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Appreciations, With an Essay on Style
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1890
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About the author
Walter Pater
112 books125 followersPeople know British writer Walter Horatio Pater for his volumes of aesthetic criticism, including
Appreciations
(1889).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 17, 2020
بحثی خلاصه و مختصر در باب سبک، با گریزی به آراء و آثار وردزورث و کولریج. والتر پیتر در ابتدای کتاب، می‌خواهد در رساله‌ای مختصر، ماهیت سبک و ارتباط آن با دیگر عناصر متن را تعریف و مشخص کند. کار قابل ستایش او، تلاش مستمر برای پیدا و تعیین کردن مبدأیی درست برای بحث‌های سبک‌شناختی است. او برخلاف اغلب پژوهشگران، تنها به مبدأ قرار دادن دکارت و فلسفۀ نوین بسنده نمی‌کند، با نگاهی در زمانی، تاریخ بحث‌های سبک‌شناختی را مرور می کند. نگاه دقیق‌تر و جزئی‌تر وی، نمود خود را بیش‌تر در دورۀ معاصر نشان می‌دهد. اغلب نویسندگان و شاعرانی که در سبک و شبک‌شناختی نظری داشته و یا تحولی ایجاد کرده‌اند، در این رساله بررسی می‌شوند. بیکن، براونینگ، تنیسون، درایدن، میشله، گیبون، فلوبر، تکری، سنت بووی، شیلر، استاندال، سوئین برگ و ...از جملۀ چهره‌های هستند که در این موضوع ذکر و بررسی شده‌اند.
دو مقالۀ بعدی، به ماهیت شاعری و جهان‌بینی وردزورث و کولریج، همچنین تفاوت و شباهت‌های مابین آن‌ها اختصاص دارد.
از متن:
دو مقالۀ بعدی، به ماهیت شاعری و جهان‌بینی وردزورث و کولریج، همچنین تفاوت و شباهت‌های مابین آن‌ها اختصاص دارد.
از متن:
«هر زیبایی در نهایت عبارت است از صافی، روشنی و لطافت حقیقت و چیزی که ما آن را «بیان» می‌نامیم، در واقع تطبیق دادن سخن است با آن بینش درونی به گونه‌ای زیباتر.
آن‌چه نویسنده از حقیقت می‌فهمد، رونوشتی است که او به جای خود حقیقت برمی‌گزیند و بر خود آن را ترجیح می‌دهد و این رونوشت، برای نویسنده، از خود حقیقت زیباتر و دلپذیر است. در ادبیات، هر جا که این احساس خود را نشان دهد، هرجا که آفرینندۀ اثر، آن را به این گونه تغییر دهد، فراتر از قصد و کاربرد اولیۀ اثر، برای دلپذیرتر ساختن آن، در کنار هنر صرفی که در آن تنها استفاده و سودمندی مورد نظر است، ظرافت و زیبایی نیز وجود خواهد داشت. در هر حال، هنر ادبی، تقلیدی است از حقیقن و عبارت است از آفرینش دوبارۀ آن. تمام ویژگی‌های موجود در یک اثر هنری دیگر نیز چنین حقیقتی را در خود نشان می‌دهد؛ حقیقتی که به گونه‌ای با روح خالق اثر پیوند خورده و ویژگی‌ها، اهداف، مزایا و توانایی‌های موجود در آن، از شخصیت فردی او نشأت گرفته است.» (12-13)
June 2, 2025
Does Pater’s choice of authors and books reflect his own values: religious aestheticism, reserved traditionalism, extensive curiosity, foppish humor, etc?
September 17, 2024
#Re-read:
This will be a long review. I do not expect many readers, although.
In December 1888, Pater allowed publication of his essay on ‘Style’ in a periodical ‘The Fortnightly’. It later appeared in ‘Appreciations’.
