Practically all artists of note are necessarily humane. Van Wyck Brooks explains why:
It is a violation of some deep instinct in us to separate the aesthetic from the humane. . . . When Abraham Lincoln in his youth . . . saved a fawn’s life by scaring it away from a rifle, he was acting in line with the discipline that requires writers to value life on pain of losing the power to recreate it. (Quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 257.)
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For a brief biography of Van Wyck Brooks, click here.
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