Few of us
are fortunate enough to accomplish anything that was in the least
worth doing, so we fall back on the arid philosophy that it is
effort alone that counts.
Luckily--or suicide would be the rule rather than the exception
for artists--the long process of disillusionment is broken by
hours when even the most self-critical feel nobly and indubitably
great; and this is the only reward that most artists ever have for
their labours, if we set a higher price on art than money. On the
whole, I am inclined to think that the artist is fully rewarded,
for the common man can have no conception of the Joy that is to be
found in belonging, though but momentarily and illusively, to the
aristocracy of genius. To find the just word for all our emotions,
to realise that our most trivial thought is illimitably creative,
to feel that it is our lot to keep life's gladdest promises, to
see the great souls of men and women, steadfast in existence as
stars in a windless pool--these, indeed, are no ordinary
pleasures. Moreover, these hours of our illusory greatness endow
us in their passing with a melancholy that is not tainted with
bitteress. We have nothing to regret; we are in truth the richer
for our rare adventure. We have been permitted to explore the
ultimate possibilities of our nature, and if we might not keep
this newly-discovered territory, at least we did not return from
our travels with empty hands. Something of the glamour lingers,
something perhaps of the wisdom, and it is with a heightened
passion, a fiercer enthusiasm, that we set ourselves once more to
our life-long task of chalking pink salmon and pinker sunsets on
the pavements of the world.
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