The rest of this issue left me cold—if I may be pardoned for possessing standards as exacting as, if somewhat different from, yours. But this is only saying that nine-tenths of what passes as “art” in America leaves me cold: and on this I suspect you would heartily agree with me. I should dearly love to open a discussion with you on “art”. Your views, as you expressed them here, interested me greatly, and also tantalized me. I had the feeling that you were eternally trying to catch a flame between your hands—a flame that eternally eluded you—or burned you into silence. You left me wondering whether there was any value in trying to perform this feat: and as I have already told you, I felt that you were nearest to “understanding” art when you _were_ burned into silence. As for me, I have no “views” at all. Sometimes I write something—a line, a phrase, that seems made to live forever. For lack of any other word I call the result “art”. But I do not know _why_ it is “art”, and I am a little afraid that if I try to find out I shall lose the gift, such as it is. It is something like the Medusa-head: one cannot look upon it direct without being frozen into stone—or, what is worse, into dogma. You are very fond of the word “miracle”. Your highest praise for anything is to say of it, “It has the miracle”. But tell me: is it not in the very nature of a miracle that we cannot tell in what way or how it will come about—let alone trying to determine within what fixed conditions it _ought_ to come about? Perhaps I am mistaken, but it has seemed to me that you have, in your magazine, frequently taken the stand that this “miracle” has certain fixed qualities, which must be recognized by all. And my own personal feeling is that there are as many kinds of miracles as there are faiths: and that every faith whatsoever can produce a “miracle” which is anything but art—is, indeed, the rankest form of fanaticism or superstition—to the holders of an opposite belief. You understand, of course, that I am not speaking ex cathedra: I so much dislike to “make a circle” around my ideas: especially when it is a question of things as little understood as the reasons for our belief in immortality—or in beauty.... We seek the beautiful when our sense of the tragic in life becomes too keen, too poignant, too unendurable: we wish to _escape_ from this bitter and sardonic realization, to falsify it somehow, to invest it with qualities that have no existence beyond our own minds. And the result—each after his own fashion—is beauty.