“Ce silence la nuit à Tahiti est encore plus étrange que le reste. Il n’existe que là, sans un cri d’oiseau pour troubler le repos.”(5)
(This silence at night in Tahiti is even stranger than the rest. It exists nowhere else but there, not even a bird’s chirp to trouble our rest.)
(English translation)
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THE INTERIOR VOICE: This silence at night in Tahiti is even stranger than the rest. It exists nowhere else but there, not even a bird’s chirp to trouble our rest. The indigens often walk around during the night, but barefoot and in silence. Here and there a big dry leaf falls but does not give the idea of noise. It is more like a touch of a spirit.
GAUGUIN: The shapes are rudimentary? They have to be. Their execution is much too simple? It has to be this way. But you do have a technique, they will say. No, I don’t. Or rather, I have one – a roaming, an elastic technique, which I use as I please to express my thoughts, since each topic fits a certain kind of technique, in harmony with the thought guiding it.
THE INTERIOR VOICE: Don’t seek around the eye, but in the thought’s mysterious core.
