Resources » KM Today Blog » 30 Mar 1922
30 March 1922
Yes, I too was very interested in Sullivan's review, though I didn't agree with it all. For instance his quotation from Tolstoi "There are no heroes only people". I believe there are heroes. And after all it was Tolstoi who made the remark who was - surely - a large part of a hero himself. And I don't believe in the limitation of man; I believe in "the heights". I can't help it; I'm forced to. It seems to me that very feeling of inevitability that there is in a great work of art is a proof - a profession of faith on the part of the artist that this life is not all. (Of course Im not talking of personal immortality as we were taught to imagine it.) If I were to agree with Sullivan Id have to believe that the mind is supreme. But I dont - not by a long long chalk. The mind is only the fine instrument its only the slave of the soul. I do agree that with a great many artists one never sees the master, one only knows the slave. And the slave is so brilliant that he can almost make you forget the absence of the other. But it is only really living when one acknowledges both - or so it seems to me - and great art is achieved when the relation between these two is perfected. But its all very difficult. [To Richard Murry, 29 March 1922.]