As for myself, I would not have my life a very regular play, let it be a tolerable farce, and a fig for the critical Unities! For the generality of men, a true modern life is like a true modern play, neither Tragedy, Comedy, nor Farce, nor one, nor all of these…
Imagine a blend of reverie, sympathy, and respect, together with 1,000 childish deeds, full of seriousness, and you’d have a rough idea of something very sincere that I feel incapable of defining more sharply…
…I made it all up, so I see it all and part of it comes out the way it ought to, it is swell about the fish, but isn’t writing a hard job though? It used to be easy before I met you. I certainly was bad, Gosh, I’m awfully bad now but it’s a different kind of bad.
Jack Yeats does not even need to do that. The way he puts down a man’s head & a woman’s head side by side, or face to face, is terrifying, two irreducible singlenesses & the impassable immensity between.
If a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing, he will probably care very little for its ethical import. If his temperament is more susceptible to ethical than to aesthetic influences, he will be blind to questions of style, treatment, and the like. It takes a Goethe to see a work of art fully, completely, and perfectly, and I thoroughly agree with Mr Whibley when he says that it is a pity that Goethe never had an opportunity of reading Dorian Gray. I feel quite certain that he would have been delighted by it…
A: To a kidney stone of a decade!
B: It doesn’t look like the sky has fallen in!
They clink their glasses.
A: Of course sometimes shit go down when there’s a billion dollars on an elevator.
Apart from Yeats, I have a play by Lady Gregory, and one from Symons (not so valuable). Joyce has been in hospital ever since we started so he has been no use…
We are all rather blessed in our deprivations if we let ourselves be, I suppose…
The truth always lies between: neither party is ever right.
My ideal would be to manage to write in equal measure, and ideally with equal facility, “useful” things and “amusing” things. And possibly things that are useful and amusing at the same time.
