| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter. To us, who live
in the nineteenth century, any century is a suitable subject for
art except our own. The only beautiful things are the things that
do not concern us. It is, to have the pleasure of quoting myself,
exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are so
suitable a motive for a tragedy. Besides, it is only the modern
that ever becomes old-fashioned. M. Zola sits down to give us a
picture of the Second Empire. Who cares for the Second Empire now?
It is out of date. Life goes faster than Realism, but Romanticism
is always in front of Life.
The third doctrine is that Life imitates Art far more than Art
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: better than his predecessors. He is simply in possession of
Wagner's ideas, which were to them inconceivable.
All I pretend to do in this book is to impart the ideas which are
most likely to be lacking in the conventional Englishman's
equipment. I came by them myself much as Wagner did, having
learnt more about music than about anything else in my youth, and
sown my political wild oats subsequently in the revolutionary
school. This combination is not common in England; and as I seem,
so far, to be the only publicly articulate result of it, I
venture to add my commentary to what has already been written by
musicians who are no revolutionists, and revolutionists who are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Unpeopled void stirred into life;
The dead world quickened, the mad blast
Hushed for an hour its idiot strife
With nothingness. . . .
And from the gloom,
Parting the flaps of frozen skin,
Old friends and dear came trooping in,
And light and laughter filled the room. . . .
Voices and faces, shapes beloved,
Babbling lips and kindly eyes,
Not ghosts, but friends that lived and moved . . .
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