Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, December 10, 1914

Mild melting day. Morning cold and damp but the clouds break soon and the sun sends its powerful shafts down thru the cloud-holes like a gigantic bomb bursting.

To Lunch with Eastman. He tells me of a talk by Keller at Inter Arts Club [meeting] last night. Keller showed and explained the different movements in art from the Old Masters down thru impressionism, pointillism, futurism, cubism and even beyond - metaphysical sensations as Eastman termed them. Also of a talk of his own on Chinese tapestries & embroideries. At lunch a discussion of Nietsche and the folly of youth trying to decide for itself what it believes. We agreed that “belief” was a matter of years: i.e. Like the physical body, it slowly evolves and the culmination can only happily be reached late in life. Meantime the mind should be kept open and free like a flower to the sun­light.

Eastman cited cases of individuals being ruined by becoming buried deeply in some one belief. He also deplored a person spending his life at war with the world because he had different ideas from the world in general. I disagree with that: that is the coward’s viewpoint. How can a person, a genius for instance, ever accomplish anything if he is continually giving in to a hostile world? Was not Wagner’s life a continual strife? Or Christ’s? That is the meaning of Nietsche’s “Not peace at any price but war!” If the individual to gain peace of mind gives in to circumstances or a hostile people, his work for humanity at once ceases.

On the return he talks of Keller and makes a point of the fact that the latter has changed his personality, morals & method of painting several times during his life a fact which shows his eternal youth. I could not agree.

In my work I have just arrived at the point where I realize that I knownothing. So far I have kept one straw to cling to: that I knew a little of pattern & color. This too has been taken away.

Once in the afternoon the sun came out clear.  Its light was very white and pale.

Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, December 10, 1914