DR. FAUSTUS - Chapter XVIII

"But to be frank, this disillusioned masterpiece of orchestral brilliance already bore within itself the traits of parody and intellectual mockery of art, which in Leverkuhn's later work so often emerged in a creative and uncanny way. Many found it chilling, even repellent and revolting, and these were the better, if not the best sort, who thus judged. All the superficial lot simply called it witty and amusing. In truth parody was here the proud expedient of a great gift threatened with sterility by a combination of scepticism, intellectual reserve, and a sense of the deadly extension of the kingdom of the banal. I trust I have put that alright. My uncertainty and my feeling of responsibility are alike great, when i seek to clothe in words thoughts that are not primarily my own, but have come to me only through my friendship with Adrian. Of a lack of naivete I would not speak, for in the end naivete lies at the bottom of being, all being even the most conscious and complicated. The conflict - almost impossible to simplify - to simplify between the inhibitions and the productive urge of inborn genius, between chastity and passion, just that is the naivete out of which such an artist nature lives, the soil for the difficult, characteristic growth of his work; and the unconscious effort to get for the "gift" the productive impulse, the necessary little ascendancy over the impediments of unbelief, arrogance, intellectual self-consciousness: this instinctive effort stirs and becomes decisive at the moment when the mechanical studies preliminary to the practice of an art begin to be combined with the first personal, while as yet entirely ephemeral and preparatory plastic efforts."