Arthur Machen

“ Thus the true artist in every age goes back to the first day of man for that which is really precious and magical in his work; he is the highest artist of all who recovers most successfully the emotions of the first man, or in other words, becomes like a little child, breaking away from the prison-house of "civilisation." ”

“ The Renaissance was the apotheosis of technique, of body divorced more or less from spirit, and one understands why Oscar Wilde—who will never be reckoned amongst those who have been indifferent to technique—detested the Renaissance and wished that it had never been. ”

“ And thus by another track we have come back to our first thesis that man is fallen, inasmuch as every man, according to the law of his first and true nature, should be a supreme artist. We have disproved the theory of progress, we have seen that the core and essence of all art was in the possession of primitive man, who knew the authentic charm but was often unable to utter it articulately, while we, who speak clearly enough, are only too apt to give form to banality and vulgarity. ”

“ He who can read but cannot write by the very fact of his reading convicts himself of imperfection; so he who enjoys Shakespeare by the fact of his enjoyment acknowledges his fault in not being Shakespeare. ”

“ Religion may or may not make any one man a technical artist; it will do better, it will transport him to that overworld whence the holy incantations of the arts descend on earth, to the place of the perfect unmanifested Vision. ”

“ The lead must die, so that the gold may be born from the furnace of this death; in other words, Tupper must perish so that Shakespeare may rise from his ashes.
This is the truth expressed so well in a book that I reviewed in these columns a fortnight ago—it is the object of Religion to make every man a poet—a supreme artist. Not of necessity an executive and practising artist—for, paradoxically enough, the thing realised, materially manifested in tones, or marble, or words, is itself a result of the Fall, a phenomenon of this imperfect world of sacraments and symbols. ”

“ If no Englishman had ever spoken French we might reasonably conclude that the art of speaking French was impossible to an Englishman, that the Anglo-Saxon was no more meant to speak French than a thistle is meant to produce figs. ”

“ It has been said that the style is the man; assuredly art is the man, his utterance of himself, the means by which his true self is made incarnate in a cathedral, in an epic, in a fugue, in a statue, in a picture, or in an ornament. ”

“ But we know that Tupper does not belong to the Palaeolithic period, and we know that the machine-made article—novel, or play, or jewel, or picture, or arm-chair—is a chief feature of our own age; so it seems to me that the theory of man ever ascending from height to height is most definitely shown to be false.
False in the arts, and therefore false in all. For, if one thinks of it, art is not an odd and clever trick like throwing three somersaults in the tenth of a second; art is at once the manifestation of man, the true speech of man, and the differentia of man from other animals. ”

“ In my parable of the flying men I should have mentioned the circumstance that some of the highest flights recorded were of the remotest past in history. But I imagine that I shall be met from many quarters with the theory of human progress, of the continual advancement of man's mind to higher and finer and nobler levels. ”

“ I should be willing to believe that we had been slowly mounting upward, and ever upward, that the human race was already within sight of the Promised Land, that the ape of old would ere long be transformed into the awful glories of divinity. ”

“ I should think that in the Celtic decorative work body and spirit were welded together as they never have been before or after; but if one takes primitive work of a much lower range than the Cup of Armagh or the Tara Brooch, work that has something of the barbarous about it, still it will often possess a magic, an enchantment, a great mystery that is denied to the exquisite accomplishment of Benvenuto Cellini. ”

“ It would be very remarkable if the nightingale were possessed of the power of losing its song and of assuming the hiss or the bray of certain other animals.
It is clear, then, I think, that art is coeval with man; art—or perhaps I should say the true matter of art; and that which later ages have added is in reality artifice, that which we call technique. ”

“ For by the very fact of our comprehension of the great man's work, by the fact of our insight into his meaning, by the facts of our tears and of our laughter, by the fact that as we read we make the lines our own, part of our hearts and minds and souls, we thereby prove our fallen state. ”

“ But if one Englishman has spoken French perfectly, then it is clear that those who cannot do so are, quâ French, imperfect; they lack something which they might possess—which they ought to possess—in the sphere of linguistic accomplishment. ”

“ ARS ARTIUM I suppose that if in every generation of men from the earliest time there had been a certain number of individuals who possessed the power of flight; if some of these flying people were able to soar to vast heights, and to sustain their courses amidst the stars for a prolonged time ”