He says that he
had had no intercourse with the lowest class of his towns-boys.
The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of
knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and
exposure.
"The laws of Nature break the rules of Art."
The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an
Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius,
referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic
man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet
unexplored. The Artist is he who detects and applies the law
from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or
nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which
others have detected. There has been no man of pure Genius; as
there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.
Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
The expressions of the poet cannot be analyzed; his sentence is
one word, whose syllables are words. There are indeed no _words_
quite worthy to be set to his music. But what matter if we do
not hear the words always, if we hear the music?
Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written
exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been
inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is
written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught
from a vaster receding thought.
A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into
literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by
those for whom it was matured.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what
you will never read, you have done rare things.
The work we choose should be our own,
God lets alone.
The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.
Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have
their foundation below the frost.
What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms of
lichens and leaves. There is a certain perfection in accident
which we never consciously attain. Draw a blunt quill filled
with ink over a sheet of paper, and fold the paper before the ink
is dry, transversely to this line, and a delicately shaded and
regular figure will be produced, in some respects more pleasing
than an elaborate drawing.
The talent of composition is very dangerous, - the striking out
the heart of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a scalp. I
feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe writes:
"The Tees flows now more gently, and makes in many places broad
sands. On the land, near to the water, upon the hillsides,
everything is so closely planted one to another, that you think
they must choke one another, - vineyards, maize, mulberry-trees,
apples, pears, quinces, and nuts. The dwarf elder throws itself
vigorously over the walls. Ivy grows with strong stems up the
rocks, and spreads itself wide over them, the lizard glides
through the intervals, and everything that wanders to and fro
reminds one of the loveliest pictures of art. The women's tufts
of hair bound up, the men's bare breasts and light jackets, the
excellent oxen which they drive home from market, the little
asses with their loads, - everything forms a living, animated
Heinrich Roos. And now that it is evening, in the mild air a few
clouds rest upon the mountains, in the heavens more stand still
than move, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets
begins to grow more loud; then one feels for once at home in the
world, and not as concealed or in exile. I am contented as
though I had been born and brought up here, and were now
returning from a Greenland or whaling voyage. Even the dust of
my Fatherland, which is often whirled about the wagon, and which
for so long a time I had not seen, is greeted. The
clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets is altogether lovely,
penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely when roguish boys
whistle in emulation of a field of such songstresses. One
fancies that they really enhance one another. Also the evening
is perfectly mild as the day."
"If one who dwelt in the south, and came hither from the south,
should hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem me very
childish. Alas! what I here express I have long known while I
suffered under an unpropitious heaven, and now may I joyful feel
this joy as an exception, which we should enjoy everforth as an
eternal necessity of our nature."
Thus we "sayled by thought and pleasaunce," as Chaucer says, and
all things seemed with us to flow; the shore itself, and the
distant cliffs, were dissolved by the undiluted air. The hardest
material seemed to obey the same law with the most fluid, and so
indeed in the long run it does. Trees were but rivers of sap and
woody fibre, flowing from the atmosphere, and emptying into the
earth by their trunks, as their roots flowed upward to the
surface. And in the heavens there were rivers of stars, and
milky-ways, already beginning to gleam and ripple over our heads.
There were rivers of rock on the surface of the earth, and rivers
of ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and circulated, and
this portion of time was but the current hour. Let us wander
where we will, the universe is built round about us, and we are
central still. If we look into the heavens they are concave, and
if we were to look into a gulf as bottomless, it would be concave
also.
