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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: of effect that such rhythmical life produces. We, in fact, have
made writing a definite mode of composition, and have treated it as
a form of elaborate design. The Greeks, upon the other hand,
regarded writing simply as a method of chronicling. Their test was
always the spoken word in its musical and metrical relations. The
voice was the medium, and the ear the critic. I have sometimes
thought that the story of Homer's blindness might be really an
artistic myth, created in critical days, and serving to remind us,
not merely that the great poet is always a seer, seeing less with
the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the soul, but
that he is a true singer also, building his song out of music,
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