Jerry Friedman wrote to JM: I
was struck by your thoughts on the penetrable or impenetrable
painting in "La
Veneziana", and I think you could add Eystein's painting in PF to your list of
parallels--the painting that's "penetrable" to "reality", but what for?
JM: A puzzling question: "what
for?". One of the richness of art, for
me, lies in our freedom to interpret a sentence, a story, a
metaphor without reaching any "useful" nor
any absolutely "right-or-wrong" conclusions.
I don't know if VN intended to suggest that "one
can enter a painting and come out of it holding a lemon" or that one should not
literally "enter" a story. And yet, when I
read VN's works, I don't need to dream in order to feel the smell of a
rose or a putrid swamp or to share in the "beneficence" of a
proffered hot cup of coffee.