The Art Of Literature

The Art Of Literature

Synopsis

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... On the other hand, where the matter is accessible to everyone or very well known, everything will -- depend upon the form; arid what it is that is thought about the matter will give the book all the value it possesses. Here only a really distinguished man will be able to produce anything worth reading; for the others will think nothing but what anyone else can think. They will just produce an impress of their own minds; but this is a print of which everyone possesses the original. However, the public is very much more concerned to have matter than form; and for this very reason it is deficient in any high degree of culture. The public shows its preference in this respect in the most laughable way when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes much trouble to the task of tracking out the actual events or personal circumstances in the life of the poet which served as the occasion of his various works; nay, these events and circumstances come in the end to be of greater importance than the works themselves; and rather than read Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been written about him, and to study the legend of Faust more industriously than the drama of that name. And when Burger declared that people would write learned disquisitions on the question, Who Leonora really was, we find this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case; for we now possess a great many learned disquisitions on Faust and the legend attaching to him. Study of this kind is, and remains, dpvnt, ed to the Te-givc 3uch preference s as though a man were material. o the matter over the form, i to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to admire its shape or colouring, but to make a chemical analysis of the 'ay and paint of which it is composed. The attempt to produce an effect by mea...

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