Personality in Literature | Page 5

not the less real because it is

intangible and mysterious. If it inexplicably affords us--as it does--an
experience which some persons describe as transcendent, then that
quality in it, which we call the "sublime" or the "beautiful," has at least
to this extent a definite reality, that it affords us unique experiences. It
is this question which I shall examine in the following chapter.
Some men have not been so made that they can respond to the beauty
which is summoned by art, just as some men, born blind, are not
touched by the light of the sun. But it is of no moment to say that tastes
differ. Men may differ about their friends, but they do not differ about
friendship. They may have different codes of honour, but a sense of
honour is the same thing for a savage as it is for a bishop. And so not
all things are called beautiful by the same men, but beauty is the same
for all.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Preface to Round the Corner. (Martin Secker.)

II
LITERATURE A FINE ART
There are many people of my acquaintance who think it almost
indecent to talk of literature as a fine art. They have the same distaste
for the word "art" as others have for the name of God. It has indeed
been misused in certain æsthetic circles and discussed almost
unctuously, so that it is often associated with long hair and cant, and
seems nonsensical if not disreputable to plain and honest men. I
remember an Oxford don, chiefly noted for his cricket and his
knowledge of Homer, and in later life for his dyspepsia, abusing a
distinguished Austrian critic who visited the University--"These
foreigners are always talking about Art!" Foreigners and long-haired
æsthetes were one and the same thing to my atrabilious instructor. The
latter was an exact man. No wonder he detested a word which is used
so vaguely and in so many contrary senses; which is sometimes applied

to a poem or a novel as if its "art" were an ornamental thing separate
from the poem or the novel; or as if it were a mere synonym for style or
adherence to some technical formula.
Yet we cannot very well get on without the word, and we certainly
cannot avoid its connotation. No man in his senses can deny that there
is such a thing as the "art of literature," though it may seem absurd to
talk about it. No one, however healthy in his tastes, would refuse to
distinguish the statement "This is a very good book"--which may mean
only that it is instructive, or useful for certain purposes--from the
statement "This, anyhow, is literature"--which means something quite
specific, namely, that this is a work of art. The very word would
become less offensive if we could be a little less vague about it, if we
could make up our minds what it is that it does mean or that we wish it
to mean. We all of us distinguish between good and bad in literature,
even if we regard our own judgments as fallible. We are all disposed to
mistrust the opinions of our contemporaries, though we have a childlike
faith in the verdict of posterity. Well, what is it that will satisfy
posterity, and that ought, a fortiori, to satisfy us? What is it, in the
domain of the delightful, as opposed to the merely knowable, which
has value for the future, and therefore should have more value for the
present? And what is it--an even more important question--which may
have this kind of value for us, whether posterity choose to value it or
not? That is the main point. We want to find what that quality is, in
literature or any of the fine arts, which makes it a matter of so great
consideration to us. What do we expect and demand from it, if it is to
be something of real moment? That is one side of the question. And
putting the question from the other side--What sort of process is
implied in the writing of literature, and what is the sanction of the
writer? It seems we are compelled to form some provisional theory of
art before we can make the most modest pretensions to discuss
literature. For such a theory is implied in every literary discussion, in
every review of a book, and in every appreciative or antagonistic
reading of a book. I myself have written hundreds of reviews of books,
and I certainly do not think it more presumptuous to set down what it is
that I require, or believe that I require, in creative literature, and what
that requirement presupposes in the artist, than to have written those

hundreds of reviews.
I begin, then, from the side of our actual