Everything about him changes and
passes away. Everything betrays him; even his senses, so closely allied
to his being and to which he sacrifices everything, like faithless
servants, betray him in their turn; and, to use an expression now but
too familiar, they go on a strike, and from that strike, gentlemen, they
never return.
* * * * *
"The constituent elements of the body sooner or later break into open
rebellion, and tend to fly from each other as if filled with mutual
horror.
"But under the ashes a youthful soul still lives, and one whose
perpetual youth is torture; for that soul loves, in spite of the
disappointments of its hard experience; it loves because it is young; it
loves just because it is a soul and it is its natural condition to love.
"Such is the soul, gentlemen. Well! for this poor, solitary and
desolate soul, there are still unutterable joys; joys not to be measured
by all which this world can offer. These joys are the gift of Art. No
one grows old in the realms of Art."
After a pungent criticism of the official teaching of art as hitherto
practiced, Delsarte explained the chief elements of aesthetics. He said:
"AEsthetics, henceforth freed from all conjecture, will be truly
established under the strict forms of a _positive science_."
But, as in the course of his lecture he had more than once touched the
giddy regions of supernaturalism, this formula seemed a contradiction to
certain minds, yet enthusiastic applause greeted the orator from all
parts of the hall.
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