Note 213 — Chapter VI · MAKROKOSMOS

Imitation, being life, is past in the very moment of accomplishment. The curtain falls, and it passes either into oblivion or, if the product is a durable artifact, into art-history. Of the songs and dances of old Cultures nothing remains, of their pictures and poems little. And even this little contains, substantially, only the ornamental side of the original imitation. Of a grand drama there remains only the text, not the image and the sound; of a poem only the words, not the recital; and of all their music the notes at most, not the tone-colours of the instruments. The essential is irrevocably gone, and every “reproduction” is in reality something new and different.