the top of a hill surrounded in every direction by water. In all the expanse of water, the only solid object is a large boat in the middle distance. The persons on top of the hill are gesturing as though to implore the persons in the boat to rescue them. During the year when I looked often at this picture I had not yet heard the story of Noah, but I did not doubt that the persons on top of the hill would soon be drowned. I recall also the image of a clump of dark-coloured trees in the right foreground of an extensive landscape. Opposite the trees, in the left foreground, is a tall building with what would have seemed to me a lofty and spacious verandah. The roof of the verandah rests on columns. I was hardly interested in the building, but I looked sometimes at the columns. The building as a whole was outlandish, but I recognised the columns as being no different from the columns at the front of the Capitol Theatre in the provincial city where I then lived. In December of each year, in the evening of the last schoolday, my school took part in a concert. While I stood with my classmates on the stage of the theatre, I was never unaware of the painted backdrop behind us: a landscape of green meadows and dark-green copses and the blue water of a winding stream. On the following day, our long summer holiday would begin, and my feeling of pleasant expectation seemed sometimes to spread beyond me and to add a certain glamour to my surroundings. At such times, I might have been about to begin not a long holiday in a well-known city but a new mode of living in landscapes of exaggerated colour. A dozen and more persons busied themselves on the verandah or in front of the building, but I seldom looked at the persons. During the year when I looked often at this picture, I looked mostly at the scenery on the farther side of the tall building and of the dark trees. The words that I still recall comprise the title of the picture: Landscape with Samuel Anointing David . I surely read at least once the name of the person who executed the painting, but I have long since forgotten the name.
I would surely have looked with interest at many an illustration before I looked for the first time at the images of the dark-coloured trees and of the lofty verandah. I would surely have felt many times before as though a ghostly version of myself moved among the images of persons in one or another illustration. Whenever I stared at the illustration on the calendar, however, I was interested not in the images of some or other persons but in images of scenery alone. I looked always past the dark-coloured clump of trees and the outlandish building and the people assembled among the lofty columns. I looked first into the middle distance of the illustration. If a version of myself could have travelled across a long bridge of stone over a shallow-seeming river, then he could have learned what lay beyond the first of the low, wooded hills in the middle distance. Soon afterwards, he could have set out not directly rearwards towards the mountains on the horizon but diagonally, as it were, towards mostly level grassy countryside in the right-hand background. My image-self, when he travelled thus, would have been driven by more than childish curiosity. What would have led him more deeply in among certain images in an image of a certain landscape was a strangeness in the seeming sky and even in the seeming air. The whole of the painted scene was strangely lit. If ever I had considered the matter previously, I would have supposed that the foreground of an illustration ought to have been more brightly lit than the background and that any seeming personage who seemed to travel towards the background should have seen more dimly as he or she travelled further away from the district that was lit by the true source of light in the true world. In the scene with the lofty verandah and the dark trees in its foreground, not only was the background the most brightly lit of the
I would surely have looked with interest at many an illustration before I looked for the first time at the images of the dark-coloured trees and of the lofty verandah. I would surely have felt many times before as though a ghostly version of myself moved among the images of persons in one or another illustration. Whenever I stared at the illustration on the calendar, however, I was interested not in the images of some or other persons but in images of scenery alone. I looked always past the dark-coloured clump of trees and the outlandish building and the people assembled among the lofty columns. I looked first into the middle distance of the illustration. If a version of myself could have travelled across a long bridge of stone over a shallow-seeming river, then he could have learned what lay beyond the first of the low, wooded hills in the middle distance. Soon afterwards, he could have set out not directly rearwards towards the mountains on the horizon but diagonally, as it were, towards mostly level grassy countryside in the right-hand background. My image-self, when he travelled thus, would have been driven by more than childish curiosity. What would have led him more deeply in among certain images in an image of a certain landscape was a strangeness in the seeming sky and even in the seeming air. The whole of the painted scene was strangely lit. If ever I had considered the matter previously, I would have supposed that the foreground of an illustration ought to have been more brightly lit than the background and that any seeming personage who seemed to travel towards the background should have seen more dimly as he or she travelled further away from the district that was lit by the true source of light in the true world. In the scene with the lofty verandah and the dark trees in its foreground, not only was the background the most brightly lit of the
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