All Art Does But Consist In The

To The Modern Spirit Nothing Is, Or Can Be Rightly Known, Except Relatively And Under Conditions.

Philosophical Theories Or Ideas, As Points Of View, Instruments Of Criticism, May Help Us To Gather Up What Might Otherwise Pass Unregarded By Us.

She Is Older Than The Rocks Among Which She Sits; Like The Vampire, She Has Been Dead Many Times, And Learned The Secrets Of The Grave; And Has Been A Diver In Deep Seas, And Keeps Their Fallen Day About Her; And Trafficked For Strange Webs With Eastern Merchants, And, As Leda, Was The Mother Of Helen Of Troy, And, As Saint Anne, The Mother Of Mary; And All This Has Been To Her But As The Sound Of Lyres And Flutes, And Lives Only In The Delicacy With Which It Has Molded The Changing Lineaments, And Tinged The Eyelids And The Hands.

Many Attempts Have Been Made By Writers On Art And Poetry To Define Beauty In The Abstract, To Express It In The Most General Terms, To Find Some Universal Formula For It.

That The Mere Matter Of A Poem, For Instance--its Subject, Its Given Incidents Or Situation; That The Mere Matter Of A Picture--the Actual Circumstances Of An Event, The Actual Topography Of A Landscape--should Be Nothing Without The Form, The Spirit Of The Handling, That This Form, This Mode Of Handling, Should Become An End In Itself, Should Penetrate Every Part Of The Matter;mthis Is What All Art Constantly Strives After, And Achieves In Different Degrees.