Excerpts from IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS by Havelock Ellis
It is merely an application of a great truth that applies to all the essential functions of living.
History, it seems, like Nature, delights in a perpetual slight novelty.
Be of good cheer. It is only externals that change.
No doubt it would be unpleasant to meet the condescending disapproval (which everything great and real must meet) of the superior person.
It is not clear how far a composer realises what he is showing of himself. Possibly if he realised he would hesitate. But it is easier in music than in any other art to elude the confession of self-revelation. Whether or not he knows--and I suspect he often knows--the emotional logic of personal temperament is deeper than all the subterfuges of art and can never be eluded.
So at all events I love to think it is, when I remember how I have been inspired or helped by the secretly burning originality of some unknown person.
To allow our vision of Nature to be disturbed by our vision of Man is to allow the infinitely small to outweigh the infinitely great.
History, it seems, like Nature, delights in a perpetual slight novelty.
Be of good cheer. It is only externals that change.
No doubt it would be unpleasant to meet the condescending disapproval (which everything great and real must meet) of the superior person.
It is not clear how far a composer realises what he is showing of himself. Possibly if he realised he would hesitate. But it is easier in music than in any other art to elude the confession of self-revelation. Whether or not he knows--and I suspect he often knows--the emotional logic of personal temperament is deeper than all the subterfuges of art and can never be eluded.
So at all events I love to think it is, when I remember how I have been inspired or helped by the secretly burning originality of some unknown person.
To allow our vision of Nature to be disturbed by our vision of Man is to allow the infinitely small to outweigh the infinitely great.