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William Sharp

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The Sevenfold Need in Literature

I.  Idea.
II. Technique.
III. Spontaneity of Impression; Fidelity of Observation; Sincerity in   Expression, which together constitute the signature of Truth, whether actual or imaginative.
IV. Judgment. (Deliberation) — which is the spiritual instinct of Symmetry, as it is the intellectual expression of Taste.
V. Emotional Power. Rhythm. Emotion.
VI.     Invention. 1.—As formative energy.
                           2.— As synthetical vision.
VII. The Achievement of Beauty.

                                                                WILLIAM SHARP.

 

 

NOTE by Mrs William Sharp:
Among the many unfulfilled schemes of work planned by William Sharp was a volume of Studies in Literature, to have been called In the Garden of Letters, prefaced by an essay on “The Literary Ideal” as he conceived it after many years of thought and study. One or two of the studies were written, but the book was not completed, nor was the prefatory essay ever written. For it, however, there is, in one of the author’s note books, a sketch, or plan, entitled The Sevenfold Need in Literature, which he intended to use as a groundwork for elaboration. It is now printed above in its bald suggestiveness. And as supplement to it, I have taken from the same note book the following statement of his idea of what Criticism as a fine art should be:

“When I speak of Criticism I have in mind not merely the more or less deft use of commentary or indication, but one of the several ways of literature, and in itself a rare and fine art: the marriage of science that knows and of spirit that discerns.

“The basis of Criticism is imagination: its spiritual quality is simplicity, its intellectual distinction is balance.”

Page(s) 9

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