isaveta:
feeling, any warm, hearty feeling is always banal and unusable, and
only the irritations and the cold ecstasies of our demoralized, of our
artistic nervous system are useful in art. It is necessary that one
should be something superhuman and inhuman, that one should have a
strangely distant and uninterested relation to everything human,
in order to be able or even tempted to play life, to play with it, to
represent it effectively and tastefully. The talent for style, form,
and expression presupposes this cool and fastidious relation to things
human, and even a certain impoverishment and stagnation of the artist.
For every healthy and strong emotion, that is beyond doubt, is
tasteless. The artist is done for so soon as he becomes a man and
begins to feel. Adalbert knew that, and that is why he went to the
cafe, off to the remote sphere, yes indeed."

"Well, God be with him, Batushka," said Lisaveta, washing her hands in
a tin basin; "you don't have to follow him."

"No, Lisaveta, I will not follow him, but only for the reason that I am
now and then able to be a little ashamed before the spring-time of my
artistry. You see, at times I get letters from unknown hands, letters
of praise and thanks from my public, admiring apostrophes from affected
readers. I read these and am myself touched in view of the warm and
inarticulate human feeling which my art has aroused in these people; a
kind of sympathy comes over me at the naive enthusiasm which the
letters utter, and I blush at the thought of how it would sober these
honest folk if they could ever cast a glance behind the scenes, if
their innocence could ever comprehend that an honest, healthy, and
decent human being never writes, acts, or composes ... all of which
does not prevent me of course from using their admiration of my genius
to strengthen and stimulate myself, that I take it with the gravest
seriousness, and put on a face like that of an ape pretending to be a
big man ... Now don't put in your oar, Lisaveta! I tell you I am often
weary to death of depicting things human without having any share in
them ... Is an artist a man, anyhow? Let some one ask 'woman' that
question. It seems to me that we artists all share a little the fate of
those eunuchs that used to sing for the Pope ... Our singing is
touchingly beautiful. And yet--"

"You ought to be a little ashamed, Tonio Kroeger. Now come and have tea.
The water will boil directly, and here are cigarettes