Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/74

 Why should I go further than I am able ? Is it not enough for you that I am perfect ?

The cleavage goes through all the phases of experience. It is the jump from prose to the process of imagination that is the next great leap of the intelligence — from the simulations of present experience to the facts of the imagination —

the greatest characteristic of the present age is that it is stale — stale as literature —

To enter a new world, and have there freedom of movement and newness. I mean that there will always be prose painting, representative work, clever as may be in revealing new phases of emotional research presented on the surface.

But the jump from that to Cezanne or back to certain of the primitives is the impossible.

The primitives are not back in some remote age — they are not BEHIND experience. Work which bridges the gap between the rigidities of vulgar experience and the imagination is rare. It is new, immediate — It is so because it is actual, always real. It is experience dynamized into reality.