i had to read and analyze this passage, then answer 13 questions pertaining to the passage just read. listen: gonk
Genius or oraginality is, for the most part, some strong quality in the mind, answering to and bringing out some new ans striking quality in nature.
Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying on a given feeling into other situations, which must be done according to the hold which the feeling itself of the mind*. In new and unknown combinations, the impression must act by sympathy, and not by rule; but there can be no sympathy, where there is no passion, no original interest. the personal interest may in some cases oppress and circumscribe the imaginative faculty, as in the instance of Rousseau: but in general the strength and consistency of the imagination will be in porportion to the strenght and depth of feeling; and it is rarely that a man even of lofty genious will be able to do more than carry on his own feelings and character, or some prominent and ruling passion, into fictitious ans uncommon situations. Milton has by allusion embodied a great part of his political and personal history in the chief characters and incidents of Paradice Lost. He has, no doubt, wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the elements are the same; you trace bias ans opinions of the man in the creations of the poet. Shakespear (almost alone) seems to have been a man of genius. "Born universal heir to humanity," he was "as one, in suffering all who suffered nothing;" with a perfect sympathy with all things, yet alike indifferent to all: who did not tamper nature or warp her to his own purposes; who "knew all qualities with a learned spirit," instead of judging of them by his own predilections; and was rather "a pipe for he Muse's finger to play what stop she pleased," than axious to set up any character or pretensions of his own. His genius consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at will into whatever he chose: his originality was the power of seeing every objet from the point of view in which others would see it. He was Proteus** of human intellect. Genius in ordinary is more obstinate and less versitile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive ans self willed, quaint and perculiar. It does some one thing by virtue of doing othing else: it excels in some one persuit by being blind to all exellence but its own. It is just the reverse of the cameleon; for it does not borrow, but lend ots color to all about it: or like a glow-worm, discloses a little circle of gorgeous light in the twilight of obscurity, in the night of intellect, the surrounds it. So did Rembrandt. If ever there was a man of genius, he was one, in the proper sense of the term. He lived in and revealed to the others a world of his own, and might be said to have invented a new view of nature. He did not discover things out of nature, in fiction or fairy land, or make a voyage to the moon "to descry new lands, rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe," but saw things in nature that every one had missed before him, and gave others eyes to see them with. This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never dremt of, but to point out to us and what is before out eyes and under out feet, though we had no suspicion of its existance, for want of sufficient strenght of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it.
*"I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful exercise of the imagination which consists in finding out some striking object or image to illustrate another." (Author's note)
**Proteus: a sea god in Greek mythology who was able to assume different shapes at will.
yeaH! long huh?? >_>
and not only that we had to know (by the reading) that:
1. The speaker uses Rembrandt as an example to illustrate the idea that:
A)painting is not as expressive a form as other media
B)genius cannot be ranked according to standards
C)genius uses art to be perfect the forms of nature
D)imaginativeness is not alwaus a desirable quality in a person of genius
E)one characteristic of genius is an original peception of the world
lol you want to guess the answer dont cha?? ^^
lol pm me your answer and i'll tell you if its right or wrong!! muhahha 3nodding
yup! Q's like that.. but there was alot!! my brain hurted after... but it as alright cause ater that class i got to go home!! yay!! ^^ lol heart
