Composition

“ Our third and final mode of poetical composition unites the two previous ones in a new totality. In this we not only discover an objective exposition, but also can trace its source in the ideal life of particular people; what is objective here is therefore portrayed as appertinent to the conscious life of individuals. ”

“ It is nevertheless for this very reason that we here cite it, as a triumphant verification of those immutable laws of the mind to which the principles of Composition are supposed to appeal; where the simple technic exhibition, or illustration of Principles, without story, or thought, or a single definite expression, has still the power to possess and to fill us with a thousand delightful emotions. ”

“ It is but the result of writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone, in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would adopt—and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. ”

“ The art of Composition, or the ability to express our thoughts in an orderly and natural form, is the last branch of education to which, as recommended by Nature, we shall here allude. The perfection of this art appears to depend on three circumstances. ”

“ The Scripture rule, "Unto him that hath, shall be given," is true of composition. The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands. ”

“ Of these it may be said, that their form is their essence, and their object, the production of pleasure in their contemplation. This is their final end. They are as much the product of genius and the result of composition, as are the lines of the poet or the historian's period. ”

“ PROPORTION or GOOD SPACING. Principles of Composition, I must repeat, are only ways of arranging lines and shapes; art is not produced by them unless they are used in combination with this general principle,—Good Spacing. They are by no means recipes for art, and their names are of little consequence. Appreciation of fineness of relations must always govern the method and form of composition. It is possible to use all the principles here discussed, and to complete all the exercises, without gaining much, if any, art experience. ”

“ Expression is literally the pressing out into palpable form that which is already within us, and composition, in the same way, is the composing or putting together of materials already existing—the form and method of the composition depend mainly on the form and quality of the materials. ”

“ In deciding how practically to carry out the principles of artistic composition, we may derive help by bearing in mind a fact already pointed out—the fitness of certain verbal arrangements for certain kinds of thought. ”

“ Use Words that suggest most. As a principle in composition, it may be said that the more a word or phrase can be made to imply or suggest, while at the same time expressing all that the writer wishes to say, the more valuable does that word or phrase become. ”

“ I cannot imagine composition existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel worth discussing at all, of a passage of description that is not in its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its{392} intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not partake of the nature of incident, or an incident that derives its interest from any other source than the general and only source of the success of a work of art—that of being illustrative. ”

“ General Principles.—There is perhaps no other form of composition which is so generally in use as exposition or explanation. If you observe your own conversation and that of the people about you, you will find that a great deal of it is explanation. Every time you say in answer to some question about a remark you have just made, "Why, I mean that—," you are explaining the first remark. In almost all the recitations you make in school you are explaining something—a principle in arithmetic, or in physics, the construction of something in manual training, the meaning of a word, etc. ”

“ Elements of Composition; Grouping; M. Agnolo; Correggio; Raffaello; Breadth;—Expression; its Classes, its Limits.
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FIFTH LECTURE. Invention is followed by Composition. Composition, in its stricter sense, is the dresser of Invention, it superintends the disposition of its materials.
Composition has physical and moral elements: those are Perspective and Light with shade; these, Unity, Propriety and Perspicuity; without Unity it cannot span its subject; without Propriety it cannot tell the story; without Perspicuity it clouds the fact with confusion ”

“ The whole composition, grouped around a single man and a single place, is so well balanced and so naturally unfolded piece by piece, that the great art shown therein often at first escapes the reader. ”

“ Mass, the second principle of structure, demands that those parts of a composition, paragraph, or sentence which are of most importance shall be so placed that they will arrest the attention. By coherence is meant that principle of structure which, in sentences, paragraphs, and whole compositions, places those parts related in thought near together, and keeps separate those parts which are separated in thought. ”

“ I limit myself to repeating, that the great law which governs all others, is expression. Every work of art that does not express an idea signifies nothing; in addressing itself to such or such a sense, it must penetrate to the mind, to the soul, and bear thither a thought, a sentiment capable of touching or elevating it. From this fundamental rule all the others are derived; for example, that which is continually and justly recommended,—composition. To this is particularly applied the precept of unity and variety. ”

“ The way one expresses himself in pictures or writing, and the way one interprets illustration or text, thus reflects the level of organization which the mind itself has reached. The single figure, the composition, the pictorial series and the textual description mark successive stages in the evolution of representative functions in the individual human mind. ”

“ The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition. ”

“ or, rather, there are no other rules than the general laws of nature, which soar above the whole field of art, and the special rules which result from the conditions appropriate to the subject of each composition. ”

“ In the simpler ages of learning, when, as yet, composition is not turned into an art, but every writer, especially of vehement and impetuous genius, is contented to put down his first thoughts, and, for their expression, takes up with the most obvious words and phrases, that present themselves to him, this improper construction will not be unfrequent. ”

“ For the practice of poetical composition, while it cultivates the sentiment of beauty in thought and feeling, is probably the best of all exercises in the art of writing correctly, grammatically, and expressively. ”

