Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest

1971

i97i 18 January When we look back at the teapots and lamps designed at the Bauhaus, we realize that the simplicity of their shapes did not derive primarily from the demands of practical function, as we had been made to believe, but from a stylistic preference for stark geometry. Something similar may be true for manufacture in general. Recently a specialist pointed out that the centric symmetry of the usual tool handles is not well suited to the kinetic requirements of the human hand and wrist. It rather derives from the practical convenience of making simple symmetrical shapes on the lathe or from molds and perhaps from a general human preference for regular shapes. 21 January The Boston Museum has a Narcissus tapestry from about 1500 that depicts the mirror image in the well with as much tangible concreteness as the gazing youth himself. To our modern eyes, this absolves Narcissus from the sin of self-adulation. He has every reason to look with attention and perhaps affection at the doppelganger, that miraculous duplication of his own self. I am reminded of 143 what Rilke says about Cezanne's "grosse und unbestechliche Sachlichkeit" in portraying himself: " . . . dutch den Umstand bestatigt, dass er sich selbst, ohne im entferntesten seinen Ausdruck auszulegen oder iiberlegen anzusehen , mit so viel demutiger Objektivitat wiederholte, mit dem Glauben und der sachlich interessierten Teilnahnie eines Hundes, der sich im Spiegel sieht und denkt: da ist noch ein Hund."* 16 February Blake says in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "the tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." 10 April When I was told that I had to go to the hospital for two weeks, I got from the library four books I had wanted to read:Jung's reminiscences, Malraux's memoirs, Benjamin 's Berlin Chronicle, and Stifter's novel Der Nachsommer. Only when I saw the books stacked on my table did I notice how much they had in common—two books of memoirs by old men, nostalgic remembrances of a German exile, and a story on the season after the season. The unconscious makes its choices even when the conscious mind is in no mood for retrospection. 22 April "Le soir de la vie apporte avec lui sa lampe," says Malraux in his Antimemoires.* * "[Cezanne's] great and incorruptible factualness . . . confirmed by the way he rendered himself with such humble objectivity, without interpreting his expression or viewing it with superiority in the least, but with the trust and the factually interested involvement of a dog who sees himself in the mirror and thinks:Thereis another dog." * "The evening of life carries its own lamp with it." 144 PARABLES OF SUN LIGHT A woman called a radio station to ask whether she had to reset her clocks from standard time to daylight saving time at exactly two o'clock in the morning. The mind tends to grasp phenomena by their contours. It is the borderline, the moment of change, the New Year's celebration at midnight, the birthday, the crossing of the dateline—the contour being the only precise part of a shape on which one can put one's finger. In painting also there is the stylistic difference between what Delacroix describes as prendre par le milieu and prendre par la ligne. Taking things by their contours is the psychologically earlier procedure. 2 May Leaving my home country in the 1930s, I faced the option of going the Latin or the Anglo-Saxon way. How much of my own choice was involved in taking the latter course I do not know. The practicality of the English language has made me develop the part of my nature that concerns sensory observation, enjoyment of the tangible life, the humor of situations. Had I led a French life, it would have meant the refinement of the intellect, systematic philosophy, the wit of formulation. I like to think that in espousing the one, I have not entirely missed the other; but when I read a piece of clever French, I feel the pleasure of exercising a somewhat atrophied pair of wings. 15 May Someone remembered that when my book Film als Kunst was published in Germany with ajacket design by Gyorgy Kepes, it was shown to Mies van der Rohe, who took off his glasses and said, "Das ist ein guter Mann!" 145 24 April 1971 Obviously he was talking about the designer...