happiness of experiencing. And have you noticed that many men and most
boys, when genuinely in love, find themselves, the moment the object of
their emotion is withdrawn, driven by their feelings into scribbling
verses? An artist, I imagine, is always falling in love with everything.
Always he is being thrown into a "state of mind." The sight of a tree
or an omnibus, the screaming of whistles or the whistling of birds, the
smell of roast pig, a gesture, a look, any trivial event may provoke a
crisis, filling him with an intolerable desire to express himself. The
artist cannot embrace the object of his emotion. He does not even wish
to. Once, perhaps, that was his desire; if so, like the pointer and
the setter, he has converted the barbarous pouncing instinct into the
civilized pleasure of tremulous contemplation. Be that as it may, the
contemplative moment is short. Simultaneously almost with the emotion
arises the longing to express, to create a form that shall match the
feeling, that shall commemorate the moment of ecstasy.

This moment of passionate apprehension is, unless I mistake, the source
of the creative impulse; indeed, the latter seems to follow so promptly
on the former that one is often tempted to regard them as a single
movement. The next step is longer. The creative impulse is one thing;
creation another. If the artist's form is to be the equivalent of an
experience, if it is to be significant in fact, every scrap of it has
got to be fused and fashioned in the white heat of his emotion. And how
is his emotion to be kept at white heat through the long, cold days of
formal construction? Emotions seem to grow cold and set like glue. The
intense power and energy called forth by the first thrilling vision grow
slack for want of incentive. What engine is to generate the heat and
make taut the energies by which alone significant form can be created?
That is where the artistic problem comes in.