'When these maidens met, Mercy and Truth,
Either asked other in awe and wonder
Of the din and darkness, and if day were dawning,
And what light it was lay on the lids of hell.'
--Piers Plowman modernized)

Idea: Ego as passport.

"Amis: 'Victor Gollancz told me a very interesting remark of [David] Lindsay's about [A Voyage to] Arcturus; he said, "I shall never appeal to a large public at all, but I think that as long as our civilization lasts one person a year will read me".' " --C S Lewis, 1947

"I took a hero once to Mars in a spaceship, but when I knew better I had angels convey him to Venus." --ibid

An artist who professes pure rationality is also a mystagogue. --And of course, some people call themselves artists who are only superstitious--occultism would suit them much better.

"Wee seeme ambitious, Gods whole worke t'undoe;
Of nothing hee made us, and we strive too,
To bring our selves to nothing backe; and wee
Doe what wee can, to do't so soone as hee."
--Donne, An Anatomie of the World

Your most shameful memories, your gravest fears must be spoken or else vitiate your art at the source.

Were there none who, on the thronged road to this or that savior, became disgusted with the common craving for salvation, saw their own weakness then as what it really was, and went home, enlightened without having reached the holy one?...

As long as i confuse two situations: that of there no longer being useful roles (good work [in Schumacher's sense]), and my own, which sometimes seems to me the ironic case of an obsolete vocation (from day to day its exact identity varies; i think i might've made a pretty good a-lot-of-neat-things...), i'll always confuse this age's real tragedy with my own self-pity.

'Insomnia's role in history, from Caligula to Hitler. Is the impossibility of sleeping the cause or the consequence of cruelty? The tyrant lies awake--that is what defines him.' --Cioran