File:The mirror of the world (1889) (14579305257).jpg

Identifier: mirrorofworld00uzan (find matches)
Title: The mirror of the world
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Uzanne, Octave, 1852-1931 Avril, Paul, b. 1843, ill
Subjects: Manners and customs
Publisher: London : J.C. Nimmo
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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27 THE MIRROR OF THE WORLD. ing the nude, even if it be academical. Compare, for example, thenude of David with the nude of the latter end of the eighteenth century, so mischievous, roguish, and smiling. Oppose to Davids nude the romantic nudities, so languishing and slim, with rather long, radiant necks and dazzling shoidders ; come to the modern and vile nude, with its vicious and pretentious Hesh, provoking andunwholesome, sometimes exceedingly attenuated, as if to exciteold mens passions.—Think out this odd history of the nude inpainting and sculpture, and draw your own conclusions. Art cannot be directed ; it pursues its way and is mercilessly influenced by its time ; it is modelled after the manners which itlowers or raises according to the worth of its adepts;but it is doomed to be wrecked in the decadence of a people that does not l)air or oppose it, that favours it too much in its mediocrity, and encourages its beginnings, making it belie its motto : Ad supera peraspera. In literature there is the same confusion ; a crowd of talented literary men obscures the sun of genius ; the continuous production becomes factory work, whence personality disappears more and more ; the successful queen-bees go and pilfer all the flowers of social life to give us often but sorry honeycombs, of which the wax sticks in our teeth.—Finally, journalism, by modifying our literary manners from top to bottom, has introduced in the already too crowded republic of letters the most ignorant and inefficient men, so that gradually each one thinks himself suited for the thankless profession of letters.— After the déclassés came the so-called impecunious ladies and gentlemen ; publishers opened shops at ever). street - corner,

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