JEAN TARDIEUby them to earth, and when I climb up again
streaming and shake myself,
I invoke a god who looks through windows
and gleams with pleasure in the panes.
Protected by his rays I conduct an inner race
with water which will not wait
and from the burden of footsteps and motorcar noises
the beating of hammers on bars and voices
that rapid flow frees me... Quaysides
and towers are already far away when
suddenly I rediscover them, covering like the centuries,
with equal love and equal terror, wave upon wave,
meanderings of the mind and the bend of my river.
—david kelley
Cézanne
Just as beyond the sky is the sky, beyond life, life,—beyond seeing is seeing.
Harsh, violent, stubborn, that moment of seeing which flashes like a spark
between two flints—and the joy it induces touches on panic, and its irrup-
tion involves it so far that it threatens the secret of the mind and the secret of
things.
A private space hidden in the full light of day, realm of primitive fire and the
surprises of condensation, second act of seeing! There, in the strident silence of
grasshoppers, a solitary Enchanter, fuming with rage and with will power, strug-
gles gradually to bring together the rebellious and rival a≈rmations of the sensi-
ble world and impalpable thought.
Where others seek light (that abstraction), he brushes aside at a stroke the
shimmering of rays, and, possessed by the fury of discovery, touches on the
nature of things: Colour.
A raiment?—No! A mask?—No! Being itself! Truth deriving from the core of
objects, drawn from the well of their substance, slowly displaced towards their
edges by the working of intimate exchanges, purified by its ascension, finally
drawn up to its pinnacle: free air,—the more it evaporates, the more it is renewed,
the more it retains its coolness on the lips of quenched eyes.
Yes. Cool. Sharp. Green. Mineral. Absolute. Colour, the world’s keystone,
point of intensity of forms (which it draws out and models at its will), limit
and link of the elements, inseparable from Creation, and like Creation, in-
exhaustible...
Such in its splendour is it also the secret, the magic and moving intersection
of the seeing soul and seen presences. Without leaving the planes it has con-
structed, it takes pleasure in metamorphoses, changes as volumes turn, as specta-