BLURB It would be a grave oversight not to pay somewhere our respects to what is now, thanks to Mr. Gelett Burgess, so happily known as the "blurb." The blurb is a perfumed flower, here of one species, there of another, worn in the buttonhole of every well-tailored publisher's jacket. From the jacket of the Modern Library edition of Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, I cull this musky violet. "The publishers asked Ben Hecht, the author of Erik Dorn, to write a brief description of Winesburg, Ohio. It follows. 'Winesburg, Ohio, remains. It is part of the prairies and towns of the Middle West. Its pages hold a little world. Figures of earth, with their eyes lost in yesterdays, hearts groping among the trifles of tomorrows. A marvelous book into which the bruised ones, the hating ones, the loving ones, come as to a confessional. Anderson writes with an odd gentleness. His embittered eyes forgive. Passion, avarice, futility and the lusts of dead hearts darken his men and women. But he bids them hope. There is no cynicism in him. He covers the barren irony of his scene with a caress. There is in Anderson's phrases a pity for all things that live. His sentences hesitate as if fearing to crush something. Yet in them men and women breathe. He has learned the secret that survived Dostoevsky. Man is the only animal able to adjust himself to anything. He survives where the hog perishes, he laughs where the gods would go mad'." Yet authors pretend that we have no adequate criticism, and critics that authors cannot learn to love one another! acting, 264 action, in drama, 271; and character, 495; as life, 455n., 456 advice to young writer, 215-6 aesthetic, attitude, 409ff., 414-5, 430-1; critic, 32; criticism, aesthetics, definition of, 428; fundamental question in, 424, affection, 442 'After Apple-Picking,' 127 Aiken, Conrad, 137n., 515 aims and functions, of art, 253, 381-2, 472, 476; of literature, Alice in Wonderland, 518 allegory, in Ibsen, 298ff.; in painting, 391n., 394 America, aristocracy of, 167-8; 168n.; culture in, 167; Americans, 166-7 anachronisms in Shakespeare, 93-94 Anderson, Sherwood, 519 Andrea del Sarto, 371 Angelico, 366 animism, 450-1 Apparition of Mrs. Veal, 181-2 Archer, Wm., 289, 301 architecture, 257-8 aristocracy of letters, 162, 169n. Aristotle, on epic, 237-8; and modern fiction, 233ff.; on Arnold, Matthew, 35, 40, 43, 47, 72, 87; on study of poetry, Art, definition of, 252 & n., 265, 397 & n., 470-1; aim & morals, 41-2, 170n., 472, 475-6; and nature, 357n., 373, beauty, in art, 253-4, 357n., 370n., 374, 381-2, 402-4, 427ff., 469, 492-3; in nature, 402-4, 411-2, 421-2 Beethoven, 193, 325, 330, 334-6, 340-1, 355 Bell, Clive, 382-3, 395n. 'Belle Heaulmière, la', 107-8 Bellini, Giovanni, 366 Bennett, Arnold, 24ff., 29-30, 432 Berenson, Bernhard, 369 & n., 370n. Besant, Walter, 494, 496 best-sellers, 158ff. Best Short-Stories, 165 Bianco, Pamela, 460 biography and fiction, 208 'Bird-Wife', 458-9 Bjornson, Björnsterne, 464-5 Blind, The, 283ff. 'blue', 347-8; blue-chord, 347 blurb, 519 book reviewing, 24ff., 30n., 73ff., 504, 506, 508, et passim Bosanquet, Bernard, 419 Botticelli, 366, 394 Bourne, Randolph, 8 Bouilhet, Louis, 227 Brahms, 336, 352ff. Brangwyn, Frank, 392, 393n. Broun, Heywood, 268n. Browning, Robert, xv & n. 355, 366, 371 Brunetière, Ferdinand, 38ff., 60, 501 Burns, 108ff., 111-2 Butcher, S. H., 477 Byzantine art, 364-5, 379 Cabell, James Branch, 168 Can Grande's Castle, 515-6 Cellini, Benvenuto, 255 C Cézanne, Paul, 381ff., 385-6, 390 Chagall, Marc, 384 Chandler, Frank Wadleigh, 291 character, in drama, 247, 477ff., esp. 480; in Ibsen's plays, character and style, 434 character novel, 211-2 characterization, in Shakespeare, 94ff.; Aristotle on, 235ff., 477ff., how achieved, 225-6 characteristic, the, 228 Chaucer, 104ff.; and Burns, 112 chiaroscuro, 371, 375, 376n. child, as adventurer, 212; artist, 460 children's reading, 6, 8, 211 Chinese painting, 368, 374 & n., 376n. Chopin, 355 Christian art, 475 classic qualities, 378; classic writers, 101ff., 105, 107, 117, 123 classical painting, 377-8 classics, in schools, 10-11, 18-19; 83; English, 12 classification, of the arts, 423; of literary works, 65-6; of pictures, 359-360, 391-2 Claude Lorraine, 377 college professors, 16-17, 19, 54 color, 362-3, 373, 376, 386-7, 394, 395n., 516 colorists, 362, 366, 372 & n. composition, pictorial, 368, 374, 394-5 concept, and art, 401 concrete and abstract in art, 401 confusion of the arts, 316, 473-4, 517 Conrad, Joseph, 202 Constable, John, 377-8 contemporary, literature, 80ff.; critic, 36-7, 73ff.; criticism, three conceptions influencing, xii convention in painting, 364 Correggio, 372, 376, 407 creative imagination, 457, 460 counterpoint, 334-5, 348-9, 514 Cretan frescoes, 362 critic, literary, 24ff., 31ff., 54ff., 73ff.; four types of, 31ff., 34; criticism, authority of, 38ff.; aims and methods of, 37, 504; factors in, 31; 24ff., 31ff.; impressionistic, 48ff.; new, 54ff,; 'criticism of life', poetry a, 110-1, 114-5 Croce, Benedetto, 63, 397, 401, 427-8 Cubism, 360, 383-4 design, a necessity in art, 236, 238-9; in drama, 247; in music, 326-7; in painting, 368 deus ex machina, 214 Dewey, John, 467-8 dialogue, 246-7, 297 'distance, psychical', 409 & n. documentation in literature, 472 drama, essentials of, 268ff., 290; definitions of, 288-9; types dramatic novel, 211ff., 214 dramatist, courses open to, 243-4; doing good, 244 drawing and draughtsman, 372, 374, 395n. dream, 451-2, 453-4, 458; dream-work, 456-7 Dreiser, Theodore, xvn. 153, 171ff. embodiment, aesthetic, 419ff.; necessary to beauty, 428-9 |