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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of
the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to
degenerate into mere FEUX-DE-JOIE of literary tricking. The
other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible
colours and visible sounds.
This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to
remind us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict
of the critics. All representative art, which can be said to
live, is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about
which we quarrel is a matter purely of externals. It is no
especial cultus of nature and veracity, but a mere whim of
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