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It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse/and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
The Czech photographer Josef Sudek was a bit of a recluse. He nevertheless had a large circle of friends, many of them fellow music lovers, and his Tuesday evening salons, at which he entertained those who crowded into his tiny studio with recordings of classical music from his large collection, were legendary.
Sudek lost his right arm in the First World War, fighting for Austria-Hungary at the Italian front. In 1926, ten years after his injury, some of his musician friends persuaded him to accompany them on a tour of Italy—where, one night, he disappeared.
One day I just couldn't resist it. When the musicians of the Czech Philharmonic told me: Josef, come with us, we are going to Italy to play music, I told myself, fool that you are, you were there, and you did not enjoy that beautiful country when you served as a soldier for the
Recipient of the American Psychoanalytic Association's 2012 CORST Essay Prize in Psychoanalysis and Culture and the 2012 Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center Essay Prize.
Page 127emperor's army. And so I went with them on this unusual excursion. In Milan we had a lot of applause and acclaim and we traveled down the Italian boot until one day we came to that place—I had to disappear in the middle of the concert; in the dark I got lost but I had to search. Far outside the city toward dawn, in the fields bathed by the morning dew, I finally found the place. But my arm wasn't there—only the poor peasant farmhouse was still standing in its place. They had brought me into it that day when I was shot in the right arm. They could never put it together again, and for years I was going from hospital to hospital … The Philharmonic people apparently even made the police look for me, but I somehow could not get myself to return f