Art=Sublimation or The Sublime Is Now (Barnett Newman)

I still write a little every day: only a little, but I do write. And then in the evenings Levitan might come knocking at my window - 'Are you there, crocodile?' - and I let him in and we talk. He has terrible fits of melancholy these days, but if I tell him a funny story he rolls on the floor with pleasure and kicks his feet in the air. But his work is deteriorating: he no longer paints with a feeling of youth, but with a sort of bravura. I think the women have worn him out. It's impossible to paint a landscape without a feeling of pathos, of ecstasy, and ecstasy is impossible when you've gorged yourself. If I were a landsacpe artist I'd live quite an ascetic life: I'd have intercourse once in a year, and I'd eat once a day.   Anton Checkhov, as quoted by the lovely Michael Pennington in his play "Anton Checkhov", cf Are You There Crocodile?-Inventing Anton Checkhov" by Michael Pennington, p 269.