When a thing is supreme there is nothing to be said.
Nine
Ivan Sergeïtch Turgenev’s Birthday
The author of a miracle like On the Eve may be born, but he is also made. In the matter of condensation alone Turgenev was unique among the great literary artificers. He could say more in a chapter of two thousand words than any other novelist that ever lived. What he accomplishes again and again in a book of sixty thousand words, Tolstoi could not have accomplished under a quarter of a million.
Ten
Fine taste in fiction is almost as rare among novelists as among the general public.
Eleven
I have never once produced any literary work without a preliminary incentive quite other than the incentive of ebullient imagination. I have never “wanted to write,” until the extrinsic advantages of writing had presented themselves to me.
Twelve
Beauty is strangely various. There is the beauty of light and joy and strength exulting; but there is also the beauty of shade, of sorrow and sadness, and of humility oppressed. The spirit of the sublime dwells not only in the high and remote; it shines unperceived amid all the usual meannesses of our daily existence.