Goethe’s mind was clear and fine. He always wished he could have had more details about the statements of St. John, which allured then troubled him. But Goethe was too great to deny the unknown or mock the unmeasured genuine. He could guess what wonders might dwell there. They who go ahead, go guided by something greater than man’s reason. Redon speaks of his art as a little door opening upon mystery. He insists thinking people are crushed by the grandeur of problems they try to solve. Sometimes such people possess heart, however, then they begin to comprehend. Redon admired Degas. But he declared that the admiration of Degas for Ingres was of the head not of the heart. He thinks Degas marks the first halt in the journey to New World art. He calls him free, joyous, exultant artist. Once Redon exclaims fretfully: “I can’t speculate about Alsace-Lorraine. How could I? Art is the refuge of the peace-loving, where can be no disputed frontiers. Wars are made by dull, imperfect, fragmentary minds, minds incapable of lofty logic, where suddenly a part assumes the false significance of a whole. In short, merely a loss of mental perspective.” I do not often procure pleasure from reading Proust. His thoughts, the meat of the matter, are substantial, satisfying enough, if not alluring. But I do not like stumbling through so many twisting, cluttered alleys. His prose is dowdy. I do not call Proust a neglected genius. In the human realm (in word art) he is a plant which did not possess that which permits to flower. Proust’s _Swan_ helps date the death of creative art. Among the things I regret, such as not looking upon the face of Loti, is not having had the opportunity to listen to the conversation of Anatole France, or rather, his monologues. They who had that opportunity tell me he was even greater there than in his writing, whose finished, scornful, scholarly paganism, gives me little, shining gold grains of joy. Nicholas Ségur writes enchantingly of the conversation of France. Great artists, perhaps, possess the power to live always on the crest of emotions, which create or transform worlds for them at will. That is an element of genius. Other people rise to it under pressure of something extraordinary. I have found pleasure in looking upon the backs of athletes, in bronze, marble, flesh, and the bodies of great beasts, such as tigers, lions, panthers. I have loved them partly for their beauty, and partly for their intensity. They are proud, powerful moments made tangible. They are highly perfected things where power focusses. Sometimes they are terrible. Then they possess the too keen beauty of bewilderment. The sculptor Bourdelle has caught this fascinating something which fascinates, by blending beauty with terror. Then the two are elevated to uncontested power. I saw some prose of Bourdelle, just a few lines, which charmed me more than the work of his chisel. He was holidaying in happiness. I surprised him.