For art really

We gazed at each other for a long moment of silence, with emotion. Both knew that the silence we observed was one of pain for France, an event which symbolized all too clearly the psychic collapse of Europe itself. We were like mourners at an invisible cenotaph during the two minutes' silence which commemorates an irremediable failure of the human will. I felt in his handclasp all the shame and despair of this graceless tragedy and I thought desperately for the phrase which might console him, might reassure him that France itself could never truly die so long as artists were being born into the world. But this world of armies and battles was to intense and too concrete to make the thought seem more than of secondary importance - for art really means freedom [...]

Lawrence Durrell, "Clea", The Alexandria Quartet, Faber & Faber, 2009 (primeira publicação: 1960)