Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part two - VI
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Sunday-peasants of romance, although I had lived long enough in the
country as a boy to know they did not exist, and when I went
abroad it was to the Italy of romance I turned my steps. I
know that you and your contemporaries seek beauty in things
as they are, tangible and real. To me there was beauty only
in the transformation of reality, which had already been done
by others. In the eighties there came a new art-creed. I tried
to adopt it, but the result was lip-service only, for my heart
rebelled against it.”
“But reality, Gert, is not a fixed conception. It appears
different to every one who sees it. An English painter once
said to me: ‘There is beauty in everything; only your eyes
see it or do not see it.’”
“I was not made to conceive reality, only the reflection of it
in the dreams of others. I lacked entirely the capacity to form
a beauty for myself out of the complexity of realities; I knew
my own ineffectiveness. When I came to Italy the baroque took
my heart and fancy. Can you not understand the agony of my
soul on realizing my inefficiency? To have nothing new or
personal wherewith to fill up form, only develop the technique
in soaring fancies, break-neck foreshortenings, powerful effects
of light and shade, and cunningly thought-out compositions.
The emptiness of it all is to be hidden under the ecstasy —
contorted faces, twisted limbs, saints, whose only true passion is
the dread of their own engulfing doubt, which they try to drown
in sickly exaltation. It is the despair of the good, the work
of an epigon school wishing to fascinate — mostly themselves.”
Jenny nodded. “What you say, Gert, is at least your own
subjective view. I am not so sure that the painters you speak
of were not highly pleased with themselves.”
He laughed and said: “Perhaps they were — and perhaps
this is my hobby-horse because for once I had — as you say —
a subjective view.”
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