“ Art has not yet come to its maturity, if it do not put itself abreast with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than the arts. ”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Art (1841). copy citation
| Author | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|---|---|
| Source | Art |
| Topic | maturity conscience |
| Date | 1841 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | in "Essays: First Series" |
| Note | |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays:_First_Series/Art |
Context
“The real value of the Iliad, or the Transfiguration, is as signs of power; billows or ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays. Art has not yet come to its maturity, if it do not put itself abreast with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than the arts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are.”
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