ARTISTS AND OLD AGE
313
enology, and the theory of types-it all sounds just like Puccini. On–
tology-where, I ask you, is there any existence of anything outside
my pictures? And what is all this stuff about things, anyway? Things
come into existence because one admits their existence, that's to say,
one formulates them, paints them.
If
one doesn't grant them their
existence, they vanish into the realm of unreality and insubstantiality.
These thinkers with their grounds of existence that no one can see,
which is utterly formless-all these contributions and contributors–
they turn on the faucet and what comes out is generally a spurt of
Plato. Then they take a quick shower, and then the next one steps
into the tub. None of them ever finishes anything.
I
have to finish
my
things! They're all idealists, and they think the whole thing only
starts with them. They're all optimists, and at the age of seventy-five
they go and have a new jacket made to measure. Schopenhauer was
a well-off man, I believe, independent, and did some real thinking
all the same-his thought was interesting, it was sublime, it was far–
reaching. But none of these gentry nowadays really
thinks-unless
one excepts Wittgenstein, who said: 'The limits of language are the
limits of my world,' and 'What the picture represents is what it
means.' There's sound thinking, there's concrete thinking! No loose
ends there! There is a systematic self-limitation to the thinking of
propositions. That is painterly thinking, that is Lethe, and there myth
comes to an end."
And so what is the situation like? Desperate? Send me up some
fresh supplies of libido and a guaranteed pre-Spenglerian civilization.
The exploration of outer space hasn't yet reached the stage where
we could start to feel something again at the sight of the stars. Oh,
why didn't I become a landscape-painter, professionally busy dashing
from the Teutoburger Wald to Astrachan, and all by aid of the
Volkswagen that we have these days? Then I could have some springy
woodland earth underfoot!
"How queer the nations are," our old man goes on thinking.
"They want interesting minds, but they also want to be the ones who
decide what the interesting minds are to be interesting about. They
want internationally famous names, but anyone who writes a word
against their pet ideas is instantly crossed off the list. They want to
be delivered of works of universal significance, but it is they who
organize the midwives and provide them with textbooks on confine-
