Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1916. Excerpt: ... any genuine aesthetic equipment have adopted it as a life work. These persons, many with large literary reputations, would, if put to the test, be incapable of denning the difference between literature as an art, and those writings wherein a smooth and fluent stylist has merely produced pure and moving document. Yet there now exists a vast difference between the two; and in twenty-five years there will be a still greater chasm between them. The poet can suggest certain vague emotions solely by means of particular kinds of metre. But this method is rudimentary. Single words, by their tone qualities and onomatopoeic suggestions, possess the same power of precise expression. Also, the aesthetic significance of ensemble forms has never been fully realised. These qualities will be skilfully and sensitively organised in the writings of the future; and the literary architecture of the novel and the short story will be as difficult to construct and as subjectively solid when finished as the dome of St. Peter's. Only then, when all the potential qualities which are at the disposal of the creators of great literature shall have been recognised and mastered, will the writer's medium be sufficiently plastic and complete to permit of full freedom of expression. We will then be able to distinguish the true literary artist from the merely skilful documentarian. 109. Documentary Coherence In Literature.-- All aesthetic creation is progression, for without progression there can be no coherence; and form confers coherence on progression. Successive parts of an art work are held together by a unity of intent or purpose; and this unity of intent-- whether document, sound, or colour--can be preserved only by the medium of aesthetic form. The attempt of certain ultra-modern anarchs to divorce document fr...
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