The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Silent Isle, by Arthur Christopher Benson

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Title: The Silent Isle

Author: Arthur Christopher Benson

Release Date: April 5, 2004 [eBook #11911]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SILENT ISLE***

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THE SILENT ISLE

BY

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

1913

Nec prohibui cor meum.

To PERCY LUBBOCK

INTRODUCTION

There are two ways of recording and communicating to others an
impression, say, of a building or a place. One way is to sit down at a
definite point, and make an elaborate picture. It is thus perhaps that
one grasps the artistic significance and unity of the object best; one
sees it in a chosen light of noon or eve; one feels its dominant
emotion, its harmony of proportion and outline. Or else one may wander
about and take sketches of it from a dozen different points of view,
record little delicacies of detail, tiny whims and irregularities; and
thus one learns more of the variety and humours of the place, its
gestures and irritabilities, its failures of purpose or design. The
question is whether you like a thing idealised or realised. As to the
different methods of interpretation, they can hardly be compared or
subordinated. An artist does not choose his method, because his method
is himself.

The book that follows is an attempt, or rather a hundred attempts, to
sketch some of the details of life, seen from a simple plane enough,
and with no desire to conform it to a theory, or to find anything very
definite in it, or to omit anything because it did not fit in with
prejudices or predilections. The only unity of mood which it reflects
is the unity of purpose which comes from a decision. I had chosen a
life which seemed to me then to be wholesome, temperate, and simple, in
exchange for a life that was complicated, restless, and mechanical. The
choice was not in the least a revolt against conventions; it was only
the result of a deliberate belief