Thank you! Gee, that's such a brilliant idea. I must try it.
If Chesterton's Mr McCabe (from On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity[0] in Heretics) had never existed, it would make little difference. It's just an excuse to say what he wants to say.
...criticism of the highest kind...treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself...to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. – Wilde, The Critic As Artist
Edit: I've 'borrowed' A Perfect Vacuum from archive.org, thanks! Also, I've hardly read any Borges, but that Borges fake review of a novel which is identical with Don Quixote but totally different is one of the funniest things I've read.
If Chesterton's Mr McCabe (from On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity[0] in Heretics) had never existed, it would make little difference. It's just an excuse to say what he wants to say.
...criticism of the highest kind...treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself...to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. – Wilde, The Critic As Artist
[0] http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301191h.html#ch16
Edit: I've 'borrowed' A Perfect Vacuum from archive.org, thanks! Also, I've hardly read any Borges, but that Borges fake review of a novel which is identical with Don Quixote but totally different is one of the funniest things I've read.
http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/borges-quixote.html