Twin demons

Abstract

The fact remains that an all-too-real conflict arises for the artist from his dual allegiance. Success and admiration are always ambiguous, and he is never free from wondering if they are due to his work or his fame. Although fame counts as a social currency like other social credits, there never accrues from it the same security as does from a name or a fortune or both. The aristocrat carries the conviction of his worth at all times and in every place; he is ‘Olympian’.¹ The artist reaches the certainty of his own value only in rare moments, and when he is silent, as artist, is often haunted by doubts and self-criticism that make him ‘blush for himself^’.² Such insecurity in turn affects his life in society, in which he can never move with ‘irreflective joy and at the highest thinkable level of prepared security and unconscious insolence’.³