LIFE THE FALLACIOUS MODEL


Art begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative and
pleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. This is
the first stage. Then Life becomes fascinated with this new wonder, and
asks to be admitted into the charmed circle. Art takes life as part of
her rough material, recreates it, and refashions it in fresh forms, is
absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps
between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style,
of decorative or ideal treatment. The third stage is when Life gets the
upper hand, and drives Art out into the wilderness. That is the true
decadence, and it is from this that we are now suffering.

Take the case of the English drama. At first in the hands of the monks
Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative and mythological. Then she
enlisted Life in her service, and using some of life's external forms,
she created an entirely new race of beings, whose sorrows were more
terrible than any sorrow man has ever felt, whose joys were keener than
lover's joys, who had the rage of the Titans and the calm of the gods,
who had monstrous and marvellous sins, monstrous and marvellous virtues.
To them she gave a language different from that of actual use, a language
full of resonant music and sweet rhythm, made stately by solemn cadence,
or made delicate by fanciful rhyme, jewelled with wonderful words, and
enriched with lofty diction. She clothed her children in strange raiment
and gave them masks, and at her bidding the antique world rose from its
marble tomb. A new Caesar stalked through the streets of risen Rome, and