In some cases where there is lack of intelligence in the lover and
dissimulation in the object of his love, it may be so. But even a poem or
a picture will often not reveal its beauty except by the expenditure of
time and study. It is foolish to expect that the secret beauty of a human
person will reveal itself more easily. The lover is an artist, an artist
who constructs an image, it is true, but only by patient and concentrated
attention to nature; he knows the defects of his image, probably better
than anyone, but he knows also that art lies, not in the avoidance of
defects, but in the realization of those traits which swallow up defects
and so render them non-existent. A great artist, Rodin, after a life spent
in the study of Nature, has declared that for art there is no ugliness in
Nature. "I have arrived at this belief by the study of Nature," he said;
"I can only grasp the beauty of the soul by the beauty of the body, but
some day one will come who will explain what I only catch a glimpse of and
will declare how the whole earth is beautiful, and all human beings
beautiful. I have never been able to say this in sculpture so well as I
wish and as I feel it affirmed within me. For poets Beauty has always
been some particular landscape, some particular woman; but it should be
all women, all landscapes.
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