On The Vanity of Artists

“On the vanity of artists - I believe that artists do not know what they can do best because they are too vain and have their minds set on something prouder than these small plants seem to be that are new, strange and beautiful and really capable of growing on their soil. Here is a musician who more than any other musician, is master at finding the tones from the realm of suffering, dejected, tormented souls and at giving speech even to the mute animals. Nobody equals him at the colours of late autumn, at the indescribably moving happiness of a last, very last, very briefest enjoyment.. yes, he is the master at the very small. But he doesn’t want to be! His character likes great walls and bold frescoes much better. It escapes him that his spirit has a different taste and disposition and likes best of all to sit quietly in the corners of collapsed houses - there, hidden, hidden from himself, he paints his real masterpieces.. only there does he become wholly good, great, and perfect;perhaps only there. - But he doesn’t know it! He is too vain to know it.“

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