The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century; Horror tales; Literature -- History and criticism
The second passage is this: "There is a far more important and warming
heat, commonly lost, which precedes the burning of the wood. It is the
smoke of industry, which is incense. I had been so thoroughly warmed in
body and spirit, that when at length my fuel was housed, I came near
selling it to the ashman, as if I had extracted all its heat." Industry
is, in itself and when properly chosen, delightful and profitable to the
worker; and when your toil has been a pleasure, you have not, as Thoreau
says, "earned money merely," but money, health, delight, and moral
profit, all in one. "We must heap up a great pile of doing for a small
diameter of being," he says in another place; and then exclaims, "How
admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self-culture by devotion
to his art!" We may escape uncongenial toil, only to devote ourselves to
that which is congenial. It is only to transact some higher business
that even Apollo dare play the truant from Admetus. We must all work for
the sake of work; we must all work, as Thoreau says again, in any
"absorbing pursuit--it does not much matter what, so it be honest"; but
the most profitable work is that which combines into one continued
effort the largest proportion of the powers and desires of a man's
nature; that into which he will plunge with ardour, and from which he
will desist with reluctance; in which he will know the weariness of
fatigue, but not that of satiety; and which will be ever fresh,
pleasing, and stimulating to his taste. Such work holds a man together,
braced at all points; it does not suffer him to doze or wander; it keeps
him actively conscious of himself, yet raised among superior interests;
it gives him the profit of industry with the pleasures of a pastime.
This is what his art should be to the true artist, and that to a degree
unknown in other and less intimate pursuits. For other professions stand
apart from the human business of life; but an art has its seat at the
centre of the artist's doings and sufferings, deals directly with his
experiences, teaches him the lessons of his own fortunes and mishaps,
and becomes a part of his biography. So says Goethe:
"Spaet erklingt was frueh erklang;
Glueck und Unglueck wird Gesang."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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