Reduced To A Miserable Mass Level, The

And Then The Sly Arch-lover That He Was, He Said The Subtlest Thing Of All: That The Lover Was Nearer The Divine Than The Beloved; For The God Was In The One But Not In The Other - Perhaps The Tenderest, Most Mocking Thought That Ever Was Thought, And Source Of All The Guile And Secret Bliss The Lover Knows.

It Is Remarkable How A Man Cannot Summarize His Thoughts In Even The Most General Sort Of Way Without Betraying Himself Completely, Without Putting His Whole Self Into It, Quite Unawares, Presenting As If In Allegory The Basic Themes And Problems Of His Life.

To Allow Only The Kind Of Art That The Average Man Understands Is The Worst Small-mindedness And The Murder Of Mind And Spirit. It Is My Conviction That The Intellect Can Be Certain That In Doing What Most Disconcerts The Crowd, In Pursuing The Most Daring, Unconventional Advances And Explorations, It Will In Some Highly Indirect Fashion Serve Man - And In The Long Run, All Men.

There Were Profound Reasons For His Attachment To The Sea: He Loved It Because As A Hardworking Artist He Needed Rest, Needed To Escape From The Demanding Complexity Of Phenomena And Lie Hidden On The Bosom Of The Simple And Tremendous; Because Of A Forbidden Longing Deep Within Him That Ran Quite Contrary To His Life's Task And Was For That Very Reason Seductive, A Longing For The Unarticulated And Immeasurable, For Eternity, For Nothingness. To Rest In The Arms Of Perfection Is The Desire Of Any Man Intent Upon Creating Excellence; And Is Not Nothingness A Form Of Perfection?

Solitude Gives Birth To The Original In Us, To Beauty Unfamiliar And Perilous - To Poetry. But Also, It Gives Birth To The Opposite: To The Perverse, The Illicit, The Absurd.