they   
are laid aside1 stimuli to  independent 
activity4      ,,vi    8,il ne faut pas 
chercher la vrit2 mais devant un homme  
comprendre  quelle est sa vrit40 ,we    
must not seek in a man's work for the   
truth1  since there are as many truths  
as brains2 but it is worth while to     

define an answer here and an answer     
there out of the many4 ,what is the     
answer of ,remy de ,gourmont8 ,quelle   
est sa vrit8 ,of what kind is his       
truth8 ,does he bring rosemary for      
remembrance or poppy for oblivion8  ,not
 in what he says1 but in the point from 
which he says it1 we must  look for our 
indications4 ,his life1 like ,sixtine1  
is a 8roman de la  vie crbrale40 ,it is 
the spectacle of a man whose conquests  
are won  by understanding4 ,for him the 
escape of mysticism was inadequate1 and 
an invitation to cowardice4 ,he would   
not abdicate1 but1 since those  empires 
are unstable whose boundaries are fixed1
 conquer continually4  ,the conquests of
 the mind are not won by neglect4 ,it is
 not sufficient  to refuse to see4 ,the 
conqueror must see so clearly that life 
blushes  before his sober eyes1 and1    
understood1 no longer dominates4 ,remy  
de  ,gourmont has suffered and conquered
 his suffering in understanding  it4 ,he
 would extend this dominion4 ,he would  

realise all that happens  to him1 books1
 a chance visitor1 a meeting in the     
street1 the liquid  bars of light across
 the muddy ,seine4 ,he would transmute  
all into the  mercurial matter of       
thought1 until1 at last impregnable1 he 
should  see life from above1 having     
trained his digestive powers to the same
  perfection as his powers of reception4
 ,although one of the ,symbolists1  he  
has moved far from the starting-point   
assigned to that school by  ,mr4        
,symons4 ,his books are not 8escapes    
from the thought of death40 ,the        
thought of death is to him like any     
other thought1 a rude playfellow  to be 
mastered and trained to fitness for that
 free and harmonious  game4 ,the life of
 the brain1 the noblest of all battles1 
that of a mind  against the universe    
which it creates1 has come to seem more 
important  to him than the curiosities  
of beauty of which he was once          
enamoured4  ,it has1 perhaps1 made him  
more of a thinker than an artist4 ,in   

his  desire to conquer his obsessions he
 has sometimes lost sight of the  unity 
that is essential to art1 a happy       
accident in thought4 ,his later  books  
have been the by-products of a more     
intimate labour4 ,he has left  them by  
the road whose end he has not hoped to  
reach1 whose pursuit  suffices him4     
,they wake in the reader a desire which 
has nothing to  do with art4 ,this      
desire--a desire for intellectual       
honesty--and with  that1 perhaps1 for   
intellectual gaiety1 is the             
characteristic gift of  his work4 ,it is
 never offered alone4 ,he accompanies it
 with criticism1  with witty epilogues1 
serious dissertations1 and licentious   
little  stories2 but it is not so much  
for the sake of these things as for the 
stimulus of that desire that we turn1   
and seldom in vain1 to ,m4 de           
,gourmont's books4      #aiaa4          
,,the ,,poetry ,,of ,,yone ,,noguchi    
,,the ,,poetry ,,of ,,yone ,,noguchi    
,so-shi1 a ,chinese philosopher1 dreamed

 that he was a butterfly1 and1 in  the  
moment of waking1 asked himself3 8,are  
you ,so-shi who has dreamed  that he was
 a butterfly1 or are you a butterfly who
 is dreaming that he  is ,so-shi80 ,that
 question is continually repeated in the
 works of ,yone  ,noguchi1 who seems1   
indeed1 to have the freedom of two      
worlds1 and to  find reality as often in
 one as in the other4 ,noguchi is for   
ever in  doubt of his own existence1    
suspicious of appearances1 and searching
  for the reality in things beyond touch
 or description4 8,my soul10 he  writes3
       8,my soul1 like a chilly winged  
fly1 roams about the sadness-walled     
body1 hunting for a casement to fly out4
      ,lo1 suddenly1 an inspired bird   
flies upright into the atom-eyed sky6   
,alas1 his reflection sinks far down    
into the mileless bottom of the         
mirrory rivulet6      ,is this world the
 solid being8--or a shadowy nothing8    
,is the form that flies up the real     
bird8 or the figure that sinks          

down80    ,and again3       8,the world 
is not my residence to the end6         
,alas1 the moon has lost her way1       
harassed among the leaf-fellows on      
the darkling hill-top6      ,isn't there
 chance for my flying out80    ,the     
world is not too much with this poet of 
,japan who writes in our  language1 and 
it is interesting to compare this       
symbolist of a nation  of conscious     
symbolists with the few men who in      
,france and ,england have  turned an    
unconscious but almost universal        
practice into a theory of  poetry4#ab   
,but ,i must not1 in my care for his    
work1 pretend that the poet is the      
immaterial floating fairy that he almost
 seems to be4 8,i have cast the  world10
 he says1 8and think me as nothing1     
8,yet ,i feel cold on snow-falling day1 
,and happy on flower day40    ,let me1  
before saying more1 set down such facts 
as ,i know about his  physical          
existence4    ,yone ,noguchi was born in
 ,japan about #ahgf4 ,he was in ,america

