Unhappy Is He To Whom The Memories

I Can Look Back . . . At Two Distinct Periods Of Opinion Whose Foundations I Have Successively Come To Distrust - A Period Before 1919 Or So, When The Weight Of Classic Authority Unduly Influenced Me, And Another Period From 1919 To About 1925, When I Placed Too High A Value On The Elements Of Revolt, Florid Colour, And Emotional Extravagance Or Intensity.

Good Art Means The Ability Of Any One Man To Pin Down In Some Permanent And Intelligible Medium A Sort Of Idea Of What He Sees In Nature That Nobody Else Sees. In Other Words, To Make The Other Fellow Grasp, Through Skilled Selective Care In Interpretative Reproduction Or Symbolism, Some Inkling Of What Only The Artist Himself Could Possibly See In The Actual Objective Scene Itself.

Now All My Tales Are Based On The Fundemental Premise That Common Human Laws And Interests And Emotions Have No Validity Or Significance In The Vast Cosmos-at-large.... To Achieve The Essence Of Real Externality, Whether Of Time Or Space Or Dimension, One Must Forget That Such Things As Organic Life, Good And Evil, Love And Hate, And All Such Local Attributes Of A Negligible And Temporary Race Called Mankind, Have Any Existence At All.

A Page Of Addison Or Of Irving Will Teach More Of Style Than A Whole Manual Of Rules, Whilst A Story Of Poe's Will Impress Upon The Mind A More Vivid Notion Of Powerful And Correct Description And Narration Than Will Ten Dry Chapters Of A Bulky Textbook.

One Can't Write A Weird Story Of Real Power Without Perfect Psychological Detachment From The Human Scene, And A Magic Prism Of Imagination Which Suffuses Them And Style Alike With That Grotesquerie And Disquieting Distortion Characteristic Of Morbid Vision. Only A Cynic Can Create Horror - For Behind Every Masterpiece Of The Sort Must Reside A Driving Daemonic Force That Despises The Human Race And Its Illusions, And Longs To Pull Them To Pieces And Mock Them.