And we can only do this when the
artist leads the way. Mere copyist's painting, realistic reproduction,
pure imitation, leave us cold because their author is a machine, a
mirror, an iodized plate, and not a soul.
Art lives by appearances, but these appearances are spiritual visions,
fixed dreams. Poetry represents to us nature become con-substantial with
the soul, because in it nature is only a reminiscence touched with
emotion, an image vibrating with our own life, a form without weight--in
short, a mode of the soul. The poetry which is most real and objective
is the expression of a soul which throws itself into things, and forgets
itself in their presence more readily than others; but still, it is the
expression of the soul, and hence what we call style. Style may be only
collective, hieratic, national, so long as the artist is still the
interpreter of the community; it tends to become personal in proportion
as society makes room for individuality and favors its expansion.
* * * * *
There is a way of killing truth by truths. Under the pretense that we
want to study it more in detail we pulverize the statue--it is an
absurdity of which our pedantry is constantly guilty. Those who can only
see the fragments of a thing are to me _esprits faux_, just as much as
those who disfigure the fragments.
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