You would paint the wind. Well, it has been tried—many times, and do you know where that leads?
I know where it has led.
But do you know? Have you seen, felt, heard what they have seen, felt, heard, our Villons—
Apollo was out of breath but the nymph was more tired than he. The chase must soon have ended when she falling to her knees half from the will to be there half from fatigue besought her mistress Diana to save her from the God's desire. And she was changed into a laurel bush.
All about the hills where they stood the hard waxen leaves of the laurel glistened above the dead leaves of the hardwood trees, the beech, the maple, the oak.
You imagine I am French because I attack you from the continental viewpoint. You are wrong. I am from the country of your friends Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, Chekov. At least if you will not yield me the point that America cannot be new, cannot do anything unless she takes the great heritage which men of all nations and ages have left to the human race.
You mean that I should not be an American but—Turgenev, enjoy you more if, well, if you were more comprehensible, a little more particular, vous comprenez? You sweep out your arms, you—I see no faces, no details of the life, no new shape—
The druggist's boy cannot be distinguished from his master when he says, Hello, over the phone—Is that what you mean?
Well, you are very much children, you Americans.
It is not to be avoided as far as I can see.