“ As these [tropes and figures of composition] are a deviation from the principles of metaphysics and logic, they are frequently VICIOUS. Since the Attribute of this proposition is so peculiarly offensive to you, your first care, methinks, should have been to gain precise and exact ideas of the subject; without which it is not possible to judge, whether what is affirmed of it be exceptionable, or no.
By tropes and figures of composition, you seem to understand metaphors, allegories, similitudes,370 and whatever else is vulgarly known under the name of figures of speech. ”

“ To give the phrase, the sentence, the structural member, the entire composition, song, or essay, a similar unity with its subject and with itself:—style is in the right way when it tends towards that. All depends upon the original unity, the vital wholeness and identity, of the initiatory apprehension or view. So much is true of all art, which therefore requires always its logic, its comprehensive reason—insight, foresight, retrospect, in simultaneous action—true, most of all, of the literary art, as being of all the arts most closely cognate to the abstract intelligence. ”

“ The foundation purpose of the book is grand,—the many varieties of composition, which include almost numberless methods of expressing beautiful and valuable thoughts and sentiments; the remarkable adaptability of the pieces to elevate the mind, attract the quick and abiding interest of the reader ”

“ Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements. ”

“ This you should constantly do, till composition is no more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work out freely and visibly intellectual æsthetic ideas almost unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the falsities of accidental combinations. ”

“ So that, instead of asking one’s self 131 (as an admired ancient advised to do) on any attempt to excel in composition, “how this or that celebrated author would have written on the occasion;” the surer way, perhaps, is to inquire of ourselves “how we have felt or thought in such a conjuncture, what sensations or reflexions the like circumstances have actually excited in us.” For the answer to these queries will undoubtedly set us in the direct road of nature and common sense. ”

“ The principles governing the arrangement of material are Mass and Coherence. Both are equally essential, but in practice some questions regarding Mass are settled first. The important positions in an essay are the beginning and the end; of these the more important is the end. In this place, then, there shall be those sentences or those 111 paragraphs which deserve that distinction. Here frequently stands the theme, the conclusion of the whole matter, that for which the composition was constructed. ”

“ Similarly, there can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. ”

“ Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. ”

“ But grammar takes into account mainly the form of a sentence, and pays little or no attention to its meaning. Composition, on the other hand, deals mainly with words as expressions of thought.
In our study of composition, then, we are to learn how to combine or group our words so as best to express our ideas. There are three ways of gaining skill in composition:—
1. ”

“ As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. ”

“ The designer and picture-painter start in the same way. Each has before him a blank space on which he sketches out the main lines of his composition. This may be called his Line-idea, and on it hinges the excellence of the whole, for no delicacy of tone, or harmony of color can remedy a bad proportion. A picture, then, may be said to be in its beginning actually a pattern of lines. Could the art student have this fact in view at the outset, it would save him much time and anxiety. Nature will not teach him composition. ”

“ Having by these divisions given an order and arrangement to our objects, we may now apply ourselves to consider with the more accuracy their qualities and relations. The first circumstance, that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance betwixt our impressions and ideas in every other particular, except their degree of force and vivacity. ”

“ The art begins at that point, and consists in the production of unity, in the establishment of a focus, in the subordination of parts by the establishment of a scale of relative values, and in a continuity of progression from one part to another. ”

“ If ideas be particular in their nature, and at the same time finite in their number, ‘tis only by custom they can become general in their representation, and contain an infinite number of other ideas under them. ”

“ Following this thought of the oneness of art, we find that the picture, the plan, and the pattern are alike in the sense that each is a group of synthetically related spaces. Abstract design is, as it were, the primer of painting, in which principles of Composition appear in a clear and definite form. In the picture they are not so obvious, being found in complex interrelations and concealed under detail. ”

“ But Japanese art comes to the aid of the student of composition with abundant material—sketch books, design books, drawings and color prints. The learner should seek for genuine works of the best periods, avoiding modern bad reproductions, imitations, carelessly re-cut blocks, crude colors, and all the hasty and commonplace stuff prepared by dealers for the foreign market.
The Japanese knew no division into Representative and Decorative; they thought of painting as the art of two dimensions, the art of rhythm and harmony, in which modelling and nature-imitation are subordinate. ”

“ Art-language must be in art-form; a number of facts, or an incident, accurately described in paint and color may have no more connection with art than a similar set of written statements just plain prose. There is no art unless the statements are bound together in certain subtle relations which we call beauty. When beauty enters, the parts cease to have separate existence, but are melted together in a unit.
Advanced composition is only a working out of simple elements into more complex and difficult interrelations. ”

“ Only through the appreciations does the composer recognize a harmony. Hence the effort to find art-structure resolves itself into a development of appreciation. This faculty is a common human possession but may remain inactive. A way must be found to lay hold upon it and cause it to grow. A natural method is that of exercises in progressive order, first building up very simple harmonies, then proceeding on to the highest forms of composition. Such a method of study includes all kinds of drawing, design and painting. ”