decision.

But the last symptoms in the literature show us that the Stoicism
is not sufficient for our generation, not satisfied with Marcus
Aurelius's gospel, which was not sufficient even to that brilliant
Sienkiewicz's Roman _arbiter elegantiarum_, the over-refined patrician
Petronius. A nation which desired to live, and does not wish either to
perish in the desert or be drowned in the mud, needs such a great help
which only religion gives. The history is not only _magister vitae_,
but also it is the master of conscience.

Literature has in Sienkiewicz a great poet--epical as well as lyrical.

I shall not mourn, although I appreciate the justified complaint about
objectivity in _belles lettres._ But now there is no question what
poetry will be; there is the question whether it will be, and I
believe that society, being tired with Zola's realism and its
caricature, not with the picturesqueness of Loti, but with catalogues
of painter's colors; not with the depth of Ibsen, but the oddness of
his imitators--it seems to me that society will hate the poetry which
discusses and philosophizes, wishes to paint but does not feel, makes
archeology but does not give impressions, and that people will turn to
the poetry as it was in the beginning, what is in its deepest essence,
to the flight of single words, to the interior melody, to the
song--the art of sounds being the greatest art. I believe that if in
the future the poetry will find listeners, they will repeat to the
poets the words of Paul Verlaine, whom by too summary judgment they
count among incomprehensible originals:

"_De la musique encore et toujours_."