In saying this I know that I am confessing myself to be a frank
improvisatore, and where such art fails, as mine often fails, is in
a lack of the power of concentration and revision, which is the
last and greatest necessity of high art. But I owe to it the
happiest and brightest experiences of life, to which no other
pleasure is even dimly comparable. Easy writing, it is said, makes
hard reading; but is it true that hard writing ever makes easy
reading?
The end of the matter would seem to be that if the creative impulse
is very strong in a man, it will probably find its way out. If
ordinary routine-work destroys it, it is probably not very robust;
yet authorship is not to be recommended as a profession, because
the prizes are few, the way hard, the disappointments poignant and
numerous; and though there are perhaps few greater benefactors to
the human race than beautiful and noble writers, yet there are many
natures both noble and beautiful who would like to approach life
that way, but who, from lack of the complete artistic equipment,
from technical deficiencies, from failure in craftsmanship, must
find some other way of enriching the blood of the world.
XIV
HERB MOLY AND HEARTSEASE
1
When Odysseus was walking swiftly, with rage in his heart, through
the island of Circe, to find out what had befallen his companions,
he would have assuredly gone to his doom in the great stone house
of the witch, the smoke of which went up among the thickets, if
Hermes had not met him.
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