II.

Secondly, there are certain prevalent ideas to which I can not subscribe. I can not believe that the mere height of the Rocky Mountains will produce lofty poetry; we have had little from Chimborazo, the Alps or the Andes. I can not believe that the mere geographical expanse of America will produce of itself excellent writing. The desert of Sahara is almost equally vast. Neither can I look forward with longing to a time when each village shall rejoice in a bad local poetaster making bad verse in the humdrum habitual way that the local architect puts up bad buildings. The arts are not the mediocre habit of mankind. There is no common denominator between the little that is good and the waste that is dull, mediocre. It may be pleasing to know that a cook is president of the local poetry society in Perigord,—there is no reason why a cook should not write as well as a plowman,—but the combination of several activities is really irrelevant. The fact remains that no good poetry has come out of Perigord since the Albigensian crusade, anno domini twelve hundred and nine. There being a local poetry society has not helped to prevent this.

The shell-fish grows its own shell, the genius creates its own milieu. You, the public, can kill genius by actual physical starvation, you may perhaps thwart or distort it, but you can in no way create it.

Because of this simple fact the patron is absolutely at the mercy of the artist, and the artist at the cost of some discomfort—personal, transient discomfort—is almost wholly free of the patron, whether this latter be an individual, or the hydra-headed detestable vulgus.

There is no misanthropy in a thorough contempt for the mob. There is no respect for mankind save in respect for detached individuals.

Eeldrop and Appleplex

T. S. Eliot