The dance of life / Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dance of life / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    counter of a word, with its original meaning all effaced, and even its secondary meaning now only just visible. That, if those folk who condemn cliches only had the intelligence to perceive it, is a significant fact. You cannot avoid using cliches, not even in the very act of condemning them. They include, if we only look keenly enough, nearly the whole of the language, almost every separate word. If one could avoid them one would be unintelligible. Even those common phrases which it is peculiarly meet to call counters are not to be absolutely condemned. They have become so common to use because so fit to use, as Baudelaire understood when he spoke of “ the immense depth of thought in vulgar locutions.” 1 There is only one rule to follow here,— and it is simply the rule in every part of art,—to know what one is doing, not to go sheep-like with the flock, ignorantly, unthinkingly, heedlessly, but to mould speech to expression the most truly one knows how. If, indeed, we are seeking clarity and the precise ex¬ pression of thought there is nothing we may not do if only we know how to do it—but that if ” might well be in capitals. One who has spent the best part of his life in trying to write things that had not 1 It is interesting to note that another aristocratic master of speech had also made just the same observation. Landor puts into the mouth of Horne Tooke the words : “ No expression can become a vulgarism which has not a broad foundation. The language of the vulgar hath its source in physics : in known, comprehended, and operative things.” At the same time Landor was as stern a judge as Baudelaire of the random use of clichis. No doubt, in letters as in life, it is easier for the aristocrat to associate with the plebeian than for the average middle-class person, fearful lest he himself be taken for plebeian.