That is why artists, as
a rule, love twilight hours, shaded rooms, half-tones, subdued
hues, because what is common, staring, tasteless, is blurred and
hidden. Men of rich vitality are generally too much occupied with
life as it is, its richness, its variety, its colour and fragrance,
to think wistfully of life as it might be. The unbridled, sensuous,
luxurious strain, that one finds in so many artists, comes from a
lack of moral temperance, a snatching at delights. They fear
dreariness and ugliness so much that they welcome any intoxication
of pleasure. But after all, it is clearness of vision that makes the
artist, the power of disentangling the central feature from the
surrounding details, the power of subordinating accessories, of
seeing which minister to the innermost impression, and which
distract and blur. An artist who creates a great character need not
necessarily even desire to attain the great qualities which he
discerns; he sees them, as he sees the vertebrae of the mountain
ridge under pasture and woodland, as he sees the structure of the
tree under its mist of green; but to see beauty is not necessarily
to desire it; for, as in the mountain and the tree, it may have no
ethical significance at all, only a symbolical meaning.
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