The World’s Tragedy

PREFACE. XXI wise in time, luckily, and my “ Retro Satanas ” takes this form. Let me define my position. It is quite true that my attitude to real life, the life of Nature, is perfectly “ sane ” and “ wholesome ”. In a perfect society I should regard even my “ Alice ” as perverted art : for in a sane world one is insane to proclaim sanity. But art (which is the Word of the Masters to the World) must move with that world and follow it into its corruption, redeeming the same. The simple humanity, the great guffawing indecency, of Shakespeare is well enough for the pagan society of Eliza- beth. The splendid savage Jehovah is sane enough and grand enough for nomadic Israel. But since then the World is Christianized, and there is a need for the bitter- ness of Shelley and Byron, the intense “ justification by sin ” doctrine of Swinburne. Perhaps we are wrong to have thought of Swinburne as having recanted ; it may be that he said to himself : “ Well, I’m sick of these dogs ! I will write simple lyrics and shut out the world ”. Still, the result is not good. Moreover we who are in the fore- front of the fight are annoyed with Achilles — and anyhow there is no excuse for such a Patroclus as Watts-Dunton ! Well, however that may be, here we are in the fight ; and if I am called an anarchist, soit ! But I throw my bomb with a difference. If I do not throw a physical bomb, it is only because there is none big enough. For the Government is in the hands of the bourgoisie and the canaille, and it is for us aristocrats to throw the bombs.