Literature is at once the most intimate and the most articulate of the

Literature is at once the most intimate and the most articulate of the arts. It cannot impart its effect through the senses or the nerves as the other arts can; it is beautiful only through the intelligence; it is the mind speaking to the mind; until it has been put into absolute terms, of an invariable significance, it does not exist at all. It cannot awaken this emotion in one, and that in another; if it fails to express precisely the meaning of the author, if it does not say him, it says nothing, and is nothing. So that when a poet has put his heart, much or little, into a poem, and sold it to a magazine, the scandal is greater than when a painter has sold a picture to a patron, or a sculptor has modeled a statue to order. These are artists less articulate and less intimate than the poet; they are more exterior to their work; they are less personally in it; they part with less of themselves in the dicker. It does not change the nature of the case to say that Tennyson and Longfellow and Emerson sold the poems in which they couched the most mystical messages their genius was charged to bear mankind. They submitted to the conditions which none can escape; but that does not justify the conditions, which are nonetheless the conditions of hucksters because they are imposed upon poets. If it will serve to make my meaning a little clearer, we will suppose that a poet has been crossed in love, or has suffered some real sorrow, like the loss of a wife or child. He pours out his broken heart in verse that shall bring tears of sacred sympathy from his readers, and an editor pays him a hundred dollars for the right of bringing his verse to their notice. It is perfectly true that the poem was not written for these dollars, but it is perfectly true that it was sold for them.

1. The author implies that writers are

(A) incompetent in business.
(B) not sufficiently paid for their work.
(C) greedy.
(D) hucksters.
(E) profiting against their will.


2. A possible title that best expresses the meaning of the passage would be

(A) “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business”
(B) “Literature and the Arts”
(C) “Progress in Literature”
(D) “Poets and Writers”
(E) “The State of the Arts”


3. By accepting payment for works of literature or art, its creators are

I. writing and painting solely for monetary gain.
II. justifying the practice of art.
III. exchanging their work for remuneration.

(A) I only
(B) III only
(C) I and II only
(D) II and III only
(E) I, II, and III


4. The author of the passage proposes that writers and artists

(A) make the best out of a bad situation.
(B) attempt to induce society to change its values.
(C) withhold their work until they gain recognition.
(D) adopt the principles of commercialism.
(E) adopt the value system of society.