who had their personages speak in the rhythms of metrical language.  Every iambic verse is a deviation from reality.  If they had tried to imitate nature Antigone and Hamlet would have spoken the prose of daily life.  Does a beautiful arch or dome or tower of a building imitate any part of reality?  Is its architectural value dependent upon the similarity to nature?  Or does the melody or harmony in music offer an imitation of the surrounding world?

Wherever we examine without prejudice the mental effects of true works of art in literature or music, in painting or sculpture, in decorative arts or architecture, we find that the central esthetic value is directly opposed to the spirit of imitation.  A work of art may and must start from something which awakens in us the interests of reality and which contains traits of reality, and to that extent it cannot avoid some imitation.  But it becomes art just in so far as it overcomes reality, stops imitating and leaves the imitated reality behind it.  It is artistic just in so far as it does not imitate reality but changes the world, selects from it special features for new purposes, remodels the world and is through this truly creative.  To imitate the world is a mechanical process; to transform the world so that it becomes a thing of beauty is the purpose of art.  The highest art may be furthest removed from reality.

We have not even the right to say that this process of selection from reality means that we keep the beautiful elements of it and simply omit and eliminate the ugly ones.  This again is not in the least characteristic of art, however often the popular mind may couple this superficial idea with that other one, that art consists of imitation.  It is not true that the esthetic value depends upon the beauty of the selected material.  The men and women whom Rembrandt painted were not beautiful persons.  The ugliest woman may be the subject of a most beautiful painting.  The so-called beautiful landscape may, of course, be material for a beautiful landscape painting, but the chances are great that such a pretty vista will attract the dilettante and not the real artist who knows that the true value of his painting is independent of the prettiness of the model.  He knows that a muddy country road or a dirty city street or a trivial little pond may be the material for immortal pictures.  He who writes literature does not select scenes of life which are beautiful in themselves, scenes which we would have liked to live through, full of radiant happiness and joy; he does not eliminate from his picture of life that which is disturbing to the peace of the soul, repellant and ugly and immoral.  On the contrary, all the great works of literature have shown us dark shades of life beside the light ones.  They have spoken of unhappiness and pain as often as of joy.  We have suffered with our poets, and in so far as the musical composer expresses the emotions of life the great symphonies have been full of pathos and tragedy.  True art has always been selection, but never selection of the beautiful elements in outer reality.