If there were anything intelligent in such art,
something of it at least could be made intelligible in literature. Man is
made with one head, not with two or three. No criticism of Rembrandt is
as good as Rembrandt; but it can be so written as to make a man go back
and look at his pictures. If there is a curious and fantastic art, it is
the business of the art critics to create a curious and fantastic literary
expression for it; inferior to it, doubtless, but still akin to it. If
they cannot do this, as they cannot; if there is nothing in their eulogies,
as there is nothing except eulogy--then they are quacks or the
high-priests of the unutterable. If the art critics can say nothing about
the artists except that they are good it is because the artists are bad.
They can explain nothing because they have found nothing; and they have
found nothing because there is nothing to be found.
THE RED REACTIONARY
The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and
complete road to anything--even to restoration. Revolution alone can be
not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead.
A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was
once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that
area that used to be called La Vendee; which in that great creative crisis
about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a
revolution against a revolution.
Pages:
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145