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Walter Pater

Book by Edward Thomas · 2 quotes · Thought, Style, Writing

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Walter Pater Quotes

“The reason why Professor Earle was pleased with this Prose Diction, and why Mr. W. B. Yeats believes that 'in this century he who does not strive to be a perfect craftsman achieves nothing,' is that men understand now the im- possibility of speaking aloud all that is within them, and if they do not speak it, they cannot write as they speak. The most they can do is to write as they would speak in a less solitary world. A man cannot say all that is in his heart to a woman or another man. The waters are too deep between us. We have not the confidence in what is within us, nor in our voices. Any man talking to the deaf or in dark- ness will leave unsaid things which he could say were he not compelled to shout, or were it light; or perhaps he will venture once — even twice— and a silence or a foolish noise prohibits him. But the silence of solitude is kindly; it allows a man to speak as if there were another in the world like himself; and in very truth, out of the multitudes, in the course of years, one or two may come, or many, who can enter that solitude and converse with him, inspired by him to confidence and articulation. Wisely did Quintilian argue against dictation, that ‘privacy is rendered impossible by it; and that a spot free from witnesses and the deepest possible silence are the most desirable for persons engaged writing, no one can doubt. You are not therefore necessarily to listen to those who think that groves and woods are the most proper places for study. ... To me, assuredly, such retirement seems rather conducive to pleasure than an incentive to literary exertion. Demosthenes acted more wisely, who secluded himself in a place where no voice could be heard, and no prospect contemplated, that his eyes might not oblige his mind to attend to anything else besides his business. As to those who study by lamplight, therefore, let the silence of the night, the closed chamber, and a single light, keep them, as it were, wholly in seclusion. . . .”

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“The more we know of any man the more singular he will appear, and nothing so well represents his singularity as style. Literature is further divided in outward seeming from speech by what helps to make it in fact more than ever an equivalent of speech. It has to make words of such a spirit, and arrange them in such a manner, that they will do all that a speaker can do by innumerable gestures and their innumerable shades, by tone and pitch of voice, by speed, by pauses, by all that he is and all that he will become. ' Is it wonderful,' asks Newman, after quoting Shakespeare's lines on the 'poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling ' and * the poet's pen ' giving ' to airy nothing a local habitation and a name ': 'Is it wonderful that that pen of his should sometimes be at fault for a while — that it should pause, write, erase, re -write, amend, complete, before he satisfies himself that his language has done justice to the conceptions which his mind's eye contemplated? ‘In this point of view, doubtless, many or most writers are elaborate ; and those certainly not the least whose style is furthest removed from ornament, being simple and natural, or vehement, or severely business-like and practical. . . .”

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