The Cutting of an AgateYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
History
The Cutting of an Agate
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Essays; Literature -- History and criticism
Three types of men have made all beautiful things. Aristocracies have
made beautiful manners, because their place in the world puts them above
the fear of life, and the countrymen have made beautiful stories and
beliefs, because they have nothing to lose and so do not fear, and the
artists have made all the rest, because Providence has filled them with
recklessness. All these look backward to a long tradition, for, being
without fear, they have held to whatever pleased them. The others being
always anxious have come to possess little that is good in itself, and
are always changing from thing to thing, for whatever they do or have
must be a means to something else, and they have so little belief that
anything can be an end in itself, that they cannot understand you if
you say, 'All the most valuable things are useless.' They prefer the
stalk to the flower, and believe that painting and poetry exist that
there may be instruction, and love that there may be children, and
theatres that busy men may rest, and holidays that busy men may go on
being busy. At all times they fear and even hate the things that have
worth in themselves, for that worth may suddenly, as it were a fire,
consume their book of Life, where the world is represented by cyphers
and symbols; and before all else, they fear irreverent joy and
unserviceable sorrow. It seems to them, that those who have been freed
by position, by poverty, or by the traditions of Art, have something
terrible about them, a light that is unendurable to eyesight. They
complain much of that commandment that we can do almost what we will, if
we do it gaily, and think that freedom is but a trifling with the world.
If we would find a company of our own way of thinking, we must go
backward to turreted walls, to courts, to high rocky places, to little
walled towns, to jesters like that jester of Charles the Fifth who made
mirth out of his own death; to the Duke Guidobaldo in his sickness, or
Duke Frederick in his strength, to all those who understood that life is
not lived, if not lived for contemplation or excitement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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