In spite of ourselves, we long for the calm and nobility and balance of the classical discipline. Here I observed this unbridled spirit in the paintings and statues with silent antipathy. Surely the highest art is passion that is controlled; order in the midst of chaos; serenity both in joy and pain. To be master of ourselves; to be master of the material we are using in order to express ourselves; not to be seduced by extraneous beauties; not to be won over by the notion that we can conquer time by stuffing space.

Dionysos had set out from the Indies, so they say, dressed in brightly colored silks, laden with bracelets and rings, his eyes smeared with rouge and his nails dyed cinnabar red. He went on and on in the direction of Greece, and as he approached her clear graceful shores, he cast off his clothes one by one, threw his bangles into the sea, and stopped dying and smearing himself. When at last he reached the Gulf of Eleusis and set foot on the sacred shore, he was stark naked. The god of drunkenness had become the god of beauty. Such is also the path of art.

All of us keep some part of Dionysos imprisoned in our hearts. The creator is he who concentrates the whole body of Dionysos inside his heart. That is why a perfect work of art liberates us. What does this mean: “liberates” us? I mean it crushes our own stifling individuality and joins the limbs of the god that twitches crippled inside us, with all his other parts, dispersed among all men all over the world. So at once we breathe and feel ourselves fulfilled. We acknowledge our brothers and transcend death. For, in looking at the work of art, we sense that everything—man and beast, future and past, life and death—are one.

At the great creative moments of humanity the aim of art is not Beauty. Beauty is only the means. The aim of art is to reveal this oneness. The aim of art is to bring salvation.