pyrotechnic sunsets, and fanning clouds like purple phoenix wings. And when Cornélie asked him why nothing was finished, he replied that nothing was any good. He saw the skies asdreams, visions and apotheoses, and on paper they were water and paint, and paint could be finished. And then he lacked self-confidence. And then he abandoned his skies, he said, and copied Byzantine Madonnas.
When he saw that his watercolours nevertheless interested her, he went on talking about himself, telling her how he first enthused about the noble and naive Primitives, Giotto and especially Lippo Memmi … How subsequently, spending a year in Paris, he had found that nothing compared with Forain: dry, cool satire in two or three lines; how then, in the Louvre, Rubens had revealed himself: Rubens, whose unique talent and unique brush he had traced among all the imitation and apprentice work of his numerous pupils, until he was able to say which cherub was by Rubens himself in a sky full of cherubs painted by four or five pupils.
And then, he said, he did not think about painting for weeks, and did not pick up a paintbrush, and went to the Vatican every day and was totally absorbed by the noble marbles.
Once he had spent a whole morning sitting dreaming in front of
Eros
, once he had dreamed up a poem accompanied by a very faint monotonous melody, like a devout incantation: at home he had wanted to put down the poem and the music on paper, but had not been able. He could no longer stand Forain, found Rubens disgusting and coarse, and had remained loyal to the Primitives.
“And suppose I painted a lot and sent a lot to exhibitions? Would I be happier? Would I feel satisfaction at having done something? I don’t think so. Sometimes Ifinish a watercolour, sell it, and I can survive for a month without troubling mama. I don’t care about money. Ambition is totally alien to me! But don’t let’s talk about me. Are you still thinking about the future and … bread?”
“Perhaps,” she replied, smiling sadly, and around her the studio darkened, the silhouettes of his mother and sisters faded, as they sat quietly and languidly uninterested in easy chairs, and all colour dissolved silently into shadow. “But I am so weak. You say you are no artist, and I, I am no apostle.”
“Giving direction to one’s life is the difficult thing. Every life has a line, a direction, a way, a path: it is along that line that life must flow into death and what comes after death; and
that
line is difficult to find. I shan’t find my line.”
“I can’t see my line before me either …”
“Do you know, a restlessness has come over me. Mama, do you hear, a restlessness has come over me. In the past I used to dream in the Forum, I was happy and didn’t think about my line. Mama, do you think about your line, and do my sisters think about theirs?”
His sisters, in the dark, sunk in the deep chairs like cats, giggled a little. Mama got up.
“My dear Duco, you know, I can’t follow you. I admire Cornélie for being able to appreciate your watercolours and for understanding what you mean by that line. My line is the way home now, as it’s getting very late …”
“That is the line of the next moment. But I feel restlessness about my line of the days and weeks afterwards. I’m not living the right way. The Past is very beautiful,and so peaceful because it’s over. But I have lost that calm. The Present is really very small. But the Future … Oh, if only we could find a goal! For the Future …”
They were no longer listening to him; they groped their way down the dark stairs. “Bread?” he wondered.
XII
O NE MORNING when she stayed home, Cornélie reviewed the reading matter that was scattered about her room. And she decided that it was useless for her to read Ovid in order to study a few Roman customs, some of which had alarmed and shocked her; she decided that Dante and Petrarch were too difficult for studying Italian, when it was enough
When he saw that his watercolours nevertheless interested her, he went on talking about himself, telling her how he first enthused about the noble and naive Primitives, Giotto and especially Lippo Memmi … How subsequently, spending a year in Paris, he had found that nothing compared with Forain: dry, cool satire in two or three lines; how then, in the Louvre, Rubens had revealed himself: Rubens, whose unique talent and unique brush he had traced among all the imitation and apprentice work of his numerous pupils, until he was able to say which cherub was by Rubens himself in a sky full of cherubs painted by four or five pupils.
And then, he said, he did not think about painting for weeks, and did not pick up a paintbrush, and went to the Vatican every day and was totally absorbed by the noble marbles.
Once he had spent a whole morning sitting dreaming in front of
Eros
, once he had dreamed up a poem accompanied by a very faint monotonous melody, like a devout incantation: at home he had wanted to put down the poem and the music on paper, but had not been able. He could no longer stand Forain, found Rubens disgusting and coarse, and had remained loyal to the Primitives.
“And suppose I painted a lot and sent a lot to exhibitions? Would I be happier? Would I feel satisfaction at having done something? I don’t think so. Sometimes Ifinish a watercolour, sell it, and I can survive for a month without troubling mama. I don’t care about money. Ambition is totally alien to me! But don’t let’s talk about me. Are you still thinking about the future and … bread?”
“Perhaps,” she replied, smiling sadly, and around her the studio darkened, the silhouettes of his mother and sisters faded, as they sat quietly and languidly uninterested in easy chairs, and all colour dissolved silently into shadow. “But I am so weak. You say you are no artist, and I, I am no apostle.”
“Giving direction to one’s life is the difficult thing. Every life has a line, a direction, a way, a path: it is along that line that life must flow into death and what comes after death; and
that
line is difficult to find. I shan’t find my line.”
“I can’t see my line before me either …”
“Do you know, a restlessness has come over me. Mama, do you hear, a restlessness has come over me. In the past I used to dream in the Forum, I was happy and didn’t think about my line. Mama, do you think about your line, and do my sisters think about theirs?”
His sisters, in the dark, sunk in the deep chairs like cats, giggled a little. Mama got up.
“My dear Duco, you know, I can’t follow you. I admire Cornélie for being able to appreciate your watercolours and for understanding what you mean by that line. My line is the way home now, as it’s getting very late …”
“That is the line of the next moment. But I feel restlessness about my line of the days and weeks afterwards. I’m not living the right way. The Past is very beautiful,and so peaceful because it’s over. But I have lost that calm. The Present is really very small. But the Future … Oh, if only we could find a goal! For the Future …”
They were no longer listening to him; they groped their way down the dark stairs. “Bread?” he wondered.
XII
O NE MORNING when she stayed home, Cornélie reviewed the reading matter that was scattered about her room. And she decided that it was useless for her to read Ovid in order to study a few Roman customs, some of which had alarmed and shocked her; she decided that Dante and Petrarch were too difficult for studying Italian, when it was enough
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