It seemed glad to be at home in its own little house, the trusty mechanism. The lights continued to flare intimately against the wooden wall as much as to say: Here I am back again. The engine sighed and stopped at the twist of the key governing the electric switch. Out went the lights with another twist of the wrist. The owner groped his way to the little door at the back and emerged into the moonlight, into the fog, leaving his idle car behind him to its own thoughts. There it must remain all night, requiring no food, no water to drink, nothing while he, being a man, must live. His wife was at the window holding the shade aside.
And what is good poetry made of
And what is good poetry made of
Of rats and snails and puppy-dog's tails
And that is what good poetry is made of
And what is bad poetry made of
And what is bad poetry made of
Of sugar and spice and everything nice
That is what bad poetry is made of
A Rebours: Huysman puts it. My dear let us free ourselves from this enslavement. We do not know how thoroughly we are bound. It must be a new definition, it must cut us off from the rest. It is in a different line. Good morning Boss said the old colored man working on the railroad and started to sing: Jesus, Jesus I love you. It was Sunday, he was working on the railroad on Sunday and had to put up some barrier. It is an end to art temporarily. That upstart Luther. My God don't talk to me of Luther, never changed his bed clothes for a year. Well, my dear, IT'S COMING just the same. To hell with art. To hell with literature. The old renaissance priests guarded art in their cloisters for three hundred years or more. Sunk their teeth in it. The ONE solid thing. Don't blame me if it went down with them. DOWN, you understand. Fist through the middle of the rose window. You are horror struck. One word: Bing! One accurate word and a shower of colored glass following it. Is it MY fault? Ask the French if that is literature.
Do you mean to say that art—O ha, ha. Do you mean to say that art—O ha, ha. Well spit it out. Do you mean to say that art is SERIOUS?—Yes. Do you mean to say that art does any WORK?—Yes. Do you mean—? Revolution. Russia. Kropotkin. Farm, Factory and Field.—CRRRRRRASH.—Down comes the world. There you are gentlemen, I am an artist.
What then would you say of the usual interpretation of the word "literature"?—Permanence. A great army with its tail in antiquity. Cliche of the soul: beauty.
But can you have literature without beauty? It all depends on what you mean by beauty.
There is beauty in the bellow of the BLAST, etc. from all previous significance.—To me beauty is purity. To me it is discovery, a race on the ground.
And for this you are willing to smash—
Yes, everything.—To go down into hell.—Well let's look.