静寂

// "I had all my life wanted to do something in the style of legend, which is absolutely the reverse of dramatic treatment. Since I first saw the Purvis de Chavannes frescoes of the life of St Geneviève in my student days, I have wished that I could try something like that in prose; something without accent, with none of the artificial elements of composition. In the Golden Legend the martyrdoms of the saints are no more dwelt on than are the trivial incidents of their lives; it is as though all human experiences, measured against one supreme spiritual experience, were of about the same importance. The essence of such writing is not to hold the note - not use an incident for all there is in it - but to touch and pass on. I felt that such writing would be a kind of discipline in these days when the 'situation' is made to count so much in writing, when the general tendency is to force things up." – Willa Cather