The vulgarity of his character is more evident than ever since the repressed parts of his biography have appeared. It is comical. And this man, who has no more understanding of spirituality than a cow, to tell the story of the greatest movement of the soul of man in history!
There is not one gleam of the Christian superstition left in me. I have nothing to fear from the sneers of Gibbon any more than I have from those of Voltaire; but I do not care to hear lectures on the steam-engine by a man who does not believe in steam.
—Some of these days—the last thing that I can see on the horizon of my future—I am going to write a tragedy called Jesus. The time is past, it seems to me, when an artist must leave alone the greatest art-theme of the ages.
Is it not the greatest? Is there any story in history more sublime than the story of this man? A humble, ignorant peasant he was, and out of the faith of his soul he made the future of the world for centuries! It is a thing that makes your brain reel.
I write it casually, but I have shuddered over it far into the deep, deep night. I have dreamed of two acts—one of them Gethsemane, and the other Calvary.—Poor fool, perhaps I shall never write them!
I have burrowed into that soul, seeking out the truths of it; the truths, as distinguished from the ten thousand fancies of men. When I write that drama I shall deal with those truths.
The climax of the scene in the garden of Gethsemane will be a vision in which looms up before him the whole history of Christianity; and that will be the last agony. It will be then that he sweats blood.
That will be something, I think.