Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

46. wanted to be a great zoologist, but he was not one because his passion for it was not great enough. His journal of disappointment is interesting but I am glad that Beethoven chose rather to give us music instead of a journal.

                   September 14, 1934 – Friday

     To Picture Show – a short piece, called I think, The Romance of Gears, (“Mechanical Principles” by Ralph Steiner?) consisting of close-up enlarged pictures of all manner of gears in action – very beautifully photographed – At the last, with trick photography they showed some of the foregoing shots multiplied and overlapping; the effect was thrilling, like music.

                   September 15, 1934 –

Finished the “Journal of a Disappointed Man” – I feel that I should offer the most abject apology to “Barbellion” for my smug criticism of him Tuesday. For every complaint he uttered he was justified ten times over. Almost it seems that I should “strike” my unjust appraisal of him “from the record” – Poor “Barbellion”!