Arthur Machen

“ It is from the earliest men, from the dimmest and most remote ages, that the artistic impulse, the whole matter of the arts, has descended to us; and all true art of to-day is written or painted or carved or sung in the oldest of all tongues, in a language that is ancient, and secret, and universal. ”

“ Art is the expression of the human soul, of the eternal things in man; and to man it is as profoundly natural as is the song to the bird.
I have showed that art was the true expression of humanity, the grand differentia between men and the other animals; but there is another aspect of the matter. From the one proposition follows the other—if art be a mystery-language of the human soul it must have an interpretation. ”

“ Here is to be sought the fundamental distinction between these tricks and human Art with the capital A. I do not know whether the opposite view—the opinion which holds that art is "artificial," the result of civilisation and gentle manners—has ever been formally proclaimed; but I should imagine that some such opinion might very possibly be found in the works of Herbert Spencer. That deceased "philosopher" would probably maintain that art grew out of some or all of man's physical necessities, and that the primitive man was originally no more an artist than is a hippopotamus. ”

“ The world, in a word, is transformed; it has put on the glowing and glistering robe of enchantment, every way is a way of wonder, and as one looks on common things and the usual and accustomed passages of life they seem to tremble and waver as if they were a curtain on the point to part asunder and disclose tremendous and most beautiful mysteries. ”

“ REALISM AND SYMBOL I have tried to point out in The Academy that art is not a trick, not in any way analogous to the performances of the celebrated pony who took port wine with the clown, not in any way related to the shows of dancing dogs or learned elephants. ”

“ Never a perfect one, since the higher cannot be adequately translated in terms of the lower, and, personally, I always feel the impertinence of the attempt to interpret great music by a flourish of words and phrases. Still, all great art has "a meaning," in other words, it is symbolic. ”

“ If man were a surface it would be real, but man being a cubical figure it is most unreal. It is, indeed, difficult to say from what complicated attack of folly this perversion of a fine word arose; the notion that a certain skill in the minute delineation of "unpleasant" characters and incidents makes a writer a "realist" certainly seems to belong more to Bedlam and Colney Hatch than to the world that is free of those high walls. ”

“ But, setting this interesting and important speculation on one side, I repeat that there comes to most of us, at one time or another, an experience which is only translatable in terms of the "Arabian Nights." We are walking in the common, grimy street, weighed down with cares or pleasures, or pain or worries, our minds filled with all manner of unimportant, unreal stuff ”

“ Setting aside the fact that Turner deliberately altered the scenes that he painted, that he treated mountains and lakes, trees, and cathedrals very much as a good stage-manager treats a stage-crowd; setting this quite on one side, one sees that the painting has received that consecration which Wordsworth speaks of: the natural has been assumed into the supernatural; the hills and streams have been exalted in glory, and the fallen world has risen from the dead. ”

“ I neither know nor care whether this be the case, and in the art of literature, correct information about Haroun's court does not count. It is, indeed, highly probable that many of the incidents in the story of Aladdin never happened, and I understand that modern science is sceptical on the question of the genie. But realism, in its true and philosophical and artistic sense, has nothing what ever to do with correct information; neither a manual of chemistry nor the racing news is en titled to be called realistic literature. ”

“ These are the people who write what are called "good" books—that is, in plain English, books which, by bringing religion into contempt, odium, and ridicule, are more harmful than a wilderness of pornographic libraries. ”

“ It is not in the nature of horses to drink with clowns, nor have dogs danced ab initio; the elephant of the wilds does not ring a bell for his dinner: all these "arts" are things superimposed they are fantastic upper stories which are no part of the original design of the building. ”

“ And, on the other hand, there is a far greater multitude who stand in the very sanctuary at the hour of the sacring of the Mass and have the power to retransmute the Blessed Gifts into ginger-beer and mixed biscuits. ”