Letter to Zdenka Braunerová, 19 July 1902
Zdenka Braunerová, one of the first Czech modern women painters, passed through artistic generations as an ageless, sympathetic figure but also a distinctive artist in her own right. She openly voiced her views on both older and newer art, inspired young artists, and collaborated with many local and foreign figures, including Paul Claudel and Auguste Rodin. Her influence on many artists is evident from the numerous surviving letters in which writers, artists, and critics alike tell her of their plans, artistic experiences, and life's adventures, and emphasise her influence in transforming their worldview.
Dear Madam,
I received your letter yesterday, shortly before travelling to a place you may remember from the time when the remarkable landscape type of these parts moved you so, and when you tasted the strange, lithographic tenderness of the local colours and perspectives. As soon as I arrived, I went on one of those nocturnal walks that had once been a source of great artistic pleasure for me, and I returned, at a very late hour, somewhat puzzled by myself. Let me tell you why. My nerves registered the same sensations that had made me ecstatic a year before and whose unique charm had been my mirage and the colour undertone of all my moods and landscape lyricisms; but (and this is the curious part) the enchantment and warm excitation did not come this time.
And despite this lethargy and indifference, I plunged into work with a surprising, headlong intensity. I must, as quickly as possible, in a hurry, within a short period of which I do not know the endpoint, use up all my energies and mental capacities that have not yet been utilised. How I laugh at the advice people are giving me not to destroy my health that has already been damaged by an excessive workload! Today, more than ever, I stand by my only maxim: that the value of life lies in the intensity with which it has been lived, and that two or three months in which I consume all my energies at a hectic, breakneck pace are worth twenty or thirty years of slow, ordinary life! I feel that I have to say some words and say them in the shortest possible time. Because later – but what do I know about what may happen later? Every moment of life reveals its own purpose... Oh, I must work, hard and fast, so that nothing
But I am spending a long time telling you things that are confused and certainly dark – and that was not the aim of my letter. In fact, I am coming to you with a request, dear Madam. Based on my memories of that night, which You allowed me to experience so differently from the practice of everyday life that I hardly believe in its actuality anymore and begin to think of it as a fiction – a fiction of utmost beauty that made me drunk... Anyway, based on these memories, which have absorbed me exclusively ever since, I created a “fairy play”. It is in the style of my “Together Through Space” short story, which, if I may so hope, has some stylistic details which you have found intriguing. I shall finish this work in the next few days.
It is absolutely not intended for the public. That would be sacrilege. But like d'Annunzio, I dream of “one copy dedicated to one woman” – and I ask you to accept this honour.
You may turn me down. But I picture you reading it one night, on a similar night, in your Prague apartment – you alone, for I myself will not get more out of it than I already have, apart from a few unsettled, fragmentary, hurriedly and roughly styled preliminary remarks.
If you agree to read this “Conversation of a Night” – you will not find accurate realities in it. Life, typically very lacking in art, demands many concessions, and one moment of fragrant, warm content has to be compensated for by countless banalities. To cleanse memories of their accumulated dross and to convey in a lasting form the essence of past moments (with a glimpse of the emerging future, the seeds of which are contained in all our feelings, eternal by nature) – that is the law of art. But perhaps what I am offering you is not even a work of art; my intention was to capture the inner truth – that which should have been said and wanted to be said rather than what was eventually said...”
If you turn me down, naturally this work will cease to exist. No one can read it but you.
Awaiting your reply,
Utterly yours,
Šebesta
Subject: | Others |
Author: | Marten, Miloš |
Title: | Letter to Zdenka Braunerová, 19 July 1902 |
Origin: | Zdenka Braunerová collection |
Licence: | Free license |