Influence
Toward the end of his life Pater's writings were exercising a considerable influence. The principles of what would be known as the Aesthetic Movement were partly traceable to him, and his effect was particularly felt on one of the movement's leading proponents, Oscar Wilde, who paid tribute to him in The Critic as Artist (1891). Among art critics influenced by Pater were Bernard Berenson, Roger Fry, Kenneth Clark and Richard Wollheim. In literature some of the early Modernists such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens admired his writing"; and Pater's influence can be traced in the subjective, stream-of-consciousness novels of the early 20th century. In literary criticism, Pater's emphasis on subjectivity and on the autonomy of the reader helped prepare the way for the revolutionary approaches to literary studies of the modern era. Among ordinary readers, idealists have found, and always will find inspiration in his desire "to burn always with this hard, gemlike flame", in his pursuit of the "highest quality" in "moments as they pass".
Read more about this topic: Walter Pater
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“To-day ... when material prosperity and well earned ease and luxury are assured facts from a national standpoint, woman’s work and woman’s influence are needed as never before; needed to bring a heart power into this money getting, dollar-worshipping civilization; needed to bring a moral force into the utilitarian motives and interests of the time; needed to stand for God and Home and Native Land versus gain and greed and grasping selfishness.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. But in this water there are countless objects at different depths; and certain influences will give certain kinds of those objects an upward influence which may be intense enough and continue long enough to bring them into the upper visible layer. After the impulse ceases they commence to sink downwards.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)