hide Sorting

You can sort these results in two ways:

By entity
Chronological order for dates, alphabetical order for places and people.
By position (current method)
As the entities appear in the document.

You are currently sorting in ascending order. Sort in descending order.

hide Most Frequent Entities

The entities that appear most frequently in this document are shown below.

Entity Max. Freq Min. Freq
Sappho 136 0 Browse Search
Department de Ville de Paris (France) 68 0 Browse Search
France (France) 60 0 Browse Search
Conde 58 0 Browse Search
Fayal (Portugal) 56 0 Browse Search
Aphrodite 52 0 Browse Search
Homer 42 0 Browse Search
Emerson 36 0 Browse Search
New England (United States) 36 0 Browse Search
Mather 36 0 Browse Search
View all entities in this document...

Browsing named entities in a specific section of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays. Search the whole document.

Found 155 total hits in 83 results.

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
Ferrara (Italy) (search for this): chapter 2
the public, and even by young authors, is the amount of toil it costs. But all the standards, all the precedents of every art, show that the greatest gifts do not supersede the necessity of work. The most astonishing development of native genius in any-direction, so far as I know, is that of Mozart in music; yet it is he who has left the remark, that, if few equalled him in his vocation, few had studied it with such persevering labor and such unremitting zeal. There is still preserved at Ferrara the piece of paper on which Ariosto wrote in sixteen different ways one of his most famous stanzas. The novel which Hawthorne left unfinished — and whose opening chapters when published proved so admirable — had been begun by him, as it appeared, in five different ways. Yet how many young collegians have at this moment in their desks the manuscript of a first novel, and have considered it a piece of heroic toil if they have once revised it! It is to rebuke this literary indolence, and
China (China) (search for this): chapter 2
, into comfort and good dinners. This is most noticeable in detached organizations, --Moravians, Shakers, Quakers, Roman Catholics,they all go the same way at last; when persecution and missionary toil are over, they enter on a tiresome millennium of meat and pudding. To guard against this spiritual obesity, this carnal Eden, what has the next age in reserve for us? Suppose forty million perfectly healthy and virtuous Americans, what is to keep them from being as uninteresting as so many Chinese? I know of nothing but that aim which is the climax and flower of all civilization, without which purity itself grows dull and devotion tedious,--the pursuit of Science and Art. Give to all this nation peace, freedom, prosperity, and even virtue, still there must be some absorbing interest, some career. That career can be sought only in two directions,--more and yet more material prosperity on the one side, Science and Art on the other. Every man's aim must either be riches, or somethi
New England (United States) (search for this): chapter 2
ness of spirit which has fought through the great civil war and slain slavery. As the Puritan has triumphed in this stern contest, so must the. Puritan triumph in the more graceful emulations that are to come; but it must be the Puritanism of Milton, not of Cromwell only. The invigorating air of great moral principles must breathe through all our literature; it is the expanding spirit of the seventeenth century by which we must conquer now. It is worth all that has been sacrificed in New England to vindicate this one fact, the supremacy of the moral nature. All culture, all art, without this, must be but rootless flowers, such as flaunt round a nation's decay. All the long, stern reign of Plymouth Rock and Salem Meeting-House was well spent, since it had this for an end,to plough into the American race the tradition of absolute righteousness, as the immutable foundation of all. This was the purpose of our fathers. There should be here no European frivolity, even if European gr
Puritan (Ohio, United States) (search for this): chapter 2
emporary thing. We must look at these till we have learned what they can teach, but a race in which the moral nature is strongest will be its own guide at last. And it is a comfort thus to end in the faith that, as the foundation of all true greatness is in the conscience, so we are safe if we can but carry into science and art the same earnestness of spirit which has fought through the great civil war and slain slavery. As the Puritan has triumphed in this stern contest, so must the. Puritan triumph in the more graceful emulations that are to come; but it must be the Puritanism of Milton, not of Cromwell only. The invigorating air of great moral principles must breathe through all our literature; it is the expanding spirit of the seventeenth century by which we must conquer now. It is worth all that has been sacrificed in New England to vindicate this one fact, the supremacy of the moral nature. All culture, all art, without this, must be but rootless flowers, such as flau
France (France) (search for this): chapter 2
hereditary right to seek from that nation those models of culture for which we must now turn to France. In a late English magazine, there is an elaborate attempt to prove the inferiority in manlinethod, style, and what they themselves call the art of making a book. The charge is true. In France alone among living nations is literature habitually pursued as an art; and, in consequence of thl often on unhappy marriages, because such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and bigamy is almost impossiFrance there is very little house-breaking, and bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about them; whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, what is there left? Germany furnishes at present no models of prose style; and aome. It is visible everywhere else. The aim which Bonaparte avowed as his highest ambition for France, to convert all trades into arts, is being rapidly fulfilled all around us. There is a constant
