The distinction between the two types of art is a difference of density rather than of species. In the same number of bars of Beet...hoven and Sousa, there is, in Beethoven, more of the essence of music, giving a thicker, more intense effect likely to alienate the unfamiliar listener by "boring" him, just as the palate accustomed to that richer food is bored by the thinness of the popular tune. The feeling that this is not the only difference is due to the fact that as an art grows more and more complex and dense, the number of relations among simple elements increases until those relations look like extraordinarily refined experiences denied to the common herd. Yet there is no real barrier to be leaped over by an effort of genius between understanding a "vulgar" dance tune and a Beethoven symphony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dull sublunary lovers' love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit... Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Interassured of the mind, Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are:MSpirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin!--But the ...definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Slim Woman, all your ample parts... have become thin and even the thin ones have reached the limit of thinness. What's the use of anger here?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »