Studies in Seven Arts
STUDIES IN SEVEN ARTS STUDIES IN SEVEN ARTS BY AETHUR SYMONS in LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD. 1906 630282 : T. and Edinturgh A. COKSTABLB, Printers to His Majesty TO RHODA Do you remember the first two sentences of ' ' Pater's essay on The School of Giorgione ? I will copy them, for they make a kind of motto for my book, and sum up, I think, the way in which you and I (you always, and I since I have known you) have looked upon art and the arts. 1 ' It is the mistake,' says Pater, of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music and painting all the various products of art as but transla- tions into different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative thought, supple- mented by certain technical qualities of colour in painting, of sound in music, of rhythmical words in poetry. In this way, the sensuous element in art, and with it almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is made a matter of indiffer- ence; and a clear apprehension of the opposite principle that the sensuous material of each art brings with it a special phase or quality of beauty, untranslatable into the forms of any other, an order of impressions distinct in kind is the beginning of all true aesthetic criticism.' With the art of poetry, or of literature in general, I am not here concerned : that is my main con- cern in most of my other books of criticism. In this book I have tried to deal with the other arts, as I know or them and I find seven : recognise ; VI handi- painting, sculpture, architecture, music, craft, the stage (in which I include drama, acting, pantomime, scenery, costume, and lighting), and, of these separate from these, dancing.
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