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). |
For Manet’s imagination was purely visual. There was nothing visionary about his invention. He did not attempt to create from within images expressive of a poetical idea. Now Cezanne at this period believed himself to be a visionary. His imagination, nourished on poetry, aimed at something besides the plastic interpretation of actual appearances. He worked, above all, to find expression for the agitation of his inner life, and, without making literary pictures in the bad sense of the word, he sought to express himself as much by the choice and implications of his figures as by the plastic realistic exposition of their forms… Cezanne was exercising himself in more purely pictorial genres, in portraits and still-life… Still on the whole the main preoccupation of Cezanne’s youth was along the more ambitious lines of poetical invention. He thought of himself as a visionary.
P9
"Cezanne: a Study of His Development
by Fry, Roger
