And he began to consider deeply. For sitting there in cold blood, with
his nerves at rest, and his brain and senses normal, the play he had
written did seem to him to put an unnecessary strain upon the faculties.
"Ah!" he thought, "in future I must take good care never to write
anything except in cold blood, with my nerves well clothed, and my brain
and senses quiet. I ought only to write when I feel as normal as I do
now." And for some minutes he remained motionless, looking at his boots.
Then there crept into his mind an uncomfortable thought. "But have I
ever written anything without feeling a little-abnormal, at the time?
Have I ever even felt inclined to write anything, until my emotions had
been unduly excited, my brain immoderately stirred, my senses unusually
quickened, or my spirit extravagantly roused? Never! Alas, never! I am
then a miserable renegade, false to the whole purpose of my being--nor do
I see the slightest hope of becoming a better man, a less unworthy
artist! For I literally cannot write without the stimulus of some
feeling exaggerated at the expense of other feelings. What has been in
the past will be in the future: I shall never be taking up my pen when I
feel my comfortable and normal self never be satisfying that self which
is the Public!" And he thought: "I am lost. For, to satisfy that normal
self, to give the Public what it wants, is, I am told, and therefore must
believe, what all artists exist for. AEschylus in his 'Choephorae' and
his 'Prometheus'; Sophocles in his 'OEdipus Tyrannus'; Euripides when he
wrote 'The Trojan Women,' 'Medea,'--and 'Hippolytus'; Shakespeare in his
'Leer'; Goethe in his 'Faust'; Ibsen in his 'Ghosts' and his 'Peer Gynt';
Tolstoy in 'The Powers of Darkness'; all--all in those great works, must
have satisfied their most comfortable and normal selves; all--all must
have given to the average human being, to the Public, what it wants; for
to do that, we know, was the reason of their existence, and who shall say
those noble artists were not true to it? That is surely unthinkable.
And yet--and yet--we are assured, and, indeed, it is true, that there is