Master: Modern culture!—H’m. Modern culture! Gad, those damned words turn my hands into fists! I want to roar with rage, I—I want to throw the chairs about. Have you not noticed how this “modern culture,” how it’s destroying beauty ? Can you really look on calmly while it prefers the practicability of speech to its imagery, the colourless costume to the picturesque, while it destroy ceremonies, visits, low bows. In wondrous flowery glades it builds black, smoky masses, leads handsome peasants there and changes their marvellous song into a vicious catch!—Besides, contrasts are necessary for beauty! Why, it’s awful if
Friend: But, my dear fellow
Master: And you still want to say that you love beauty in all things. Have shame! The savage has more aesthetic understanding. It’s all over. There will be none rich beyond words, none poor beyond words. Venal love, interested crimes, extravagant Yankee millionaires, ravings about gain, picturesque ragamuffins, all that which is so interesting, and gives such beautiful variety to our life, all is falling into dust, all, all!—It’s interesting just to think what contemporary
