“I see what you mean. But I also notice that the temper of my theories is the exact opposite of Jean-Jacques’.—He raved over and poetized his wild nature and naturalness generally and put it forward as an ideal. My point of view is that it is a question of expediency only. I do not for a moment sentimentalize crudeness. I maintain that that crude and unformed _bed_, or backing, is absolutely essential to maximum fineness; just as crudity in an individual’s composition is necessary for him to be able to create. There is no more absolute value in stupidity and formlessness than there is in dung. But they are just as necessary. The conditions of creation and of life disgust me. The birth of a work of art is as dirty as that of a baby. But I consider that my most irremediable follies have come from fastidiousness; not the other thing. If you are going to work or perform, you must make up your mind to have dirty hands most part of the time. Similarly, you must praise chaos and filth. _It is put there for you._ Incense is, I believe, camels’ dung. When you praise, you do so with dung. When you see men fighting, robbing each other, behaving meanly or breaking out into violent vulgarities, you must conventionally clap your hands. If you have not the stomach to do that, you cannot be a creative artist. If people stopped behaving in that way, you could not be a creative artist.” “So you would discourage virtue, self-sacrifice, and graceful behaviour?” “No, praise them very much. Also praise deceit, lechery, and panic. Whatever a man does, praise him. In that way you will be acting as the artist does; If you are not an artist, you will not act in that way. An artist should be as impartial as God.” “Is God impartial?” “We disintegrate. His dream is no doubt ignorant of our classifications.” “Rousseau again⸺?” “If you really want to saddle me with that Swiss, I will help you. My enthusiasm for art has made me fond of chaos. It is the artist’s fate almost always to be exiled among the slaves. _The artist who takes his job seriously gets his sensibility blunted._ He is less squeamish than other people and less discriminating.” “He becomes in fact less of an artist?” “An artist is a cold card, with a hide like a rhinoceros.” “You are poetizing him! But if that is so, wouldn’t it be better to be something else?” “No, I think it’s about the best thing to be.” “With his women companions, sweethearts, he is also apt to be undiscriminating.” “He is notorious for that!” “I think that is a pity. Then that is because I am a woman, and am conscious of not being a slave.” “But then such women as you are condemned also to find themselves surrounded by slaves!” “Your frequentation of the abject has not caused you to forget one banal art!” “You tempt me to abandon art. Art is the refuge of the shy.” “Are you shy?” “Yes.” “You need not be.”