Sharp

“ To some extent I have an advantage over you in having a very fierce nation to write for. I have to make everything very hard and clear, as it were. It is like riding a wild horse. If one’s hands fumble or one’s knees [336] loosen one is thrown. You have in the proper sense far more imagination than I have and that makes your work correspondingly more difficult. ”

“ My advice is, be as sharp as yo like, if yo're sharp in a reight way, but thers some things it's as weel to be slow abaat. Be slow to do a shabby trick, an' be sharp to help a poor body 'at needs it. Be slow to see other fowk's faults, an' be sharp to improve yor own. Be slow to scandalise yor neighbors, an' keep a sharp luk aat to steer clear ov iverybody else's business ”

“ I answer that, Dull is opposed to sharp: and a thing is said to be sharp because it can pierce; so that a thing is called dull through being obtuse and unable to pierce. Now a bodily sense, by a kind of metaphor, is said to pierce the medium, in so far as it perceives its object from a distance or is able by penetration as it were to perceive the smallest details or the inmost parts of a thing. ”

“ It is not only that it is written with delicate art: but it is rich in atmosphere—a much rarer thing. The simplicity, the charm, the subtle implication of floating, evasive yet fluctuating romance, your own keen sense of the use of words and their veiled life and latent as well as obvious colour, combine to a winning and often compelling effect. ”

“ Instead of sharp, some say hard, and instead of flat, some say soft. The terms sonant and surd are, in a scientific point of view, the least exceptionable. They have, however, the disadvantage of being pedantic. ”

“ a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use. ”

“ So much of my work is aside from the general temper and taste, and not only in its ideals but in its ‘atmosphere,’ indeed even in its writer’s methods and manner, that I have to be content (as I gladly am content) to let the wind that blows through minds and hearts carry the seed whithersoever it may perchance take root, and this with the knowledge that the resting places must almost of necessity, as things are, be few and far between. ”

“ Having a reputation for writing great stories (for example) you will write equally great essays, satires and what not, all in vain. It is only to mediocrity that ‘great general ability’ is conceded.290 That is why the late William Sharp, turning to another kind of work than that in which he had distinguished himself, took a feminine name, and, secure from disparaging comparison with himself, was accessible to commendation. ”

“ I shall once more cut a figure, and cock my hat in the face of the best of them! for since our modern men of fortune are grown wise enough to be sharpers: I think sharpers are fools that don't take up the airs of men of quality. ”

“ Being basic, elementary, they are independent of time; or even race. In a literary—technically literary—way they seem to me to be quite your most perfect work. I am sensitive to word arrangement, and some of your work has made me rather disposed to swear at you for carelessness. You have not always taken the trouble to hunt for the word that you needed. ”

“ Every part of his work is of selected stock, as free from knots and seams and sap-wood as a piece of old-growth pine. There is plan, proportion, integrity to his essays—the naturalist living faithfully up to a sensitive literary conscience. ”

“ Our canons of the beautiful are false if they do not in some way include the toad. Shall we [123] measure all the out-of-doors by the linnet's song, the cardinal-flower's flame, and the hay-field's odor? Deeper, wider, more fundamental and abiding than these standards, lie the intellectual principles of plan and purpose and the intellectual quality of perfect execution. We shall love not alone with all our heart, but with all our mind as well. ”

“ Somewhere in one of my books—I think in the latest, The Divine Adventure, but at the moment cannot remember—I say that I no longer ask of a book, is it clever, or striking, or is it well done, or even is it beautiful, but—out of how deep a life does it come. ”

“ Had you been that woodchuck, gentle reader, I wonder if you would have taken account of the thick-strewn stones behind you, the dense tangle of dewberry-vines off on your left, the heavy boots of your enemy and his unthinking rage? ”

“ A sharper has always under his coat, at the back of his trowsers, one or more little pockets, termed finettes, in which are carried the packs of cards he intends substituting for those of the house where he plays. ”

“ For that mystery concerns the evolution of a human soul; and the part of it for which ‘the man’ is consciously and personally responsible, is the method he used, the fiction he created and deliberately fostered,—rightly or wrongly—for the protection of his inner, compelling self.
This deliberate ‘blind’—which according to some critics “is William Sharp’s most notable achievement in fiction rather than the creation of any of ‘her’ works”—is largely the cause of the sense of confusion that exists in the minds of certain of his friends, to whom he told the half but not the whole of the facts. ”

“ What advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. ”

“ If I may speak quite openly and as a friend who would wish you to do yourself full justice and produce the best work that is in you, I wish you had given yourself more time to work out some of the situations which seem, to me at least, to lack a certain degree of precision and consistency. ”

“ The following Review from The Morning Post and letter from our poet-friend Mathilde Blind will give an idea of the style and defects of the novel:
“The many who have the mental courage to allow that they prefer the objective to the subjective novel may pass some delightful hours in the perusal of Mr. Sharp’s ‘The Sport of Chance.’ It has primâ facie an undeniable advantage to start with, i. e. it is unlike almost anything hitherto written in the shape of a novel in three volumes. ”

“ But such a person,—whether man or woman,—although he may possess the most amiable traits of character, meekness, good-nature, etc., cannot lead a good life, any more than a knife of the very best workmanship and steel can be sharp and cut well, without the process of sharpening, i.e. ”

“ and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden. ”

“ I look more to the breadth and imagination of the poet than to minute details—though a stickler for natural melody and the lasting canons of art. The real value of the book lies, of course, in the chapters on some of the elder poets. You are quite right in pointing out the impossibility of correct proportion in the details of the last chapter. It is added to give more completeness to the work as a whole. ”

