« intuition and feeling | Main | the first human being »
December 26, 2007
what a biography!
An art dealer, and since he somehow realizes after three years that that wasn’t it, a little school teacher in England. And in the midst of that the decision: to become a priest. He goes to Brussels and learns Greek and Latin. But why the detour? Aren’t there people somehow who don’t expect their priest to know Greek or Latin? And so he becomes what is called an evangelist, and he goes to a mining district and tells the people the story of the gospel. And while he talks, he begins to draw. And finally he doesn’t even notice how he’s stopped talking and is only drawing. And from then on, that’s all he does, until his last hour, when he decides to stop everything because he might not be able to paint for weeks; at that point it seems natural for him to give up everything, especially life. What a biography!
Ah, how he, too, renounced and renounced. His self-portrait in the portfolio looks shabby and tormented, almost desperate, but not devastated: the way a dog looks when it’s in a bad way. He holds out his face and you take note of the fact: he is in a bad way, day and night. But in his paintings (the arbre fleuri) poverty has already become rich: a great splendor from within. And that’s how he sees everything: as a poor man; just compare his parks. These too are expressed with such quietness and simplicity, as if for poor people, so they can understand; without going into the extravagance that’s in these trees; as if to do that would already be taking sides. He isn’t on anyone’s side, isn’t on the side of the parks, and his love for all these things is directed at the nameless, and that’s why he himself concealed it. He does not show it, he has it. And quickly takes it out of himself and puts it into the work, into the innermost and incessant part of the work: quickly: and no one has seen it.
Rilke - Letters on Cezanne
Posted by amin at December 26, 2007 2:02 PM