I. Still Life with Apples and Peaches
What was Art, after all, if not simply giving out what you have inside you?(1)
Inside Cezanne:
Flowers spectacular, pink
Twigs reddish, buds fuzzy whitish
Leaves slender, curved

But what of the fruit, round, short stem?

You know all pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside.(2) But what of the fruit? The thymus is a blue fruit. A fruit inside of you, ripe as a blueberry at birth, but quickly dwindling. Cezanne inked the indigo out of him, a blue life source his brush touched. Then, with the stroke of oxygen the color wheel spun: a red twig, a pink flower, a peach.

He brought the peach inside to make it still. But a peach will live a blazing blush until it rots. Even a decomposing peach expresses life: vibrant yellows beneath the wrinkles, flesh pink, the seed ready.

There is a problem with the peach. It calls to be known, to be sensed and savored. It is a new lover you have known before. It calls to you from the tree: “grow yourself some pleasure.”(3) All fruit tasted inside will never be as good as in the garden. Children of the city are at a great loss, for they know only the market and not the tree.

On the beach, I am a peach. In from the ocean, wrapped in a blue towel, lost in salt and sky and a mouthful of fleshy-burst. I am alive as this spurting fruit, already decomposing in my mouth. I am a juicy explosion at noon, prancing in circles, shaking my sack of shells.

Why else would I stare into the sun but to see Rilke? My poet eats the fruit of Cezanne, stares at his tree. Rilke writes a letter, a rectangle I raise to the sky, looking for a spot of juice. My poet passes me a napkin, the drip at my chin. I crumble it into a wet ball, an off-white planet, an eyeball.

Sun: Sol solis
The sun here is so tremendous it seems as if objects were silhouetted not only in black and white, but in blue, red, brown and violet.(4)
Peach Tree: Prunus persica
Deciduous. Small, spreading tree usually under 20’ tall (max. 39’). Told from all native plums by woolly buds, very short-stalked flowers and fruit, and long slender leaves.
leaves slender, 6”, often curved
fruit large, 3½”, round, very short stem
slender leaves curve and droop from twigs
twigs reddish, buds fuzzy whitish
flowers spectacular, pink (or white or red in cultivars) in early spring(5)

Still Life with Apples and Peaches (c. 1905):
Tremendous it seems, spread round. Very curved, large. The sun is reddish, fuzzy whitish. Fruit pink, native” spreading spectacular. Fruit silhouetted in white, black and brown. Woolly spread droops flowers 3” leaves curved. As if objects were very early trees, told from buds in early spring: very round, usually under sun-curve. Short brown under fruit, very” and slender curve. Tremendous fruit, both “ small and max. red, brown and violet large. Told from all objects by spectacular spread and early max.

That is,

II. Still Life with Apples
But when the fruits of the season shrivel as ghosts, something inside you grows. A fleck of blue pulses desire in the face of death. Here with us the frost has been so severe that all the fruit and vine harvest is lost. But behold the advantage of art, painting remains.(6) So too the outdoors remain—a frosted landscape awaits the brush. Cezanne’s pears are green—too young—yellow and brown. He compliments them with a human skull, an object complacent with time.

There is a problem with the peach; it is not a peach at all. Cezanne is a babe suckled by the Illusions.(7) The fruit sits clean over cloth, vivacious and full, presenting the problem. It is not a problem of the peach, but the problem of words. You see, I don’t speak French—the placard does not announce this still life of apples and oranges. The horror! I have been turning Cezanne’s peaches in my hands for years, only to realize I brought them to the museum, here in my bag. These peaches belong to me, the apples to Cezanne. Oh hideous eyes that deceived me—how can I trust you yet?

The peaches were still but the farmer was loud, offering a slice. I placed a sliver into me, forgetting Cezanne. I am the subject. No, I am the object, the peach inside my mouth the subject. The peach and me, me and the peach, French kissing while the farmer looked on.

RULE 1. No two varieties of the same kind of fruit shall bear the same name.(8)
As Cezanne completed his “Still Life with Apples and Peaches” the U.S. Department of Agriculture published a book on the apple—a “Catalogue of the Known Varieties.” But here a rule is broken. Who bears the name Paul Cezanne? Is he not a red striped man, oblate, and very good to best quality?

