FIELD AND STUDY 



act. I had rather read "Macbeth" than to have 

 been present at the scenes upon which it is founded. 

 The difference between a photograph and a 

 painting is an important difference, not so much a 

 difference of fact as a difference of spirit and atmos- 

 phere. The artist does something to his facts, the 

 photographer does not. Facts that have passed 

 through the personality of an artist meet with a 

 change; a touch of the ideal has been added; there 

 is a novelty, a beguiling strangeness; the spirit of 

 romance has breathed upon it and, without blurring 

 its realism, has imparted a charm, which the reality 

 did not have. The literary artist goes to nature or 

 to human life for his material, but unless he does 

 something to that material, something analogous 

 to that which the bee does to the nectar which she 

 gathers from the flowers before she stores it as 

 honey, it will be unworthy the name of literature. 

 It may have value as science, or as statistics, but 

 not as literature. The bee concentrates the sweet 

 water which she gathers from the flowers and adds 

 a minute drop from her own body in the shape of 

 formic acid before she achieves honey. The writer 

 who goes to the field or the street or the mart or 

 the trenches for his subject-matter will not achieve 

 literature by merely a faithful transcript of what he 

 sees and feels — his matter must be touched to the 

 finer issues of the imagination. Much of that which 

 passes for realism in current literature is merely the 

 236 



