I agree with the idea that good and great are qualitatively different, not points on a grey scale of goodness. Great art often contains dirty details, poor work, unclear muddled areas, sloppy bits. But I think of the difference not in passion about ideas or ideals or worldly opinions, but in terms of seriousness about the art itself.

A great artist is serious about what they are doing, not about what they think everyone else in the world ought to do. A minor artist can accept that we write made-up stories about made-up things, and do a good job of it, within an accepted frame of reference. A great artist has to concern themselves simply and directly with why we do it, how we do it, and what if anything is worthwhile in it. And their work has to try to seriously try to answer those basic questions, in the way they make a story.

   If you look at Shakespeare's really great pieces, the first thing that happens is what the thing is all about. A guard comes to take the place of another, a king took the place of another, an actor takes the part of someone else, these upstart actors take the place of the older troupe, we're digging up old bones to bury the new dead, the entire kindom is replaced by another. It's all about the same kind of thing--signs, symbols, substitutions, language, writing, acting, art. It's so centered and fundamentally direct that it would take a quite a lot of messy details, bad writing, and dirty folios before it ever burned out as an engine of artistically significant meanings. Great artists are concerned with art itself before other matters. It's the job.

   But when it becomes merely intellectual, art musing about art, it's just a dead exercise. People may disagree about exactly when that happens.