Just as the aim of politicians is to appear constant and consistent,
artists and literary men aspire to change.
Would that the desire of one were as easy of attainment as that of the
other!
To change! To develop! To acquire a second personality which shall be
different from the first! This is given only to men of genius and to
saints. Thus Caesar, Luther, and Saint Ignatius each lived two distinct
lives; or, rather, perhaps, it was one life, with sides that were
obverse and reverse.
The same thing occurs sometimes also among painters. The evolution of El
Greco in painting upsets the whole theory of art.
There is no instance of a like transformation either in ancient or
modern literature. Some such change has been imputed to Goethe, but I
see nothing more in this author than a short preliminary period of
exalted feeling, followed by a lifetime dominated by study and the
intellect.
Among other writers there is not even the suggestion of change.
Shakespeare is alike in all his works; Calderón and Cervantes are always
the same, and this is equally true of our modern authors. The first
pages of Dickens, of Tolstoi or of Zola could be inserted among the
last, and nobody would be the wiser.
Even the erudite rhetorical poets, the Victor Hugos, the Gautiers, and
our Spanish Zorrillas, never get outside of their own rhetoric.