“ The face is sharper, more contracted, firmer; has more inward, self-developing capacity for business and practical counsels; more of enterprising spirit—which is shown especially by the strongly prominent and fully rounded bones of the eye-sockets. ”

“ The proverb requires that the intercourse of man with man operate in the way of sharpening the manner and forming the habits and character; that one help another to culture and polish of manner, rub off his ruggedness, round his corners, as one has to make use of iron when he sharpens iron and seeks to make it bright. ”

“ But whenever I have expressed such a conviction I have been told that the works of man are after all nobler, in the truer sense lovelier, and more spiritually refreshing and helpful—and though I do not find them so, I must believe that to most people such is the case, perhaps to the infinite majority. ”

“ We shall have the horrors of the spasmodic school revived without that element of a high, vague, spiritual intention which gave some nobility—or pseudo-nobility—to the disciples of the spasmodists. We shall have every kind of extravagance and folly posing as poetry. ”

“ They seem to be the result of some outside force constraining you to write them. And with their freshness they have a curious primordial flavour—that comes, I suppose, from the deep roots and full essences of life which are their substance of soul. ”

“ It was soon evident that the noise and confused magnetism of the great City weighed disastrously on William Sharp. At the New Year, 1895, he wrote to a friend:
“London I do not like, though I feel its magnetic charm, or sorcery. I suffer here. The gloom, the streets, the obtrusion and intrusion of people, all conspire against thought, dream, true living. It is a vast reservoir of all the evils of civilised life with a climate which makes me inclined to believe that Dante came here instead of to Hades.” ”

“ It will be difficult to follow—for absolute simplicity is the most difficult of all styles, being, as it must be, the expression of a mind at once so imaginative [269] in itself, so lucid in its outlook, and so controlled in its expression, that only a very few rarely gifted individuals can hope to achieve the isolating ideal you indicate. ”

“ Every word you say is true and urgent, and even if I did not know it to be so I would pay the most searching heed to any advice from you, in whose insight and judgment mentally as well as spiritually I have such deep confidence. ”

“ That William Sharp should be one of the fortunates who, toward the end of life, could say he had fulfilled more than half of his early desires, was due mainly to a ceaseless curiosity and love of adventure, to a happy fearlessness of disposition that prompted him when starting on any quest to seize the propitious moment, and if necessary to burn his boats behind him. He believed himself to have been born under a lucky star. ”

“ There is no other writer whose good opinion could please me more—for I love your work, and take an endless delight in your poetry, and look to you as not only one of the rare few on whose lips is the honey of Magh Mell but as one the dark zone of whose mind is lit with the strange stars and constellations of the spiritual life. ”

“ Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life and of the joy of life; because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her personality stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days, a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new doors in his mind and put him “in touch with ancestral memories” of his race. So, for a time, he stilled the critical, intellectual mood of William Sharp to give play to the development of this new found expression of subtler emotions, towards which he had been moving with all the ardour of his nature. ”

“ But over and above this shaping force, this manipulative power upon character and thought, he has enriched our language, our literature, with a new wealth of poetic diction, has added to it new symbols, has enabled us to inhale a more liberal if an unfamiliar air, has, above all, raised us to a fresh standpoint, a standpoint involving our construction of a new definition. ”

“ So I decided that the surest way of beginning to prepare myself for the work of the critic would be to make a study of three or four of the best writers among the older, and three or four among the younger school of each nation, and to judge from the point of view of the nation. For example, in studying French literature, I would try to judge from the point of view of a Frenchman. ”

“ Poetry is a glorious rebirth of prose. When a beautiful thought can be uttered in worthy prose: best so. But when it moves through the mind in music, and shapes itself to a lyric rhythm, then it should find expression in poetry. The truest poets are those who can most exquisitely capture, and concentrate in a few words, this haunting rhythm. ”

“ We do not stir. It is a hard lesson. By all my other teachers I had been taught every manner of stirring, and this strange exercise of being still takes me where my body is weakest, and puts me almost out of breath. ”

“ For the reader, then, his test of the nature-writer will be the extreme test of sincerity. The nature-writer (and the poet) more than many writers is limited by decree to his experiences—not to what he has seen or heard only, but as strictly to what he has truly felt. All writing must be sincere. Is it that nature-writing and poetry must be spontaneously sincere? ”

“ I have been running hither and thither seeing people about one thing and another. But now I am back in my rooms and have got things straight enough to settle down at last to my usual routine. Yesterday I began arranging under their various heads some hitherto unsorted folk-stories on which I am about to work, and today I have been busy over your book. I never like your poetry as well as your prose, but here and always you are a wonderful writer of myths. ”

“ Even in a savage there must be dormant possibilities, animal and spiritual traits of all kinds, which could to [162] a deeper than any human vision (as we can conceive it) so colour and modify an abstract ‘replica’ as to make it altogether unlike the picture we should draw.”—W. S.
“Jan. 5th.—The first thing the artist should cultivate if not strongly dowered in this respect by Nature, is Serenity. ”

“ Style (that is, the outer emotion that compels and the hidden life of the imagination that impels and the brooding thought that shapes and colours) should, spiritually, reflect a soul’s lineaments as faithfully as the lens of the photographer reflects the physiognomy of a man or woman. It is because I feel in you a deep instinct for beauty, a deep longing for beautiful expression and because I believe you have it in you to achieve highly in worth and beauty, that I write to you thus.... There is that Lady of Silence, the Madonna of Enigma, who lives in the heart of many women. ”

“ I could write more, but I have not recovered from the malady of the degoût de la plume, consequent on excess—and I pray that it may never fall on you. For though it is wisdom at my age to cease to write, it is not well to be taught to cease by distaste. ”