THE WORK OF ART
43
mere show of reverence; we expect you once again to wrest from them a
fresh and significant asptct.
Down underneath our common volition, a thousand differences are at
play. But that volition
is_-
and when we shall be no longer anything more
than historical phases of our time, when all those differences shall have
disappeared in the fraternal embrace of death, we would still that the
spirit which, in spite of all our weaknesses and all our bickerings, has
brought us together here should be the thing which in the end will work
a new metamorphosis on time's wrinkled visage.
For every work of art becomes a symbol and a sign, but not always
of the same thing. A work of art implies the possibility of a reincarnation.
And the world of history can only lose its meaning in the contemporary
will of man.
It
is for each of us, in his own field and through his own
efforts, and for the sake of all those who are engaged in a quest af them–
selves, to recreate the phantom heritage which lies about us, to open the
eyes of all the sightless statues, to turn hopes into will and revolts intO
revolutions, and to shape thereby, out of the age-old sorraws of man, a new
and glowing consciousness of humankind.
Translated from the French
by
SAMUEL PUTNAM.
