attempts to account for the unsatisfactoriness of forms he may consider
the state of mind of the artist. He cannot be sure that because the
forms are wrong the state of mind was wrong; because right forms imply
right feeling, wrong forms do not necessarily imply wrong feeling; but
if he has got to explain the wrongness of form, here is a possibility he
cannot overlook. He will have left the firm land of aesthetics to travel
in an unstable element; in criticism one catches at any straw. There is
no harm in that, provided the critic never forgets that, whatever
ingenious theories he may put forward, they can be nothing more than
attempts to explain the one central fact--that some forms move us
aesthetically and others do not.

This discussion has brought me close to a question that is neither
aesthetic nor metaphysical but impinges on both. It is the question of
the artistic problem, and it is really a technical question. I have
suggested that the task of the artist is either to create significant
form or to express a sense of reality--whichever way you prefer to put
it. But it is certain that few artists, if any, can sit down or stand up
just to create nothing more definite than significant form, just to
express nothing more definite than a sense of reality. Artists must
canalise their emotion, they must concentrate their energies on some
definite problem. The man who sets out with the whole world before him
is unlikely to get anywhere. In that fact lies the explanation of the
absolute necessity for artistic conventions. That is why it is easier to
write good verse than good prose, why it is more difficult to write good
blank verse than good rhyming couplets. That is the explanation of the
sonnet, the ballade, and the rondeau; severe limitations concentrate and
intensify the artist's energies.

It would be almost impossible for an artist who set himself a task no