新发展大学英语阅读与写作3课文翻译VAGUETHOUGHTSONART模糊思考艺术.pdfVIP

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is thatwhich excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.Impersonal emotion! And what--I thought do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires me with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be What could I buy that for? Impulse of acquisition; or: From what quarry did it come? Impulse of inquiry; or: Which would be the right end for my head? Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse--to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to theuniversal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word impersonal, then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary forgetfulness of ones own personality and its active wants. So Art--I thought--is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while producing no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration. Nor can I imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art, without hypothecating a perfect human being. But since we shall never see, or know if we do see, that desirable creature--dogmatism is banished, Academ