"People were not yet bold enough to attribute values --- even infinite ones --- to the immediate, unforeseen, unforeseeable, and unimportant products of the moment.  The principle that you win at every throw had not yet been enunciated."

            -- On Mallarmé, Paul Valéry

If we could summon the temerity to speak of Mahler's…

"Once more you near me, wavering apparitions

That early showed before the turbid gaze.

Will now I seek to grant you definition,

My heart essay again the former daze?"

          — Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 …

"For all human sentiments there is a time of early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that gradually fades until nothing is left of happiness but a memory, and glory is known for delusion.  Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resemble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of glory and disaster, of vague expectations and real disappointments".

      — The Unknown Masterpiece, Honoré de Balzac.

The…