with astonishing adequacy. This
brings up the question whether in the art of literature there are not
intertwined two distinct kinds or levels of art--a generalized,
non-linguistic art, which can be transferred without loss into an alien
linguistic medium, and a specifically linguistic art that is not
transferable.[197] I believe the distinction is entirely valid, though
we never get the two levels pure in practice. Literature moves in
language as a medium, but that medium comprises two layers, the latent
content of language--our intuitive record of experience--and the
particular conformation of a given language--the specific how of our
record of experience. Literature that draws its sustenance mainly--never
entirely--from the lower level, say a play of Shakespeare's, is
translatable without too great a loss of character. If it moves in the
upper rather than in the lower level--a fair example is a lyric of
Swinburne's--it is as good as untranslatable. Both types of literary
expression may be great or mediocre.

[Footnote 196: See Benedetto Croce, "Aesthetic."]

[Footnote 197: The question of the transferability of art productions
seems to me to be of genuine theoretic interest. For all that we speak
of the sacrosanct uniqueness of a given art work, we know very well,
though we do not always admit it, that not all productions are equally
intractable to transference. A Chopin etude is inviolate; it moves
altogether in the world of piano tone. A Bach fugue is transferable into
another set of musical timbres without serious loss of esthetic
significance. Chopin plays with the language of the piano as though no
other language existed (the medium "disappears"); Bach speaks the
language of the piano as a handy means of giving outward expression to a
conception wrought in the generalized language of tone.]

There is really no mystery in the distinction. It can be clarified a
little by comparing literature with science. A scientific truth is
impersonal, in its essence it is untinctured by the particular
linguistic medium in which it finds expression. It can as readily
deliver its message in Chinese[198] as in English. Nevertheless it must
have some expression, and that expression must needs be a linguistic
one. Indeed the apprehension of the scientific truth is itself a
linguistic process, for thought is nothing but language denuded of its
outward garb. The proper medium of scientific expression is therefore a
generalized lan