Only thus can the dignity of artistic servitude be preserved--not to
speak of the bare existence of the artist and the self-respect of the
man. I shall say nothing of the self-respect of the public. To the self-
respect of the public the present appeal against the censorship is being
made and I join in it with all my heart.
For I have lived long enough to learn that the monstrous and outlandish
figure, the _magot chinois_ whom I believed to be but a memorial of our
forefathers' mental aberration, that grotesque _potiche_, works! The
absurd and hollow creature of clay seems to be alive with a sort of
(surely) unconscious life worthy of its traditions. It heaves its
stomach, it rolls its eyes, it brandishes a monstrous arm: and with the
censorship, like a Bravo of old Venice with a more carnal weapon, stabs
its victim from behind in the twilight of its upper shelf. Less
picturesque than the Venetian in cloak and mask, less estimable, too, in
this, that the assassin plied his moral trade at his own risk deriving no
countenance from the powers of the Republic, it stands more malevolent,
inasmuch that the Bravo striking in the dusk killed but the body, whereas
the grotesque thing nodding its mandarin head may in its absurd
unconsciousness strike down at any time the spirit of an honest, of an
artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.
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