The spark is perhaps struck, but he
parts with his vital force in striking it. He will be apt to be
reproached with being eremitical, self-absorbed, unsociable,
fastidious; but he must not care for that, because the essence of his
work is to cultivate relations of sympathy with people whose faces he
may never see, and he must save his talk, so to speak, for his books.
With his friends it is different, for talking to congenial people with
whom one is familiar is a process at once stimulating and
tranquillising, and it is at such moments that ideas take swift and
brilliant shape.
Those who may read these words will be apt to think that it is a
selfish business after all; yet that is only because so many people
consider the life of the writer an otiose and unnecessary life; but the
sacrifices of which I speak are only those that all men who follow an
absorbing profession have to make--barristers, politicians, physicians,
men of business. No one complains if they seclude themselves at certain
hours. Of course, if a writer finds that general society makes no
demands upon his nervous force, but is simply a recreation, there is no
reason why he should not take that recreation; though I have known men
who just missed being great writers because they could not resist the
temptation of general society.
The conclusion of the matter is that an artist must cultivate a strict
sense of responsibility; if he has a certain thing to say, he must say
it with all his force; and he must be content with a secret and silent
influence, an impersonal brotherliness, deep and inner relations of
soul with soul, that may never express themselves in glance or gesture,
in hand-clasp or smile, but which, for all that, are truer and more
permanent relations than word or gesture or close embrace can give; a
marriage of souls, a bodiless union.
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