Pater begins the tome by pointing out the requirement of differentiating poetry and prose and passes on to accentuate the range of artistic prose. He points out the coloured prose of Bacon and the picturesque prose of Livy and Carlyle musical with Cicero, mystical with Plato and Michelet, Thomas Browne, and finally florid with Milton.
Criticism should be able to point out the ‘beauties of prose’ as it does with respect to poetry. The task of criticism is to point out the imaginative power of prose.
Pater then refers to the otherness which Dryden made between prose and poetry and passes on to Wordsworth who equated the language of poetry and prose which is equivalent to the distinction between the literature of power and literature of knowledge.
Pater’s main concern is to suggest that both prose and poetry is art. His interest is in highlighting the artistic qualities of prose. His essay ‘Style’ is a major contribution to English criticism.
Birthday. Pater superbly catches the essence of Pascal when he beyond the geometry of the thinker responds to his ‘intuition of a world’.
Admitting that imagination may impede with pure science, Pater passes on to consider the historian’s prose. Positing that the ‘sense of fact’ is central in historical writing he refers to the historian’s structural ability to present fact which reaches the condition he refers to the distinctive features of the prose of Gibbon, Livy, Tacitus and Michelet. Pater in this connection declares that in the long run all beauty depends on fineness of truth (we should understand it as fine presentation of truth and are reminded of Keats’s famous phrase ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’).
Pater, then refers to form and colour as a sign of literary art and considers prose as literary art finally leading to the rhythm and musical value in the prose of Cicero, Michelet and Newman. Pater passes on to the artistic quality of a scholar.
It should be noted by the contemporary reader Pater’s reference to female conscience which moves ‘lightly’ and ‘amiably’ compared to the ‘real scholarship’ of men. In spite of the anti-feminist stance of Pater we should note how the scholar handles the material like the ‘sculptor’s marble’. In doing so his medium will diffuse through a general air of responsiveness of refined usage. He works also by the method of exclusions. It is .a matter of mastering the content which indicates the freedom of the artist.
Clutton Brock, in his fine essay ‘What is Art’, has equated this freedom with ‘rhythm’. It is the aesthetic heaven of the artist. Pater thinks that the scholar is an artist. With stunning ease Pater passes on to consider the task of translators. However, his point is that one who is commendable of being translated dictates every word to the translator because he has full command over each word he writes. He had eliminated all unsuitable word.
Consequently, the translator has no autonomy. This is the point, which will not be accepted by modern critics like Walter Benjamin.
Pater encompasses his dialogue of style to the realm of science. As a great scientist deals with ideas of science brings precision to his style, the literary artist should learn the precision and grappling with the rich material he controls. According to Pater the scholar should have ‘historic sense’ and it involves the ability to reject worn-out words and to choose finer edge of words still in use. Passingly he refers to the persnickety scholarship of Tennyson.
In this connection we may refer to Eliot’s critical comment that Tennyson had complete competence over language which should be the model for the literary artist writing prose. Pater invests the scholar with the power of creating the ‘willing intelligence’ of his reader which is close enough to Coleridge’s dictum that the poet can create ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in the reader.
Pater, at one breath refers to Lycidas and Newman’s Idea of a University.
Perceptibly, he gives equal importance to prose and poetry. Pater refers to ‘One beauty’ which is both in poetry and prose. This leads him to refer to the style of ‘Madame Bovary’ and Stendhal’s Le Rouge et Le Noir, (The Scarlet and the Black). These are model styles in the sense that all art consists in the removal of surplusage. He refers to the finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of dust to bring out the shining of the gem and alludes to Michelangelo’s sculpture to suggest the inner connection amongst all the arts.
Pater brings in the question of the necessity of mind in style. All the laws of good writing aim at a unity or identity of the mind. Pater also takes into deliberation logic as an essential principle of good writing. Pater brilliantly brings out the conscious artistic structure which by using childlike simple sentences by the side of long, flowing sentences which one may find in Flaubert, He also hints at the similarity between poetic composition and literary prose whose basic principle is constructive intelligence.
