Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 101]
May 9, 10
I have been drunk, but all the while my inner mind is sober – fully appreciating, and still looking for physical beauty. The passion of Narcissus for his own reflection was no weak love, but the culmination of a passion to worship of beauty, too terrible and sensual for the modern world to think of, too wounderful for them to dream of.
May 10
128.
Yesterday a French Flying Corps man brought down by an English squadron, there's some mystery about the affair – two of the English were brought down too: no Boche in the sky. The telling is that he failed to answer signals, & being out of the French arc, the accident is dismissed as explained.
Today A. Section Pall Bearers and Honour Guard: a long funeral well attended by French staffs and their Flying Corps. He was buried by the side of Cliff and Maj. Stuart, 6th Batt. the Firing Party. Two [indecipherable] of the English staff and two R.F.C. men represented England. Henri Renault, R.I.P.
May 10
129.
A dull day of deepness: no mail, no sun. Reading selections from "Modern Painters" from Johnny J.
Yesterday Harold N. back to unit: he attached for a while to 2nd A.A.H. pined for the line again: so he's back to A. Bearers.
Evening, turning in after the 9 parade.
Tried this afternoon for a while a reading of "The Beautiful" – one of the selections from "Modern Painters". I read one single page, then a definition of Taste set me lazily wondering.
Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection. He who receives little pleasure from these sources wants taste: he who receives pleasure from any other sources, has false or bad taste.
Wilde's old "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book: books are well written or badly written: that is all" immediately came to mind reading this, and it almost applies to "Taste", there is no such thing as good taste or bad taste. Taste is an instinct, possessed by all – and a faculty realised by all, it is a realising of the fitness of things, by the individual, it is his impression of hope against the barrenness of his surroundings. Taste is not preference: preference is limitation, taste embraces all.