necessary to be continually apologizing for and explaining away the
phrase, which, moreover, he never does explain. Yet the explanation is
as simple as can be. Genius of the very highest order never, probably,
succeeds in completely realizing its conceptions, because its
conceptions are unrealizable. When Cézanne envied M. Bouguereau his
power of realization he was perfectly sincere and perfectly sensible. A
Bouguereau can realize completely the little nasty things that are in
his mind: if a Cézanne, a Shakespeare, or an Æschylus could realize as
completely all that was in his the human race would think more of itself
than it does. Cézanne's consciousness of the impossibility of realizing
completely his conceptions--his consciousness, rather, that he had
not completely realized them--made him regard all his pictures as
unfinished. Some day, he thought--or liked to believe--he would push
them a little further. His habit of destroying his own works, however,
had nothing to do with any sense of failure or incapacity. It was simply
a manifestation of rage and a means of appeasement. Some people like
cups and saucers: Cézanne preferred oil-paintings, and his own were
always to hand. A word of commendation for "les professeurs" ("qui n'ont
rien dans le ven_._._n_._._tr_._._re--les salauds--les châtrés--les
j_._f_._._._s") or the least denigration of Chardin or Delacroix was
sure to cost a still-life or a water-colour at any rate.

It is surprising that M. Vollard should not have made this more clear,
for he certainly understood the genius and character of Cézanne. His
book is an amazingly vivid presentment of both; and to have made such
a book out of the life of a man whose whole life went into the art of
painting is a remarkable feat. For Cézanne poured all his prodigious
energy and genius into a funnel that ended in the point of his brush. He
was a painter if ever there was one, and he was nothing else; he had no
notion of being anything else. There is enough in Paris, one would have