charm-compeller

Updated: May 16, 2025

Any presentation of the artist in triumph must be flat in proportion as it really sticks to its subject it can only smuggle in relief and variety. For, to put the matter in an image, all we then in his triumph see of the charm-compeller is the back he turns to us as he bends over his work. "His" triumph, decently, is but the triumph of what he produces, and that is another affair.

Henry James - The Tragic Muse