Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life

Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life

Die Realitt der Dinge ist der Dinge Werk; der Schein der Dinge ist der Menschen Werk; und ein Gemt, das sich am Scheine weidet, ergtzt sich schon nicht mehr an dem, was es empfngt, sondern an dem, was es tut. One afternoon, in Rome, on the way back from the Aventine, the road-mender climbed onto the tram as it trotted slowly along, and fastened to its front, alongside of the place of the driver, a bough of budding bay. Might one not search long for a better symbol of what we may all do by our life? Bleakness, wind, squalid streets, a car full of heterogeneous people, some very dull, most very common; a laborious jog-trot all the way. But to redeem it all with the pleasantness of beauty and the charm of significance, this laurel branch. Our language does not possess any single word wherewith to sum up the various categories of things (made by nature or made by man, intended solely for the purpose of subserving by mere coincidence) which minister to our organic and many-sided sthetic instincts: the things affecting us in that absolutely special, unmistakable, and hitherto mysterious manner expressed in our finding them beautiful. It is of the part which such thingswhether actually present or merely shadowed in our mindcan play in our life; and of the influence of the instinct for beauty on the other instincts making up our nature, that I would treat in these pages. And for this reason I have been glad to accept from the hands of chance, and of that road-mender of the tram-way, the bay laurel as a symbol of what we have no word to express: the aggregate of all art, all poetry, and particularly of all poetic and artistic vision and emotion. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 27939
Author: Lee, Vernon
Release Date: Jan 31, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English