Imitation

“ But the final clause of the proposition, that imitation of the past heralds approaching dissolution, is demonstrably untrue of every great epoch of artistic activity. A fearless spirit of imitation, born of the worship yielded to the achievements of an earlier time, may, on the contrary, be claimed as the hall-mark of genius, and is indeed most frankly confessed in the work of men of unchallenged supremacy. ”

“ Thus far, then, we are pretty well agreed that the imitator has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates. Imitation is only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic poets, whether they write in iambic or in heroic verse, are imitators in the highest degree?
Very true.
And now tell me, I conjure you, has not imitation been shown by us to be concerned with that which is thrice removed from the truth?
Certainly.
And what is the faculty in man to which imitation is addressed? ”

“ When I speak of the habitual imitation and continued study of masters, it is not to be understood that I advise any endeavour to copy the exact peculiar colour and complexion of another man's mind; the success of such an attempt must always be like his, who imitates exactly the air, manner, and gestures of him whom he admires. His model may be excellent, but the copy will be ridiculous; this ridicule does not arise from his having imitated, but from his not having chosen the right mode of imitation. ”

“ Any imitation that does not do one or other or both of these things in full measure fails in the quality of emotional expression and emotional appeal, and in so failing falls short, taken merely as imitation, of the standard of fine art. ”

“ By imitation, I do not mean imitation in its largest sense, but simply the following of other masters, and the advantage to be drawn from the study of their works.
Those who have undertaken to write on our art, and have represented it as a kind of inspiration, as a gift bestowed upon peculiar favourites at their birth, seem to insure a much more favourable disposition from their readers, and have a much more captivating and liberal air, than he who attempts to examine, coldly, whether there are any means by which this art may be acquired ”

“ And here lies the difference between creators and imitators: the creator tells what passes in his own world—the imitator does not. The imitator abdicates, and by the fact of imitation falls upon his knees. He is like one who, hearing a traveler talk, pretends to others that he has traveled. ”

“ It is by a stretch of ordinary usage that we apply the word imitation even to this last way of representing things; since words are no true likeness of, but only customary signs for, the thing they represent. And those arts we cannot call imitative at all, which by combinations of abstract sound or form express and arouse emotions unattended by the recognizable likeness, idea or image of any definite thing. ”

“ Thank God for these good men, but say, ‘I also am a man.’ Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.
Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost,—cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. ”

“ For imitation is a definite art of copying what you represent exactly after the model of the most beautiful things of nature, which you must take pure and free from the manner of your master or that of others, who also reduce to a manner the things that they take from nature. ”

“ Surely imitation can have nothing to do with this; we do not imitate the dog’s bark to learn whether he is serious or not; we observe, remember, and imagine; and it seems to me that we judge people in much the same way.
These visible and audible signs of personality, these lines and tones whose meaning is impressed upon us by the intense and constant observation of our childhood, are also a chief basis of the communication of impressions in art and literature. ”

“ All the resemblances, of social origin, noticed in the social world are the direct or indirect result of imitation in all its forms,—custom, fashion, sympathy, obedience, instruction, education, naive or deliberate imitation. ”

“ Once for all, then, to say that acting reaches the point of Nature, and touches it quick, is to say all. In other arts imitation is more or less fatuous, illusion more or less vulgar. But acting is, at its less good, imitation; at its best, illusion; at its worst, and when it ceases to be an art, convention. ”

“ Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it. ”

“ But which of them is true is determined by the art of calculation; and this is allied to the better faculty in the soul, as the arts of imitation are to the worse. And the same holds of the ear as well as of the eye, of poetry as well as painting. The imitation is of actions voluntary or involuntary, in which there is an expectation of a good or bad result, and present experience of pleasure and pain. But is a man in harmony with himself when he is the subject of these conflicting influences? ”

“ The two principles of imitation and imagination, indeed, are not only distinct, but almost opposite.
‘The great difference, then, which we find between the classical and the romantic style, between ancient and modern poetry, is, that the one more frequently describes things as they are interesting in themselves,—the other for the sake of the associations of ideas connected with them; that the one dwells more on the immediate impressions of objects on the senses—the other on the ideas which they suggest to the imagination. ”

“ The materials of all imitation being thus laid open, nothing now remain'd but to illustrate some particular pleasures which arise either from the relations of different objects one to another, or from the nature of imitation itself. ”

“ We must remember, too, that with many of the higher kinds of imitation—pre-eminently so with that which may be called constructive, since its material is invariably appropriated from foreign sources—the pleasure which is derived from recognition and from illusion adds to its play the powerful charm of imagination. ”

“ They may be shortly classed as expressive by association and by direct induction. Expressive by association are passages of direct imitation: the tolling of bells, the clash of arms, the roar of wind, the hum of spinning wheels, even to the bleating of sheep and the whirr of windmills; the cadence of the voice in pleading, laughter, love; from such imitations we are REMINDED of a fact or an emotion. ”

