To put this glorious furnace on canvas is,
as you will acknowledge, the task of a god. It never came to me in my
dreams, so I wooed it by day. Above all, I wished to express truth; the
sun is black. Think of an ebon sun fringed with its dazzling
photosphere! I tried to paint sun-rhythms, the rhythms of the quivering
sky, which is never still even when it seems most immobile; I tried to
paint the rhythms of the atmosphere, shivering as it is with chords of
sunlight and chromatic scales as yet unpainted. Like Oswald Alving in
Ibsen's Ghosts, my last cry will be for 'the sun.' How did my friends
act? What did the critics say? A black sun was too much for the world,
though astronomers have proven my theory correct. The doctors swore I
drank too much absinthe; the critics said a species of optical madness
had set in; that I saw only the peripheral tints--I was yellow and blue
crazy. Perhaps I was, perhaps I am. So is the fellow crazy who invented
wireless telegraphy; so is the man off his base who invents a folding
bird cage. We are all crazy, and the craziest gang are our doctors at
the Hermitage.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99