--Why not, indeed? said Lynch, laughing.
--IF A MAN HACKING IN FURY AT A BLOCK OF WOOD, Stephen continued, MAKE
THERE AN IMAGE OF A COW, IS THAT IMAGE A WORK OF ART? IF NOT, WHY NOT?
--That's a lovely one, said Lynch, laughing again. That has the true
scholastic stink.
--Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues to
write of. The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spoke
of distinguished clearly one from another. Even in literature, the
highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. The
lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of
emotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled
at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is more
conscious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeling emotion.
The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature
when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an
epical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotional
gravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The
narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist
passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons
and the action like a vital sea. This progress you will see easily in
that old English ballad TURPIN HERO which begins in the first person
and ends in the third person. The dramatic form is reached when the
vitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills every
person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and
intangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at first a cry
or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally
refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak.
The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and
reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic, like
that of material creation, is accomplished. The artist, like the God of
creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork,
invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his
fingernails.
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