Department de Ville de Paris (France) (search for this): chapter 2
e, it is an even chance that it leads him away from favor. Indeed, within the last few years, it has come to be a sign of infinite humor to dispense with even these few rules, and spell as badly as possible. Yet even if you went to London or to Paris in search of this imaginary body of critics, you would not find them; there also you would find the transient and the immortal confounded together, and the transient often uppermost. Even a foreign country is not always, as has been said, a contd and vanished, leaving only memories of wrong behind. Let us not be too exultant; the hasty wealth of New York may do as little. Intellect in this age is not to be found in the circles of fashion; it is not found in such society in Europe, it is not here. Even in Paris, the world's capital, imperialism tainted all it touched; and art survived in spite of it. We, a younger and cruder race, need still to go abroad for our standard of execution, but our ideal and our faith must be our own.
Europe (search for this): chapter 2
into the American race the tradition of absolute righteousness, as the immutable foundation of all. This was the purpose of our fathers. There should be here no European frivolity, even if European grace disappeared with it. For the sake of this great purpose, history will pardon all their excesses,--overwork, grim Sabbaths, prohEuropean grace disappeared with it. For the sake of this great purpose, history will pardon all their excesses,--overwork, grim Sabbaths, prohibition of innocent amusements, all were better than to be frivolous. And so, in these later years, the arduous reforms into which the life-blood of Puritanism has passed have all helped to train us for art, because they have trained us in earnestness, even while they seemed to run counter to that spirit of joy in which art has iaces might there not have been in that Southern society before the war? Here and there in its midst were to be found ease, affluence, leisure, polished manners, European culture,--all worthless; it produced not a book, not a painting, not a statue; it concentrated itself on politics, and failed; then on war, and failed; it is dea
Plymouth Rock (New York, United States) (search for this): chapter 2
ut it must be the Puritanism of Milton, not of Cromwell only. The invigorating air of great moral principles must breathe through all our literature; it is the expanding spirit of the seventeenth century by which we must conquer now. It is worth all that has been sacrificed in New England to vindicate this one fact, the supremacy of the moral nature. All culture, all art, without this, must be but rootless flowers, such as flaunt round a nation's decay. All the long, stern reign of Plymouth Rock and Salem Meeting-House was well spent, since it had this for an end,to plough into the American race the tradition of absolute righteousness, as the immutable foundation of all. This was the purpose of our fathers. There should be here no European frivolity, even if European grace disappeared with it. For the sake of this great purpose, history will pardon all their excesses,--overwork, grim Sabbaths, prohibition of innocent amusements, all were better than to be frivolous. And so, in
Greeley (search for this): chapter 2
pure literature. It is said that some high legal authority on copyright thus cites a case: One Moore had written a book which he called Irish Melodies, and so on. Now, as Aristotle defined the shipbuilder's art to be all of the ship but the wood, so the literary art displayed in Moore's Melodies was precisely the thing ignored in this citation. To pursue literature as an art is not therefore to be a mathematician nor a political economist; still less to be a successful journalist, like Greeley, or a lecturer with a thousand annual invitations, like Gough. These careers have really no more to do with literature than has the stage or the bar. Indeed, a man may earn twenty thousand dollars a year by writing sensation stories, and have nothing to do with literature in any high sense. But to devote one's life to perfecting the manner, as well as the matter, of one's work; to expatriate one's self long years for it, like Motley; to overcome vast physical obstacles for it, like Presco
Jane Eyre (search for this): chapter 2
. Freshness is perhaps the best word to describe this additional element; it is a style that has blood in it. This may come from various sources,good health, animal spirits, outdoor habits, or simply an ardent nature. It is hard to describe this quality, or to give rules for it; the most obvious way to acquire it is to keep one's life fresh and vigorous, to write only what presses to be said, and to utter that as if the world waited for the saying. Where lies the extraordinary power of Jane Eyre, for instance? In the intense earnestness which vitalizes every line; each atom of the author's life appears to come throbbing and surging through it; every sentence seems endowed with a soul of its own, and looks up at you with human eyes. The next element of literary art may be said to be structure. So strong in the American mind is the demand for organization, that the logical element of style, which is its skeleton, is not rare among us. But this is only the basis; besides the phil
1 2 3 4 5 6 ...