{"id":1217,"date":"2004-06-22T15:30:49","date_gmt":"2004-06-22T19:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2015-05-14T10:15:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T14:15:03","slug":"odets-beethoven-and-cezanne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1217","title":{"rendered":"Odets: On Beethoven and Cezanne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entry from Journal<\/i><\/p>\n

January 27, 1940<\/i><\/p>\n

Perhaps this constant uncovering of the self is one of the prime impulses in the creative mechanism, it and the constant effort to relate the self to persons, things — a woman — outside of the self. All of the characters in my plays have the common activity of “a search for reality”. Well, it’s my activity before it’s theirs. And before it was mine it was the activity of almost any serious artist who ever lived, from the breakdown of feudalism till today. When you say an artist died still looking for his form, as, for instance, Beethovern and Cezanne did, you mean he died still looking for his reality.<\/p>\n

A man named Turner wrote a book on Beethoven and was very smart — he called the book “Beethoven — the search for reality.” Woe to the artist who is able someday to look at his life and say, “Yes, this is it. Here I rest.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n