The vague expressiveness and charm of the medium, the musical aspect,
is largely lacking. Not wholly lacking, of course, as a multitude of
beautiful passages testify; yet, in general, it remains true that, in
prose, the medium tends to be transparent, sacrificing itself in order
that nothing may stand between what it reveals to thought and the
imagination. It fulfills its function when the words are not unpleasant
to the ear, and when their flow, adapting itself to the span and
pulsation of the attention, is so smooth as to become unnoticeable,
like the movement of a ship on a calm sea,--when it is a means to an
end, not an end in itself.
Prose literature is, therefore, incompletely beautiful. The full meaning
and value of the aesthetic are not to be found there, but rather in
poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture. Yet prose literature
remains art, if incomplete art--a free, personal expression of life,
for the sake of contemplation. As free, it differs from verbal
expression in the service of practical ends, and as personal, it cannot
be classed with science. Throughout the long course of its history,
it has tended to become now the one, now the other of these--and its
lack of the decorative element has done much to make this possible--but
its power to outlast the moral and political issues which it has so
often sought to direct, and its well-merited rejection by sociologists
and psychologists as anything more than material for their work, are
sufficient evidence and warning of where it properly belongs,--among
the arts.
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