Marc Chagall, Au-dessus De Vitebsk, 1915-1920, huile Sur Toile, 67 X 92,7 Cm, The Museum Of Modern Art,

i will wade out                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air                                       Alive                                                 with closed eyes to dash against darkness                                       in the sleeping curves of my body Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls                                            Will i complete the mystery                                            of my flesh I will rise               After a thousand years lipping flowers             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

E. E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys, 1923. 

Source: Saturday Morning Cartoons: Baopu #15 by Yao Xiao. 

A Human

#inktober17

If you like you can read [this book], and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the Second World War; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.  The purpose of a thought experiment, as the term was used by the [physicists], is not to predict the future [...] but to describe reality, the present  world.  Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like - what's going on- what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. [...]  They may use all kind of facts to support their tissue of lies.They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which was really fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane- bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voice, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. [...]  In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel- that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard t say just what we learned, how we were changed.  The artist deals with what cannot be said in word.

Ursula Le Guin, Introduction,The Left Hand of Darkness, 1976. 

Harlem

“What happens to a dream deferred?       Does it dry up       like a raisin in the sun?       Or fester like a sore—       And then run?       Does it stink like rotten meat?       Or crust and sugar over—       like a syrupy sweet?       Maybe it just sags       like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

- Langston Hugues, Harlem, 1951.

Il marchait sur un pied sans savoir où il poserait l’autre. Au tournant de la rue le vent balayait la poussière et sa bouche avide engouffrait tout l’espace. Il se mit à courir espérant s’envoler d’un moment à l’autre, mais au bord du ruisseau les pavés étaient humides et ses bras battants l’air n’ont pu le retenir. Dans sa chute il comprit qu’il était plus lourd que son rêve et il aima, depuis, le poids qui l’avait fait tomber.

Pierre Reverdy, “La saveur du réel”, Plupart du temps, 1915-1922.

Camille Pissarro,Vue de Bazincourt, effet de neige, soir 1894, huile sur toile, 54,5 x 65 cm, Ordrupgaard Museum, Copenhague. 

Source: “Pissarro à Eragny, la nature retrouvée”, 16 mars au 9 juillet 2017, musée du Luxembourg, Paris.