In every art there is a medium, and the poet, like
all other artists, learns from the poets of the past how to use his
medium. Often he does this unconsciously by reading them for delight. He
first becomes a poet because he loves the poetry of others. And the
painter becomes a painter because he loves the pictures of others. Each
of them is apt to begin--
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
So the artist insists to himself upon the value of hard work. He is
impatient of all the talk about inspiration; for he knows that, though
nothing can be done without it, it comes only with command of the
medium. And this command, like all craftsmanship, is traditional, handed
down from one generation to another. Any kind of expression in this
imperfect world is as difficult as virtue itself. For expression, like
virtue, is a kind of transcendence. In it the natural man rises above
his animal functions, above living so that he may continue to live; he
triumphs over those animal functions which hold him down to the earth as
incessantly as the attraction of gravity itself. But, like the airman,
he can triumph only by material means, and by means gradually perfected
in the practice of others. Yet there is always this difference, that in
mechanics anyone can learn to make use of an invention; but in the
higher activities, invention, if it becomes mechanical, destroys the
activity itself, even in the original inventor.
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