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CHAPTER I
ART AND THE DRAMA
I always agree with that man who said, “Let me make the nation’s songs and I care not who frames her laws,” or words to that effect, for, in my opinion, nothing so well indicates national character or so keenly accentuates the difference between individuals and nations as the way in which they spend their leisure hours; and the theatres of Japan are thoroughly ... more...
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A BALLADE OF ART COLLECTORS
Oh Lord! We are the covetous. Our neighbours' goods afflict us sore.From Frisco to the Bosphorus All sightly stuff, the less the more,We want it in our hoard and store. Nor sacrilege doth us appal—Egyptian vault—fane at Cawnpore— Collector folk are sinners all.
Our envoys plot in partibus. They've small ... more...
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There is a hill-crowned city by a silver sea, near a Golden Gate. For ages the water has washed from an almost land-locked bay against this hill-crowned city, and on its northern side has created of the shore an amphitheatre stretching for some three miles to the western headlands.
Behind this amphitheatre rises, in terraces, the steep hills of this water-lashed city, and in part, a forest of pines stretches ... more...
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Introduction
No more accurate account of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition has been given than one that was forced from the lips of a charming Eastern woman of culture. Walking one evening in the Fine Arts colonnade, while the illumination from distant searchlights accented the glory of Maybeck's masterpiece, and lit up the half-domes and arches across the lagoon, she exclaimed to her companion: ... more...
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Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts
"The influence of sculpture is far reaching. The mind that loves this art and understands its language will more and more insist on a certain order and decorum in visual life. It opens an avenue for the expression of aesthetic enjoyment somewhere between poetry and music and akin to drama. - Arthur Hoeber
The Fountain of Energy
A. Stirling Calder, Sculptor [See ... more...
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The Sculpture and Mural Decorations
"In this fair world of dreams and vagary,Where all is weak and clothed in failing forms,Where skies and trees and beauties speak of change,And always wear a garb that's like our minds,We hear a cry from those who are aboutAnd from within we hear a quiet voiceThat drives us on to do, and do, and do."
The persistent necessity for creation is strikingly proved by the prolific ... more...
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A Fourteenth Century Legend
Friar Bacon, reading one day of the many conquests of England, bethought himself how he might keep it hereafter from the like conquests and so make himself famous to all posterity. This (after great study) he found could be no way so well done as one; which was to make a head of brass, and if he could make this head to speak (and hear it when it spoke) then might he be able to wall ... more...
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Foreword
This handbook is designed to furnish the information necessary for intelligent appreciation of the purely artistic features of the Exposition. It is planned first to explain the symbolism of the architecture, sculpture and painting; and second, to point out the special qualities that give each artistic unit its individual appeal. It is made for the intelligent observer who, having enjoyed the purely ... more...
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Butler, Samuel
Butler, Samuel
Author, educated at Shrewsbury and Cambridge, wrote two satirical books, Erewhon (nowhere) [1872], and Erewhon Revisited [1901]. He translated the Iliad and Odyssey in prose, and mooted the theory that the latter was written by a woman. Other works were The Fair Haven, Life and Habit, The Way of all Flesh (a novel) [1903], etc., and some sonnets. He also wrote on the Sonnets of Shakespeare.
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works, but also extending to examinations of Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of ...
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works, but also extending to examinations of Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of ...
INTRODUCTION
It is hardly necessary to apologise for the miscellaneous character of the following collection of essays. Samuel Butler was a man of such unusual versatility, and his interests were so many and so various that his literary remains were bound to cover a wide field. Nevertheless it will be found that several of the subjects to which he devoted much time and labour are not represented ... more...
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CHAPTER I
THE DRAMATIC CRITIC
His Qualifications
The production of a play in the Russian tongue renders topical a phrase once used, not unhappily, by Mr Cecil Raleigh concerning the qualifications of the dramatic critic. After listening to a somewhat extravagant speech about the duties of the critic, he said that the dramatic critic ought, apparently, to be a "polyglot archangel." During the last ... more...
