Works Cited

The impulsive creator of "overgrown forests" of music might seem a more powerful and more important and more rugged fellow. Speaking for myself, I am bored with undisciplined talent. The intertwining vines and aimless vegetation that spring from careless genius are of little use to a world which suffers from obscurity, and not from too much clarity. Life is so short that no musician has the right to expect any appreciable number of people to devote any appreciable part of their listening lives to the wild free notes that dribble from his talent but casual fingers. A large number of musical compositions, a large number of grand operas and light operas, are too long, too carelessly put together, and fail for this reason. They are not above the heads of the public. They are just not worthy of the public because the creative artist involved has been too self-indulgent actually to finish off his job.

Oscar Hammerstein II

Works Cited

Never will we know his fabulous head
where the eyes' apples slowly ripened. Yet
his torso glows: a candelabrum set
before his gaze which is pushed back and hid,

restrained and shining. Else the curving breast
could not thus blind you, nor through the soft turn
of the loins could this smile easily have passed
into the bright groins where the genitals burned.

Else stood this stone a fragment and defaced,
with lucent body from the shoulders falling,
too short, not gleaming like a lion's fell;

nor would this star have shaken the shackles off,
bursting with light, until there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rilke, Torso of an Archaic Apollo