Amateur

“ It is only on the score of technique, the mere rule of thumb business, that we stand below the serious amateurs; we belong to a higher order of beings and have grander souls; in spirit we come nearer to the great masters. The motives of the serious amateur are not above suspicion. In his assiduous practice, his limited repertoire, his studied semi-public style of performance, is there not a suggestion of vanity? Is his conscious parade of skill, taken along with his fear of unknown works, the mark of a selfless devotion to music, and music alone? ”

“ Gentlemen are summoned from the audience to tie the mediums. Now, tell me, is it an easy task for an amateur to tie a man up off-hand with a rope three yards long, in a very secure way? The amateur is flurried, self-conscious, anxious to acquit himself well of the business, but he is a gentleman, not a brute, and if one of the Brothers sees the ropes getting into a dangerous tangle, he gives a slight groan, as if he were being injured, and the instantaneous impulse of the other man is to loosen the cord a trifle. ”

“ The professional quickly assimilates mannerisms which are only too likely to become mechanical, but which the amateur, because he is an amateur, [pg 69] is not likely to learn, if at first he is trained to avoid them. ”

“ The amateur it is who really astonishes them. They cannot come up even with your amateur beginner, performing at close quarters; whereas the master of his craft on a platform runs quite away at the outset from the lagging senses of his honest audience. ”

“ The conscious amateur confesses this himself, makes no pretension to mastership, and calls himself—in distinction from the professional, who subjects himself to rules—an unlearned person. But sometimes the amateur, on the contrary, covers over his weakness, cherishes in himself the self-conceit that he is equal to the heroes of his art or science, constitutes himself the first admirer of his own performances, seeks for their want of recognition in external motives, never in their own want of excellence ”

“ After all they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with this was another perversity—an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. ”

“ There is no work so scholarly and engaging as the amateur's. But in your play I am amazed to find the touch of the professional and experienced playwright. Yes, my dear, you have proved that you happen to possess the quality—one that is most difficult to acquire—of surrounding a situation which is improbable enough to be convincing with that absurdly mechanical conversation which the theatre-going public demands. ”

“ Come out into the world, measure yourself against the best, criticise your own work as if it were a stranger's. Be honest, and say, "That man's work knocks mine into a cocked hat," and then go home miserable, but determined to beat that man's work or perish in the attempt. Never sneak! If you see first-class work by anyone, go boldly and say, "Sir, I am an amateur," or, "I am a young professional," as the case may be. ”

“ Yes, it is only fair to distinguish, when we talk about the “amateur”—and no one has less tolerance for the feeble amateur than I have—it is necessary to distinguish between the mind of the dilettante, of the idler, of the wishy-washy person who, from the high realms of an unbroken self-satisfaction, condescends occasionally to an art, and the mind of the trained and exact, and therefore of presumably the strenuous. ”

“ It should be one of the chief ends of amateur producing to get away from the curse of the professional stage: the star system. It has been stated here that the greatest emphasis must be laid on the play itself, and no actor, professional or amateur, should ever labor under the delusion [pg 19] that he is of greater or even as great importance as the play in which he strives to act his part. The average actor is inclined to judge a play's merit according to the sort of part it furnishes him ”

“ Yet, in spite of all these drawbacks and of this childish immaturity, the amateur and enthusiast finds himself charmed and held as if in the clutch of some Old-World spell, and this at what others will call the dreary and monotonous intoning of the savage. ”

“ Etymologically, the amateur is one who loves, the connoisseur one who knows. In usage, the term amateur is applied to one who pursues any study or art simply from the love of it; the word carries a natural implication of superficialness, tho marked excellence is at times attained by amateurs. A connoisseur is supposed to be so thoroughly informed regarding any art or work as to be able to criticize or select intelligently and authoritatively; there are many incompetent critics, but there can not, in the true sense, be an incompetent connoisseur. ”

“ While I always enjoyed interpreting character as a relaxation, and even achieved, while at school in the East, a rather enviable reputation as an amateur, I nevertheless had a distinct prejudice against the professional stage, even while intensely admiring its higher exponents. ”

“ An amateur is one versed in, or a lover and practicer of, any particular pursuit, art, or science, but not engaged in it professionally. A novice is one who is new or inexperienced in any art or business—a beginner, a tyro. ”

“ The amateur practises to some extent that in regard to which he may not be well informed; the connoisseur is well informed in regard to that which he may not practise at all. A novice or tyro may be a professional; an amateur never is; the amateur may be skilled and experienced as the novice or tyro never is. ”

“ Beneath this, which we may call the transcendental aspect of the play, we find a solid and objective study of the self-made man, the headstrong amateur, who has never submitted to the wholesome discipline of professional training, but who has trusted to the help of those trolls or mascots, his native talent and his unfailing "luck." ”

“ The conquering word is, 'This one thing I do.' The difference between the amateur and the artist is that the one pursues an art at intervals by spurts, as a parergon—a thing that is done in the intervals of other occupations—and that the other makes it his life's business. ”

“ The amateur is very rare in French literature—as rare as he is common in our own. ”

“ They first taught the amateur that it was safe for him, if he wished, to prosecute the craft for himself, and that he possessed advantages that could make him, if he followed them up independently, all but the equal of the best guides. ”

“ As the literary contributions to the UNITED AMATEUR for January are mainly in the form of verse, I shall devote most of my attention to them. Poetry, like the poor, we have always with us; but the critic is moved to remark, as he casts back in his mind over the last twenty years of amateur publishing activity, that on the whole the tone of amateur poetry is distinctly higher than it used to be. ”

