:04:03
She closes her eyes and listens
:04:07
to the words he whispers
into her long hair.
:04:11
I'd depict it as I saw it now,
but in the blue haze.
:04:16
I remember something Munch
once said a couple of years ago.
:04:24
He had discovered that the Greeks
regarded death as blue.
:04:31
It says somewhere in The Iliad,
"Blue death closes his eyes."
:04:39
"Here in the grey gloomy North,"
Munch said,
:04:42
"we regard death as black.
But in sunny Hellas
:04:48
"they regard it as blue.
Why shouldn't it be blue?"
:04:57
Munch's painting
Night In St. Cloud,
:05:00
a study of despondency in
swirling blue and black silhouette,
:05:05
is a major breakthrough.
:05:07
This painting, which is called Night
:05:11
makes such demands
on one's ability to guess
:05:17
that few people go to the trouble
of studying it more closely.
:05:24
The atmosphere around the painting
is so faintly designated
:05:29
that it seems to disappear
before one can grasp it.
:05:34
The painter himself follows
his own path in a misty
:05:44
and shapeless world of dreams.
:05:47
And the critic of Aftenposten
refers to Munch's "sick mind"
:05:52
and states that "the borderline
between madness and genius
:05:56
"is unconscionably narrow."
:05:59
Munch is primarily