There is not
a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a
shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my
nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those
'pour qui le monde visible existe.'
Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though
it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and
shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I
desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulate
utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life,
the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely
necessary for me to find it somewhere.
All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences
of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the
box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of
detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society,
as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer;
but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have
clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence
I may weep undisturbed.
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