The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.
“Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship… It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself… Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.”
Ingmar Bergman