self fell apart. This practical detail has made it a comparatively
simple matter to exhibit these twins separately in the future, and such
is my intention. This volume, then, contains the first half of the
longer book.

I have been asked occasionally why I devote so much attention in my
writing to interpreters. The answer is, of course, that I devote very
little attention to them, not enough, I sometimes think. This book,
indeed, says nearly all that I have said up to date on the subject. But
I am not at all in sympathy with those critics of music and the drama
who lay stress on the relative unimportance of interpreters. Sometimes I
am inclined to believe that interpreters, who mould their own
personalities rather than clay or words, are greater than creators. I
think we might have a more ideal theatre if interpreters could be their
own creators, like the mediaeval troubadours or the gipsies of Spain. For
there are many disadvantages about creative art. One of them is its
persistence. Beethoven and Dante wrote notes and letters down on paper
and there they remain, apparently forever. It is very annoying. Legends
hover round the names of these artists, and for centuries after their
deaths all the stupid creators in the world try to do something similar
to the work these men have done, and all the really inspired artists
have to pass a period of probation during which they strive to forget
the work these men have done. "You will find," remarks sagaciously one
Henry C. Lunn, "that people will often praise a bad fugue because Bach
has produced so many good ones." It would be much better for everybody
if a law were passed consigning all creative work to the flames ten
years after it saw the light. Then we would have novelty. If Beethoven
recurred again, at least nobody would know it. Any knowledge about books
or pictures or music of the past would have to be carried in the memory
and in a few decades all memory of anything that was not essential would
have disappeared. It must have been a thrilling experience to have
lived in Alexandria at the time the library was burned. Just think,
twenty years after that event, philosophers and professors probably
could be found in Alexandria who did not go round with long faces
telling you what had been done and what should be done. No references to
the early Assyrians and the Greeks until the papyruses were replaced.
The Renaissance and the Revival of Learning, on the other hand,
doubtl