Pater next moves to consider the function of mind in style. Mind and soul are sometimes in conflict. In Blake we find the soul is more significant than mind. His style is exceptional but he is also a sole instance.
The point of theological interest comes next. Theological literature uses soul. The vulgate, the English Bible, The English Bible the English Prayer—Book, the writings of Swedenborg are examples of religious feeling in operation as soul in literature. Pater devotes considerable space for Flaubert whom he considers as the martyr of literary style. Flaubert’s meticulous sense of style is seen in his correspondence to Madame X to whom he writes about his painstaking reading of the Aeneid.
Pater observes, what did Flaubert understand by beauty? The creation of the beauty depended upon superhuman labour for the discovery of the right word or the right phrase. He mentions the unique word, phrase, sentence. Flaubert would say, there are no beautiful thoughts without beautiful forms.
He also takes into consideration harmony and ease in reading aloud a piece of literature. Also, into the mind of the sensitive mind a flood of random sounds, colours penetrate from without to become part of his structure. Flaubert wrote to Madame X with disarming simplicity happy ‘those who have no doubts of themselves! Who lengthen out as the pen runs on’. He reached an almost despairing condition when he exclaimed ‘Art! art! art! bitter deception!’
After this he adds a marvellous analogy, ‘I am like a man whose ear is true’ but who plays falsely on the violin: his fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sounds of which he has the inward sense? The discovery of the right word is instinctive and beyond ‘analysis’.
In Flaubert there was the exact apprehension of what needed to carry the meaning. Pater, at this stage, rather surprisingly refers to ‘inspired translation’ as a condition of good style. It indicated the use of language involving translation from inward to outward.
In the highest literature, beauty is, after all, truth. Truth is accuracy, truth is also expression as the French call the vraie vente. Then Pater considers the seeming baldness of Le Ronge at Le Noir, the wild ornament of Les Miserables and Flaubert’s style as hard as bronze.
Noting innumerable styles he refers to the well—known saying “The style is the man” complex, or simple in his individuality. Pater refers to Flaubert’s commentator who observed styles as many atypical moulds. Pater comments if the style be the man it will be in a real sense ‘impersonal’, perhaps meaning the creator has eliminated himself. The result is for anybody to appreciate. One wonders at the term ‘impersonal’ because Eliot made this word the central element of his article ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent.’
Pater, while discussing Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables refers to Bach and observes that many consider ‘music’ to be a higher art. Pater with marvellous critical tact observes that, though music and literature are apparently different, the art of literature presents to the imagination a range of interests as free as those which music presents ‘through sense’. It is in this sense all arts aspire to the condition of music.
In the closing paragraph of his tome, Pater refers to good art and great art.
Pater considers great art to be great by virtue of his content which the artist has mastered. It is in this sense Thackeray’s ‘Esmond’ is art than ‘Vanity Fair’ : The greatness of literary art such as The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Les Miserables and The English Bible, are great art. He sums up his tome by observing that colour and ‘mystic perfume’ and something of the soul of humanity finds its logical place in the great structure of human life.
Herbert Read has referred to the ‘modernism’ of Pater. In effect, Pater’s tome looks forward to Remy de Gourmont’s ‘Le problem du style’ (The problem of style) where Gourmont also implies style is the man in the sense that he sees the root of style in physiology, that is, the finer the nerve pattern of an artist the better will be his style.
For us, teachers of the English language, this tome is like a Bible. No wonder it finds place in all the different syllabuses of Literary Criticism all over the World.
This will be a long review. I do not expect many readers, although.
In December 1888, Pater allowed publication of his essay on ‘Style’ in a periodical ‘The Fortnightly’. It later appeared in ‘Appreciations’.
Pater begins the tome by pointing out the requirement of differentiating poetry and prose and passes on to accentuate the range of artistic prose. He points out the coloured prose of Bacon and the picturesque prose of Livy and Carlyle musical with Cicero, mystical with Plato and Michelet, Thomas Browne, and finally florid with Milton.