 before  he was twenty1 and1 in company 
with a few other ,japanese students1    
suffered extreme poverty1 and the       
starvation which those who have not     
tried it consider so efficacious a      
stimulant to the soul4 ,he made some    
friends among ,american writers1 and    
stayed for a time with ,joaquin         
,miller4 ,in #ahig he published ,seen   
and ,unseen3 or ,monologues of a        
,homeless ,snail1 and in the next year  
,the ,voice of the ,valley1 a  little   
book inspired by a stay in the          
,yosemite4 ,in #aijb he came to         
,england1 and lived with ,mr4 ,yoshio   
,markino 7who had not then realised     
himself and ,london in his              
water-colours7 in poor lodgings in the  
,brixton ,road4 ,from these lodgings he 
issued a sixteen-page pamphlet of  verse
 printed on brown paper1 which drew such
 notice that the ,unicorn  ,press 7an   
unfortunate little firm that published  
some very good books1  some bad ones1   
and died7 produced a volume1 called1    

like the pamphlet1  ,from the ,eastern  
,sea1 and containing1 besides those     
sixteen pages  of poetry1 other verses  
from the ,american books and a number of
 new  pieces4 ,the cover of this edition
 was designed by ,mr4 ,yoshio ,markino4 
,i knew ,noguchi at this time1 and often
 walked with him along the  ,embankment 
in the evenings1 or under those         
8lamp-lights of web-like  streets bathed
 in the opiate mists10 that he and      
,yoshio ,markino have  used so          
delicately in their several arts4 ,i    
remember him as a small  man1 though    
perhaps not noticeably small by         
,japanese standards1 with  black hair   
less orderly and geometrical in growth  
than most ,japanese  hair1 and a face of
 extraordinary sensitiveness1           
high-browed but with  broadly set eyes1 
and a mouth like a woman's1 like that of
 a woman  controlling some almost       
tearful emotion4 ,even in the handling  
of a  cigarette1 whose end he stripped  
of its paper so that the tobacco might  

serve in the making of another 7we were 
almost penniless in those  days71 there 
was a delicacy that made it impossible  
not to recognise  that he was a man who 
lived more finely than most4 ,his       
conversations  were of poetry1 of the   
principles of the particular poetry he  
held  that it was his to write1 and of  
the works of those ,english poets he    
had read4 8,i hate your ,longfellow10 he
 said1 8and ,i love your ,keats10  and  
in contrasting the two he was1 perhaps1 
defining to himself an  important       
tendency of his own4    ,he left ,london
 in #aijc1 and went to ,new ,york and   
then to ,japan4 ,he had  some           
difficulties there1 difficulties1 ,i    
believe1 of misunderstanding  on the    
part of his own countrymen4 ,he crossed 
to the mainland and  travelled in ,china
 for a year1 and perhaps longer4 ,in    
#aijf he published  ,the ,summer ,cloud 
in ,tokio1 and1 in ,june last year1 he  
sent me a  two-volume book in a blue    
case with small ivory fastenings1       

printed by  the ,valley ,press in       
,kamakura4 ,this book1 ,the ,pilgrimage1
 has been  issued in ,england by ,mr4   
,elkin ,mathews4    ,these five books do
 not contain a large body of verse1 but 
they contain  verse whose interest for  
us is not concentrated in the           
nationality of  the writer4 ,the title  
of the brown-paper pamphlet published in
 the  ,brixton ,road is ,from the       
,eastern ,sea1 8by ,yone ,noguchi       
7,japanese710  but though that word     
aroused a careless curiosity1 the       
curiosity was  turned into something    
more valuable by qualities less         
incidental4 ,the  imagery of ,noguchi's 
verse is ,japanese in feeling1 just as  
the imagery  in ,synge's plays is       
,irish1 and that of ,verlaine's poetry  
,french1 but  the imagery in any one of 
these three cases would have been       
worthless  if the man who used it had   
been merely ,japanese1 ,irish1 or       
,french1 and  not a man of genius with  
the gift of setting words free with     

living  breath4 ,our concern is not with
 the nationality of this writer1 but    
with his conception of the poet1 and    
with his poetry4    ,noguchi wrote his  
first book in #ahif1 and so had not read
 ,mr4 ,arthur  ,symons' ,the ,symbolist 
,movement in ,literature1 which was     
issued three  years later4 ,he would    
have found there an account of poets not
 unlike  himself1 and of a poetry nearer
 than ,keats' to his own1 and further   
removed than ,keats' from that of the   
hated ,longfellow4    ,symons1 writing  
of ,verlaine1 says3 8,is not his whole  
art a delicate  waiting upon moods1 with
 that perfect confidence in them as they
  are1 which is a large part of ordinary
 education to discourage in us1  and a  
large part of experience to repress8    
,but to ,verlaine1 happily1  experience 
taught nothing2 or rather it taught him 
only to cling the  more closely to those
 moods in whose succession lies the more
 intimate  part of our spiritual life40 
,noguchi lives almost continuously in   

those  moods2 experience with him is    
momentary rather than cumulative2 and   
his  aim1 expressed more than once in   
his verse1 is only to keep himself a    
vessel as clear as possible for the     
unsullied transference of those  moments
 from the bowl of life to that of art4  
,it will not be difficult  to make from 
his verses a portrait of his ideal poet1
 and1 in writing  of a man not yet very 
widely known1 ,i believe ,i shall best  
be doing my  duty by him in quoting his 
own words as often as ,i can4 ,in ,the  
,poet  he says3       8,the roses live  
by the eating of their own beauty and   
then die4      ,his song is the funeral 
chant for his own death of every        
moment40    ,and again1 of himself3     
8,i sing the song of my heart-strings1  
alone in the eternal muteness1          
in the face of ,god40    ,and again3    
8,the ,god-beloved man welcomes1        
respects as an honoured guest1 his own  
soul and body in his solitude4      ,lo6
 the roses under the night dress        

