The Ways of Paradise, page 10
37. At the very turn of the century he rented a solitary cabin and set up camp by the disused Bibémus quarry. Paul Cézanne was then almost 60 years old. This retreat was a return to the place where, as a boy, he’d lived a free and happy life in the wilderness with his classmate Émile Zola. They had often swum in the great reservoir that Zola’s father had constructed and which supplied the town of Aix with fresh water.
From Bibémus he had a view of his old subject, Mont Sainte-Victoire – looming there in the distance – and he reproduced it time and again. The quarry in the foreground lies bare, exposed to weather and wind and the merciless afternoon sun. Trees and bushes have begun to take root in the hollows of the ochre-coloured cliffs. The area recalls the wild remnants of a strange, unkempt garden. A very particular disorder marks this place. John Rewald reports from a visit to the site: ‘Yet it appears as though no plan presided over the exploitation of the quarry, where the stone has been extracted here and left untouched there. Between deep cavities and shallow furrows, solitary blocks remain standing.… It is a vast field of seemingly accidental forms, as if some prehistoric giant, constructing a fantastic playground, had piled up cubes and dug holes and then abandoned them without leaving a hint of his intricate plan.’ The dramatic canvases of Bibémus confirm Dorival’s impression that the artist had been ‘seized by cosmic vertigo’. Everything, as in Erle Loran’s diagram, is in uneasy motion and circulation. Cézanne said he wanted to paint ‘the virginity of the world’, its original state.
38. Probably in reference to the unfortunate Baron’s observation in C. J. L. Almqvist’s Baron Julius K*:
Near Vättern
We continued our ascent of Mount Omberg and soon reached its most significant elevation close to Vättern. From here one has a vast and pleasant view across the water to the entire Västergötland coast, which stretches before the eye from north to south. The Vättern is among the deepest, most dangerous and turbulent of lakes, quick to roil and roll with terrible waves. Now it rested untroubled and gleamed with the clarity of a passion stilled.
Baron Julius was again walking at my side, and his spirit had returned to the melancholy in which we first encountered him, but which had taken on a more cheerful hue during our meal of wild strawberries.
Once at the point on the Omberg whence we were furnished with the immense view over water and land, we sat down in a circle so as to richly and at length enjoy this enchanting spectacle.
Each had his own observation.
The stranger said: ‘Of all that I’ve seen on this earth, nothing so resembles Mount Carmel, albeit in miniature, as this, our Swedish Omberg.’
‘Mount Carmel in Palestine!’ Frans exclaimed. All eyes now fell upon our pale visitor.
‘Has Monsieur le Baron visited Palestine?’ I asked, rapt.
‘I have climbed Mount Carmel’, he replied with measure. ‘Carmel, like this mountain, is neither very high nor peaked, but a broad, expansive plateau a few hundred feet above the mirror of the sea. Atop it one has a captivating view across the Mediterranean to the west, just as here the gaze looks out on our own little Mediterranean, Vättern. Were Tåkern at a greater distance from where we are, I’d compare it to Lake Tiberias or Genesareth. But one thing fails us: here there is no Lebanon in the background to the north-east, unless we consider yon dark expanse of Kolmården or the Motala hills. Nor do we have Jerusalem on the plain below, nor the Cave of Elijah here upon our Swedish Carmel.’
‘A journey to Palestine, to the Promised Land, in our time, in the nineteenth century, how unusual,’ I remarked.
