I thought I should have no need to answer.
However, when the butler had deposited the soup and shut the door
after him, my father returned to the attack.
"Yes, Victor," he said in a friendly way, as if a happy solution of
my difficulties had just occurred to him, "why don't you make up
something quite orthodox and keep your own opinions out of it?"
I sighed and took half a glass of claret to fortify me. I saw I was
in for propounding my views upon genius, and I did not feel up to
it.
I could have avoided the argument, doubtless, by seeming to assent,
by promising to "make up something," and saved myself a number of
words.
But there is a strong impulse in me to revolt against allowing
myself to seem to accept a false statement or opinion that I do not
really hold.
And I pulled myself together with an effort.
"I don't think you understand in the least my view of a writer and
his writings," I said. "It is not a voluntary thing, led up to by
pre-determination. There can be no question of making up. I never
try to write nor to think. I do not invoke my own ideas. They spring
into being of themselves, quite unsought. And, in a measure, they
are uncontrollable."
My father was staring at me in silence.
"Eh?" he said merely as I paused.
I laughed.
"What I mean is, that a man, as a man, endowed with will, control,
wishes, and so on, ceases to exist, you may say, while he is
writing.
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