themselves in silence1 and              
expect no mortal applaud--content with  
that of their voiceless          ,god40 
,and again3       8,o1 wash me and wash 
me again with thy light1      ,and burn 
my body to a flame of soul6      ,it is 
this moment that ,i conquer the         
intervention of flesh1      ,and its    
rebellions that worked in me at         
unexpected time4      ,it's not too much
 to say ,i am a revelation or a wonder1 
,winging as a falcon into the breast of 
loveliness and air40    ,and again3     
8444 ,what a bird      ,dreams in the   
moonlight is my dream1      ,what a rose
 sings is my song40    8,o1 to lose the 
world and gain a song10 he cries1 and   
then1 8,i am glad  to be no-man to-day1 
with the laughter and dance of the sea  
soul40 ,his  thoughts fall like leaves  
in autumn 8on the snowy cheeks of his   
paper40  ,his is the poetry of          
self-abnegation1 of identification of   
himself  with the world4 ,his soul      
dances 8on the silver strings0 of the   

rain4  8,we10 he sings1 are 8happy to be
 biographers of each other1 ,i and a    
bird40 ,he flies himself as a kite1 to  
be lifted or let fall by the  winds that
 do not move at all those whose pride is
 in their sage and  measured footsteps  
on the ground4    ,in the last of his   
volumes there are a few specimens of    
,japanese  seventeen-syllabled verse1   
hokku1 and in a note ,noguchi writes    
that  such a poem 8in ,japanese mind1   
might be compared with a tiny star1 ,i  
dare say1 carrying the whole sky at its 
back4 ,it is like a slightly  open door1
 where you may steal into the realm of  
poesy4 ,its value  depends on how much  
it suggests4 ,the ,hokku poet's chief   
aim is to  impress the reader with the  
high atmosphere in which he is living40 
,the ,hokku poet1 like ,noguchi1 never  
writes of the thing about which  he is  
writing4 ,the emotions he wishes to     
express are too subtle for  description 
in words1 and can only be written of in 
the spaces between  the lines1 just as  

between the petals of a flower we may   
find dreams  that the flower has never  
known1 and the suggestions of something 
less  ponderable than the earth in which
 it had its roots4 ,an example of       
,hokku poetry will illustrate the method
 of all ,noguchi's3       8,where the   
flowers sleep1      ,thank ,god6 ,i     
shall sleep to-night4      ,oh1 come1   
butterfly40    ,that is valuable as a   
talisman rather than as a picture4 ,it  
is a pearl  to be dissolved in the wine 
of a mood4 ,pearls are not wine1 nor in 
themselves to be thought of as drink1   
but there is a kind of magic in  the    
wine in which they are dissolved4    ,in
 ,noguchi's poems there is the          
co-operation between silence and speech 
of which ,carlyle was thinking when he  
wrote3 8,in a ,symbol there is          
concealment and yet revelation3 here    
therefore by ,silence and ,speech       
acting together1 comes a double         
significance4 ,and if both the ,speech  
be  itself high1 and the ,silence fit   

and noble1 how expressive will their    
union be60 ,in many poems of the ,french
 symbolists the ,speech is almost       
meaningless1 except in the ,silence that
 is covered by its melody4  ,in ,noguchi
 both ,speech and ,silence are full of a
 charm that we can  scarcely find in    
life but in fortunate rare moods4 ,he   
writes3       8,i am stirring the waves 
of ,reverie with my meaningless but     
wisdom-wreathed syllables40    ,but he  
is incapable of denying his own charm to
 the carefully-worded  accompaniment of 
the ,silence with which he is really    
concerned4 ,he sees  the world with eyes
 too guileless not to make it alive1    
even when using  it as an invocation4   
,he sees ideas too clearly not to make  
them1 even  in a spell1 independently   
vivid for his listeners4 ,for an example
 of  the one take this picture3         
8,alas1 the mother cow1 with matron     
eyes1 utters her bitter heart1          
kidnapped of her children by the curling
 gossamer mist60    ,for an example of  

the other1 this idea3       8,the       
,universe1 too1 has somewhere its       
shadow2 but what about my               
songs8      ,an there be no shadow1 no  
echoing to the end--my broken-throated  
lute will never again be made whole40   
,he is a poet whose flame has been so   
scrupulously tended as to flicker  with 
the slightest breath4 ,he is as         
many-mooded as the combinations  between
 sunshine and shadow4 ,his poetry       
actually is the thing that  has induced 
a mood in him1 trimmed of all that he   
has had to remove  for himself1 and so  
made into something between nature and  
that pure  elevation of mind from which 
,noguchi feels4 ,this quality of pale   
flame-like emotion is common to all his 
poems1 extraordinarily various  as they 
are4    ,sometimes he speaks with       
grandeur1 as in these lines3            
8,when ,i am lost in the deep body of   
the mist on a hill1      ,the universe  
seems built with me as its pillar6      
,am ,i the ,god upon the face of the    

