We must give them up because they mean time, and
time is one of the things that the artist cannot throw away. Of course
the artist must not lose his hold on life; but if he is working in a
reflective medium, it is his friendships that help him, and not his
acquaintances. He must learn to be glad to be alone, for it is in
solitude that an idea works itself out, very often quite unconsciously,
by a sort of secret gestation. How often have I found that to put an
idea in the mind and to leave it there, even if one does not
consciously meditate upon it, is sufficient to clothe the naked thought
with a body of appropriate utterance, when it comes to the birth. But
casual social intercourse, the languid interchange of conventional
talk, mere gregariousness, must be eschewed by an artist, for the
simple reason that his temptation will be to expend his force in
entering into closer relations with the casual, and possibly
unintelligent, person than the necessities of the situation warrant.
The artist is so impatient of dulness, so greedy of fineness, in all
his relations, that he is apt to subject himself to a wasteful strain
in talking to unperceptive and unappreciative persons. It is not that
he desires to appear brilliant; it is that he is so intolerant of
tedium that he sacrifices himself to fatiguing efforts in trying to
strike a spark out of a dull stone.
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