One sees men of great artistic gifts who suffer from each of these
disadvantages. One sees poets, born in a prosaic age, who would
have won high fame if they had been born in an age of poets. And
one sees, too, men who seem to struggle with big, unintelligible
thoughts, thoughts which do not seem to fit on to anything
existing. The happy artist is the man who touches the note which
awakens a responsive echo in many hearts; the man who instinctively
uses the medium of the time, and who neither regrets the old nor
portends the new.

Karl Katz must content himself, if he can find a corner and a
crust, with the memory of the day when the sun lay hot among the
ruins, with the thought of the pleasant coolness of the vault, the
leaping shower of corn, the thunder of the imprisoned feet, the
heroic players, the heady wine. That must be enough for him. He has
had a taste, let him remember, of marvels hidden from common eyes
and ears. Let it be for him to muse in the sun, and to be grateful
for the space of recollection given him. If he had lived the life
of the world, he would but have had a treasure of simple memories,
much that was sordid, much that was sad.

But now he has his own dreams, and he must pay the price in
heaviness and dreariness!



December 14, 1888.