This makes me remember a poet’s portrait of Christ, drawn by Leconte de Lisle. It is too lovely ever to forget:
“Figure aux cheveux roux, d’ombre et de paix voilée,
Errante aux bords des lacs sous son nimbe de feu,
Salut! L’humanité dans ta tombe scellée
O jeune Esseinien, cherche son dernier dieu!
The boyish Christ, a halo of flame about His head, wandering along the shores of Galilee. Humanities last God.”
The dilettante plays. The great artist learns to suffer; creating is the pendant of unselfish anguish.
“How good it is to read in a quiet room!” Redon exclaims—“with a window upon a forest.” He could say that, because he had not permitted the tumult of the world to touch his heart. That was a finer thing to do than to collect dollars. Success, what is popularly called so, is more or less vulgar, and a little too noisy now-a-days.
Redon is a poet in words without suspecting it. Hear him!