spirit,
the direct unrestricted imprint of one soul on another, a portrait, not
a photograph of the personality--it is the ideal part that would be
caught in this canvas. It is a sympathy for "substance"--the over-value
together with a consciousness that there must be a lower value--the
"Demosthenic part of the Philippics"--the "Ciceronic part of the
Catiline," the sublimity, against the vileness of Rousseau's
Confessions. It is something akin to, but something more than these
predominant partial tones of Hawthorne--"the grand old countenance of
Homer; the decrepit form, but vivid face of Aesop; the dark presence of
Dante; the wild Ariosto; Rabelais' smile of deep-wrought mirth; the
profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes; the all-glorious Shakespeare;
Spenser, meet guest for allegoric structure; the severe divinity of
Milton; and Bunyan, molded of humblest clay, but instinct with
celestial fire."

There are communities now, partly vanished, but cherished and sacred,
scattered throughout this world of ours, in which freedom of thought
and soul, and even of body, have been fought for. And we believe that
there ever lives in that part of the over-soul, native to them, the
thoughts which these freedom-struggles have inspired. America is not
too young to have its divinities, and its place legends. Many of those
"Transcendent Thoughts" and "Visions" which had their birth beneath our
Concord elms--messages that have brought salvation to many listening
souls throughout the world--are still growing, day by day, to greater
and greater beauty--are still showing clearer and clearer man's way to
God!

No true composer will take his substance from another finite being--but
there are times, when he feels that his self-expression needs some
liberation from at least a part of his own soul. At such times, shall
he not better turn to those greater souls, rather than to the external,
the immediate, and the "Garish Day"?

The strains of one man may fall far below the course of those Phaetons
of Concord, or of the Aegean Sea, or of Westmorland--but the greater
the distance his music falls away, the more reason that some greater
man shall bring his nearer those higher spheres.

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INFO ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION

This edition of Charles Ives' "Essays Before a Sonata" was originally
published in 1920 by The Knickerbocker Press. It has also been
republished unabridged by Dov