Criticism should be able to point out the ‘beauties of prose’ as it does with respect to poetry. The task of criticism is to point out the imaginative power of prose.
Pater then refers to the otherness which Dryden made between prose and poetry and passes on to Wordsworth who equated the language of poetry and prose which is equivalent to the distinction between the literature of power and literature of knowledge.
Pater’s main concern is to suggest that both prose and poetry is art. His interest is in highlighting the artistic qualities of prose. His essay ‘Style’ is a major contribution to English criticism.
Birthday. Pater superbly catches the essence of Pascal when he beyond the geometry of the thinker responds to his ‘intuition of a world’.
Admitting that imagination may impede with pure science, Pater passes on to consider the historian’s prose. Positing that the ‘sense of fact’ is central in historical writing he refers to the historian’s structural ability to present fact which reaches the condition he refers to the distinctive features of the prose of Gibbon, Livy, Tacitus and Michelet. Pater in this connection declares that in the long run all beauty depends on fineness of truth (we should understand it as fine presentation of truth and are reminded of Keats’s famous phrase ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’).
Pater, then refers to form and colour as a sign of literary art and considers prose as literary art finally leading to the rhythm and musical value in the prose of Cicero, Michelet and Newman. Pater passes on to the artistic quality of a scholar.
It should be noted by the contemporary reader Pater’s reference to female conscience which moves ‘lightly’ and ‘amiably’ compared to the ‘real scholarship’ of men. In spite of the anti-feminist stance of Pater we should note how the scholar handles the material like the ‘sculptor’s marble’. In doing so his medium will diffuse through a general air of responsiveness of refined usage. He works also by the method of exclusions. It is .a matter of mastering the content which indicates the freedom of the artist.
Clutton Brock, in his fine essay ‘What is Art’, has equated this freedom with ‘rhythm’. It is the aesthetic heaven of the artist. Pater thinks that the scholar is an artist. With stunning ease Pater passes on to consider the task of translators. However, his point is that one who is commendable of being translated dictates every word to the translator because he has full command over each word he writes. He had eliminated all unsuitable word.
Consequently, the translator has no autonomy. This is the point, which will not be accepted by modern critics like Walter Benjamin.
Pater encompasses his dialogue of style to the realm of science. As a great scientist deals with ideas of science brings precision to his style, the literary artist should learn the precision and grappling with the rich material he controls. According to Pater the scholar should have ‘historic sense’ and it involves the ability to reject worn-out words and to choose finer edge of words still in use. Passingly he refers to the persnickety scholarship of Tennyson.
In this connection we may refer to Eliot’s critical comment that Tennyson had complete competence over language which should be the model for the literary artist writing prose. Pater invests the scholar with the power of creating the ‘willing intelligence’ of his reader which is close enough to Coleridge’s dictum that the poet can create ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in the reader.
Pater, at one breath refers to Lycidas and Newman’s Idea of a University.
Perceptibly, he gives equal importance to prose and poetry. Pater refers to ‘One beauty’ which is both in poetry and prose. This leads him to refer to the style of ‘Madame Bovary’ and Stendhal’s Le Rouge et Le Noir, (The Scarlet and the Black). These are model styles in the sense that all art consists in the removal of surplusage. He refers to the finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of dust to bring out the shining of the gem and alludes to Michelangelo’s sculpture to suggest the inner connection amongst all the arts.
Pater brings in the question of the necessity of mind in style. All the laws of good writing aim at a unity or identity of the mind. Pater also takes into deliberation logic as an essential principle of good writing. Pater brilliantly brings out the conscious artistic structure which by using childlike simple sentences by the side of long, flowing sentences which one may find in Flaubert, He also hints at the similarity between poetic composition and literary prose whose basic principle is constructive intelligence.
Pater next moves to consider the function of mind in style. Mind and soul are sometimes in conflict. In Blake we find the soul is more significant than mind. His style is exceptional but he is also a sole instance.