deep1 nay deepless deepness in the      
beginning80    ,sometimes wistfully3    
8,alas6 my soul is like a paper lantern1
 its paste wetted off under          the
 rain4      ,my love1 wilt thou not come
 back to-night8      ,lo1 the snail at  
my door stealthily hides his horns4     
,oh1 put forth thy honourable horns for 
my sake6      ,where is ,truth8 ,where  
is ,light80    ,sometimes questioning3  
8,my poetry begins with the tireless    
songs of the cricket1 on the lean       
grey-haired hill1 in sober-faced        
evening4      ,and the next page is     
,stillness----      ,and what then1     
about the next to that8      ,alas1 the 
,god puts his universe-covering hand    
over its sheets6      ,master1 take off 
your hand for the humble servant6       
,asked in vain3----      ,how long for  
my meditation80    ,but it is impossible
 with the quotations permissible in an  
article to  give an adequate presentment
 of a poet whose poems are so separate  
that a hundred of them do not suffice   

for his expression4 ,noguchi has1  like 
,verlaine1 escaped the wisdom of        
experience2 his latest moods are  as    
sky-clear as his first1 different though
 they are in technique and  in feeling4 
,each one of them is a glint of light   
from a diamond2 it is  impossible1 but  
in seeing innumerable glints together1  
satisfactorily  to perceive the diamond 
itself4    ,noguchi's technique is his  
own1 though it would be possible to find
  in reminiscent phrases suggestions of 
influence4 ,a man using ,english  words 
with something of the surprising daring 
of the ,irish peasants  on whose talk   
,mr4 ,synge modelled his prose1 using   
them1 too1 like a  foreigner who has    
fallen in love with them1 he is able to 
give them a  morning freshness newer and
 stranger than is given them 7though the
  words of all fine writers are newly   
discovered7 by men whose ancestors  have
 bandied them about4 ,he uses them in   
short and long lines that1  in his later
 books1 learn more and more of rhythm4  

,rhyme he has not  attempted1 and it    
would1 ,i think1 have hampered the      
butterfly-flash  of his verse from      
thought to thought4 ,in ,the ,summer    
,cloud many of  the poems of his early  
books are altered to prose simply by the
 plan  of their printing4 ,the type is  
differently set on the page and they    
are called prose poems4 ,i do not know  
what led ,noguchi to make this          
experiment1 but it proved that the      
irregular1 broken lines in which his    
poems were originally published had a   
real power over the effect the  words   
produced4 ,the spaces between the lines 
were a kind of thought  punctuation1 and
 the mind needed these moments between  
the little1  breathless1 scarcely-worded
 sighs that make his poems4 ,in reading 
them aloud it becomes clear that the    
ritual of the line-spacing was  more    
important than that of commas or        
full-stops4 ,noguchi's songs are  like  
bird flights1 timing themselves with the
 pulse of the mind that  follows them4  

,his ideal is a poetry of pure          
suggestion whose melody  shall be of    
thought1 capricious and uncertain as the
 mind1 but only  with the mind's        
caprice1 the mind's uncertainty4 ,the   
following poem was  printed as prose in 
,the ,summer ,cloud1 and as it stands   
here in ,the  ,pilgrimage4              
8,little ,fairy1      ,little ,fairy by 
a hearth1      ,flight in thine eyes1   
,hush on thy feet1      ,shall ,i go    
with thee up to ,heaven      ,by the    
road of the fire-flame8        ,little  
,fairy1      ,little ,fairy by a river1 
,dance in thy heart1      ,longing at   
thy lips1      ,shall ,i go down with   
thee to 8,far-,away10      ,rolling over
 the singing bubbles8        ,little    
,fairy1      ,little ,fairy by a poppy1 
,dream in thy hair1      ,solitude under
 thy wings1      ,shall ,i sleep with   
thee to-night in the golden cup         
,under the stars80    ,it is easy1 in   
reading it aloud1 to recognise that its 
form is not  accidental1 but follows1   

breath for breath1 the movements of the 
mind4    ,but who shall analyse charm1  
or separate the tints of the opal8 ,in  
writing of ,noguchi1 ,i am writing of   
something that can only be defined  by  
itself4 ,i can only take shred after    
shred from the cloak of gossamer  he has
 woven for himself1 and only hope in    
doing so to persuade other  readers to  
buy his books and find for themselves a 
hundred shreds  as beautiful as these4  
,the frontispiece to ,the ,pilgrimage is
 a  reproduction of a drawing by        
,utamaru1 a thing of four pale colours  
and  a splash of black1 and made as     
light as wind by curves as subtle and as
  indefinable as those traced by        
worshipping stars round the object of   
their adoration4 ,i had forgotten that  
it is the picture of a girl1 and  that  
fact is1 indeed1 as immaterial as the   
titles of ,noguchi's poems4  ,in looking
 at it1 ,i forget not only its subject1 
but the book in which  it is1 for this  
art1 of poet or painter1 ,verlaine1     

