We have the mechanics of our crafts, the tricks of our
trades, so well in hand that we make our books and pictures and music say
what we please. We _use_ our art to gain our own vain ends instead of
being driven _by_ our art to find adequate expression for some great truth
that demands through us a hearing. You have said it all, my friend--you
have summed up the whole situation in the present-day world of creative
art--these people are satisfied. You have given them what they want,
prostituting your art to do it. That's what I have been doing all these
years--giving people what they want. For a price we cater to them--even as
their tailors, and milliners, and barbers. And never again will the world
have a truly great art or literature until men like us--in the divine
selfishness of their, calling--demand, first and last, that they,
_themselves_, be satisfied by the work of their hands."
Going to the easel, he rudely jerked aside the curtain. Involuntarily, the
painter went to stand by his side before the picture.
"Look at it!" cried the novelist. "Look at it in the light of your own
genius! Don't you see its power? Doesn't it tell you what you _could_ do,
if you would? If you couldn't paint a picture, or if you couldn't feel a
picture to be painted, it wouldn't matter.
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