None of which I mean as a defense of, say, wantonness or dissipation, which an artist should abhor (not only for the hurt it can cause others, but also for the ruinous effect it can have on that artist’s confidence and productivity), nor as a celebration of suffering for its own sake, but as a rebuke of the position that is so intent on ‘demythologizing’ the artistic process that it would remove from that process the very excesses and mysteries without which sublimity is not achieved.