File:The Savoy (1896) (14595857797).jpg

Identifier: savoy02symo (find matches)
Title: The Savoy
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Symons, Arthur, 1865-1945 Beardsley, Aubrey, 1872-1898
Subjects: English literature Literature, Modern Art
Publisher: London, L. Smithers
Contributing Library: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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lavish motion, and are in contrast with the illustrationsto the Purgatory, which are placid, marmoreal, tender, starry, rapturous. All in this great series are in some measure powerful and moving, andnot, as it is customary to say of the work of Blake, because a flamingimagination pierces through a cloudy and indecisive technique, but becausethey have the only excellence possible in any art, a mastery over artisticexpression. The technique of Blake was imperfect, incomplete, as is thetechnique of wellnigh all artists who have striven to bring fires from remotesummits ; but where his imagination is perfect and complete, his techniquehas a like perfection, a like completeness. He strove to embody more subtleraptures, more elaborate intuitions than any before him ; his imagination andtechnique are more broken and strained under a great burden than theimagination and technique of any other master. I am, wrote Blake, likeothers, just equal in invention and execution. And again, No man can
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BLAKES ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 57 improve an original invention ; nor can an original invention exist withoutexecution, organized, delineated, and articulated either by God or man. . . .I have heard people say, Give me the ideas ; it is no matter what words youput them into ; and others say, Give me the design ; it is no matter for theexecution. . . . Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriatewords, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution.Living in a time when technique and imagination are continually perfectand complete, because they no longer strive to bring fire from heaven, weforget how imperfect and incomplete they were in even the greatest masters,in Botticelli, in Orcagna, and in Giotto. The errors in the handiwork ofexalted spirits are as the more fantastical errors in their lives ; as Coleridgesopium cloud ; as Villiers de llsle Adams candidature for the throne of Greece <as Blakes anger against causes and purposes he but

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