Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863 — John Shaqi
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
And though, as I have said, Art enters into all works, whether addressed
to the reason or to the imagination, those addressed to the imagination
are works of Art _par emphasis_, for they require much more than the
elementary principles which Art has in common with Science. The two part
company with each other almost as soon as they meet on that ground of
Method which is common to both,—Science ever seeking, through all forms
of the ideal, to realise the Positive—Art, from all forms of the
Positive, ever seeking to extract the Ideal. The _beau ideal_ is not in
the reason—its only existence is in the imagination. To create in the
reader’s mind images which do not exist in the world, and leave them
there, imperishable as the memories of friends with whom he has lived,
and of scenes in which he has had his home, obviously necessitates a
much ampler and much subtler Art than that which is required to make a
positive fact clear to the comprehension. The highest quality of Art, as
applied to literature, is therefore called “the Creative.” Nor do I
attach any importance to the cavil of some over ingenious critics, who
have denied that genius in reality _creates_; inasmuch as the forms it
presents are only new combinations of ideas already existent. New
combinations are, to all plain intents and purposes, creations. It is
not in the power of man to create something out of nothing. And though
the Deity no doubt can do so now—as those who acknowledge that the
Divine Creator preceded all created things, must suppose that He did
before there was even a Chaos—yet, so far as it is vouchsafed to us to
trace Him through Nature, all that we see in created Nature is combined
out of what before existed. Art, therefore, may be said to create when
it combines existent details into new wholes. No man can say that the
watch which lies before me, or the table on which I write, were not
created (that is, made) by the watchmaker or cabinetmaker, because the
materials which compose a watch or a table have been on the earth, so
far as we know of it, since the earth was a world fit for men to dwell
in. Therefore, neither in Nature nor in Art can it be truly said that
that power is not creative which brings into the world a new form,
though all which compose a form, as all which compose a flower, a tree,
a mite, an elephant, a man, are, if taken in detail, as old as the gases
in the air we breathe, or the elements of the earth we tread. But the
Creative Faculty in Art requires a higher power than it asks in Nature;
for Nature may create things without life and mind—Nature may create
dust and stones which have no other life and mind than are possessed by
the animalcules that inhabit them. But the moment Art creates, it puts
into its creations life and intellect; and it is only in proportion as
the life thus bestowed endures beyond the life of man, and the intellect
thus expressed exceeds that which millions of men can embody in one
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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