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November 28, 2007

poetry plus morality

I just reread some of Rouault's writings. Somehow his voice awakes in me an enchanting resonance. Not so much through what he says but somehow he opens the sources to reality of feeling and also the state of mind when it reaches certainty. He is free from professional polish. His phrases are of an archaic and biblical kind but the ecstasy is of the poet. He is not a religious man painting. He is a painter thinking religiously. Poetry, plus morality, means to him religion but in his writing there is more poetry than religion. I wonder if he ever suspected that there is no such thing as religious feeling? That it is the poetic expressed in terms of religious doctrine?


Josef Herman - The Journals

Posted by amin at November 28, 2007 12:29 AM