Let him rather keep his
hold on the world, at whatever sacrifice. Because by the time that
he has explored the home of the merry giants, and dreamed his
dream, the world to which he tries to tell the vision will heed it
not, but treat it as a fanciful tale.
All depends on the artist being in league with his day; if he is
born too early or too late, he has no hold on the world, no message
for it. Either he is a voice out of the past, an echo of old joys,
piping a forgotten message, or he is fanciful, unreal, visionary,
if he sees and tries to utter what shall be. By the time that
events confirm his foresight, the vitality of his prophecy is gone,
and he is only looked at with a curious admiration, as one that had
a certain clearness of vision, but no more; he is called into court
by the historian of tendency, but he has had no hold on living men.
One sees men of great artistic gifts who suffer from each of these
disadvantages. One sees poets, born in a prosaic age, who would
have won high fame if they had been born in an age of poets. And
one sees, too, men who seem to struggle with big, unintelligible
thoughts, thoughts which do not seem to fit on to anything
existing.
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