"
"I believe you!"
"Yes; but he isn't born nowadays. He belongs to the ages of inspired
innocence and inspired energy. We are not inspired; we are not
energetic; we are not innocent. We're deliberate and languid and
corrupt. And we can't reproduce by our vile mechanical process what
only exists by the grace of nature and of God. Look at the modern
individual--for all their cant and rant, is there a more contemptible
object on the face of this earth? Don't talk to me of individuality."
"It's given us one or two artists--"
"Artists? Yes, artists by the million; and no Art. To produce Art, the
artist's individuality must conform to the Absolute."
Jewdwine in ninety-two was a man of enormous utterances and noble
truths. With him all artistic achievements stood or fell according to
the canons of the _Prolegomena to AEsthetics_. Therefore in ninety-two
his conversation was not what you would call diverting. Yet it made
you giddy; his ideas kept on circulating round and round the same icy,
invisible pole. Rickman, in describing the interview afterwards, said
he thought he had caught a cold in the head talking to Jewdwine; his
intellect seemed to be sitting in a thorough draught.
"And if the artist has a non-conforming devil in him? If he's the sort
of genius who can't and won't conform? Strikes me the poor old
Absolute's got to climb down."
"If he's a genius--he generally isn't--he'll know that he'll express
himself best by conforming.
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