Volume Ii Part 42 (2/2)

ORIGINAL GERMAN.-German prose, which is really not fas.h.i.+oned on any pattern and must be considered an original creation of German taste, should give the eager advocate of a future original German culture an indication of how real German dress, German society, German furniture, German meals would look without the imitation of models.-Some one who had long reflected on these vistas finally cried in great horror, ”But, Heaven help us, perhaps we already have that original culture-only we don't like to talk about it!”

92.

FORBIDDEN BOOKS.-One should never read anything written by those arrogant wiseacres and puzzle-brains who have the detestable vice of logical paradox. They apply _logical_ formulae just where everything is really improvised at random and built in the air. (”Therefore” with them means, ”You idiot of a reader, this 'therefore' does not exist for you, but only for me.” The answer to this is: ”You idiot of a writer, then why do you write?”)

93.

DISPLAYING ONE'S WIT.-Every one who wishes to display his wit thereby proclaims that he has also a plentiful lack of wit. That vice which clever Frenchmen have of adding a touch of _dedain_ to their best ideas arises from a desire to be considered richer than they really are. They wish to be carelessly generous, as if weary of continual spending from overfull treasuries.

94.

FRENCH AND GERMAN LITERATURE.-The misfortune of the French and German literature of the last hundred years is that the Germans ran away too early from the French school, and the French, later on, went too early to the German school.

95.

OUR PROSE.-None of the present-day cultured nations has so bad a prose as the German. When clever, _blase_ Frenchmen say, ”There is no German prose,” we ought really not to be angry, for this criticism is more polite than we deserve. If we look for reasons, we come at last to the strange phenomenon that the German knows only improvised prose and has no conception of any other. He simply cannot understand the Italian, who says that prose is as much harder than poetry as the representation of naked beauty is harder to the sculptor than that of draped beauty. Verse, images, rhythm, and rhyme need honest effort-that even the German realises, and he is not inclined to set a very high value on extempore poetry. But the notion of working at a page of prose as at a statue sounds to him like a tale from fairyland.

96.

THE GRAND STYLE.-The grand style comes into being when the beautiful wins a victory over the monstrous.

97.

DODGING.-We do not realise, in the case of distinguished minds, wherein lies the excellence of their expression, their turn of phrase, until we can say what word every mediocre writer would inevitably have hit upon in expressing the same idea. All great artists, in steering their car, show themselves p.r.o.ne to dodge and leave the track, but never to fall over.

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