Impudence is the word for it. My
world is real. I want to be really aristocratic, really brave,
really paying for the privilege of not being a driven worker. The
things the artist makes are like the things my private dream-artist
makes, relaxing, distracting. What can Art at its greatest be, pure
Art that is, but a more splendid, more permanent, transmissible
reverie! The very essence of what I am after is NOT to be an
artist. . . ."
After a large and serious movement through his mind he came back to
Science, Philosophy or Politics as the sole three justifications for
the usurpation of leisure.
So far as devotion to science went, he knew he had no specific
aptitude for any departmentalized subject, and equally he felt no
natural call to philosophy. He was left with politics. . . .
"Or else, why shouldn't I go down there and pick up a shovel and set
to work? To make leisure for my betters. . . ."
And now it was that he could take up the real trouble that more than
anything else had been keeping him ineffective and the prey of every
chance demand and temptation during the last ten months.
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