Pictor's Metamorphoses (13 page)

One day, while sitting over a glass of wine in a tavern, Albert read in the newspaper of the capital how all the world had gone to his home to see his paintings. It was a long, lovely article. Its headline was his name, printed in thick boldface type, and everywhere inflated words of praise oozed from the columns. But the longer he read, the stranger it all seemed to him.

“How marvelously the yellow of the background glows in the picture of the ‘Blue Woman'—a new, unprecedentedly bold, bewitching harmony!”

“Wondrous, too, is the plasticity of expression in the ‘Still Life with Roses.' —And the series of self-portraits! They may be compared with the finest masterpieces of the art of psychological portraiture!”

Curious, curious, indeed! He could not remember ever having painted a still life with roses, or a blue woman, and never to his knowledge had he painted a self-portrait. And yet he could find no mention of the clay bank or the angel, of the rainy sky, or any of the other paintings which were so dear to him.

Albert returned to the city. Still in traveling clothes, he went to his apartment and found people coming and going. A man sat in the doorway and Albert had to buy a ticket to gain admission.

There were his celebrated paintings. Someone had put labels on them, labels which said all sorts of things Albert knew nothing about at all. For a while he stood contemplating the pictures with their unfamiliar names. He saw that people could give them entirely different names from those he had chosen. He saw that what he had portrayed in “The Garden Wall” appeared to others to be a cloud, and the chasms of his “Stone Landscape” could just as well represent a human face.

In the end, it made little difference. But Albert preferred to go away again, to travel, and never again return to this city. He went on to paint many more pictures and gave them as many names, and he was happy doing so; but he showed his pictures to no one.

Tale of the Wicker Chair

A
YOUNG MAN
sat in his lonely garret. He wanted to become a painter, but there were many serious obstacles to be overcome. At first he lived quietly in his garret, growing somewhat older. He had acquired the habit of sitting in front of a small mirror for hours and tentatively sketching his own likeness. He had already filled a whole notebook with these sketches, and with a few of them he was quite content.

“Considering that I have had no formal training,” he said to himself, “this sketch has actually come off quite well. And what an interesting crease that is over there by the nose. One can see there's something of the intellectual in me, or at least something like that. All I need to do is extend the corners of the mouth a tiny bit farther down, then it will have such an individual expression—downright melancholy.”

But later, after some time had passed, when he looked at the sketches again, he discovered that most of them no longer pleased him at all. This was disagreeable, but he came to the conclusion that he was making progress and that he should make even greater demands on himself.

The young man did not live in the most desirable and intimate relationship with his garret and the things that stood and lay about it; nevertheless, this relationship was not a bad one. He did his things no greater and no lesser injustice than most people do; he scarcely saw them and knew them but poorly.

When a self-portrait again would fall short of the mark, from time to time he would read books, from which he learned how others had fared, other young unknowns who like him had started off from modest beginnings, only later to achieve wide renown. He delighted in reading such books, and in them he read his own future.

And so one day, when again he was somewhat sullen and depressed, he sat at home reading about an extremely famous Dutch painter. This painter had been in the throes of a genuine passion, one might even call it a frenzy, quite completely governed by the impulse to become a good painter. In reading further, he discovered various other things which were not quite applicable to his own case. He read how, during stormy weather, when he could not paint out of doors, the Dutchman steadfastly and passionately had copied every thing, even the lowliest, that came within his field of vision. Just so had he come to paint an old pair of wooden shoes. On another occasion he painted an old crooked chair, a coarse, crude kitchen or peasant chair made of ordinary wood, with a seat of woven straw that was pretty nearly worn to shreds. And he painted this chair—which otherwise would certainly never have been vouchsafed a single human glance—with so much love and fidelity, so much passion and devotion, that the painting had become one of his finest works. The book's author had many candid and moving words to say about the painting of the straw chair.

Here the reader paused for reflection. This was something new for him to attempt. He immediately decided—for he was a young man given to extremely rash decisions—to emulate the example of the great master and try to set his own foot on the path to greatness.

