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George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor (ed. George Hillard) 46 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 46 0 Browse Search
Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (ed. W. H. Channing) 36 0 Browse Search
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 2 36 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 26 0 Browse Search
Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches 24 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 16 0 Browse Search
The Daily Dispatch: March 12, 1861., [Electronic resource] 12 0 Browse Search
Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899 10 0 Browse Search
Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career. 10 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays. You can also browse the collection for Dante or search for Dante in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Literature as an art. (search)
n mere externals; we think, because we live in a new country, we are unworthy of ourselves if we do not Americanize the grammar and spelling-book. In a republic, must the objective case be governed by a verb? We shall yet learn that it is not new literary forms we need, but only fresh inspiration, combined with cultivated taste. The standard of good art is always much the same; modifications are trifling. Otherwise we could not enjoy any foreign literature. A fine phrase in Aeschylus or Dante affects us as if we had read it in Emerson. A structural completeness in a work of art seems the same in the Oedipus Tyrannus as in The scarlet letter. Art has therefore its law; and eccentricity, though often promising as a mere trait of youth, is only a disfigurement to maturer years. It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards and reserve himself for something better. A young writer must commonly plough in his first crop, a
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
about the tyranny of the ancient classics, as if there were some special peril about it, quite distinct from all other tyrannies. But if a man is to be stunted by the influence of a master, it makes no difference whether that master lived before or since the Christian epoch. One folio volume is as ponderous as another, if it crushes down the tender germs of thought. There is no great choice between the volumes of the Encyclopedia. It is not important to know whether a man reads Homer or Dante: the essential point is whether he believes the world to be young or old; whether he sees as much scope for his own inspiration as if never a book had appeared in the world. So long as he does this, he has the American spirit; no books, no travel, can overwhelm him, for these will only enlarge his thoughts and raise his standard of execution. When he loses this faith, he takes rank among the copyists and the secondary, and no accident can raise him to a place among the benefactors of manki
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, The Greek goddesses. (search)
ched, that it is now found hard to do more than reproduce them. As no sculptor can produce more than a Greek profile, so no poet has yet produced more than a Greek woman. Modern life has not aimed to elevate the ideal, but the average. Common intelligence spread more widely, sweetness and purity protected, more respect for the humblest woman as woman, less faith in the sibyl and the saint,--this is modern life. In the Middle Ages there were glimpses of a new creation. Raphael painted, Dante sang, something that promised more than Greece gave; but it came to nothing. Superstition was in the way; the new woman did not get herself disentangled from a false mythology and an unnatural asceticism, and was never fairly born. Art could not join what God had put asunder; the maid-mother was after all an image less noble than maid or mother separately. That path is closed; I rejoice that we can have no more Madonnas; we have come back to nature and are safe beneath its eternal laws.