哈佛经典讲座

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• Let us turn to another familiar human interest, that of the fine arts. There exists a vague idea, sometimes defended by the connoisseur, but more often ignored or repudiated by him, that the greatest works of art must express the general or the universal. Thus we feel that Greek sculpture is great because it portrays man, whereas most contemporary sculpture portrays persons; and that Italian painting of the Renaissance, expressing, as it does, the Christian interpretation of life, is superior to the impressionistic landscape which seizes on some momentary play of light and color. Now I do not for a moment wish to contend that such considerations as these are decisive in determining the merit of art. It may even be that they should not affect our purely æsthetic judgments at all. But it is ... (查看原文)

  Joan 2024-08-31 20:45:48

• The case of poetry is perhaps clearer. Historical or narrative poems, love poems to a mistress’s eyes or lips, evidently dwell on some concrete situation or on some rare and evanescent(/ex,vanus;out of,empty) quality that for a moment narrows the mind and shuts out the world. On the other hand, there are poems like Tennyson’s “Higher Pantheism,” and “Maud,” Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” or Matthew Arnold’s “ Dover Beach,” 2 in which the poet is striving to express through his peculiar medium some generalization of life. He has had some wider vision, revealing man in his true place in the whole scheme of things. Such a vision is rarely clear, perhaps never entirely articulate; but it betokens a mind struggling for light, dissatisfied with any ready-made plan and... (查看原文)

  Joan 2024-08-31 20:45:48

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