The point of theological interest comes next. Theological literature uses soul. The vulgate, the English Bible, The English Bible the English Prayer—Book, the writings of Swedenborg are examples of religious feeling in operation as soul in literature. Pater devotes considerable space for Flaubert whom he considers as the martyr of literary style. Flaubert’s meticulous sense of style is seen in his correspondence to Madame X to whom he writes about his painstaking reading of the Aeneid.
Pater observes, what did Flaubert understand by beauty? The creation of the beauty depended upon superhuman labour for the discovery of the right word or the right phrase. He mentions the unique word, phrase, sentence. Flaubert would say, there are no beautiful thoughts without beautiful forms.
He also takes into consideration harmony and ease in reading aloud a piece of literature. Also, into the mind of the sensitive mind a flood of random sounds, colours penetrate from without to become part of his structure. Flaubert wrote to Madame X with disarming simplicity happy ‘those who have no doubts of themselves! Who lengthen out as the pen runs on’. He reached an almost despairing condition when he exclaimed ‘Art! art! art! bitter deception!’
After this he adds a marvellous analogy, ‘I am like a man whose ear is true’ but who plays falsely on the violin: his fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sounds of which he has the inward sense? The discovery of the right word is instinctive and beyond ‘analysis’.
In Flaubert there was the exact apprehension of what needed to carry the meaning. Pater, at this stage, rather surprisingly refers to ‘inspired translation’ as a condition of good style. It indicated the use of language involving translation from inward to outward.
In the highest literature, beauty is, after all, truth. Truth is accuracy, truth is also expression as the French call the vraie vente. Then Pater considers the seeming baldness of Le Ronge at Le Noir, the wild ornament of Les Miserables and Flaubert’s style as hard as bronze.
Noting innumerable styles he refers to the well—known saying “The style is the man” complex, or simple in his individuality. Pater refers to Flaubert’s commentator who observed styles as many atypical moulds. Pater comments if the style be the man it will be in a real sense ‘impersonal’, perhaps meaning the creator has eliminated himself. The result is for anybody to appreciate. One wonders at the term ‘impersonal’ because Eliot made this word the central element of his article ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent.’
Pater, while discussing Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables refers to Bach and observes that many consider ‘music’ to be a higher art. Pater with marvellous critical tact observes that, though music and literature are apparently different, the art of literature presents to the imagination a range of interests as free as those which music presents ‘through sense’. It is in this sense all arts aspire to the condition of music.
In the closing paragraph of his tome, Pater refers to good art and great art.
Pater considers great art to be great by virtue of his content which the artist has mastered. It is in this sense Thackeray’s ‘Esmond’ is art than ‘Vanity Fair’ : The greatness of literary art such as The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Les Miserables and The English Bible, are great art. He sums up his tome by observing that colour and ‘mystic perfume’ and something of the soul of humanity finds its logical place in the great structure of human life.
Herbert Read has referred to the ‘modernism’ of Pater. In effect, Pater’s tome looks forward to Remy de Gourmont’s ‘Le problem du style’ (The problem of style) where Gourmont also implies style is the man in the sense that he sees the root of style in physiology, that is, the finer the nerve pattern of an artist the better will be his style.
For us, teachers of the English language, this tome is like a Bible. No wonder it finds place in all the different syllabuses of Literary Criticism all over the World.
October 8, 2018
I find Pater so interesting. I don’t always agree with what he says - or understand for that matter - but I learnt so much from him. His prose is very moderate but sometimes takes up in a moment of passion for his topic, and I find that beautiful. But god, he is hard to read. On average, I had to read a paragraph 2 or 3 times to make sure I got it. It’s very challenging, but I think it’s well worth the work!
August 20, 2022
Mostly skimmed, but I read the sections that interested me.
April 27, 2016
It took me over 10 weeks to read a 150 page book because it was so hard to motivate myself to get back to it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews