The sculptor is not satisfied with moulding his idea in clay; he gives it final form in marble or malachite or jade or bronze. Many an author, however, having completed work on his manuscript, is content to allow his publisher to choose the paper, the ink, the binding, the typography: all, obviously, part of the author's task. It is the publisher's wish, no doubt, to issue the book as cheaply as possible, and to this end he will make as many books after the same model as he practicably can. But every book should have a different appearance from every other book. Every book should have the aspect to which its ideas give birth. The form of the material should dictate the form of the binding. Who but a fool, for example, would print and bind Lavengro and Roderick Hudson in a similar manner? And yet that is just what publishers will do if they are let alone.
Peter had become so excited that he had awakened George Moore, who now descended from the mantelpiece and sought the seclusion of a couch in the corner where, after a few abortive licks at his left hind-leg, and a pretence of scrubbing his ears, he again settled into sleep. As for me, I listened, entranced, and as the night before I had discovered Paris, it seemed to me now that I was discovering the secrets of the writer's craft and I determined to go forth in the morning with a note-book, jotting down the names of every object I encountered.
I must have been somewhat bewildered for I repeated a question I had asked before:
Have you written anything yet?
Not yet.... I am collecting my materials. It may take me considerably longer to collect what I shall require for a very short book.
What is the book to be about?
Van Vechten, Van Vechten, you are not following me! he cried, and he again began to walk up and down the little room. What is the book to be about? Why, it is to be about the names of the things I have collected. It is to be about three hundred pages, he added triumphantly. That is what it is to be about, about three hundred pages, three hundred pages of colour and style and lists, lists of objects, all jumbled artfully. There isn't a moral, or an idea, or a plot, or even a character. There's to be no propaganda or preaching, or violence, or emotion, or even humour. I am not trying to imitate Dickens or Dostoevsky. They did not write books; they wrote newspapers. Art eliminates all such rubbish. Art has nothing to do with ideas. Art is abstract. When art becomes concrete it is no longer art. Thank God, I know what I want to do! Thank God, I haven't wasted my time admiring hack work! Thank God, I can start in at once constructing a masterpiece! Why a list of passengers sailing on the Kronprinz Wilhelm is more nearly a work of art than a novel by Thomas Hardy! What is there in that? Anybody can do it. Where is the arrangement, the colour, the form? Hardy merely photographs life!
But aren't you trying to photograph still life?
Peter's face was almost purple; I thought he would burst a blood-vessel.
Don't you understand that perfumes and reaping-machines are never to be found together in real life? That is art, making a pattern, dragging unfamiliar words and colours and sounds together until they form a pattern, a beautiful pattern. An Aubusson carpet is art, and it is assuredly not a photograph of still life.... Art....