"the work of the mind, tracking down a quarry in the high regions of the intellect, is one of the most strenuous kinds of human endeavour. to achieve fame in art - and in art must be included all the mind's creations - courage, above all, is needed, courage of a kind that the ordinary man has no idea of, which is perhaps described for the first time here.

driven by the relentless pressure of poverty, kept to his path by bette like a horse blinkered ot prevent its looking to right or left, whipped on by that harsh old maid, an embodiment of Necessity, a kind of underling of Fate, Wenceslas, born a poet and a dreamer, had passed from conception to execution, leaping over the abysses that separate those two hemispheres of art without noticing their depth.

to think, to dream, to conceive fine works, is a delightful occupation. it is dreaming cigar-smoke dreams, or living a courtesan's self-indulgent life. the work of art to be created is envisaged in the exhileration of conception, with its infant grace, and the scented flower and the bursting juices of its fruit. these are the pleasures in the imagination of a work of art's conception."