,noguchi1 ,utamaru1  ,whistler1 frees   
us1 infecting us with its own freedom1  
from the world  which is too much with  
us1 for the exploration of that other   
world of  dream which1 unless we1 too1  
are children1 is with us so fitfully1   
and  so seldom4       8,beckoned by an  
appointed hand1 unseen yet sure1 in holy
 air      ,we wander as a wind1 silver  
and free1      ,with one song in heart1 
we1 the children of prayer4        ,our 
song is not of a city's fall2      ,no  
laughter of a kingdom bids our feet     
wait2      ,our heart is away1 with sun1
 wind1 and rain3      ,we1 the shadowy  
roamers on the holy highway40           
#aiji4          ,,kinetic ,,and         
,,potential ,,speech          ,,kinetic 
,,and ,,potential ,,speech              
,definitions1 like mythologies1 wear    
out4 ,it is then important to  replace  
them4 ,aladdin's wife had a choice1 but 
we have none4 ,we must  change our old  
lamps for new1 or sit in the dark4 ,a   
natural philosopher  who retained the   

mythological definition of thunder could
 not speak  of lightning to young men   
who had learnt of electricity without an
  air of irrelevance of which he might  
be quite unconscious4 ,not so his       
listeners1 who would brush his          
explanations impatiently aside as soon  
as they knew the beliefs on which he    
based them4 ,whenever historians  or    
critics seem irrelevant1 we are safe in 
assuming a difference  between their    
definitions and our own4 ,when they seem
 irrelevant to  many people beside      
ourselves1 we can go further and assume 
that their  definitions are either worn 
out or not yet accepted4 ,sometimes1 of 
course1 they are without definitions    
either old or new1 but then they  need  
not trouble us1 for they disappear like 
cuttle-fishes in the  darkness of their 
own ink4 ,there is at the present day a 
widespread  dissatisfaction with        
historians of literature4 ,it is        
impossible not to  feel that their dicta
 do not matter1 that their sense of     

perspective  is wrong or uncertain1 that
 their books are of no use to us except 
as  bibliographies4 ,a new definition of
 literature is needed1 that shall  give 
them some scale1 some standard to which 
they can refer4 ,for  without such      
standard or scale1 they can do no more  
than gossip1 or  judge poetry by its    
passion1 by its sense1 by its           
smoothness1 or by  any other            
half-remembered scrap from a definition 
that is no longer  adequate4    ,if we  
would get rid of these irrelevancies1   
and write histories of  literature that 
shall deal with the matter of which they
 propose to  treat1 we must find a new  
standard of values1 and to find that we 
must make a new definition4 ,we must    
have a statement of the nature of       
literature applicable not to the books  
of one nation of one time only1  but to 
those of all nations and of all times4  
,it must supply us with  terms in which 
we can state the aims of widely         
different schools and  writers1 with    

regard to their medium and not to any   
accidental quality4  ,if it is to do    
that we must escape from the prejudices 
of our own time  7which may be invisible
 to us7 by seeking our formula in a     
definition  of the medium common to all 
writers1 a statement of the function of 
words in combination4    ,to make such a
 statement ,i have borrowed two epithets
 from the  terminology of physical      
science4 ,energy is described by        
physicists  as kinetic and potential4   
,kinetic energy is force actually       
exerted4  ,potential energy is force    
that a body is in a position to exert4  
,applying these terms to language1      
without attempting too strict  an       
analogy1 ,i wish to define literature1  
or rather the medium of  literature1 as 
a combination of kinetic with potential 
speech4 ,in  this combination the two   
are coincident4 ,there is no such thing 
in  literature as speech purely kinetic 
or purely potential4 ,purely kinetic    
speech is prose1 not good prose1 not    

literature1 but colourless  prose1 prose
 without atmosphere1 the sort of prose  
that ,m4 ,jourdain  discovered he had   
been speaking all his life4 ,it says    
things4 ,an  example of purely potential
 speech may be found in music4 ,i do not
  think it can be made with words1      
though we can give our minds a taste  of
 it in listening to a meaningless but   
narcotic incantation1 or a  poem in a   
language that we do not understand4 ,the
 proportion between  kinetic and        
potential speech and the energy of the  
combination varies  with different works
 and the literature of different ages4  
,there is no  literature to which it is 
impossible to apply the formula4 ,let us
 try  to clarify it by example and      
particularisation4    ,it may be asked1 
what of ballad poetry in which there is 
much so stated  as to approach purely   
kinetic speech8 ,does not the admitted  
power  of a sea-song1 a song whose words
 are utterly trivial1 disprove our      
assertion8 ,it does not2 for to such    

songs or chanties the music to  which   
they are sung has given a quality of    
potential speech1 without  which they   
would be worthless and speedily         
forgotten4 ,in that case  the words and 
the melody respectively represent       
kinetic and potential  speech4 ,it has  
been very truly said that a prima-donna 
can turn the  alphabet to poetry by the 
emotional power of her voice4    ,it may
 further be asked by any one who has not
 clearly apprehended my  meaning 7and   
this would be more than excusable71 ,do 
,i mean to suggest  that literature is  
not literature unless it contains a     
double meaning8  and1 if so1 do ,i not  
find in allegory the most perfect       
example of the  simultaneous existence  
of kinetic and potential speech8 ,this  
would  indeed be a reductio ad absurdum4
 ,i must answer1 that allegory  7though 
it may represent the result of an early 
guess at the nature of  art7 is not     
necessarily poetry4 ,there is1 indeed1 a
 gross and obvious  duality of meaning  

in such a work as ,the ,farie ,queene4  
,the tale  written on the paper enables 
us to reconstruct another4 ,but that    
other  might have been written with no  
greater difficulty4 ,it does not aid1   
and may clog with external              
preoccupations1 the tale that we sit    
down  to read4 ,it is an impertinent    
shadow1 a dog that keeps too closely at 
our heels4 ,hazlitt rebukes those who   
think that the allegory of ,the  ,farie 
,queene will bite them4 ,we are more    
afraid that it will lick our  hands1 and
 all we ask is1 that it will allow      
itself to be forgotten4  ,an acrostic   
sonnet may be a good sonnet1 but we are 
not likely to  perceive its excellence  
if we are intent upon the initial       
letters of  the lines4 ,no2 allegory may
 be a rude attempt to copy in things    
said  the duality of poetic speech4 ,the
 old delight in conscious allegory may  
be comparable to the modern delight in  
conscious symbolism4 ,but we must  not  
forget for a moment that the resemblance

