On ne peut pas exiger d'un homme qui ne sait pas, qu'il dise des choses raisonnables sur l'art de peindre; mais, N. de D---- et Cézanne se mit à taper comme un sourd sur sa table--comment peut-il oser dire qu'un peintre se tue parce qu'il a fait un mauvais tableau? Quand un tableau n'est pas réalisé, on le f... au feu, et on en recommence un autre!
_Réalisé_--Cézanne's incessant complaint that "he was unable to realize" has been taken by many stupid people to imply that Cézanne was conscious in himself of some peculiar and slightly humiliating inhibition from which his fellows were free; and even M. Vollard has thought it necessary to be continually apologizing for and explaining away the phrase, which, moreover, he never does explain. Yet the explanation is as simple as can be. Genius of the very highest order never, probably, succeeds in completely realizing its conceptions, because its conceptions are unrealizable. When Cézanne envied M. Bouguereau his power of realization he was perfectly sincere and perfectly sensible. A Bouguereau can realize completely the little nasty things that are in his mind: if a Cézanne, a Shakespeare, or an Æschylus could realize as completely all that was in his the human race would think more of itself than it does. Cézanne's consciousness of the impossibility of realizing completely his conceptions--his consciousness, rather, that he had not completely realized them--made him regard all his pictures as unfinished. Some day, he thought--or liked to believe--he would push them a little further. His habit of destroying his own works, however, had nothing to do with any sense of failure or incapacity. It was simply a manifestation of rage and a means of appeasement. Some people like cups and saucers: Cézanne preferred oil-paintings, and his own were always to hand. A word of commendation for "les professeurs" ("qui n'ont rien dans le ven_._._n_._._tr_._._re--les salauds--les châtrés--les j_._f_._._._s") or the least denigration of Chardin or Delacroix was sure to cost a still-life or a water-colour at any rate.
It is surprising that M. Vollard should not have made this more clear, for he certainly understood the genius and character of Cézanne. His book is an amazingly vivid presentment of both; and to have made such a book out of the life of a man whose whole life went into the art of painting is a remarkable feat. For Cézanne poured all his prodigious energy and genius into a funnel that ended in the point of his brush. He was a painter if ever there was one, and he was nothing else; he had no notion of being anything else. There is enough in Paris, one would have supposed, to attract from himself for a moment the attention of the most preoccupied and self-absorbed of men. When Cézanne lived in Paris he rose early, painted as long as there was light to paint by, and went to bed immediately after dinner. The time during which he was not painting he seems to have spent in wondering whether the light would be satisfactory ("gris clair") next day. Cézanne in Paris, like the peasant in the country, spent most of his spare time thinking about the weather.