The Life-Work of Flaubert

ss sadden me, while sad things leave me indifferent. I weep so much internally in my own soul, that my tears cannot flow outwardly as well; things that I read of in a book agitate me much more than any actually existing sorrows." Here we encounter a distinguishing trait of the majority of natures that are gifted with strong artistic temperaments. "The more oppressed I feel, the more melancholy and highly strung and prone to tears and to give myself over to a sense of imaginary suffering, so much the more do my real feelings remain dry and hard and dead within my heart; they are crystallized within it." This is the mental attitude described by Pushkin:

"In vain did I appeal to the emotions within me, With unmoved ears I heard the breath of Death, And all unmoved I gazed on her. So that is what I loved with flaming soul, With such intensity of passion, With so great anguish and agony of love, With such torment and unreason! Where is now pain and where is love? Alas, for the poor credulous shade in my sou