 is only one of analogy4  ,when ,spenser
 writes of ,mammon's cave3       8,both 
roof1 and floor1 and walls were all of  
gold      ,but overgrown with rust and  
old decay1      ,and hid in darkness    
that none could behold      ,the hue    
thereof2 for view of cheerful day       
,did never in that house itself display1
      ,but a faint shadow of uncertain  
light2      ,such as a lamp whose life  
doth fade away2      ,or as the moon    
clothd with cloudy night1      ,does    
show to him that walks in fear and sad  
affright40    ,when he writes thus1 we  
do not1 in our search for potential     
speech1  have to remember that he is    
writing of the love of money4 ,away with
  such tedious recollections4 ,the      
stanza is like a picture by ,rembrandt  
of an alchemist's laboratory1 where     
dusty alembic and smouldering  fire mean
 far more than themselves4 ,the lines   
say something1 but we  hear much for    
which they have not words4 8,the moon   
clothd with cloudy  night10 is not      

richer in suggestion than that same     
description4 ,not in  the allegory but  
in the words themselves1 their order and
 their melody1  must we find1 if they   
are to be literature1 that combination  
of kinetic  and potential speech4       
,let me take another example of fine    
poetry1 and show that it does  perform  
in itself this dual function of         
language4 ,let us examine the  first    
stanza of ,blake's 8,the ,tiger03       
8,tiger6 ,tiger6 burning bright      ,in
 the forests of the night1      ,what   
immortal hand or eye      ,could frame  
thy fearful symmetry80    ,it is        
impossible to deny the power of         
suggestion wielded by those four  lines1
 a power utterly disproportionate to    
what is actually said4 ,the  kinetic    
base of that stanza is only the         
proposition to a supposed  tiger of a   
difficult problem in metaphysics4 ,but  
above1 below1 and  on either side of    
that question1 completely enveloping it1
 is the  phosphorescence of another     

speech1 that we cannot so easily        
overhear4  ,and who shall speak in fit  
terms of its potentiality8 ,that glowing
  image1 that surprised address2 not in 
the enumeration of such things  shall we
 come upon its secret4    ,the test of a
 formula is1 that it shall fit4 ,it must
 enable us to  co-ordinate scattered    
knowledge1 and throw into a clear       
perspective  the jumble of loose        
statements and scraps of information    
whose  value we cannot but recognise1   
although they have remained outside     
previous schemes and done little more   
than disturb the equilibrium of         
once-established theories4 ,it is a     
comfort and a joy to a thinker when  he 
can say that a formula of his has almost
 been proposed by minds that  have      
approached his problem along roads other
 than his own4 ,when he can  find       
statements1 true in themselves but      
inadequate1 pegging out1 as  it were1   
the ground from which his formula has   
been dug1 he can feel  that it is no    

mere chance that has given it a         
momentary appearance of  usefulness4 ,he
 can speak of it with the solid         
confidence that it has  behind it the   
collaboration of his predecessors4      
,we can bring such confidence to the use
 of this formula of kinetic  and        
potential speech1 for to whatever       
problem of literary theory or           
phenomenon of the history of literature 
we apply it1 we find that it  has been  
almost stated by those who have         
separately considered that  problem or  
phenomenon4 ,it smelts the ore that they
 have dug1 and forges  a weapon for the 
attack not of one problem1 but of all4  
,for example2 though kinetic speech may 
be translated without loss from  one    
language to another1 potential speech   
would not be potential but  kinetic if  
we were able to express it otherwise    
than by itself4 ,this is  what ,shelley 
means when he denies the possibility of 
the translation  of poetry1 though he   
does not perceive the full reason1 but  

only that  the poetic quality of a poem 
is partly dependent on a succession  of 
inimitable sounds4 ,his statement1      
incomplete though it is1 is a           
recognition of the duality of poetic    
speech4 ,he does not for a moment       
contend that we cannot render the       
meaning2 he sees that the meaning is    
not all4 ,the body is one thing and the 
soul is another4 ,if we leave the  soul 
behind we have nothing but dead matter1 
fit for manure or food4  ,life1 or      
poetry1 delicate-footed1 mysterious1    
gracious with knowledge  of her mystery1
 is passed away and we cannot recapture 
her4    ,sometimes1 indeed1 she goes    
without our interference1 and disappears
  only because of our neglect4 ,there   
are poems that many men cannot  perceive
 to be poetry4 ,there are others1 once  
poetry1 now no longer  so4 ,let us apply
 our formula to these phenomena1 and    
first to the  varying popularity of     
poetry1 since our solution of this      
question will  help us in solving the   

other4 ,we shall find that the nearer   
poetry  approaches to kinetic speech1   
the more easily is it apprehended by the
  multitude4 ,kinetic speech secures its
 effects by the presentation of  facts1 
situations and stories1 which are stuff 
not so fine as to slip  through the     
coarse meshes of the general            
understanding4 ,this explains  the      
immediate and wide popularity of such   
poets as ,longfellow1 ,scott1  and      
,macaulay4 ,because prose1 as a rule1   
depends more nearly on its  kinetic than
 on its potential utterance1 it is1 as a
 rule1 the more  widely read4 ,when1 as 
in the hands of some nineteenth century 
writers1  it emphasizes the potential   
element of speech it correspondingly    
narrows its public4 ,whenever poetry of 
high potentiality is read by a  large   
public it will be found that its        
potential speech is condoned  for them  
or hidden from them by more than usually
 vigorous kinetic  speech4 ,for         
potential speech secures its effects by 

