GILBERT.He will be always showing us the work of art in some new relation to our age.He will always be reminding us that great works of art are living things -are,in fact,the only things that live.So much,indeed,will he feel this,that I am certain that,as civilisation progresses and we become more highly organised,the elect spirits of each age,the critical and cultured spirits,will grow less and less interested in actual life,and WILL SEEK TO GAINTHEIR IMPRESSIONS ALMOST ENTIRELY FROM WHAT ART HAS TOUCHED.For life is terribly deficient in form.Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people.There is a grotesque horror about its comedies,and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.
One is always wounded when one approaches it.Things last either too long,or not long enough.
ERNEST.Poor life!Poor human life!Are you not even touched by the tears that the Roman poet tells us are part of its essence.
GILBERT.Too quickly touched by them,I fear.For when one looks back upon the life that was so vivid in its emotional intensity,and filled with such fervent moments of ecstasy or of joy,it all seems to be a dream and an illusion.What are the unreal things,but the passions that once burned one like fire?What are the incredible things,but the things that one has faithfully believed?
What are the improbable things?The things that one has done oneself.No,Ernest;life cheats us with shadows,like a puppet-master.We ask it for pleasure.It gives it to us,with bitterness and disappointment in its train.We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days,but it passes away from us,and things less noble take its place,and on some grey windy dawn,or odorous eve of silence and of silver,we find ourselves looking with callous wonder,or dull heart of stone,at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed.
ERNEST.Life then is a failure?
GILBERT.From the artistic point of view,certainly.And the chief thing that makes life a failure from this artistic point of view is the thing that lends to life its sordid security,the fact that one can never repeat exactly the same emotion.How different it is in the world of Art!On a shelf of the bookcase behind you stands the DIVINE COMEDY,and I know that,if I open it at a certain place,I shall be filled with a fierce hatred of some one who has never wronged me,or stirred by a great love for some one whom I shall never see.There is no mood or passion that Art cannot give us,and those of us who have discovered her secret can settle beforehand what our experiences are going to be.We can choose our day and select our hour.We can say to ourselves,'To-morrow,at dawn,we shall walk with grave Virgil through the valley of the shadow of death,'and lo!the dawn finds us in the obscure wood,and the Mantuan stands by our side.We pass through the gate of the legend fatal to hope,and with pity or with joy behold the horror of another world.The hypocrites go by,with their painted faces and their cowls of gilded lead.Out of the ceaseless winds that drive them,the carnal look at us,and we watch the heretic rending his flesh,and the glutton lashed by the rain.We break the withered branches from the tree in the grove of the Harpies,and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds with red blood before us,and cries aloud with bitter cries.Out of a horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us,and when from his sepulchre of flame the great Ghibelline rises,the pride that triumphs over the torture of that bed becomes ours for a moment.Through the dim purple air fly those who have stained the world with the beauty of their sin,and in the pit of loathsome disease,dropsy-stricken and swollen of body into the semblance of a monstrous lute,lies Adamo di Brescia,the coiner of false coin.He bids us listen to his misery;we stop,and with dry and gaping lips he tells us how he dreams day and night of the brooks of clear water that in cool dewy channels gush down the green Casentine hills.Sinon,the false Greek of Troy,mocks at him.He smites him in the face,and they wrangle.
We are fascinated by their shame,and loiter,till Virgil chides us and leads us away to that city turreted by giants where great Nimrod blows his horn.Terrible things are in store for us,and we go to meet them in Dante's raiment and with Dante's heart.We traverse the marshes of the Styx,and Argenti swims to the boat through the slimy waves.He calls to us,and we reject him.When we hear the voice of his agony we are glad,and Virgil praises us for the bitterness of our scorn.We tread upon the cold crystal of Cocytus,in which traitors stick like straws in glass.Our foot strikes against the head of Bocca.He will not tell us his name,and we tear the hair in handfuls from the screaming skull.
Alberigo prays us to break the ice upon his face that he may weep a little.We pledge our word to him,and when he has uttered his dolorous tale we deny the word that we have spoken,and pass from him;such cruelty being courtesy indeed,for who more base than he who has mercy for the condemned of God?In the jaws of Lucifer we see the man who sold Christ,and in the jaws of Lucifer the men who slew Caesar.We tremble,and come forth to re-behold the stars.
