The Gift of Asher Lev

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.

Now I stand on the knoll before the grave of Jacob Kahn, the cypress tall against the blue morning sky and the wind warm on my face. It is the only sense left me, I hear him say. There are colors in the wind, Asher Lev. Find your demons again and return to your work. Colors wait for you in the wind. Things were too comfortable for you. An artist needs a broken world in order to have pieces to shape into art. Isn't that right, Asher Lev? Comfort is death to art. Asher Lev, artist. Asher Lev, troubler. Asher Lev, my future. His voice weaves through the wind, and I add to it the words of the psalmist, " 'Protect me, O God, for I seek refuge in You. I say to the Lord, Your are my benefactor; there is no one above You....' " The wind is red and black in the trembling cypress.

Disorder and frequent sorrow the mulch for creativity.

If there were not anxiety behind those apples, Cézanne would not interest me any more than Bouguereau.

God is merciful in what He sometimes lets us forget.

And Cézanne, in the last letter he wrote, laments his poor health, and adds: “Je continue donc mes études.

Go to sleep, Asher. You’ve had a difficult day.” “A difficult day? I didn’t do a thing all day!” “For you, my husband, that is the most difficult kind of day you can have.

Man sees only between the blinks of his eyes. He does not know what the world is like during the blinks. He sees the world in pieces, in fragments.

Truth has to be given in riddles. People can’t take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed, Lev. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.

Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. If

Some troubles do not go away as we grow older. They grow older with us.

You paint it,” he responds. “You are a specialist in darkness.” I tell him, “I didn’t live through it.” He says, “We all lived through it, everyone; all of humanity lived through it. Was Picasso in Guernica? Did Guido Reni see with his own eyes the slaughter of little children in Bethlehem?

Devorah tended to fill empty spaces with books: end tables, the tops of dressers, the edges of desks, on occasion even a chair. She would arrange and rearrange the books with exacting care, lining up the spines so none jutted out: sentinel rows of books.

Surely all art is the result of having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further. RAINER MARIA RILKE

God killed my little sister. That’s right, Lev. A little girl, suddenly sick and dead. Everything He touches is destroyed. Casagemas, Apollinaire, Eva, Max Jacob. How do you worship Him, Lev? He’s the true destroyer. Satan works out in the open, cards on the table. He gives it to you straight, no games. God plays at sweetness and goodness, and kills you. Who’s worse, Satan or God? Satan at least has the decency to show us his real face. So I pay God back with my paintings.

To remember is not a punishment, Asher. To remember is a victory against the sitra achra, against Hitler, may his name be erased. The film is a sanctification of the name of God. Why should I not participate in it?

Weeks of longing and solitude: twin muses of creation.

Is it better for man to live with uncertainty? Is the answer of Freud an answer? We should simply learn to accept our position as strange sick creatures? Is the answer of Nietzsche an answer? We should learn to live gladly as guests in a murderous but fascinating world that cares nothing about our presence?

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly,” I read in the collection of letters written by Camille Pissarro to his son Lucien, “that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.… You must harness yourself to drawing.

It hurts a father to see a son this way. It makes no difference what age the son is; it hurts.

What’s next from you? Paintingwise, I mean.” “I don’t know. I’m between things now.” “Dawn between things or dusk between things?” “I don’t know that, either.

I’ve never known of a serious artist who was happy. Except maybe Rubens.

There is never an end to our work. It is not given to us to complete it. Who completes his work? That is the way of the world, Asher. Only the Master of the Universe completed His work. And it is said that even the Master of the Universe needs humankind in order truly to complete the Creation. Without man, what is God? And without God, what is man? Everyone needs the help of someone to complete the work of Creation that is never truly completed. Everyone. An artist, a Rebbe, everyone.

The two extremes of secular life. Stoic acceptance and gay defiance in the face of—nothing; in the face of indifference, boiling violence, inexorable chaos; in the face of—the Other Side. Two hundred years of this. Enough. Jews must return to Torah. The world must return to God. There must be a center to human life or, God forbid, there will be no human life left on this planet. A man may not live alone.

We have hurt you, yet you love us. We have exiled you, yet you are tied to us. “Though He slay me, yet will I have faith in Him.

Asher, an animal cannot help what he does. A human being is able to control himself if he wills it.

Without man, what is God? And without God, what is man? Everyone needs the help of someone to complete the work of Creation that is never truly completed. Everyone.

I told her of a letter Camille Pissarro once wrote to his son about Monet’s dealers, who were insisting he exhibit only one kind of painting, the one that had become very popular with collectors. The collectors only wanted Sheaves. Pissarro wrote that he couldn’t understand how Monet could subject himself to the demand that he repeat himself. He called it a terrible consequence of success.

A person has to have a reason for living, and the best reason is another person. Together they can make a plan for their lives.