I still read the literary journals and tingle with excitement thinking of the time when The Captive is discussed in them. Can I believe that this book will not stir the world? If I did not believe it, I could not believe anything!
I feel a new interest now in the authors that people talk about. I want to know who they are and what they do. And all the time I find myself thinking: “Have I more than this man?—More than that man?” That always throws me into despair, because I am a great admirer; and because I am always hypnotized by the last thing that I read.
But I find very little that is great in modern books. Books are better made now than they ever were before—I mean in the way of literary craftsmanship. As far as form goes, there is no author living who would put together such a hodge-podge as Wilhelm Meister, or La Nouvelle Heloïse. But they all imitate each other; they are all mild and tame; there is no real power, no genius among them. They have even forgotten it exists.
I came across this, for instance, the other day in a book of Mr. Howells's:
“In fact, the whole belief in genius seems to me rather a mischievous superstition, and if not mischievous, always, still always, a superstition. From the account of those who talk about it, genius appears to be the attribute of a very potent and admirable prodigy which God has created out of the common for the astonishment and confusion of the rest of us poor human beings. Do they mean anything more or less than the mastery which comes to any man in accordance with his powers and diligence in any direction? If not, why not have an end to the superstition which has caused our race to go on for so long writing and reading of the difference between talent and genius?”
Is not that simply blasphemous?
—Have I genius? Ah, save the word!
How can I know? It is none of my affair—I do my work.