On the other hand, what worshipful tenderness meets even the memory
of the patient Aude who silently closed her eyes and died when Roland
was brought home dead, of Solvejg, waiting with saintly resignation
for the return of the rover Peer Gynt. Of course the sadistic braggart
earns much hatred and the whimpering masochistic male much scorn. The
sadistic vamp gets shot by jealous lovers and the clinging masochistic
vine is called a pest. To the lovers who are not unbearably normal
and whose slight pituitary instability causes them to do and say the
unexpected, love owes its poetry, the love life its charm and its
inspirational power.
All other things being equal, when a slightly sadistic male, seeking
as his mate the image of a pliant mother, meets a slightly masochistic
female who seeks the image of the powerful, domineering father, there
are many chances that the match will, for a long period of time, retain
its original qualities.
The sadistic female, on the other hand soon emasculates the masochistic
male. Sadistic mates and masochistic mates land in the divorce court,
the former throwing at each other charges of cruelty, the latter, for
unfaithfulness of one or both mates, who seek in adultery relief from
the monotony of their too peaceful existence.
CHAPTER XXII
LOVE AMONG THE ARTISTS
Frequent are the divorces in the artistic world. Platitudinous
moralisers explain that fact with the stupid statement that the morals
of the stage are "loose." Like the Freudians, they always seek in sex
the origin of every disturbance in human life.
Sex in the life of an artist, however, plays an infinitely less
important part than egotism, the desire to be above.
The so-called normal man, who works, eats, sleeps, reproduces himself,
and, at his death leaves the world exactly as he found it is probably
subnormal.
He differs very little from the animals who do exactly the same things
in the same way and seem perfectly pleased with the endless repetition
of an immutable life ritual.
=Dissatisfaction= is really the element which we must consider when
we try to draw a line of cleavage between men and the animals.
Dissatisfaction breeds either neurosis or creation.
The dissatisfied person, devoid of intellectual resources, either
commits a crime or kills himself or goes off into another world thru
the door that leads into insanity.
The dissatisfied person gifted with powers of self-expression, makes
the world in which he lives better, more beautiful or more comfortable.
That sort of achievement presupposes a certain amount of healthy
sadism, the courage to criticise, to offer suggestions, to force the
products of one's mind upon the community, to say "look at me, I am
perfect or, at least, better than you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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