CHAPTER XXII
Love among the Artists
Frequent are the divorces in the artistic world. Platitudinous moralisers explain that fact with the stupid statement that the morals of the stage are "loose." Like the Freudians, they always seek in sex the origin of every disturbance in human life.
Sex in the life of an artist, however, plays an infinitely less important part than egotism, the desire to be above.
The so-called normal man, who works, eats, sleeps, reproduces himself, and, at his death leaves the world exactly as he found it is probably subnormal.
He differs very little from the animals who do exactly the same things in the same way and seem perfectly pleased with the endless repetition of an immutable life ritual.
Dissatisfaction is really the element which we must consider when we try to draw a line of cleavage between men and the animals. Dissatisfaction breeds either neurosis or creation.
The dissatisfied person, devoid of intellectual resources, either commits a crime or kills himself or goes off into another world thru the door that leads into insanity.
The dissatisfied person gifted with powers of self-expression, makes the world in which he lives better, more beautiful or more comfortable. That sort of achievement presupposes a certain amount of healthy sadism, the courage to criticise, to offer suggestions, to force the products of one's mind upon the community, to say "look at me, I am perfect or, at least, better than you."