LOVE, HAPPINESS AND ART
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glow of an enthusiasm that made me thrill from head to foot, of
such a state of mind, superior to life itself, a state in which fame
counts for nothing and even happiness is superfluous.
If
everything
around us, instead of permanently conspiring to drown us in a
slough of mud, contributed rather to keep our spirits healthy, who
can tell whether we might not be able to do for aesthetics what
stoicism did for morals? Greek art was not an art; it was the very
constitution of an entire people, of an entire race, of the country
itself. In Greece the line of the mountains was different from else–
where, and they were composed of marble, which was thus available
to the sculptors, etc.
The time for Beauty is over. Mankind may return to it, but it
has no use for it at present. The more Art develops, the more scientific
)
it will be, just as science will become artistic. Separated in their early
stages, the two will become one again when both reach their cul–
mination.
It
is beyond the power of human thought today to foresee
in what a dazzling intellectual light the works of the future will
flower. Meanwhile we are in a shadowy corridor, groping in the
dark. We are without a lever; the ground is slippery under our feet;
we all lack a basis-literati and scribblers that we are. What's the
good of all this? Is our chatter the answer to any need? Between
the crowd and ourselves no bond exists. Alas for the crowd; alas
for us, especially. But since there is a reason for everything, and
since the fancy of one individual seems to me just as valid as the
appetite of a million men and can occupy an equal place
in
the
world, we must (regardless of material things and of mankind, which
disavows us) live for our vocation, climb into our ivory tower, and
dwell there alone with our dreams. At times I have feelings of great
despair and emptiness-doubts that taunt me at my moments of
naivest satisfaction. And yet I would not exchange all this for any–
thing, because my conscience tells me that I am fulfilling my duty,
obeying a decree of fate-that I am doing what is Good, that I
am
in the Right.
October 1-2, 1852
The other day I learned that a young man I knew at school
had been interned at Saint-Yon (the Rouen insane asylum). A year
ago I read a book of stupid poems by him; but I was moved by
