"Much (not all!) French art, for centuries, has prized subtlety & delicacy of touch, simplicity & clarity of utterance, refinement, polish, etc. "
While absolutely appreciating and accepting most of what Evan Blackmore writes on the matter it occurs to me that the French public might not have been quite so discriminating in taste as were French artists. How else to account for the immense popularity of writers like Balzac, Zola and Charles Paul de Kock and the wholesale embracing of the "Oh, la la" spirit of the operettas by honorary French composer Jacques Offenbach ?
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