Image credits
August Westberg, Kungliga Biblioteket, Humlegården Stockholm, film printing, c. 21.6 x 30 cm, 1897. Tekniska Museet, Stockholm
Alice Roscher, The Omphalos of Jerusalem, drawing, taken from Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Omphalos. Eine philologisch-archäologisch-volkskundliche Abhandlung über die Vorstellungen der Griechen und anderen Völker vom « Nabel der Erde » [Omphalos: A Philological-Archaeological-Ethnographic Treatise on the Ideas of the Greeks and Other Peoples About the ‘Centre of the Earth’] (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), pl. IX
Robert Smithson, Spiral Hill, pencil and felt tip on paper, 40.6 x 30.5 cm, 1971. © Holt/Smithson Foundation, ADAGP, Paris
Michel Til, automatic drawing with quill, c. 1897, taken from Théodore Flournoy, Esprits et médiums: Mélanges de métapsychique et de psychologie [Spirits and Mediums: Blending Metaphysics and Psychology] (Geneva: Kündig, 1911), 104. © Gallica
Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, Hierosolima, print, 19 x 30 cm, 1493, taken from Hartmann Schedel, Liber cronicarum, 1493
Albrecht Dürer, ‘Knot Design with Seven Hexagonal Stars’, print, 28.5 x 22.5 cm, c. 1507. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection
Detail from Jackson Pollock, Number 32, oil painting on canvas, 269 x 457.5 cm, 1950. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westphalen, Düsseldorf. Photograph by Walter Klein, Düsseldorf. © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Gottfried Eichler, ‘Mundus’, print, 23 x 15.7 cm, c. 1758; reproduced in Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Augsburg: Johann Georg Hertel, 1758-60), pl. 6. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Diagram taken from ‘L’oubli des noms propres’ [Forgetting Proper Names], in Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901, tr. Samuel Yankelevitch (Paris: Payot, 1922)
After Jean-Baptiste Lassus, taken from the labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral, 1859
Diagrams taken from Odilo Wolff, Der Tempel von Jerusalem. Eine kunsthistorische Studie über seine Masse und Proportionen [The Temple of Jerusalem: An Artistic and Historical Study of its Mass and Proportions] (Vienna: Verlag von Anton Schroll & Cie, 1913), 54 and 67
Frontmatter in Cercle et Carré [Circle and Square], drawing by Pierre Daura, 15 March 1930
Gérard de Nerval, Les bords du Nil et ébauche d’un plan du Caire [The Banks of the Nile and Sketch of a Plan of Cairo], ink and watercolour on paper, 15 x 9.5cm, taken from Carnet de voyage en Orient [Travelogue of a Journey in the Orient], 1843. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Archives et Manuscrits. © Gallica
Anonymous, ‘Alle Weissheit ist bey Gott dem Herrn…’, first chapter in Siracide, lithograph, 43.9 x 38 cm, 1654. Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Figure copied by Johann Kaspar Hiltensperger in a 1749 print
Jost Amman, ‘Aus dem Geschlechterbuch der Familie Tucker’ [From the Tucker family genealogy book], ink on parchment, 1589
Pilgrim clothes belonging to Stephan Praun: coats and hats made of felt, silk, wool and leather, bone and jet ornaments, shells; coconut tree wood and brass rosary; wood and iron stick with brass embellishments, 1571. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg
Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, vue de la carrière de Bibémus [Sainte-Victoire Mountain, View from Bibémus], oil on canvas, 65.1 x 81.3 cm, 1895–99. Baltimore Museum of Art
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970. Photo by Gianfranco Gorgoni, film print, 16.2 x 24 cm, 1970. © Holt/Smithson Foundation & Dia Art Foundation, ADAGP, Paris
Attributed to Nikolai Suetin, photograph of the tomb of Kazimir Malevich in Nemchinovka, near Moscow, 1935, extract from Kasimir Malewitsch zum 100 Geburtstag (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1978), 15
John Everett Millais, John Ruskin, oil on canvas, 78.7 x 68 cm, 1853–54. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Eugène Atget, ‘House known as Nicolas Flamel’s after restoration, or house of the Grand Pignon, 51 rue de Montmorency, 3rd arrondissement, Paris’, print on albumen paper, 22.2 x 17.8 cm, c. 1900. Paris Musées / Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
The Virgil Master, miniature taken from the Chroniques de France ou de Saint-Denis [The Chronicles of France or of Saint-Denis], f. 48, parchment, 25 x 18 cm, c. 1380. Royal MS 20 C VII, British Library, London
Jackson Pollock, Ibid.
