I ought only to write when I feel as normal as I do
now." And for some minutes he remained motionless, looking at his boots.
Then there crept into his mind an uncomfortable thought. "But have I
ever written anything without feeling a little-abnormal, at the time?
Have I ever even felt inclined to write anything, until my emotions had
been unduly excited, my brain immoderately stirred, my senses unusually
quickened, or my spirit extravagantly roused? Never! Alas, never! I am
then a miserable renegade, false to the whole purpose of my being--nor do
I see the slightest hope of becoming a better man, a less unworthy
artist! For I literally cannot write without the stimulus of some
feeling exaggerated at the expense of other feelings. What has been in
the past will be in the future: I shall never be taking up my pen when I
feel my comfortable and normal self never be satisfying that self which
is the Public!" And he thought: "I am lost. For, to satisfy that normal
self, to give the Public what it wants, is, I am told, and therefore must
believe, what all artists exist for. AEschylus in his 'Choephorae' and
his 'Prometheus'; Sophocles in his 'OEdipus Tyrannus'; Euripides when he
wrote 'The Trojan Women,' 'Medea,'--and 'Hippolytus'; Shakespeare in his
'Leer'; Goethe in his 'Faust'; Ibsen in his 'Ghosts' and his 'Peer Gynt';
Tolstoy in 'The Powers of Darkness'; all--all in those great works, must
have satisfied their most comfortable and normal selves; all--all must
have given to the average human being, to the Public, what it wants; for
to do that, we know, was the reason of their existence, and who shall say
those noble artists were not true to it? That is surely unthinkable.
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