DOI Artikel:
Beerbohm, Max: A defence of cosmetics
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20196#0078
72 A Defence of Cosmetics
their faces rather against the attempt to justify inferior dramatic
art by the Subvention of a quite alien art like painting, of any art,
indeed, whose sphere is only surface. Let those, again, who sneer,
so rightly, at the " painted anecdotes of the Academy," censure
equally the writers who trespass on painter's ground. It is a
proclaimed sin that a painter should concern himself with a good
little girl's affection for a Scotch greyhound, or the keen enjoymenl
of their port by elderly gentlemen of the early 'forties. Yet, for a
painter to prod the soul with his paint-brush is no worse than for
a novelist to refuse to dip under the surface, and the fashion of
avoiding a psychological study of grief by stating that the owner's
hair turned white in a single night, or of shame by mentioning a
sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may
be. But ! But with the universal use of cosmetics and the
consequent secernment of soul and surface, which, at the risk of
irritating a reader, I must again insist upon, all those old properties
that went to bolster up theordinary novel—the trembling lips, the
flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of
biting the moustache—aye and the hectic spot of red on either
cheek—will be made spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by
Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to discern. The same
spirit that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as it grinned at
the wondrous painter of mist and river, and now sends him
sprawling for the pearls that Meredith dived for in the deep
waters of romance.
Indeed the revival of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an
influence, conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost
to mutter against that inexorable law by which Artifice must
perish from time to time. That such branches of painting as the
staining of glass or the illuminating of manuscripts should fall into
disuse seems, in comparison, so likely ; these were esoteric arts ;
they
their faces rather against the attempt to justify inferior dramatic
art by the Subvention of a quite alien art like painting, of any art,
indeed, whose sphere is only surface. Let those, again, who sneer,
so rightly, at the " painted anecdotes of the Academy," censure
equally the writers who trespass on painter's ground. It is a
proclaimed sin that a painter should concern himself with a good
little girl's affection for a Scotch greyhound, or the keen enjoymenl
of their port by elderly gentlemen of the early 'forties. Yet, for a
painter to prod the soul with his paint-brush is no worse than for
a novelist to refuse to dip under the surface, and the fashion of
avoiding a psychological study of grief by stating that the owner's
hair turned white in a single night, or of shame by mentioning a
sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may
be. But ! But with the universal use of cosmetics and the
consequent secernment of soul and surface, which, at the risk of
irritating a reader, I must again insist upon, all those old properties
that went to bolster up theordinary novel—the trembling lips, the
flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of
biting the moustache—aye and the hectic spot of red on either
cheek—will be made spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by
Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to discern. The same
spirit that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as it grinned at
the wondrous painter of mist and river, and now sends him
sprawling for the pearls that Meredith dived for in the deep
waters of romance.
Indeed the revival of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an
influence, conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost
to mutter against that inexorable law by which Artifice must
perish from time to time. That such branches of painting as the
staining of glass or the illuminating of manuscripts should fall into
disuse seems, in comparison, so likely ; these were esoteric arts ;
they