THE OBSCURITY OF THE POET
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earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be fas–
tidious, to be polite even, nor make the talented artist consider himself
obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the ad–
miration aroused by which will matter little to his body devoured by
worms, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much knowledge
and skill by an artist who must for ever remain unknown and is barely
identified under the name Vermeer. All these obligations which have
not their sanction in our present life seem to helong to a different
world, founded upon kindness, scrupulosity, self-sacrifice, a world en–
tirely different from this, which we leave in order to be born into this
world, before pcrhaps returning to the other to live once again beneath
the sway of those unknown laws which we have obeyed because we bore
their precepts in our hearts, knowing not whose hand had traced them
there-those laws to which every profound work of the intellect brings
us nearer and which are invisible only-and still !- to fools.
