This is a long discourse; but not so much about myself as appears.
I was struck with your insight, and I wanted to tell you how I
analyse the change of style which you point out, and which
results, I think, from colder, more laborious, duller effort as
one grows in years.
The artist ought never to be commanded by his subject, or his
vehicle of expression. But until he ceases to love both with a
blind passion, he will probably be so commanded. And then his
style will appear decorative, florid, mixed, unequal, laboured. It
is the sobriety of a satiated or blunted enthusiasm which makes
the literary artist. He ought to remember his dithyrambic moods,
but not to be subject to them any longer, nor to yearn after them.
Do you know that I have only just now found the time, during my
long days and nights in bed with influenza and bronchitis, to read
Marie Bashkirtseff? (Did ever name so puzzling grow upon the
Ygdrasil of even Russian life?)
By this time you must be quite tired of hearing from your friends
how much Marie Bashkirtseff reminds them of you.
I cannot help it. I must say it once again. I am such a fossil
that I permit myself the most antediluvian remarks--if I think
they have a grain of truth in them. Of course, the dissimilarities
are quite as striking as the likenesses. No two leaves on one
linden are really the same. But you and she, detached from the
forest of life, seem to me like leaves plucked from the same sort
of tree.
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