suggestion4 ,there  is a bloom on its   
wings that a callous retina does not    
perceive4 ,it  is like a butterfly that 
has visited flowers and scatters their  
scent  in its flight4 ,the scent and the
 fluttering of its bloom-laden wings    
are more important than the direction or
 speed of its flying4 ,it is  always    
easier for the public to say1 how fast1 
or where it is going  than to notice    
these delicate things4 ,the kinetic     
speech of a poem is  understood by all2 
the potential depends for its           
apprehension upon  the taste and        
knowledge of the reader4 ,words must    
have for us the  associations that they 
had for the poet4 ,we must be able to   
see them  with his eyes1 hear them with 
his ears1 and taste their scents with   
nostrils not dissimilar to his4 ,in time
 these things change4 ,unpopular  poetry
 becomes quite popular1 and indeed1 no  
longer poetry1 as it  loses1 through    
usage or forgetfulness1 its proximity to
 the condition  of potential speech4    

,accents are shifted from one to another
 syllable1  and we should be deaf to the
 melody if we were unable to replace    
them4  ,new meanings gather round the   
words1 and they come back from later    
travels disguised in strange perfumes4  
,the kinetic speech may be  disturbed1  
but the potential has disappeared in a  
jargon of new sounds1  a quarrel of new 
memories1 and a chaos of new odours4    
,sometimes indeed1  it is as if it had  
never existed4    ,in this light it is  
easy to understand the curious business 
of  criticism1 and to formulate an      
account of what occurs when poetry dies1
  or falls asleep like the princess in  
the wood1 to be awakened after  two     
centuries by a critic's kiss4 ,the      
,elizabethan dramatists lost  their     
potential and were judged only by their 
kinetic speech during  the eighteenth   
century4 ,they were considered coarse   
and bloody-minded1  because there is    
rapine and murder in their plays4 ,lamb 
restored to  them the potentiality they 

had lost and turned bleak rock to       
flowering  country4 ,spenser had become 
a mere monger of allegory1 until        
,hazlitt  and ,leigh ,hunt reconstituted
 him poet by discovering for themselves 
and others the attitude that restores to
 his kinetic its lost  potential speech4
 ,writers of ,wordsworth's generation   
realised1 at least  subconsciously1 that
 a poem is not independent of knowledge4
 ,they tried  to help us by printing at 
the head of a poem information about the
  circumstances of its conception4 ,when
 a poet tells us that a sonnet was      
composed 8on ,westminster ,bridge0 or   
8suggested by ,mr4 ,westell's views  of 
the caves1 c4 in ,yorkshire10 he is     
trying to ease for us the task  of      
aesthetic reproduction to which his poem
 is a stimulus4 ,he is trying  to ensure
 that we shall approach it as he did1   
and hear as well as the  kinetic the    
potential speech that he values4 ,there 
is a crudity about  such obvious        
assistance1 and it would be quite       

insufficient without  the wider         
knowledge on which we draw unconsciously
 as we read4 ,but the  crudity of those 
pitiable scraps of proffered information
 is not so  remarkable as the dulness of
 perception that can allow a man to     
demand  of a poem that it shall itself  
compel him accurately to enjoy it4 ,it  
is possible that much of the old poetry 
that now seems to us no more  than      
direct speech was once wrapped in a veil
 of suggestion4 ,it is the  critic's    
business to rediscover those forgotten  
veils and to restore to  the kinetic the
 magic of potential speech4    ,the     
formula of kinetic and potential speech 
illumines not only the  critic's        
business but also that of the historian4
 ,it enables him to  link together in a 
single scheme the prose of ,goldsmith   
with that of  ,pater and the poetry of  
the eighteenth century with poetry1 like
 that  of the ,symbolists of the        
nineteenth1 so different as to seem     
completely  unrelated4 ,it enables him  

to explain a phenomenon that he has     
usually  alluded to as a mere curious   
accident1 the fact that there have been 
ages when poetry has been popular and   
others in which it has been the         
possession of a few4 ,it will1 ,i think1
 be found that this periodicity         
coincides with a general variation      
between kinetic and potential  speech4  
,in the eighteenth century1 when poetry 
was often rhymed prose1  when the common
 standard of poetry was good sense1 when
 she gave advice  and said things1 and  
did not seem to realise that there were 
things  she could not say1 when1 in     
short1 the kinetic almost overwhelmed   
the  potential1 then poetry was a       
popular form of literature4 ,in other   
ages1 when poetry has approached the    
condition of potential speech  and so   
has needed for its appreciation such    
knowledge as that lately  discussed1 it 
has not swelled the publisher's purse so
 swiftly as forms  of literature that   
happened to be more nearly kinetic and  

