Fingers that are red and blue.

But a human being must have some joy; even in the midst of my distress I asserted that claim. I could renounce Justice, Reason, Meaning in life and in the world; I had seen that the world could get along splendidly without these abstractions - but I could not get along without some bit of joy, and so I began to paint.

Afterward one does not have black fingers as with writing but red and blue ones. At this painting, too, many of my friends have taken offense. I don't have much luck that way - whenever I undertake something very necessary, auspicious and beautiful, people become cross. They would like one to stay as she is; they don't want one's face to change. But my face will not comform! It insists on changing often; that's a necessity.

Another reproach thrown at me seems to me fully justified. People say that I have no sense of reality. The poems I write as well as the little pictures I paint do not correspond with reality. I really do lack respect for reality. I consider reality to be the last thing one need concern oneself about, for it is, tediously enough, always present, while more beautiful and necessary things demand our attention and care. Reality is what one must not under any circumstances be satisfied with, what one must not under any circumstances worship and revere, for it is accidental, the offal of life. And it is no wise to be changed, this shabby, consistently disappointing and barren reality, except by our denying it and proving in the process that we are stronger than it.


From Life Story, Briefly Told, by Hermann Hesse with minor changes by me.