one hundred & nineteen

to return to the purity of means *

* Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (31 December 1869 - 3 November 1954)

one hundred & eighteen

Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. Sorrow is the very essence of life. *

* Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 to 29 November 1924)

one hundred & seventeen

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it. *

* Gustave Flaubert (12 December 1821 - 8 May 1880)

one hundred & sixteen

I am writing a study of the soul as I observe myself closely and use myself as an anatomical testing-ground. It would therefore be wrong to look on these notes as confessions. I have chosen – in accordance with Sören Kirkegaard – to split the work into two parts; the painter and his distraught friend the poet. Just as Leonarda da Vinci studied the recesses of the body and dissected human cadavers, I try from self-scrutiny to dissect what is the universal in the soul. *

* Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 - 23 January 1944)