The catalogue names the apple Paul. Syn. Seedling Paul………………………………....
Form.              ob        (oblate)
Color.              rs         (red, striped)
Flavor.             sa         (subacid)
Quality.           vg        (very good to best)
Season.            ml        (medium to late)(9)

Is there violence in a name? Someone came to the rootstock, bladed it back, sliced the scion to bring forth fruit. Bent over the rootstock, carving wood into the supernatural, someone made an apple tree. Someone ate of the tree and called it Paul. “Grafting is a technique of joining two parts of different plants together in such a way that they will unite and continue their growth as one plant.”(10)

Still Life with Apples (c. 1898):
Paul. No two shall bear the same flavor. Two very good red. One very Flavor. A medium seed syn. Form. Varieties of syn. Forms. No two the same kind but very very syn., medium to ripe, Quality to Color (joining: syn. and syn.; Season and Seed). Paul: one shall bear the syn. of color. In such a way, red together and continue late. Plants together and continue varieties. Pauls together and continue very good to best growth. Pauls no two, a syn. joining syn. shall bear one name.

A still life is implicitly a contradiction: to be still is to die. Cezanne captured this simply in the French—Nature morte avec pommes et pêches; Nature morte avec des pommes; Nature morte avec oignons et bouteille—that is, dead nature with various fruits, apples and peaches; onions and bottle. Is an onion dead when it is on display? Is rendering complicit with death?

Cezanne went to the core and found it was violet or blue or reddish or green. He pulled out all the violet hues that had been tucked inside.(11) So the onion was no more an onion, but Cezanne’s folds of color; he was a conquistador capturing onions, massacring the bulbs with the wet of his brush.

The artist dismembers reality. Here is a peach—Catch! Do we agree that you are holding a peach? No, we do not agree. Do we agree that I threw you a peach? It is true that the great magician, I mean the sun, was of the party.(12) It is true that the sun deceives us. “The truth of red is in the smear; the pencil’s truth is in the wobbly line.”(13)

III. Still Life with Skull
These are feelings that I cannot express, it is better to feel them.(14) But then feelings are spread across a table, a drab cloth giving way to young flesh: peaches echo sunlight, the play between beckon and bloom.

Cezanne stored his emotions—colors trapped in small tubes. Then he pressed upon them and out shouted a smudge of red, yellow. Dab at the old feelings, and shift them into shapes. The canvas reeks of pent up anger, derision, delight. Like finding a jar of tomatoes in mid-winter—a smell of summer condensed, reimagined.

A hand knows how to form letters—the muscles of the wrist and fingers weave shapes. Cezanne’s hand knew how to form fruit, a dimension charted by the body. The heart rages in three dimensions, calling for life within, without; forthwith.

So we come to a globe, a peach, a skull, an organ. “I repeat, images of full roundness help us to collect ourselves, permit us to confer an initial constitution on ourselves, and to confirm our being intimately, inside.”(15) Some women announce their organ, a peach dome: beneath a blouse spins a full, round rapture. Do you find yourself looking? Seeking the circle of yourself? So too spins the cranium, the “brain-case…forms a[n]…egg-shaped box.”(16) The brain, a sea-sponge oval, a shape that announces itself through the mouth: O. The round O offers us oxygen—to live and to die in a shape.

“The Skull is supported on the summit of the vertebral column, and is of an oval shape, wider behind than in front… It is divided into two parts, the Cranium and the Face, the former of which constitutes a case for the accommodation and protection of the brain, while opening on the face are the orifices of the nose and mouth; between the cranium above and the face below the orbital cavities are situated.”(17)

Still Life with Skull (c. 1895):
Divided into two; oval shapes opening below, Skull above, a supported face. Two cavities situated, cases for opening oval wide. Parts in parts, nose, verte ovals. Divided Face front, a case of shape, wider than opening. Form divide: Skull and orbs, orifices wide, bits between constitution.

