Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/92

 8o RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. iHERE still survive scattered over the world a few critics no longer young, alas ! who consider that form in art is a thing of importance, that the matter life presents to any art, be it poetry, painting or music, must be transmitted, or indeed can only be transmitted to society, by means of the form in which it is cast. To these persons futurism, cubism and other barbarisms of modernity have nothing to say. In this place I have only to treat of literature, and I would draw attention to the valuable service rendered to the criticism of literature as an art by F. Baldensperger in his new book, c La Litterature : creation, succes, duree.' He begins by pointing out that language is the material in which the c fait litteraire ' is expressed, and that there are two tendencies, as the poles apart, in the way in which language is employed by human beings ; one has for objeft expression, the other intelligibility. The first tries to reproduce a par- ticular aspeft of things in the best possible way, while the second seeks to interpret ordinary ideas in the most convenient fashion. It is these two tendencies, expression and formulas, that influence and exist in literary forms, and the early chapters of the book show how they a6t on each other, and how they are both necessary to the art of litera-