He did not take counsel of himself and say: “Go to, let us describe the traitors frozen up to their necks in a dismal lake, for that will be most terrible.” But the picture of the lake, in all its iciness, with the haggard faces staring (20) out from its glassy crust, came unbidden before his mind with such intense reality that, for the rest of his life, he could not look at a frozen pool without a shudder of horror. It shows, too, how Dante composed his poem. When Dante, in imagination, arrived at the lowest (15) circle of hell, where traitors like Judas and Brutus are punished, he came upon a terrible frozen lake, which, he says, “Ever makes me shudder at the sight of frozen pools.” I have always considered this line a marvelous instance of the intensity of Dante’s imagination. It is far different with the artistic genius, who, without stopping to think, sees the picture and hears the symphony with the eyes and ears of imagination, and paints and plays merely what he has seen and heard. We therefore say ordinarily that he does not create, but only constructs and combines. ![]() (10)When he writes a piece of music, he first decides that this phrase expresses joy, and that phrase disappointment, and the other phrase disgust, and he composes accordingly. When he paints a picture, he first thinks how certain persons would look under certain given circumstances, and paints them accordingly. When the critical genius writes a poem or a novel, he constructs his plot and his characters in conformity to some prearranged theory, or with a view to illustrate some favorite doctrine. The former sees wholes, where the latter sees aggregatesĬorresponding with these two kinds of genius, there are two classes of artistic productions. ![]() The former sees a tree in all its glory, where the latter sees an (5) exogen with a pair of cotyledons. The former sees things synthetically, in all their natural complexity the latter pulls things to pieces analytically and scrutinizes their relations. The former is distinguished by a concrete, the latter by an abstract, imagination. There are two contrasted kinds of genius, the poetical and the philosophical or, to speak yet more generally, the artistic and the critical. This passage, written by John Fiske in the late 1800s, offers the author’s perspective on what he says are two kinds of genius. As you form your answers, be sure to base them on what is stated in the passage and introduction, or the inferences you can make from the material. Read the passage below and the questions that follow it.
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