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Article: Henry James and the Lust of the Eyes: Thirteen Artists in His Work.
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- December 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In that select company of writers for whom the visible world thrillingly exists--Goethe, Ruskin, Pater, Peter Ackroyd, Bruce Chatwin--Henry James has an eminent place. Goethe's admission in Dichtung und Warheit might have been made by his American counterpart: "The eye was, above all others, the organ by which I seized the world. I had, from childhood, lived among painters, and had accustomed myself to look at objects, as they did, with reference to art... Wherever I looked, I saw a picture." All of James's writings--his fiction, his essays, his travel sketches--reveal the passion for things visible, reveal a "lust of the eyes," to use his own expression, which Adeline R. ...