DOI Artikel:
Mabel Dodge, Speculations
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31330#0011
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stunned and dismayed, or one may be aroused, stimulated, intrigued and
delighted. That there has been an approach is what counts. It is only in
a state of indifference that there is no approach at all, and indifference reeks
of death. It is the tomb of life itself.
A further consciousness than is already ours will need many new forms
of expression. In literature everything that has been felt or known so far
has been said, as it has been said. What more there may be for us to realize
must be expressed in a new way. Language has been crystallized into four
or five established literary forms, that up to the present day have been held
sacred and intranscendent. But all the truth cannot be contained in any one
or any limited number of moulds. As A. E. the Irish poet says of it:
The hero first thought it;
To him ’twas a deed:
To those who retaught it,
A chain on their speed.
The fire that we kindled,
A beacon by night,
When darkness has dwindled
Grows pale in the light.
For life has no glory
Stays long in one dwelling,
And time has no story
That’s true twice in telling.
And only the teaching
That never was spoken
Is worthy thy reaching,
The fountain unbroken.
This is so of all the arts, for of course what is true of one must, to be justi-
fiable, be true of them all; even to the art of life, and perhaps first of all to that
one.
Nearly every thinking person nowadays is in revolt against something,
because the craving of the individual is for further consciousness and because
consciousness is expanding and is bursting through the moulds that have
held it up to now. And so let every man whose private truth is too great
for his existing conditions pause before he turn away from Picasso’s painting
or from Gertrude Stein’s writing, for their case is his case.
Of course comment is the best of signs. Any comment. One that
Gertrude Stein hears oftenest is from conscientious souls who have honestly
tried—and who have failed,—to get anything out of her work at all. “But
7
delighted. That there has been an approach is what counts. It is only in
a state of indifference that there is no approach at all, and indifference reeks
of death. It is the tomb of life itself.
A further consciousness than is already ours will need many new forms
of expression. In literature everything that has been felt or known so far
has been said, as it has been said. What more there may be for us to realize
must be expressed in a new way. Language has been crystallized into four
or five established literary forms, that up to the present day have been held
sacred and intranscendent. But all the truth cannot be contained in any one
or any limited number of moulds. As A. E. the Irish poet says of it:
The hero first thought it;
To him ’twas a deed:
To those who retaught it,
A chain on their speed.
The fire that we kindled,
A beacon by night,
When darkness has dwindled
Grows pale in the light.
For life has no glory
Stays long in one dwelling,
And time has no story
That’s true twice in telling.
And only the teaching
That never was spoken
Is worthy thy reaching,
The fountain unbroken.
This is so of all the arts, for of course what is true of one must, to be justi-
fiable, be true of them all; even to the art of life, and perhaps first of all to that
one.
Nearly every thinking person nowadays is in revolt against something,
because the craving of the individual is for further consciousness and because
consciousness is expanding and is bursting through the moulds that have
held it up to now. And so let every man whose private truth is too great
for his existing conditions pause before he turn away from Picasso’s painting
or from Gertrude Stein’s writing, for their case is his case.
Of course comment is the best of signs. Any comment. One that
Gertrude Stein hears oftenest is from conscientious souls who have honestly
tried—and who have failed,—to get anything out of her work at all. “But
7
