The realist who makes a poem, not on
his lady's eyebrows but her intestines, is a good current example.
The novelist who shovels undistinguished humanity, just because it
is human, into his book is another. The versifier who twists and
breaks his rhythm solely in order to get new sounds is a third. A
fourth is the stylist who writes in disjointed phrases and
expletives, intended to represent the actual processes of the
mind.
The realist poet, so the Greeks would have said, lacks measure. He
destroys the balance of his art by asking your attention for the
strangeness of his subject. It is as if a sculptor should make a
Venus of chewing gum. The novelist lacks self-restraint. Life
interests him so much that he devours without digesting it. The
result is like a moving picture run too fast. The versifier also
lacks measure. He is more anxious to be new than to be true, and
he seeks effects upon the reader rather than forms for his
thought. The bizarre stylist misses truth by straining too much to
achieve it. Words are only symbols. They never more than roughly
represent a picture of thought. A monologue like this, as the
heroine goes to shop: Chapel Street.
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