And Bukatski took up the gauntlet.
“What have you against collecting?”
“Nothing,” answered Vaskovski. “It is a kind of old-womanish method of loving art, worthy of our age. Do you not think there is something decrepit about it? To my thinking, it is very characteristic. Once people bore within them enthusiasm for high art: they loved it where it was, in museums, in churches; to-day they take it to their own private cabinets. Long ago people ended with collecting; to-day they begin with it, and begin at oddities: I am not talking at Bukatski; but to-day the youngest boy, if he has a little money, will begin to collect—and what? Not objects of art, but its oddities, or in every case its trifles. You see, my dear friend, it has seemed to me always that love and amateurism are two different things; and I insist that a great amateur of women, for example, is not a man capable of lofty feeling.”
“Perhaps so. There is something in that,” said Pan Stanislav.
“How can this concern me?” inquired Mashko, passing his fingers through his English side whiskers. “It contains, to begin with, the decree of an ancient pedagogue about modern times.”
“Of a pedagogue?” repeated Vaskovski. “Why, since a morsel of bread fell to me, as from heaven,[3] I renounced the slaughter of innocents and the rôle of Herod; secondly, you are mistaken in saying that I utter a decree. Almost with joy I see and note new proofs every hour that we are at the end of an epoch, and that a new one will begin shortly.”
“We are in the open sea, and will not turn to shore soon,” muttered Mashko.
“Give us peace,” said Pan Stanislav.
But the unconquered Vaskovski continued,—
“Amateurism leads to refinement; in refinement great ideals perish, and yield to desire for enjoyment. All this is nothing but paganism. No one can realize to what a degree we are paganized. But is there something? There is the Aryan spirit, which does not ossify, which never grows cold,—a spirit which has within it the divine afflatus, hence creative power; and this spirit feels hampered in pagan fetters. The reaction has set in already, and a rebirth in Christ will begin in this field, as in others. That is undoubted.”