Synge and the Ireland of his Time: V
By William Butler Yeats
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V
Taylor always spoke with confidence though he was no determined man, being easily flattered or jostled from his way; and this, putting as it were his fiery heart into his mouth made him formidable. And I have noticed that all those who speak the thoughts of many, speak confidently, while those who speak their own thoughts are hesitating and timid, as though they spoke out of a mind and body grown sensitive to the edge of
bewilderment among many impressions. They speak to us that we may give
them certainty, by seeing what they have seen; and so it is, that
enlargement of experience does not come from those oratorical thinkers,
or from those decisive rhythms that move large numbers of men, but from
writers that seem by contrast as feminine as the soul when it explores in
Blake's picture the recesses of the grave, carrying its faint lamp
trembling and astonished; or as the Muses who are never pictured as
one-breasted amazons, but as women needing protection. Indeed, all art
which appeals to individual man and awaits the confirmation of his senses
and his reveries, seems when arrayed against the moral zeal, the confident
logic, the ordered proof of journalism, a trifling, impertinent,
vexatious thing, a tumbler who has unrolled his carpet in the way of a
marching army.
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