so more  easily enjoyed4    ,the        
eighteenth century poets and the        
,symbolists alike come under our        
definition and can be classed by the    
formula that depends upon it4  ,i have  
suggested that the eighteenth century   
poets cared mostly for  kinetic speech1 
and1 indeed1 carried their appreciation 
of it so high  as sometimes to forget   
that poetry could do anything but speak 
wisely  and well4 ,few schools have     
suffered a greater variety of imperfect 
and bungling definitions than that of   
,symbolism4 ,the ,symbolist aims  have  
been described as 8an escape from the   
thought of death10 and  8intimacy with  
spiritual things40 ,nowhere has there   
been a definition  that has shown their 
relation to the aims of poetry in       
general4 ,but1  when ,mallarm says3     
8,nommer un objet1 c'est supprimer les  
trois quarts  de la jouissance du pome  
qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu 
peu2 le suggrer1 voil le rve10 he is    
saying1 in other words1 that  poetry    

depends on potential speech4 ,the       
,symbolists sought to write  poetry that
 should be purely potential1 and in the 
revision of certain  of his poems       
,mallarm tried to eliminate bit by bit  
the whole structure  of kinetic speech  
that had been in them4 ,the eighteenth  
century aims  carried to their extreme  
would have meant bad prose2 the         
,symbolist  aims carried to their       
extreme would have meant 7as they       
sometimes did7  unintelligibility4      
,poetry is made by a combination of     
kinetic with  potential speech4         
,eliminate either and the result is no  
longer poetry4    ,i do not propose the 
words kinetic and potential as terms of 
abuse or  praise1 though in different   
ages there have been artists who would  
have  used them so4 ,the eighteenth     
century poets would have used kinetic   
as a term of praise2 the ,symbolists    
would have used it as a term  of abuse4 
,the fact that different schools would  
have set different  values on the words 

is itself a proof that they may be      
serviceable  to historians and critics4 
,literature does indeed vary between    
these  extremes1 its kinetic quality    
preserving it from nonsense1 its        
potential quality separating it from bad
 prose4 ,some sort of relevancy  would  
be discoverable in any history that set 
itself to trace these  variations4 ,some
 sort of relevancy is obvious in all    
criticism that  attempts 7as all good   
criticism does7 the enhancement of the  
potential  and the clarification of the 
kinetic element in such literature as   
happens to be its subject4 ,in any case1
 an adoption of the definition  of      
literature that this essay upholds would
 make ridiculous the  classification of 
books by their subjects and of writers  
by their  opinions1 on which so many    
intellects have wasted time and vitality
  worthy of a more profitable           
employment4      #aiaa4        ,printed 
by ,,ballantyne1 ,,hanson  ,,co4        
,edinburgh  ,london          ,,footnotes

      #a ,after passing this note for   
press1 ,i learn that this essay has been
  reprinted at ,tokyo in a new edition  
of ,mr4 ,noguchi's ,the ,pilgrimage4    
#b ,for the reputation of ,breughel     
d',enfer is based on his imitations  of 
his father1 ,breughel le ,vieux1 to whom
 is attributed the ,temptation  of ,st4 
,anthony at ,genoa4    #c ,a piece of   
money coined by ,charles ,,viii4    #d  
,figures that strike the hour on the    
clock-tower at ,dijon4    #e ,the       
quotations in this essay are taken from 
,dr4 ,oscar ,levy's  admirable ,english 
edition of ,nietzsche1 translated by    
,drs4 ,w4 ,a4  ,haussmann and ,m4 ,a4   
,mgge1 ,messrs4 ,paul ,v4 ,cohn1 ,thomas
 ,common1 ,j4  ,m4 ,kennedy1 ,a4 ,m4    
,ludovici and ,h4 ,b4 ,samuel1 and ,miss
 ,helen ,zimmern3  eighteen volumes     
published by ,mr4 ,t4 ,n4 ,foulis4    #f
 ,clarendon ,press4 #aiaj4    #g ,oscar 
,wilde4    #h ,these references are to  
the page-numbers in ,messrs4            
,macmillan's  library edition4    #i    

,his inability to tell a story was      
perhaps the reason of1 or1  at least    
supplies a commentary upon1 his         
readiness to admire the  narratives of  
,m4 ,filon1 ,octave ,feuillet1 ,mrs4    
,humphry ,ward1 and to  admire them1    
quite ingenuously1 for the story's sake1
 like the ordinary  reader of novels4   
#aj ,the ,symbolist ,movement in        
,literature1 #ahii4    #aa ,an ,english 
translation was published in #aiab by   
,messrs4 ,stephen  ,swift4    #ab ,when 
,i wrote this article ,i was still      
hypnotised1 like the  symbolists        
themselves1 with the idea that symbolism
 was a method4 ,my  later article on    
kinetic and potential speech contains   
what ,i believe  to be a more accurate  
account of the significance of what is  
called  the 8symbolist movement40 ,it   
did not turn a practice into a theory1  
but merely emphasized one of the two    
inseparable functions of words  when    
combined in poetic speech1 and          
emphasized it at the expense of the     

other4    ,japanese poets have always   
insisted on the potential element in    
poetic  speech4 ,its intensity has      
always been for them the test of a poem4
  ,noguchi1 except in that he is a      
,japanese poet who happens to write in  
,english1 is not an innovator but the   
heir to a long ,japanese tradition4     
,transcriber's ,notes      ,punctuation1
 hyphenation1 and spelling were made    
consistent when a  predominant          
preference was found in the original    
book2 otherwise they  were not changed4 
,inconsistent use of accent marks has   
not been remedied4    ,simple           
typographical errors were corrected2    
unbalanced quotation  marks were        
remedied when the change was obvious1   
and otherwise left  unbalanced4    ,page
 #afg3 ,a superscript is represented as 
me4