He looked around his attic room and noticed that he had never really taken a good look at the things among which he lived. Nowhere could he find a bandy-legged chair whose seat was of woven straw, nor were there any wooden shoes lying around, and thus for a moment he became dejected and despondent. He felt discouraged again, as he so often did when he read about the lives of great men. All the little signs and hints and marvelous coincidences which had played such a wonderful role in their lives were lacking in his own, and it was useless to expect them. And yet he quickly pulled himself together, realizing that the time was ripe for him to face up to his task and stubbornly pursue this difficult path to fame. He inspected all the objects in his little room and discovered a wicker chair that would serve him well as a model.

With his foot, he pulled the chair a bit closer to him; he sharpened his pencil, put his sketchbook on his knee, and began to sketch. The first few gingerly strokes seemed satisfactorily to indicate the form, and now he began rashly and energetically to ink in the sketch, and with a few more strokes he hastily got down the bold contours. In one corner a deep, triangular shadow enticed him, he accentuated it, and so he went on, until one thing or another would disturb him.

He went on like this for a while, then held the sketchbook at a distance and probingly examined his sketch. He saw that the wicker chair was very badly drawn.

Angrily he sketched in a new line, and then he glared furiously at the chair. Something was wrong. This made him very angry.

“You Devil of a chair!” he cried out vehemently. “Never in all my days have I seen such an ill-tempered beast!”

The chair creaked a little and said in an even-tempered voice: “Yes, just look at me! I am as I am, and no more will I change.”

The painter kicked the chair with the tips of his toes, and the chair retreated. Now it looked entirely different.

“You stupid idiot of a chair,” the young man cried. “Now you look all crooked and lopsided!”

The wicker chair smiled a little and said softly: “That, young man, is what is known as perspective.”

At this, the youth sprang to his feet. “Perspective!” he screamed in rage. “Now this rascal of a chair wants to play schoolmaster! Perspective is my concern, not yours, mind you!”

The chair said nothing more. The painter furiously paced up and down, until the angry knocking of a cane from the apartment below sounded against the floorboards. Below him lived an older man, a scholar, who tolerated no noise.

He sat down and again studied his most recent self-portrait. But he did not like it. He saw that in reality he himself was more handsome and more interesting than it was, and this was the simple truth.

Now he wanted to go on reading his book. But there was still more to read about the Dutch straw chair, and this irritated him. The author was making such a lot of fuss about that chair, and after all …

The young man looked for his beret and decided to go out for a while. He recalled that for quite some time now painting had struck him as unsatisfactory. It offered nothing but torment and disappointment, and finally, even the best painters in the world could portray only the plain surface of things. This was no calling for a man in love with the depths. And, as he had done on more than one occasion, he gave serious thought to following another inclination, one he had had longer still: to become a writer.

The wicker chair was left alone in the garret. It was sorry that its young master had gone. It had hoped that now, once and for all, a proper relationship would develop between them. It certainly would have liked, now and then, to have said a few words, and it knew that, doubtless, it could pass on quite a lot of valuable information to a young man. But now, unfortunately, nothing would come of it.

Conversation with the Stove

H
E INTRODUCED HIMSELF
to me, stout, squat, his huge mouth full of fire. His name was Franklin.

“Are you Benjamin Franklin?” I asked.

“No, just Franklin. Francolino. I am an Italian stove, a first-rate invention. Admittedly, I don't heat particularly well, but as an invention, as a product of a highly developed industry—”

“Yes, I'm aware of that. All stoves with fine names heat only reasonably well, and yet they are excellent inventions; many of them are even marvelous feats of industry, as I know from reading their prospectuses. I am exceedingly fond of them, they merit our admiration. But tell me, Franklin, how is it that an Italian stove has an American name? Isn't this a bit odd?”

