The Complete Essays of John GalsworthyGalsworthy, John
General
The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy
Galsworthy, John
Essays
Realist—Romanticist! Enlightenment—Delight! That is the true apposition.
To make a revelation—to tell a fairy-tale! And either of these
artists may use what form he likes—naturalistic, fantastic, poetic,
impressionistic. For it is not by the form, but by the purpose and mood
of his art that he shall be known, as one or as the other. Realists
indeed—including the half of Shakespeare that was realist not being
primarily concerned to amuse their audience, are still comparatively
unpopular in a world made up for the greater part of men of action, who
instinctively reject all art that does not distract them without causing
them to think. For thought makes demands on an energy already in full
use; thought causes introspection; and introspection causes discomfort,
and disturbs the grooves of action. To say that the object of the
realist is to enlighten rather than to delight, is not to say that in
his art the realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is the teller
of a fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to do so; he
is amusing, too, a large part of mankind. For, admitted that the abject,
and the test of Art, is always the awakening of vibration, of impersonal
emotion, it is still usually forgotten that men fall, roughly speaking,
into two flocks: Those whose intelligence is uninquiring in the face
of Art, and does not demand to be appeased before their emotions can be
stirred; and those who, having a speculative bent of mind, must first be
satisfied by an enlightening quality in a work of Art, before that work
of Art can awaken in them feeling. The audience of the realist is drawn
from this latter type of man; the much larger audience of the romantic
artist from the former; together with, in both cases, those fastidious
few for whom all Art is style and only style, and who welcome either
kind, so long as it is good enough.
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