The classics live only because they
still express the vital feeling of to-day. The new art must do
more,--must speak for the morrow. And as the poet is a kind of seer, the
true critic is his prophetic herald.
It is with due humility that we approach a view of the work of our own
time, with a dim feeling that our best will be a mere conjecture. But we
shall the more cheerfully return to our resolution that our chief
business is a positive appreciation. Where we cannot praise, we can
generally be silent. Certain truths concerning contemporary art seem
firmly grounded in the recorded past. The new Messiah never came with
instant wide acclaim. Many false prophets flashed brilliantly on the
horizon to fall as suddenly as they rose. In a refracted view we see the
figures of the great projected in too large dimension upon their day.
And precisely opposite we fail to glimpse the ephemeral lights obscuring
the truly great. The lesson seems never to be learned; indeed it can, of
course, never be learned. For that would imply an eternal paradox that
the present generation must always distrust its own judgment.
Who could possibly imagine in Schubert's time the sway he holds to-day.
Our minds reel to think that by a mere accident were recovered the
Passion of Bach and the symphonies of Schubert. Or must we prayerfully
believe that a Providence will make the best prevail? And, by the way,
the serious nature of this appreciation appears when we see how it was
ever by the greatest of his time that the future master was heralded.
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