Letter to a Young Lady in Paris by Cortazar part 2

How hard it is to feel welcome in this world where so many structures are existing and sometimes/always existing against you.

To illustrate the difference between despair of creativity and absolute courage, I would like to compare two extremely different artists' works.

1. Monk by the Sea, 1809 by Caspar David Friedrich


To me, this work and Friedrich's other portraits hint at a haunting spiritual paralysis. The people face away from the audience across vast, inhospitable landscapes, motionless. In Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
, the man is forever almost a suicide. How could he possibly produce? "Surely he never produces"

"it offends me to intrude on a compact order, built even to the finest nets of air,"

"How can I tell you about it, Andrea, the minute mishaps of this soundless and vegetal dawn, halfasleep on what staggered path picking up butt-ends of clover, individual leaves, white hunks of fur, falling against the furniture, crazy from lack of sleep, and I'm behind in my Gide, Troyat I haven't gotten to translating, and my reply to a distant young lady who will be asking herself already if . . . why go on with alI this, why go on with this letter I keep trying to write between telephone calIs and interviews."

2. Stills from Rhythm 0, 1974 by Marina Abramović




This artist's courage and power lie in her ability to fuse artist and audience, to create a free space where "I" and "you" both make and the possibility of destruction is the possibility of creation!