Its witchery is irresistible.
XI. CLASSICAL CURRENTS
Guy de Maupassant put before us a widely diverse number of novels
in a famous essay attached to the definitive edition of his
masterpiece, "Pierre et Jean," and puzzlingly demanded the real
form of the novel. If "Don Quixote" is one, how can "Madame
Bovary" be another? If "Les Miserables" is included in the list,
what are we to say to Huysmans' "La Bas"?
Just such a question I should like to propound, substituting
sonata for novel. If Scarlatti wrote sonatas, what is the
Appassionata? If the A flat Weber is one, can the F minor Brahms
be called a sonata? Is the Haydn form orthodox and the Schumann
heterodox? These be enigmas to make weary the formalists. Come,
let us confess, and in the open air: there is a great amount of
hypocrisy and cant in this matter. We can, as can any
conservatory student, give the recipe for turning out a smug
specimen of the form, but when we study the great examples, it is
just the subtle eluding of hard and fast rules that distinguishes
the efforts of the masters from the machine work of apprentices
and academic monsters.
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