"My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass," said Alfred de
Musset. Very well! let each one drink from his glass, but observe! it is
not necessary that in the true artist all should be individual and
peculiar. It is necessary only that there should exist a degree of
individuality, something novel, a distinguishing tone and an artistic
physiognomy peculiarly his own. Servile imitations, plagiarism, stupid
adaptations, put to death all art and all poetry. In literature
particularly is such decline most easy.
Hoping that, from what has been said, you have been led more fully to
appreciate the advantage of seeing all of the branches of intellectual
culture led out of the ruts of routine, away from plagiarism and from
disorder and anarchy, one word upon the most distasteful and effectual
blight to which art is subject--_the loss of naturalness_, viz.,
_affectation_. Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or
singer, caterers to perverted tastes?
In sculpture what is more displeasing than a distorted figure, which
aimed at grace and is become a caricature? Affectation is in the arts
the equivalant of sophistry in logic, of the false in morals, of
hypocrisy in religion. It is not extravagant to assume that affectation,
being a falsity, an active lie, is a torture to the spirit which
perceives it, and a wrong to the honest souls who endure it. It should
be, therefore, for twofold cause, banished without pity from the realm
of aesthetics.
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