§ 2. Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing a wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it—
"Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all
hoar,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence." oil paintings for sale
That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. The idea of the
peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wave could not have
been given by any other words so well as by this "wayward indolence." But Homer
would never have written, never thought of, such words. He could not by any
possibility have lost sight of the great fact that the wave, from the beginning
to the end of it, do what it might, was still nothing else than salt water; and
that salt water could not be either wayward or indolent. He will call the
waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous," "compact-black," "dark-clear,"
"violet-colored," "wine-colored," and so on. But every one of these epithets is
descriptive of pure physical nature. "Over-roofed" is the term he invariably
uses of anything—rock, house, or wave—that nods over at the brow; the other
terms need no explanation; they are as accurate and intense in truth as words
can be, but they never show the slightest feeling of anything animated in the
ocean. Black or clear, monstrous or violet-colored, cold salt water it is
always, and nothing but that. art oil paintings onlineBursts gradual, with a wayward indolence." oil paintings for sale
§ 3. "Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the tinge of fallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of the wave which Homer could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step in advance? Also there appears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling in the one writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has been received for a first principle that writers are great in proportion to the intensity of their feelings, and Homer seems to have no feelings about the sea but that it is black and deep, surely in this respect also the modern writer is the greater?" oil paintings online
Stay a moment. Homer had some feeling about the sea; a faith in the animation of it much stronger than Keats's. But all this sense of something living in it, he separates in his mind into a great abstract image of a Sea Power. He never says the waves rage, or the waves are idle. But he says there is somewhat in, and greater than, the waves, which rages, and is idle, and that he calls a god. art oil paintings for sale
§ 4. I do not think we ever enough endeavor to enter into what a Greek's real notion of a god was. We are so accustomed to the modern mockeries of the classical religion, so accustomed to hear and see the Greek gods introduced as living personages, or invoked for help, by men who believe neither in them nor in any other gods, that we seem to have infected the Greek ages themselves with the breath, and dimmed them with the shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think that Homer, as we know that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more than this, that all the nations of past time were ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty allegory, or a graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at the end of the garden. abstract oil paintings for sale
This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about Greek faith; not, indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or ordinary powers of thought; but still so venomously inherent in the modern philosophy that all the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it out of any of us. And then, side by side with this mere infidel folly, stands the bitter short-sightedness of Puritanism, holding the classical god to be either simply an idol,—a block of stone ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped,—or else an actual diabolic or betraying power, usurping the place of god. original oil paintings
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