Art is the creation of beauty in
form, visible or audible, and the artist is the creator of beauty in
visible or audible form. But beauty is infinitely various, and as truly
beauty in the voice of Sarah Bernhardt or the silence of Duse as in a
face painted by Leonardo or a poem written by Blake. A dance, performed
faultlessly and by a dancer of temperament, is as beautiful, in its own
way, as a performance on the violin by Ysaye or the effect of an
orchestra conducted by Richter. In each case the beauty is different,
but, once we have really attained beauty, there can be no question of
superiority. Beauty is always equally beautiful; the degrees exist only
when we have not yet attained beauty.
And thus the old prejudice against the artist to whom interpretation in
his own special form of creation is really based upon a
misunderstanding. Take the art of music. Bach writes a composition for
the violin: that composition exists, in the abstract, the moment it is
written down upon paper, but, even to those trained musicians who are
able to read it at sight, it exists in a state at best but half alive;
to all the rest of the world it is silent.
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