Paul-Marie-Léon Regnard, Attitude Passionnelles: Érotisme [Passionate Attitudes: Eroticism], photoengraving, 10.7 x 6.5 cm, 1878; taken from the Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (Service de M. Charcot), (Paris: Bureaux du progrès médical, 1878), pl. XIX et XXI. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Francis Bedford, ‘Upper Bethoron (Beit Ur al-Foqa and the Valley of Ajalon)’, albumen print mounted on card, 23.1 x 29 cm, 1862. Royal Collection Trust
William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat, oil on canvas, 86 x 140 cm, 1855. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight
André Masson, Gradiva, oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm, 1939. Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, RMN-Grand Palais. © ADAGP, Paris
Rogier van der Weyden, The Magdalen Reading, oil on wood, 62.2 x 54.4 cm, c. 1435. National Gallery, London
Blaise, ‘Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie’, print, 15 x 11.6 cm, 1853; taken from Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, Histoire physique, civile et morale de Paris depuis les premiers temps historiques, annotée et continuée jusqu’à nos jours par Camille Leynadier [A Physical, Civil and Moral History of Paris from the Dawn of History, Annotated and Continued to the Present Day by Camille Leynadier] (Paris: Gabriel Roux éditeur, 1853), 17
Roger Henrard, Vue aérienne de Paris avec l’île de la Cité et l’île Saint-Louis [Aerial View of Paris With the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis] (detail), 1st, 4th and 6th arrondissements, silver gelatin print, 13.8 x19.8cm, 1952. © Paris Musées, Musée Carnavalet, RMN-Grand Palais. All rights reserved
Diagram of the Golden Section, by the author
Diagram taken from Arthur Conan Doyle’s novella ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’, in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (London: G. Newnes Ltd., 1894)
Diagram reproduced from ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy’ [‘Little Hans’], Sigmund Freud, 1909, in Cinq psychanalyses [Five Psychoanalyses], tr. Marie Bonaparte (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954)
Ernst Josephson, ‘Napoléon III’, drawing on paper, 17.7 x 11.5 cm, 1888. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
André Masson, ‘L’invention du labyrinthe’ [The Invention of the Labyrinth], ink on paper, 58.7 x 46.4 cm, 1942. Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of William S. Rubin. © ADAGP, Paris
Michel Til, Ibid.
André Breton, ‘Un portrait symbolique d’elle et de moi…’ [A Symbolic Portrait of Her and Me], photographic print of a drawing of Nadja, 1928. Reprinted by permission of Aube Ellouët-Breton et Atelier André Breton (www.andrebreton.fr). © ADAGP, Paris
Diagram by Oscar Pfister taken from ‘L’oubli des noms propres’ [Forgetting Proper Names], in Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901, tr. Samuel Yankelevitch (Paris: Payot, 1922)
Photograph taken from ‘The Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey’, Artforum VI, no. 4, December 1967. © Holt/Smithson Foundation, ADAGP, Paris, 2024
Copy of a mosaic from Taormina preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Syracuse, taken from Wiktor A. Daszewski, Nea Paphos II, ‘La mosaïque de Thésée. Études sur les mosaïques avec représentations du labyrinthe, de Thésée et du Minotaure’ [The Mosaic of Theseus: Studies on Mosaics Depicting the Labyrinth, Theseus and the Minotaur], Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw: PWN, Éditions scientifiques de Pologne, 1977)
Diagram of the positioning of ‘planes and volumes moving around an imaginary central axis’ in ‘La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, vue de la carrière de Bibémus’ by Paul Cézanne, taken from Erle Loran, Cézanne’s Composition Analysis of His Form, with Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1943)
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All other translations by Saskia Vogel
About the Authors
Born in Stockholm in 1942, Peter Cornell is a writer, historian and art critic. He taught theory and history of modern art at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) and the Royal Institute of the Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm, and is an honourary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademien).
Saskia Vogel is the author of Permission, the translator of over twenty Swedish-language books and the deputy editor of Erotic Review. Her work has been awarded the Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature and the Bernard Shaw Prize. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in Berlin.
Copyright
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Copyright © Peter Cornell, 1987
Translation copyright © Saskia Vogel, 2024
Originally published in Great Britain
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Peter Cornell, The Ways of Paradise
