English novelist and playwright (1867–1933)
John Galsworthy OM (14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932.
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Pen Names:
John Sinjohn
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But all over-expression, whether by journalists, poets, novelists, or clergymen, is bad for the language, bad for the mind; and by over-expression, I mean the use of words running beyond the sincere feeling of writer or speaker or beyond what the event will sanely carry. From time to time a crusade is preached against it from the text: ‘The cat was on the mat.’ Some Victorian scribe, we must suppose, once wrote: ‘Stretching herself with feline grace and emitting those sounds immemorially connected with satisfaction, Grimalkin lay on a rug whose richly variegated pattern spoke eloquently of the Orient and all the wonders of the Arabian Nights.’ And an exasperated reader annotated the margin with the shorter version of the absorbing event. How the late Georgian scribe will express the occurrence we do not yet know. Thus, perhaps: ‘What there is of cat is cat is what of cat there lying cat is what on what of mat laying cat.’ The reader will probably the margin with ‘Some cat!
The fascination of [Joseph Conrad’s] writing lies in a singular blending of reality with romance – he paints a world of strange skies and seas, rivers, forests, men, stranger harbours and ships, all, to our tamed understanding, touched a little by the marvelous. Beyond all modern writers he had lived romance; lived it for many years with a full unconscious pulse, the zest of a young man loving adventure, and before ever he thought to become a writer. How many talents among us are spoiled by having no store of experience and feeling, unconsciously amassed, to feed on! How many writers, without cream inside the churn, are turning out butter!
Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothetical perfect human being.
Impersonal emotion! And what - I thought - do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not Art, which, while I am contemplating it, inspires me with any active or direct impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be: 'What could I buy that for?' Impulse of acquisition; or: 'From what quarry did it come?' Impulse of inquiry; or: 'Which would be the right end for my head?' Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition - I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse - to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word 'impersonal,' then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.
Get Up! Go out! Do something! But what - what was worth doing? What had any meaning in it? She saw herself doing - extravagant things; nursing sick women; tending pale babies; making a speech in Parliament; riding a steeplechase; hoeing turnips in knickerbockers - decorative. And she lay perfectly still, bound by the filaments of her self-vision. So long as she saw herself she would do nothing - she knew it - for nothing would be worth doing! And it seemed to her, lying there so still, that not to see herself would be worse than anything. And she felt that to feel this was to acknowledge herself caged for ever.
Pentru tanarul Lennan urma apoi o perioada stranie, in care nu-si dadea seama de la un minut la altul daca era sau nu fericit, cautand sa fie mereu cu Anna, agitandu-se daca nu reusea, necajindu-se daca ea vorbea sau zambea altuia;cand se afla insa alaturi de ea tot nelinistit si nemultumit era, suferind din pricina timiditatii sale
In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the animals' good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open air and exercise. Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but tobe shut up in cages!
The Man of Property, p. 191
-but deep down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property. What though the board was up, and cosiness to let? — someone would come along and take it again some day.
And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there — the melancholy craving in his heart — because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky.
He might wish and wish and never get it — the beauty and the loving in the world!
Ljubav kao njezina — strastvena, koja obožava, koja štiti, koja čezne za potpunim podavanjem i žrtvovanjem same sebe, ali koja potajno traži i punu njegovu ljubav — jer kako bi bez toga mogla ljubiti ponosna žena? — takva ljubav čezne uvijek za potpunijim sjedinjenjem, nego što je moguće u ovom svijetu, gdje se sve mijenja i pokreće.