“Art has to do with life, inner and outer life, and one may well say that it represents both simultaneously: purest form and highest content. Life, however, appears in two fold forms, as being and as becoming, and art fulfills its task most completely when it maintains an even balance between the two. Only this way can it assure itself of both present and future, which must be of equal importance, only in this way can it become what it ought to become: life in life.

But the content of life is inexhaustible and the medium of art is limited. Life knows no conclusion, the thread on which it spins its phenomena merges into the infinite.

Art on the other hand must come to a conclusion, it must, as best it can, tie the thread into a circle…

For the poet, history is the vehicle for the embodiment of his views and ideas, whereas, to turn the statement around, he is not the resurrecting angel for history…”