The intellectual picture of
the atmosphere of craftsmanship from which the storyteller comes has perhaps
never been sketched in such a significant way as by Paul Valéry: “This patient
process of Nature was once imitated by men. Miniatures, ivory carvings,
elaborated to the point of greatest perfection, stones that are perfect in
polish and engraving, lacquer work or paintings in which a series of thin
transparent layers are placed one on top of the other – all these products of
sustained, sacrificing effort are vanishing, and the time is past in which time
did not matter. Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated. . . .
It is almost as if the decline of the idea of eternity coincided with the increasing
aversion to sustained effort.”
