“Are you willing to consider sex seriously, or not?”
“Yes, I don’t mind.”—Hobson settled down, his face flushed from his late display.—“But I shall begin to believe before very long that your intentions are honourable as regards the fair Fräulein.—What exactly is your discourse intended to prove?”
“Not the desirability of the marriage tie, any more than a propaganda for representation and anecdote in art. But if a man marries, or a great painter represents (and the claims and seductions of life are very urgent), he will not be governed in his choice by the same laws that regulate the life of an efficient citizen, a successful merchant, or the ideals of a health expert.”
“I should have said that the considerations that precede a proposition of marriage had many analogies with the health expert’s outlook, the good citizen’s⸺”
“Was Napoleon successful in life, or did he ruin himself and end his days in miserable captivity?—Passion precludes the idea of success. Failure is its condition.—Art and Sex when they are deep enough make tragedies, and not advertisements for Health experts, or happy endings for the Public, or social panaceas.”
“Alas, that is true.”
“Well, then, well, then, Alan Hobson, you scarecrow of an advanced fool-farm, deplorable pedant of a sophistic voice-culture⸺”
“I? My voice—? But that’s absurd!—If my speech⸺”
Hobson was up in arms about his voice: although it was not his.
Tarr needed a grimacing, tumultuous mask for the face he had to cover.—The clown was the only rôle that was ample enough. He had compared his clowning with Hobson’s Pierrotesque and French variety.