Cezanne brings memory to the canvas: One should have a good stomach and get roaring drunk; ‘the vine is the mother of the wine.’(18) I get roaring drunk in the library. Rilke breathes into my ear: “there is no place at all/ that isn’t looking at you.”(19) But I go on guzzling, looking out the window at a familiar silhouette. As if all this were just as easy to grasp and to give.(20)

In one reproduction the onions and bottle appear colorless, in another the onions are red, the bottle green. The red onions reek of the same red as the tinged peaches, the singed wine. Come forth to see red grow: “Will transformation. Oh be crazed for the fire/ in which something boasting with change is recalled”(21) Yes, red fires as blood spills forth a circle, a skull, a babe, a barrel of wine.

Cezanne gets drunk on green—one of the gayest colours which does the most good to the eyes.(22) Rilke drinks the apple—he turned to nature and knew how to swallow back his love for every apple and put it to rest in the painted apple forever.(23) I drink reproduction—an apple turned into a painting of an apple, turned into a peach. A German poem, translated, at midnight turns into a tree. I must get to midnight to look both ways. I sit under the tree and listen for a gust of German. I stand before the painting searching for the gayest colors, the mother of the wine.

I look out the window to bring my poet into view. He enters as a violet flood; ink running between us, I turn fertile before him. He pulls out the violet hues that had been tucked inside. Is rendering complicit with sex?

My poet sees a painter, sees a problem: there was a conflict, a mutual struggle between the two procedures of, first, looking and confidently receiving, and then of appropriating and making personal use of what has been received.(24)

My poet creates a rendition of reality—call it a window to press up against. My poet puts his nose to the glass to see Arbre Fleuri, Cezanne’s tree: a great splendor from within.(25)

My poet left the window open; the floors warped by a century of rain, the panes cracked, but the painting preserved.

I look out the window. Rilke enters as the sun, that great magician:
“Dare to say what you call apple.
This sweetness that condenses first
so in the taste that’s tenderly intense

it may become awake, transparent, double
meaning, clear, bright, earthy, ours—
O knowledge, feeling, joy—immense!”(26)

Dare to say apples, peaches, skulls. Dare to say the living is mulled with death; the live wood crazed for the fire, the shared sound of cede and seed. Dare to swallow an O, to round out a globe in your brain, your belly. O sun, screw[ing] up one’s eyes and filling with magic the receptacle of our sensations. Do not snap and detach me…from the earth whence I have imbibed so much even without knowing it.(27)

1 Zola, Emile. The Masterpiece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006: 35

2 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 112

3 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 67

4 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 146

5 Sibley, David Allen. The Sibley Guide to Trees. New York: Knopf, 2009: 263

6 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 145

7 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 77

8 Ragan, W.H., ed. Nomenclature of the Apple; a Catalog of the Known Varieties Referred to in American Publications from 1804-1904. Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1905: 11

9 Ragan, W.H., ed. Nomenclature of the Apple; a Catalog of the Known Varieties Referred to in American Publications from 1804-1904. Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1905: 226

10 Browse, Philip McMillan, ed. Plant Propagation. London: The Royal Horticultural Society, 1999: 170

11 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters on Cezanne. Ed. Clara Rilke. New York: Fromm International, 1985: 86

12 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 260

13 Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991: 180

14 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 182

15 Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994: 234.

16 Wolff, Eugene. Anatomy for Artists. London: H.K. Lewis and Co., 1962: 5

17 Gray, Henry. Gray's Anatomy: The Unabridged Running Press Edition Of The American Classic. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1974:: 54

18 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 252

19 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Selected Poems. Trans. Robert Bly. New York: Harper & Row, 1981: 147.

20 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters on Cezanne. Ed. Clara Rilke. New York: Fromm International, 1985: 89

21 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Trans. A. Poulin, Jr. New York: Mariner Books, 1975: 161

22 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 225

23 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters on Cezanne. Ed. Clara Rilke. New York: Fromm International, 1985: 51

24 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters on Cezanne. Ed. Clara Rilke. New York: Fromm International, 1985: 36

25 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters on Cezanne. Ed. Clara Rilke. New York: Fromm International, 1985: 20

26 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Trans. A. Poulin, Jr. New York: Mariner Books, 1975: 109

27 Cezanne, Paul. Paul Cezanne Letters. Ed. John Rewald. New York: Da Capo, 1976: 250

Truth

Untruth

We Don't Know and TheyWon't Tell Us

We Don't Know and They
Won't Tell Us