AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS
writer, I do not seem to know what the question means. Or rather,
I do see that it must mean something, but almost any answer I can
put up or give remains almost totally meaningless to me: bluff or
patter. The question-put by an outside person- makes a crook of
me, and I resent that. I feel inclined to say: "Ask no questions and
you'll be told no lies."
But, of course, apart from politeness, one cannot tell intelligent
people to go
to
hell; and the askers of that particular question are
intelligent people, who are within their rights. At least I take it they
are within their rights: I cannot say with authority what these are, as
I do not know exactly what is involved in the being of a full-time
intelligent person. I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a
certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with
me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the
needs of the <;lay, the non-writing day. But it seems to me that I sel–
dom purely
think.
If
I wrote less- 1 don't mean quantitively, but
with less intensity-! might think more; if I thought more I might
write less.
Obviously intelligent people are on the increase: education, I
suppose. This sounds supercilious. I do not feel supercilious, but I
feel slightly frightened- the intelligent people seem to be closing in
on the artist like the rats on the selfish bishop who hoarded corn in
famine time. We all know what happened to the bishop; they picked
his
bones white. The rats were in the right; at any rate they were
the instruments of vengeance. The bishop was in the wrong; lre had
been unsocial. But really nobody could call- and as far as I know
nobody does call-you or me Bishop Hattos: we don't hoard. What–
ever comes in goes out again. We are not, either, bolted and barred
granaries; we are combinations of a mill and a bakery. So I really
must get rid of that original rat nightmare, and the idea of that
closing-in circle of thousands of avid glittering eyes. The worst it boils
down to, really, is that people these days have a mania for being
shown round factories.
In fact, I suppose there never has been a time (or has there?)
when the public in general, at any rate the Anglo-Saxon public, has
been kinder to the ·artist or more conscious of him. That's what intel–
ligence is doing: breeding this clement air. The very least the artist
can do is to come across and be rather less taciturn and farouche.
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