December 20, 2008
In connection with the remarks on the Drama it should be further said, that this art is the most attractive, naturally, of all. The others speak to man from a distance, through cold and remote associations. The literature of a generation generally addresses but a scanty portion of society; of their contemporaries, history and poetry are confined to a few readers; philosophy and science to still fewer; but the buskined muse comes out impatient from these abstractions, to repeat in a popular and intelligible form the productions of the closet, to copy the manners of high and low life, to act upon the heart; and succeeds, by thus avoiding the haughty port of the Parnassian queens, to draw the multitude by the cords of love. Folly wins where wisdom fails; and the policy of adding to our attractions even at the cost of some wit, is seldom repented. This is the excellence of the drama which pretends to nothing more than to be a true picture of life.
Emerson - Journals Volume I
Posted by amin at December 20, 2008 4:39 PM