“ Since imitation is so conspicuous in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and poetry, it has been mistaken to be the aim of our artistic activity, whereas it is only a means to an end, to the production of pleasure free from desire. ”

“ Therefore he inquires, "Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him? ”

“ Whenever then in future, I speak of ideas of imitation, I wish to be understood to mean the immediate and present perception that something produced by art is not what it seems to be. I prefer saying "that it is not what it seems to be," to saying "that it seems to be what it is not," because we perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the subsequent perception of its being something else—flat, for instance, when we thought it was round. ”

“ Since imitation can never attain to the dignity and worth of the original, and since we live in the midst of nature, it would be folly to claim for its more or less successful copy the position and form of a great mental and moral influence. ”

“ When we come to the element of impersonation, we are nearer the heart of dramatic art, and perhaps deeper into the circle of the child's interests and instincts as well. Imitation is one of the absolute and fundamental aspects of a child's activities. It is impossible to escape calling it an instinct, when one sees that it is deeper and more universal than any impulse or tendency. The interpretation put by more recent psychologists upon the term and the fact of imitation throws a new and grateful light upon it as a principle in drama. ”

“ Our language generally confounds, or rather those who use it, when they speak of the art, the two words copy and imitation, though essentially different in their operation, as well as their meaning. An eye geometrically just, with a hand implicitly obedient, is the requisite of the former, without all choice, without selection, amendment, or omission; whilst choice, directed by judgment and taste, constitutes the essence of imitation, and raises the humble copyist to the noble rank of an artist. ”

“ These living forms are, without any change, presented to observation in every age and country. There needs but opening the eyes, and these forms necessarily imprint themselves on the fancy; and the love of imitation, which naturally accompanies and keeps pace with this sense of beauty in the poet, is continually urging him to translate them into description. These descriptions will, indeed, have different degrees of colouring, according to the force of genius in the imitator ”

“ It is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. ”

“ This is now confronted by the principle · there can be no imitation. Imitation, however, is merely an artistic phenomenon, i.e., it is based on appearance . we can accept manners, thoughts, and so on through imitation; but imitation can create nothing. ”

“ Of dramatic imitation play by adults we find only a few remnants among civilized people, aside from mimicry on the one hand and the borders of art on the other, where imitation is not exhibited as an end in itself, but rather in relation to its effect on the spectators, and therefore is no longer a genuine play. ”

“ Perhaps it ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation, as the refined civilised state in which we live, is removed from a gross state of nature; and those who have not cultivated their imaginations, which the majority of mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard to arts, to continue in this state of nature. ”

“ It is immaterial whether the sense of hearing, sight, or touch is appealed to; it does not matter whether it is a composition of sound, of color, of line, or of form that is under consideration, the fundamental principles of the art are the same; and one of the fundamental propositions is: imitation is fatal to pure art. ”

“ What is called the effect of imitation is mainly the product of conscious instruction and of the selective influence exercised by the unconscious confirmations and ratifications of those with whom one associates. ”

“ One chief reason, it should seem then, why imitation pleases, is, because, by exciting curiosity, and inviting a comparison between the object and the representation, it opens a new field of inquiry, and leads the attention to a variety of details and distinctions not perceived before. ”

“ The pleasure which imitation gives has been often and diversely analyzed; it may be that of recognition, or that of new knowledge satisfying our curiosity as if the original were present, or that of delight in the skill of the artist, or that of interest in seeing how his view differs from our own, or that of the illusion created for us; but all these modes of pleasure exist when the imitation is an exact copy of the original, and they do not characterize the artistic imitation in any way to differentiate its peculiar pleasure. ”

“ If the imitative arts are to touch and elevate the emotions, if they are to afford permanent delight of the due pitch and volume, it is not a more essential law that their imitation, merely as such, should be of the order which we have defined as ideal, than that they should at the same time exhibit these independent effects which they share with the non-imitative group. ”

“ The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. ”

“ Thus, in addition to the section on poetry as an imitative art, we have a section on imitation of nature, another on external nature, and another on imitation. Imitation, in the last of these, it is true, means for the most part imitation of the ancients, as in the sentence in which Thomas Rymer urged the seventeenth-century dramatists to imitate Attic tragedy even to the point of introducing the chorus. ”

“ But now that the imitative art has enclosed him, it is clear that we must begin by dividing the art of creation; for imitation is a kind of creation—of images, however, as we affirm, and not of real things. ”

“ I am also convinced that the imitation of style in writing, pursued methodically, enables a man to express his own thoughts with facility, propriety of colouring, exactitude of phrase and term, according to the variety of images, grave or gay, familiar or dignified, which we desire to develop and to communicate under their true aspect in prose or poetry. ”