Art and Emotion (continued)

Art is but a hard-to-please mistress who wants everything and yields to nothing, save death. Who is the true creator pleased with his works, who fails to see all its imperfections, who fails to see his meager creations, who fails to see the long way that remains to be travelled ?

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Dans mon travail, I don't always do what I must achieve; however, I always do what I desire. When I, miraculously, bring together both of these principles, my works may hold the road.

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Whatever the case, I endeavour to instill nobleness and sway in the art I offer to mankind, to the ones willing to bend over my works. I insert what I think, or at least assume, to be the qualities of my heart. I celebrate in a hymn or in an incantation, in the peacefulness or the storm and in a permanent and invariable quest for an ideal, my ideal. Love is the mainspring that makes me move forward, the love that gives something to men and contends against ignorance and gloom.

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If the artist boasts an ideal, he is happy, for Art no longer represents an aim for him, but it has become a means. Never consign to oblivion the fact that glory, praise and fashion are but fleeing and that your works remain. Creator, you stand face to face with two critics: yourself, you who must be uncompromising and inflexible (can you lie to yourself? If you can, quickly take another job then!) and the time that goes by, the time which makes the second work, for this one will prove you either wrong or right. (Console yourself, for time will also take care of all those who attacked you; they will not come better out of it. I actually do not want to be in the shoes of those who condemned Beethoven's quartets!)

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What can time's power do against time's justice?

If, in your own language, you have something to say, say it!

And, alas, for those who do not grasp its meaning, they can do nothing else except learn it. Work for your era and leave your marks on it. But take care of doing it with a timeless attitude for everything that is fashionable soon becomes out of fashion!

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The artist is at the service of art; art is at the service of Man.

The artist must be the slave of art and not that of Man. (But isn't it that being the slave of art is a mere blessing from God?)

The artist must have the most rigorous and the most relentless code of ethics.

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