It is possible to
conceive that music may in the future desert form in favour of colour;
it is possible to conceive that painters might produce pictures of pure
colour, quite apart from any imitation of natural objects, in which
colour might aspire more to the condition of music, and modulate from
tone to tone.
In literary art, the movement in the direction of realistic art, as
opposed to idealistic, is the most marked development of later days.
But I believe that there is still a further possibility of development,
a combination of prose and poetry, which may be confidently expected in
the future.
It is clear, I think, that the old instinct which tended to make a
division between poetry and prose is being gradually obliterated. The
rhythmical structure of poetry, and above all the device of rhyme, is
essentially immature and childish: the use by poets of rhythmical beat
and verbal assonance is simply the endeavour to captivate what is a
primeval and even barbarous instinct. The pleasure which children take
in beating their hands upon a table, in rapping out a tattoo with a
stick, in putting together unmeaning structures of rhyme, is not
necessarily an artistic thing at all; what lies at the root of it is
the pleasure of the conscious perception of similarity and regularity.
This same tendency is to be seen in our buildings, in the love of
geometrical forms, so that the elementary perception is better pleased
by contemplating a building with a door in the middle and the same
number of windows on each side, than in contemplating the structure of
a tree.
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