“But it is a picture of a horse, nevertheless.”
He lifted his shoulders in another shrug.
“As you like—it is not a picture of a cow, certainly.”
Here Gudrun broke in, flushed and brilliant, anxious to avoid any more of this, any more of Ursula’s foolish persistence in giving herself away.
“What do you mean by ‘it is a picture of a horse?’” she cried at her sister. “What do you mean by a horse? You mean an idea you have in your head, and which you want to see represented. There is another idea altogether, quite another idea. Call it a horse if you like, or say it is not a horse. I have just as much right to say that your horse isn’t a horse, that it is a falsity of your own make-up.”
Ursula wavered, baffled. Then her words came.
“But why does he have this idea of a horse?” she said. “I know it is his idea. I know it is a picture of himself, really—”
Loerke snorted with rage.
“A picture of myself!” he repeated, in derision. “Wissen sie, gnädige Frau, that is a Kunstwerk, a work of art. It is a work of art, it is a picture of nothing, of absolutely nothing. It has nothing to do with anything but itself, it has no relation with the everyday world of this and other, there is no connection between them, absolutely none, they are two different and distinct planes of existence, and to translate one into the other is worse than foolish, it is a darkening of all counsel, a making confusion everywhere. Do you see, you must not confuse the relative work of action, with the absolute world of art. That you must not do.”
“That is quite true,” cried Gudrun, let loose in a sort of rhapsody. “The two things are quite and permanently apart, they have nothing to do with one another. I and my art, they have nothing to do with each other. My art stands in another world, I am in this world.”