'the salt, bitter passion of the sea'

The trouble began at evening. Then a yearning for something unknown came over her, a passion for something she knew not what. She would walk the foreshore alone after dusk, expecting, expecting something, as if she had gone to a rendezvous. The salt, bitter passion of the sea, its indifference to the earth, its swinging, definite motion, its strength, its attack, and its salt burning, seemed to provoke her to a pitch of madness, tantalizing her with vast suggestions of fulfilment. And then, for personification, would come Skrebensky, Skrebensky, whom she knew, whom she was fond of, who was attractive, but whose soul could not contain her in its waves of strength, nor his breast compel her in burning, salty passion.

—D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)

You Want to Rebel Against Society?

"Art as a weapon?" he said to me, the word "weapon" rich with contempt and itself a weapon. "Art as taking the right stand on everything? Art as the advocate of good things? Who taught you all this? Who taught you art is slogans? Who taught you art is in the service of 'the people'? Art is in the service of art--otherwise there is no art worthy of anyone's attention. What is the motive for writing serious literature, Mr. Zuckerman? To disarm the enemies of price control? The motive for writing serious literature is to write serious literature. You want to rebel against society? I'll tell you how to do it--write well. You want to embrace a lost cause? Then don't fight in behalf of the laboring class. They're going to make out fine. They're going to fill up on Plymouths to their heart's content. The workingman will conquer us all--out of his mindlessness will flow the slop that is this philistine country's cultural destiny. We'll soon have something in this country far worse than the government of the peasants and the workers--we will have the culture of the peasants and the workers. Not the high-flown word, not the inspiring word, not the pro-this and anti-that word, not the word that advertises to the respectable that you are a wonderful, admirable, compassionate person on the side of the downtrodden and the oppressed. No, for the word that tells the literate few condemned to live in America that you are on the side of the word! This play of yours is crap. It's awful It's infuriating. It is crude, primitive, simple-minded, propagandistic crap. It blurs the world with words. And it reeks to high heaven of your virtue. Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than an artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation to idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place--your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love! Start preaching and taking positions, start seeing your own perspective as superior and your worthless as an artist, worthless and ludicrous. Why do you write these proclamations? Because you look around and you're 'shocked'? Because you look around and you're 'moved'? People give up too easily and fake their feelings. They want to have feelings right away, and so 'shocked' and 'moved' are the easiest. The stupidest. Except for the rare case, Mr. Zuckerman, shock is always fake. Proclamations. Art has no use for proclamations! Get your lovable shit out of this office, please."

--Philip Roth, I Married a Communist (1998)