Adolf. Quite. I have tested myself. When I went to bed the evening after our conversation I reviewed your chain of argument point by point, and felt convinced that it was sound. But the next morning, when my head cleared again, after the night’s sleep, the thought flashed through me like lightning that you might be mistaken all the same. I jumped up, and snatched up a brush and palette, in order to paint, but— just think of it!— it was all up. I was no longer capable of any illusion. The whole thing was nothing but blobs of color, and I was horrified at the thought I could ever have believed I could convert anyone else to the belief that this painted canvas was anything else except painted canvas. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could as much paint again as I could become a child again.
Gustav. You realized then that the real striving of the age, its aspiration for reality, for actuality, can only find a corresponding medium in sculpture, which gives bodies extension in the three dimensions.
Adolf.[Hesitating.] The three dimensions? Yes—in a word, bodies.
Gustav. And now you want to become a sculptor? That means that you were a sculptor really from the beginning, you got off the line somehow, so you only needed a guide to direct you back again to the right track. I say, when you work now, does the great joy of creation come over you?
Adolf. Now, I live again.
Gustav. May I see what you’re doing?
Adolf.[Undraping a figure on the small table.] A female figure.
Gustav.[Probing.] Without a model, and yet so lifelike?
Adolf.[Heavily.] Yes, but it is like somebody; extraordinary how this woman is in me, just as I am in her.
Gustav. That last is not so extraordinary—do you know anything about transfusion?