United States or Latvia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"And don't you like ?" "And isn't that splendid?" These simple sentences, interchanged, took on the value of intimate confidences. "I've had such a jolly time," Temple said. "I haven't had such a talk for ages." And yet all the talk had been mere confessions of faith in Ibsen, in Browning, in Maeterlinck, in English gardens, in Art for Art's sake, and in Whistler and Beethoven.
It was art for art's sake. How she must be laughing at him by this time. He roughly folded up the screen and sent it flying into a corner. She had no doubt left all in disorder. And when he found that everything was in its proper place basin, towel, and soap he flew into a rage because she had not made the bed.
He often felt tempted to send Coello his ducats and tell him he had been hasty, and cherished no desire to wed his daughter; but perhaps that would break the heart of the poor, dear little thing, who loved him so tenderly! He would be no dishonorable ingrate, but bear the consequences of his own recklessness. Perhaps some miracle would happen in Italy, Art's own domain.
Especially do we question the soundness of the sentiment expressed in the last clause. Why is real life to be abandoned by every man of feeling and imagination and given over to the men of manoeuvre and compromise? Is not this the sentiment of the monkish ascetic coming back to us in another form and enjoining us to make ourselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Art's sake?
This idea, the taste of which was rather risky, made her grow white with pleasure, and she pictured herself as a silver statuette, symbolic of the warm, voluptuous delights of darkness. "Of course you will only sit for the head and shoulders," said Labordette. She looked quietly at him. "Why? The moment a work of art's in question I don't mind the sculptor that takes my likeness a blooming bit!"
As for the old masters, the better plan would be never even to look at one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along with Plato, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two others, neither of them Englishmen, to limbo, as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom. While we are about it, let us leave off talking about "art for art's sake." Who is art, that it should have a sake?
"Augh," said Skinadre, "by the livin' it's in him, an' I always knew it was the rale drop." "Boys," said Harte, "go off wid yez out o' this, I say; divil a foot you'll come in." "Arra go to Jimmaiky; who cares about you, Syl, when we have Art's liberty? Sure we didn't know the thing ourselves half an hour ago."
No doubt the upholders of "Art for art's sake" will generally be in favour of the courageous course, of refusing to sacrifice the better or stronger part of the public to the weaker or worse; but their maxim in no way binds them to this view.
But this is to diminish the importance of art; for it is art's privilege to make feelings common by providing a medium through which they can be communicated rather than merely to express them after they have become common. Understanding is more valuable when it encompasses the things that tend to separate and distinguish men than when it is limited to the things that unite them.
And now art, for art's sake the first faint radiance of a rosy dawn had begun to shine in upon him, and to the beauty of womanhood he was beginning to see how necessary it was to add the beauty of life the beauty of material background how, in fact, the only background for great beauty was great art.
Word Of The Day