“But cannot you say of some life that it could not die?”
“No, because in that case it is the real coming through. Death is the one attribute that is peculiar to life. It is the something that it is impossible to imagine in connexion with art. Reality is entirely founded on this fact, that of Death. All action revolves round that, and has it for motif. The purest thought is totally ignorant of death. Death means the perpetual extinction of impertinent sparks. But it is the key of life.”
“But what is art? You are talking about it as though I knew what it was!”
“What is life, do you know? Well, I know what art is in the same way.”
“Yes, but I ask you as a favour to define it for me. A picture is art, a living person is life. We sitting here are life; if we were talking on a stage we should be art. How would you define art?”
“Well, let’s take your example. But a picture, and also the actors on a stage, are pure life. Art is merely what the picture and the stage-scene represent, and what we now, and any living person as such, only, do not. That is why you can say that the true statue can be smashed, and yet not die.”
“Still, what is it? What is art?”
“It is ourselves disentangled from death and accident.”
“How do you know?”