Each mind is a weapon loaded
to the muzzle with will. The very scullions have genius.' A steady
course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our
acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of
fervent fiery-coloured existence. They dominate us, and defy scepticism.
One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de
Rubempre. It is a grief from which I have never been able completely to
rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when
I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was. He created
life, he did not copy it. I admit, however, that he set far too high a
value on modernity of form, and that, consequently, there is no book of
his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with _Salammbo_ or
_Esmond_, or _The Cloister and the Hearth_, or the _Vicomte de
Bragelonne_.--_The Decay of Lying_.
LIFE THE FALLACIOUS MODEL
Art begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative and
pleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent.
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