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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. WHAT GENIUS IS?THE LATE DISCUSSION CONCERNING IT. THERE has lately been carried on in our periodical press a remarkable discussion concerning the reality of genius, a discussion in which it was gravely questioned whether it is a thing that has an existence or not, or whether it is merely a name. This discussion was, I believe, started by Mr. Howells, the novelist, in one of his monthly utterances in Harper's Magazine, in .which he expressed some radical notions not only concerning genius, but concerning the aims and methods of men of genius generally. Mr. Howells is a realist, and does not believe in any fiction except that which is copied directly from life; he is a worker, and does not believe in any inspiration except that of work. There is no genius, he says; '' there is only the mastery that comes to natural aptitude from the hardest study of any art or science. Well, after all, there is nothing wonderful in this statement; it sounds very much like what has been said before. Is it any more remarkable than Carlyle's definition of genius as an extraordinary faculty of 'aking pains, or John Foster's, the power of lightingOne's own fire ? Hogarth said, I know no such thing as genius: genius is nothing but labor and diligence. The truth is, all men of genius have been workers, hard workers, and have done what they have done mostly by work. But this alone would not have done it. There is something else required, without which all the labor in the world is in vain. How many workers, great workers, there have been in literature and art who have piled up mountains of books and pictures and poems, all of which, with their authors, have long since been forgotten They failed to possess that one spark that keeps every work of art alive. They certainly ha...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217491051 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217491057 |
| Weight | 0.87 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.60 In |
| List Price | $19.99 |
| Format | Paperback |
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| Pages | 264 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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