Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Roger Cohen, in his New York Times op-ed essay this morning (part of my breakfast-time intelligence briefing, served by the beautiful Carla along with three kinds of fruit and specially-prepared steel-cut oatmeal) quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, speaking of "Cézanne’s abiding obsession with apples and wine bottles":
Many here have our apples and wine bottles, and Cézanne's obsession to "force them. . . to be beautiful". And rarely can we be certain that we have succeeded.
Some of my own apples and wine bottles are cosines, and parts of speech, and definitions of quantities, and cams, and latches, and instant centers, and the dashpots of Corliss valve gear. I care no less for women, and little kids, and animals, and automobiles, and buildings - but they are already beautiful.
Evidently I, like so many others here, am driven, Cézanne-like, to make beautiful what may not so often be recognized as such.
I indeed sit in my own garden (surrounded by uncountable LEDs), like Rilke's old dog - the dog of my work. But it neither beats me nor lets me starve.
You may wonder what Carla put in the oatmeal this morning.
Best regards,
Doug
“And (like Van Gogh) he makes his ‘saints’ out of such things: and forces them — forces them — to be beautiful, to stand for the whole world and all joy and all glory, and he doesn’t know whether he has succeeded in making them do it for him. And sits in the garden like an old dog, the dog of his work that is calling him again and that beats him and lets him starve.”
Many here have our apples and wine bottles, and Cézanne's obsession to "force them. . . to be beautiful". And rarely can we be certain that we have succeeded.
Some of my own apples and wine bottles are cosines, and parts of speech, and definitions of quantities, and cams, and latches, and instant centers, and the dashpots of Corliss valve gear. I care no less for women, and little kids, and animals, and automobiles, and buildings - but they are already beautiful.
Evidently I, like so many others here, am driven, Cézanne-like, to make beautiful what may not so often be recognized as such.
I indeed sit in my own garden (surrounded by uncountable LEDs), like Rilke's old dog - the dog of my work. But it neither beats me nor lets me starve.
You may wonder what Carla put in the oatmeal this morning.
Best regards,
Doug