Transcriber’s Note
Cover created by Transcriberand placed into the Public Domain.
A HISTORY OF STORYTELLING:Studies in the development ofNarrative. 1909
EDGAR ALLAN POE: A CriticalStudy. 1910
THE HOOFMARKS OF THEFAUN. 1911
OSCAR WILDE: A Critical Study.1912
PORTRAITS
AND
SPECULATIONS
BY
ARTHUR RANSOME
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1913
Copyright
TO
JOHN MASEFIELD
Of the Essays in this book, “Art for Life’s Sake”appeared in The English Review; “The Poetryof Yone Noguchi,”1 “Remy de Gourmont,” and“Aloysius Bertrand” in The Fortnightly Review;“Kinetic and Potential Speech,” in The Oxfordand Cambridge Review. The papers on Daudetand Coppée were prefixed to collections of storiesby these writers: I thank the publishers, Messrs.T. C. and E. C. Jack, for permission to reproducethem here.
| PAGE | |
| ART FOR LIFE’S SAKE | 1 |
| ALOYSIUS BERTRAND | 35 |
| ALPHONSE DAUDET | 57 |
| THE RETROSPECTION OF FRANÇOIS COPPÉE | 71 |
| FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE | 87 |
| WALTER PATER | 129 |
| REMY DE GOURMONT | 161 |
| THE POETRY OF YONE NOGUCHI | 187 |
| KINETIC AND POTENTIAL SPEECH | 207 |
3
It is not yet fifty years since one or two menof genius, followed presently by a score ofmen of talent, noisier, shriller in voice thanthemselves, preached a theory of art newin this country, shocking to our prejudicesat that time, and imported from some Frenchartists and from a German philosopher. Thiswas the doctrine of art for art’s sake.Baudelaire had written: “Poetry ... hasno other end than itself; it can have noother, and no poem will be so great, sonoble, so