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88 Letters only the chosen few whom we humble mortals are priviledged to worship from afar. This attitude explains the vehemence with which those who point out the defects in accounts of ESP phenomena are attacked for not being open-minded! To be critical is not necessarily to be sceptical, but what if it were? A valid system will stand against valid criticisms: an invalid system will not. T. Healey Northfield, Salisbury St., Barnsley, Yorks., England I am forced to agree with Richard I. Land’s conclusion in Leonardo 9, 306 (1976): the case for the existenceof ESP has not been demonstrated. A stronger position cannot be taken, since one cannot guarantee that a faultless example of ESP will not appear in the future. One point of interest not discussed by Land is the frequent lack of awareness of the nature of the ‘extra-sensory’process even in articulate and educated possessors of the ‘power’. This ‘power’ usually consists of highly developed uses of normal sensory facilities, often carried out subconsciously. I have had the opportunity to observe a doctoral student in science for some years now. This student has the uncanny ability to diagnose muscular soreness in remote areas of the body by observing the gait and stance of the subject or by manipulating the subject’s foot. He has no insight into his powers, which utilize his background as a physical education instructor, a highly developed but subconscious understanding of the human body as a mechanical device and a great sensitivity to responses and attitudes of the subject. On the other hand, the temptation to chicanery must be very great, with the lure of money and fame and when each demonstration has to be crowned with success(as in the case of a notorious countryman of mine). The subconscious handling of sensory information that also expresses itself in dreams and in the deja V N phenomenon is of interest to creative artists. An artist’s source of inspiration may often be inarticulable or may depend on processes that can be analyzed only by careful and close observation by a well-trained observer. Robert Werman Institute of Life Sciences Neurobiology Unit The Hebrew Universiry Jerusalem, Israel ROBERT FALK AS A TEACHER OF PAINTING The article by Oleg Sergeyevich Prokofiev in Leonardo 9, 320 (1976) focuses attention on an artist little known in the West and still not fully appreciated in the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that Falk owed much to Cbzanne, spent many years in France and was a connoisseur of French music and poetry, he remained an essential part of the Russian tradition and he was one of the finest Russian innovators in art. Falk‘s notion of memory as a purifier, his frequent references to music in the context of painting. his concern with the totality and cohesion of reality-and hence with integration , not disintergration-bring him close in spirit to the Russian symbolists (especially to Viktor Borisov-Musatov), even, paradoxically, to Malevich in his early phase of Suprematism. Falk asserted that the function of artists was ‘to set free the linear rhythms’ of concrete reality and, through his skillful use of pictorial rhythm and rhyme, he fulfilled this function. That is why line (as a melodic and connective device) was of the utmost importance to Falk. And it was this musical interpretation of form that distinguished him from his Knave of Diamonds colleagues, such as Petr Konchalovsky, Aleksandr Kuprin and Ilia Mashkov. Their more rundimentaty scale relied on ‘tones’ and not ‘overtones’(to paraphrase Falk) and, hence, the results were often predictable; they were always painters but only rarely artists. The critic Ivan Aksenov, writing in 1913, said that Falk displayed the acuity of an Alcaeus. In publicizing Falk‘s artistic credo, Prokofiev (and his colleague Kirill Sokolov) has made us more aware not only of the sharpness and clarity of Falk’s perception but also of the simple truth uttered by the poet Aleksandr Blok: ‘In order to make a work of art, it is essential to have the ability to do so.’ John E. Bowlt Dept. of’Slavic Languages University of Texas Box 7217 Austin, TX 78712, U.S.A. CORRECTION Readers...