DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51520#0035
even his portraits are composed from drawings
and notes.
At this time a new faith was abroad, a new
manner of thinking, and I find I have already
written this description of the naturalistic
movement in which I found myself caught.
“The idea of a new art based upon science in
opposition to the art of the old world that was
based upon imagination, an art that should
explain all things and embrace life in its
entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it
were, a new creed in a new civilization, filled
me with wonder, and I stood dumb before the
vastness of the conception and the height of
the ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw
a new race of writers that would arise, and,
with the aid of the novel, continue to a more
glorious and legitimate conclusion the work
that the Hebrew prophets had begun.” A
few pages later I find the admission that I was
deceived, as was all my generation, by a
certain externality, an outer skin, a nearness,
un approchement; in a word, by the substitu-
tion of Paris for the distant and exotic back-
grounds so beloved of the romantic school. I
think that Degas was more typical of his time
than was Manet. Looking at a picture by
Degas we think, “Yes, that was how we
thought in the seventies and in the eighties.”
Manet desired modernity as earnestly as Degas,
but his genius saved him from the ideas that
were of his time. Manet was a pure painter,
and it mattered nothing to him whether he
c 25
and notes.
At this time a new faith was abroad, a new
manner of thinking, and I find I have already
written this description of the naturalistic
movement in which I found myself caught.
“The idea of a new art based upon science in
opposition to the art of the old world that was
based upon imagination, an art that should
explain all things and embrace life in its
entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it
were, a new creed in a new civilization, filled
me with wonder, and I stood dumb before the
vastness of the conception and the height of
the ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw
a new race of writers that would arise, and,
with the aid of the novel, continue to a more
glorious and legitimate conclusion the work
that the Hebrew prophets had begun.” A
few pages later I find the admission that I was
deceived, as was all my generation, by a
certain externality, an outer skin, a nearness,
un approchement; in a word, by the substitu-
tion of Paris for the distant and exotic back-
grounds so beloved of the romantic school. I
think that Degas was more typical of his time
than was Manet. Looking at a picture by
Degas we think, “Yes, that was how we
thought in the seventies and in the eighties.”
Manet desired modernity as earnestly as Degas,
but his genius saved him from the ideas that
were of his time. Manet was a pure painter,
and it mattered nothing to him whether he
c 25