—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
Was this like Vico’s heroic age, during which the verbal formulations that described all things and relationships were real, deified, and magical? Let there be light, and there was light; love is golden, and so love was golden. How readily we were conditioned to respond to associated objects! No one believes words are like that now though science has made us see the universe as long, tangled sentences in a language based on energy and disorder, chronicling endless history. Theory, too, strives hard to interpret all art, politics and philosophy as common narratives sharing themes of suppression, class struggle, imperialism, and so on and so forth, leading always to the vain ego. But for some reason, I find this modern spelunking for words oppressive and tiring.
