And the younger playwrights are not only taking their
art seriously, but being taken seriously themselves. The critic who
ought to be a newsboy is now comparatively rare.
I now find myself inspired to make a second legend of Creative Evolution
without distractions and embellishments. My sands are running out; the
exuberance of 1901 has aged into the garrulity of 1930; and the war has
been a stern intimation that the matter is not one to be trifled with. I
abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back
to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the eternal interest of
the philosopher's stone which enables men to live for ever. I am not, I
hope, under more illusion than is humanly inevitable as to the crudity
of this my beginning of a Bible for Creative Evolution. I am doing the
best I can at my age. My powers are waning; but so much the better for
those who found me unbearably brilliant when I was in my prime. It is
my hope that a hundred apter and more elegant parables by younger hands
will soon leave mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the
fifteenth century left behind the first attempts of the early Christians
at iconography.
Pages:
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155