“No, not really. It is one of the hidden laws, mind you. Cowardly peoples have folk songs glorifying courage. Loveless peoples have plays extolling love. It's the same with us stoves. An Italian stove usually gets an American name, just as a German stove usually gets a Greek name. They are German and in no way do they heat better than I, but they are called Eureka or Phoenix or Hector's Farewell. The name stirs up powerful associations. So, too, have I been named Franklin. I am a stove, but I could just as well be a statesman. I have a big mouth, give off but little heat, spew smoke through a pipe, bear a good name, and stir up powerful associations. That is how I am.”

“Certainly,” said I, “I hold you in the highest esteem. Since you're an Italian stove, surely one can also roast chestnuts in you?”

“Certainly one can, everyone is free to try. It is a pastime that many people enjoy. Many people also write poems or play chess. Certainly, one can roast chestnuts in me. They will surely burn and no longer be edible, but still it's a way to pass the time. People love nothing quite so much as a pastime, and since I am a work of man, it is my duty to serve him. We do our simple duty, we monuments, we do exactly what is required of us, no more and no less.”

“Did you say monuments? Do you think of yourself as a monument?”

“We are all monuments. We products of industry are all monuments to a human faculty or virtue, a faculty which seldom exists in the lower forms of life, and, among its more highly developed forms, is to be found only in human beings.”

“Which faculty is that, Mr. Franklin?”

“The sense for the inappropriate. I am, like many of my peers, a monument to this sense. My name is Franklin, I am a stove, I have a big mouth that eats wood, and a big pipe through which warmth finds the quickest means of escape. What's more, and just as important, I have ornaments—lions and other things—and I have a few valves, the opening and closing of which gives a great deal of pleasure. This, too, serves the pastime, just like the valves on a horn, which the hornplayer can open and close as he pleases. It gives him the illusion of doing something significant; and, in the end, he does do something significant.”

“Franklin, you are utterly delightful. You're the cleverest stove I've ever seen. But tell me now, are you a stove or are you a monument?”

“You ask so many questions! Surely you know that man is the only living thing that confers meaning on inanimate objects. That's human nature; I serve man, I am one of his works, I'm content to confirm the facts. Man is an idealist, a thinker. For the beast, the oak is an oak, the mountain a mountain, the wind a wind and no heavenly child. For man, however, everything is divine, rife with meaning, everything's a symbol. Everything signifies something else, something entirely different from what it is. Being and appearance remain at odds. It's an old notion, it goes back, I believe, to Plato. A homicide is an act of heroism, a plague is the finger of God, a war is the glorification of God, a cancer of the stomach is evolution. How then could a stove simply be a stove? On the contrary, it is a symbol, it is a monument, it is a harbinger. No doubt it appears to be a stove, and in a certain sense, so it is; but from its simple face the ancient sphinx mysteriously smiles at you. Even the stove is the carrier of an idea, even it is a mouthpiece for the divine essence. That is why people love it, that is why people pay it the respect that is its due. That is why it heats poorly and only in its immediate vicinity. That is why it is called Franklin.”

Pictor's Metamorphoses

P
ICTOR HAD SCARCELY
set foot in Paradise when he found himself standing before a tree that had two crowns. In the leaves of one was the face of a man; in the leaves of the other, the face of a woman. Pictor stood in awe of the tree and timidly asked, “Are you the Tree of Life?”

The tree kept silence. Suddenly, coiling itself around the single trunk that joined the tree's two boughs, there appeared a Serpent. And because the Serpent, and not the tree, was about to reply, Pictor turned around and continued on his way. His eyes widened in wonder and delight at all he beheld. Somehow he knew the Source of Life was near.

Soon enough, he came upon another tree, whose two crowns held the sun and the moon. And once again Pictor asked, “Are you the Tree of Life?”

The sun seemed to nod its assent; the moon smiled down at him. All around grew clusters of flowers, strange and wonderful, unlike any Pictor had ever seen. From within the circles of their many-hued petals, bright faces and eyes peered out at him. Some of the flowers nodded on their stems, smiling and laughing like the sun and the moon. Others were silent, drunken, sunken within themselves, as if drowned in their own perfumes.