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134 DRAMATIC AND LYRIC INTERPRETATION
Real art has a limited public.
Take a city like New York with, as I understand, five or six millions of inhabitants. You have only one opera house and only two fairly sized halls devoted to pure music, but you have dozens and dozens of palaces devoted to the cinematograph and to what you call so euphemistically '' Vaudeville.''
Why?
Because the public for real art is limited in number.
Therefore the path for the true artist is not a smooth one.
If his ambition aims higher than cheap popularity, he must be prepared to struggle against ignorance, incompetence, indifference, and bad taste.
The crowd, which is always more numerous than the intellectual aristocracy, is not yet ready for beauty. No nation has as yet a popular elite, a crowd totally educated, and the first-class artist appeals only to a limited first-class public. Now, if it is a great soul which makes the great talent of an artist, the public, attracted by this artist, has certainly the same great soul. They understand each other, they love each other. Each artist has a clientele corresponding to his soul. There are |
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