The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX What does it matter to me that Anacreon should sing of Bathyllus, if in his verse I hear the notes of that divine harmony which is the eternal hymn of beauty? Poetry is pure as the Sun: it spreads its veil of light over the errors of humanity. Woe to him who would lift the veil in order to perceive things ugly! The Council of Trent decided that it was permissible for wise and prudent persons to read the books of the ancients, even those which were obscene, on account of the beauty of the form. A statue of Nero or of Heliogabalus made like a masterpiece of Phidias, would it not be an absolutely beautiful and absolutely good work ?—and would not he deserve the execration of the whole world who would propose to break it because it was the representation of a monster? Scandalous statues are those which are badly sculptured, and the Venus of Milo would be desecrated if one placed her beside some of the Virgins which they dare to exhibit in certain churches. One realizes evil in books of morality ill-written far more than in the poetry of Catullus or the ingenious Allegories of Apuleius. There are no bad books, except those which are badly conceived and badly executed. Every word of beauty is a word of truth. It is a light crystallized in speech. But in order that the most brilliant light may be produced and made visible, a shadow is necessary; and the creative word, that it may become efficacious, needs contradictions. It must submit to the ordeal of negation, of sarcasm, and then to that more cruel yet, of indifference and forgetfulness. 240