“Eh? But I’d so much rather paint.”
“Better look out. You may have more talent for writing than for painting.” Potter sensed a criticism in the remark, which he privately resented.
“No, the thing I’ll never be able to do is the thing I’m going to do.”
Emmet did not reply at once, and his sleepy blue eyes, long and narrow between the lids, rested upon an indefinable point of distance. The wind ruffled his dark curly hair that grew low on the brow and temples. He was the handsomer of the two.
“Damn specialists and specialism,” he said. “I keep thinking about a synthesis of the arts. Take the theatre, for example. Why not do something like Wagner did—in a lighter, more lyric vein? Bring all the arts together and create a new art? I hate this little business of one man with a pen, one man with a brush and another with a piano, none of them understanding each other.”
“A synthesis of the arts is contradictory,” said Osprey. “Only Nature can accomplish it, at any rate, and Nature and art are sworn enemies. Nature takes a tree and gives it form and colour; its leaves rustle and its branches are wood-winds. Then in certain lights the tree will have the elusive, the startling quality of poetry. There you have sculpture, painting, music and literature—but it isn’t art, and, thank God, art never will be such a pudding.”
“Nevertheless,” replied Roget, without controversy and as if to himself, “Nevertheless something can be done that way. What about the church in Renaissance Italy and elsewhere? That was a synthesis—a man didn’t paint just to be painting something of his own. He painted for God’s sake.”
It was really cold by now, and a moment later they were hastily dressing. Roget murmured:
“‘The wandering moon, an optimistic sprite, etched a pale border ’round the face of night.’ Ce n’est pas mal. It’s pictorial and yet it’s literary too. Perhaps you will use words to fix your notions for painting. What’s that, in a sense, but synthesis, old-timer?” he finished jubilantly.
They went home in the dusk. These were the perfect hours college gave them....