“ It bears evident traces of the hand of an amateur. How is it that amateurs invariably take better photographs than professionals? I must qualify invariably. My own negatives 417 have always represented a province of chaos and old night in which you might dimly perceive fleecy spots of twilight, representing nothing; so that, if I am right in supposing the portrait of your mother to be yours, I must salute you as my superior. ”

“ An unfailing sign of the amateur, at least of the amateur with no innate sense of fictional values, is a story made up of hard and angular blocks of narration, description, and dialogue. The skilled writer—if the particular story permits, a proviso always to be understood—will intermingle speech with action and description with both. ”

“ Do not regard your writing as a medium for the exhibition of your own cleverness. Never try to show off your own learning or to [Pg 110] impress the reader with your own brilliancy.
Early amateur efforts often bristle with quotations, foreign words, stilted phrases, pedantic remarks, or references to classical personages. The reason for this is clear; when the amateur writes he invariably sees himself as the chief object of interest in the foreground, rather than his subject-matter. ”

“ Amateur work is, as a rule, very commendable, but scarcely so as regards conjuring, clumsy and ill-made apparatus being absolutely useless, and consequently dear at any price. Apart from this I have another, and what I believe to be a more important object in view, viz., that of giving instruction in the actual working of the trick. ”

“ By this process, also, the amateur is enabled to provide himself with slides for his magic lantern and to have the satisfaction of exhibiting to his friends the trophies of his own skill in the use of the camera and the developing solution. ”

“ The amateur, if rightly trained, should be able to impart a certain natural, naïve, unprofessional tone to the part he is impersonating, but this can only be done by constant rehearsing. The director usually finds that the amateur's first instinct is to imitate the tricks of the professional actor, and not allow himself to feel the character of the rôle. ”

“ Now, though the professional novelist has only of late begun to think seriously of the subject, it is plain that he too is competing with labour unnaturally cheap, and is losing in the competition. To define an amateur is difficult, as all athletic clubs and rowing clubs are aware. But in this particular field of human industry, the amateur may be defined with ease. ”

“ To be told that he had first to make himself a painter was rather hard.
‘Of course you are a novice,’ said the R.A., ‘and{v.1-299} quite natural too. I don’t want to be disagreeable, my dear fellow, but an amateur is really worse,—you may take my word for it,—than an absolute beginner. The very traditions of amateur art are different. ”

“ The objects and productions of high intrinsic merit are preserved by the amateur. It is so in art and letters. It is necessarily so. A body of amateurs is an essential background to the development of science. The late Professor Pickering, renowned astronomer, encouraged the amateur societies of star-observers, and others. ”

“ Curiously enough, in many cases, the amateur not only executes his work better than his salaried rival, but often outclasses him in the very important respect that he is more enterprising. Acting on his own responsibility, he knows that by smartness alone can he make way against professionals. ”

“ The amateur who is brimful of energy seeking an outlet in the direction, say, of photography or the cultivation of flowers, does not want to compile an album or fill a garden which no eyes but his shall ever behold. ”

“ AMATEUR THEATRICALS
Perhaps the most beneficial enterprise in the community work is the amateur theater. It gives the richest opportunity for self-expression. It includes acting, literature, singing, music, and painting. It amuses and teaches—it reflects and analyzes the social life and directs it in its entirety toward higher levels of achievements. ”

“ What, as a rule, distinguishes the work of the amateur from the work of the great writer is that an amateur will retain a poem for the sake of a few good lines, whereas a great writer will relentlessly sacrifice a few fine phrases, if the whole structure and texture of the poem is loose and unsatisfactory. ”

“ Every artist was first an amateur. ”

“ Being for the most part quiet in colour and slow in growth, they do not readily obtain a hold on the affections of amateurs, and only such as are amateurs indeed, and influenced by peculiar tastes, will ever become permanently interested in them. ”

“ Whereas the amateur who works with no higher aim than that of immediate recognition betrays it from the vanity and wantonness of his spirit. The one is naughty because he is needy, the other from natural depravity. Besides, the amateur can keep his work to himself, whereas the professional man must exhibit or starve. ”

“ But the amateur, however refined himself, must beware of men who love not fly leaves neither regard margins, but write notes over the latter, and light their pipes with the former. After seeing the wreck of a book which these persons have been busy with, one appreciates the fine Greek hyperbole. ”

“ It may, of course, be urged that all artists are amateurs before they secure a paying public. The amateur novelist may be compared to the young dramatic author who gives his piece at a matinée, and who, once in a hundred times, finds a manager to approve it. ”

“ As the amateur will aspire to come before his parlor audience some day or other, it may be some little service and help to him to give a few suggestions as to the best way of conducting such an exhibition, and to specify the kind of tricks to which he will do well to limit himself. It will be desirable to open with an off-hand expression of his wish to place before them a few amusing tricks to wile away an hour; and let him assume a lively air, for his own liveliness will sustain that of the spectators. ”

“ It cannot be hoped that an amateur club will discover many masterpieces among original plays submitted to it, but if any of the works considered has even a touch of originality, some good characterization, any marked technical skill; in a word, if there is something interesting or promising, then it is worth producing. Doubtless many beginners are discouraged [pg 7] from writing plays for lack of experience gained by seeing their work staged; for such, the amateur club is the only resource. ”

“ There is no particular excuse for presenting plays which can be seen acted anywhere and any time by professionals; amateurs should strive to produce classics, or modern plays which for one reason or another are not often seen, and impart to them that peculiar flavor which charms as well as interests and attracts. Nor is there much use in the amateur actor's striving to become professional in manner: he cannot hope, in the short time he can spare for his work, to become a good professional ”