“I fancy you’re trying to voice your esthetic consciousness of great art that, however time may change its accessories, remains inherently changeless. Realism in fact as opposed to what is wrongly called realism. Lots of critics, Sylvia, have tried to define what is worrying you, and lots of long words have been enlisted on their behalf. A better and more ancient word for realism was ‘poetry’; but the word has been debased by the versifiers who call themselves poets just as painters call themselves artists—both are titles that only posterity can award. Great art is something that is made and that lives in itself; like that stuff, radium, which was discovered the year before last, it eternally gives out energy without consuming itself. Radium, however, does not solve the riddle of life, and until we solve that, great art will remain undefinable. Which reminds me of a mistake that so-called believers make. I’ve often heard Christians maintain the truth of Christianity, because it is still alive. What nonsense! The words of Christ are still alive, because Christ Himself was a great poet, and therefore expressed humanity as perhaps no one else ever expressed humanity before. But the lying romantic, the bad poet, in fact, who tickles the vain and credulous mob with miracles and theogonies, expresses nothing. It is a proof of nothing but the vitality of great art that the words of Christ can exist and can continue to affect humanity notwithstanding the mountebank behavior attributed to Him, out of which priests have manufactured a religion. It is equally surprising that Cervantes could hold his own against the romances of chivalry he tried to kill. He may have killed one mode of expression, but he did not prevent East Lynne from being written; he yet endures because Don Quixote, whom he made, has life. By the way, you never got on with Don Quixote, did you?”
Sylvia shook her head.
“I think it’s a failure on your part, dear Sylvia.”
“He is so stupid,” she said.
“But he realized how stupid he was before he died.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t help my bad taste, as you call it. He annoys me.”
“You think the Yanguseian carriers dealt with him in the proper way?”
“I don’t remember them.”
“They beat him.”
“I think I could beat a person who annoyed me very much,” Sylvia said. “I don’t mean with sticks, of course, but with my behavior.”