4 quotations linked to Appreciations, with an Essay on Style by or associated with Walter Pater, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Literary form, structure, differentiation, concentration, Wordsworth, reading, aesthetic training and disciplined critical attention.
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“in literary as in all other art, structure is all-important”
Pater treats structure as a governing discipline: a work should be conceived as a whole whose parts remain related to its beginning, direction and intended end.
Source note: Appreciations, essay “Style”; Project Gutenberg #4037. The surrounding sentence develops the metaphor of an architectural conception of a literary work.
“makes the reading of Wordsworth an excellent sort of training towards the things of art and poetry.”
Pater presents sustained engagement with a difficult poet as a form of aesthetic training, implying that taste and discrimination can be developed through repeated attentive reading.
Source note: Appreciations, essay on Wordsworth; Project Gutenberg #4037. The sentence refers specifically to the contrast Pater perceives between higher and lower qualities in Wordsworth’s poetry.
“a habit of reading between the lines, a faith in the effect of concentration and collectedness of mind in the right appreciation of poetry”
Pater describes demanding reading as training in concentration and inference, where appreciation grows through disciplined attention instead of quick surface consumption.
Source note: Appreciations, essay on Wordsworth; Project Gutenberg #4037. Pater is describing the kind of training he believes Wordsworth can produce in receptive readers.
“all progress of mind consists for the most part in differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object into its component aspects”
Pater describes intellectual progress as learning to distinguish parts within what initially seems confused, a method that makes clearer categories and more exact judgment possible.
Source note: Appreciations, essay “Style”; Project Gutenberg #4037. The immediate example concerns distinctions between prose, verse and poetry.