I WENT BACK TO NEW YORK on business and I chanced to bump into a very intelligent German publisher I have known for years because he was a friend of my father’s. A man with an adventurous past, which he had always combined with the world of culture and business. He was said to be a great seducer.
Outwardly, he looks like a gentleman, or a fictional hero. He speaks English with a slight accent that makes his conversation even more attractive. He looks like a very wealthy man, although he isn’t. But he has friends all over the world: politicians, bankers, great journalists, artists. His home is a beautiful house in Paris, and he is an enthusiastic opera lover. Fond of wearing flamboyant double-breasted pinstripe suits, he is considered an amusing man, a true cosmopolitan and is invited for weekends to the most exclusive country houses.
We had a drink in the hotel bar. He talked to me about literature and music. I told him that I had seen Julian Sax’s exhibition in Venice and that maybe I was going to start writing a novel about him.
“But why? It’s not worth the effort! He’s not very interesting. He doesn’t warrant a novel. There are plenty of other subjects. Write a thriller, write a book about the people you have met, on your relationship with Judaism! At most you can write a short story about Sax, but believe me, not even that is worth the effort.”
“But he is a great artist!”
“So they say, but he is a person of little interest, very little indeed.”
I realised that it was time to change the subject and that he wasn’t going to be the publisher of my book.
I must say that the German publisher’s remarks about Sax puzzled me. Probably his judgement was subjective, motivated by old affairs with women or by jealousy over such an explosive and unexpected success. Many say that Sax pretends to be an ascetic, that he only thinks of painting, whereas in reality he is a worldly, superficial man. But what does that matter? I continue to meet people who talk about him to me, but I can’t get my novel started because I don’t have a plot. I thought of having Rossa take a fancy for Sax, which would lead to my jealousy. She could become his model and something might grow up between them, but it’s a banal storyline; by now he has had many models, too many.
Do I envy his freedom in love? His success? His money? No, I envy his strength of character, his perseverance, his arrogance, his talent. His constant desire to paint another portrait. I find it extraordinary that his paintings are snapped up at astronomical prices by great collectors and by the world’s most important museums. Sax devotes all his time to painting, trying to interpret a face, a body, a place. His work reveals a great tenderness for animals and a meticulous, almost excessive attention for his human models. No destiny seems to me more enviable than that of an artist who can permit himself to observe the world around him and to reproduce it in his own way.