The Realistic Revolt in Modern Poetry (Classic Reprint) - Tapa dura

Excerpt from The Realistic Revolt in Modern Poetry

But like every new movement, the reaction against Victorianism and romance has its extremists who seem determined, above all else, on being original, without con sidering that their changes in the artistic medium, by which they have to communicate with their audience, are too violent and sudden. It is true that an ancient Greek would be as much at a loss before the statuary of Rousseaux as before our photographs: the gulf between the art which he knew and that of modern Europe is too wide to be jumped at one bound. Nor must we forget that the idiom and inflection of the language of art changes as much as the ordinary speech of a community, and that after two thousand years it will be unintelligible to its older speakers. But though it changes, the change is gradual and in the development of art, the characteristic expression of the msthetic consciousness through the ages, we never find lacunae. Though the barbarians may have destroyed classic art and built their own out of its ruins, yet within the classical period or within the modern, between the cataclysms that blot out all traditions, the continuity of art is clear and certain.

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