The Birth of Tragedy |
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived … I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..." (Walden, 1854). |
More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex and conflicting natures as Cezanne’s require a long period of fermentation. Cezanne could not create masterpieces whilst he persisted in struggling against the current of his genius, whilst diverse influences and ambitions waged war with him; but even in the least successful of these works he showed the authenticity of his inspirations and the exigence of his artistic conscience. We have to recognize his heroic, his almost contemptuous candour, and the desperate sincerity of his work. We cannot for a moment suspect him of wishing to impose on us an image which was not his own. The most fantastic personages, the most incongruous ‘mises en scene’ always represent a reality which he is seeking to realize and express. Even under the exacting conditions posed for him on the one hand by his insatiable ambition to rival the masterpieces of the seventeenth century, to be grandiose and impressive, and on the other by this want of verisimilitude, he never covers himself by a trick. He would rather appear absurd than show a want of loyalty of his art. Everything is frank to a fault, and audaciously honest.
The public expects a little more regard than this. It is shocked by such inconsiderate manners. Clever and contriving artists may indeed flout the public, but the very insults must be in essence only a more subtle kind of flattery. Before canvases which reveal so total an indifference to it expectations as these it is implacable, and one can see why Cezanne’s works whenever they were exhibited achieved a derisive and humiliation failure. This was, however, the greatest service which the public could have rendered to Cezanne at this stage. A success which had encourage him to persist in this direction might have deprived us of the greatest master of modern times. Excessively sensitive to criticism, as we have seen that he was, he must have suffered much from this want of comprehension. And in spite of his bravado, in spite of all his sallies against official art, he may well have felt less sure of himself than he appeared to be. He had not really found himself….
P27-28
"Cezanne: a Study of His Development
by Fry, Roger
