474
PARTISAN REVIEW
jects by binding together differently ideas already prepared, by pre–
senting objects already seen. This painting-this second-hand word,
so to speak-is what is generally understood by culture. The artist,
according to Balzac or Cezanne, is not to be a cultivated animal,
he assumes culture from the start and builds it anew, he speaks as
the first man spoke,and paints as if no one had ever painted. Expres–
sion cannot, then, be the translation of a thought already clear, since
thoughts are those which have already been stated among ourselves
or others. "Conception" cannot precede "execution.'!
Befo~e
expres–
sion, there is nothing but a vague fever and only the finished, under–
stood work will show that
something
rather than
nothing
was to be
found. Because he has returned for his knowledge to the mute and
solitary depths of experience on which culture and the exchange of
ideas are built, the artist launches his work as a man launched the
first word, without knowing whether it will be anything more than
a cry, whether it will be able to detach itself from the flux of indi–
vidual life where it was born and to present-whether to this same
life in its future, to the monads which co-exist with it, or to the open
community of future monads·-the independent existence of an iden–
tifiable
meaning.
The meaning of what we call the artist is nowhere,
neither in things, which are not yet meanings, nor in himself; in his
unfonnulated life. He appeals from reason already constructed, in
which "cultivated men" are enclosed to a reason which embraces
his
very origins. When Bernard wished to bring him back to the
huma.rt intellig-ence, Cezanne answered : "I turn toward the intelli–
gence of the
Pater Omnipotens."
He turned, in any case, towards the
idea or project of an infinite Logos.
The uncertainty and solitude of Cezanne are not explained, in
their essence, by his nervous constitution, but by the intent of his
work. Heredity had given him rich sensations, made him emotionally
receptive, given him vague feelings of anguish or mystery which dis–
organized his self-willed life and cut him off from men; but these
gifts make a work only through the act of expression, and count for
nothing either in the difficulties or the virtues of tlus act. The diffi–
culties of Cezanne arc tho::e of the first word. He believed himself
impotent because he was not omnipotent, because he was not God
and because he wished to paint the world, to transmute it in its entirety
into a picture, to make
visible
the way
in
which it
touches
us. A new
theory of physics can be proved because the idea or meaning
i':l
bound
by calculation with measurements belonging to a domain already
common to all men. A painter like Cezanne, an artist, a philosopher,
