But can it give the impulse to thought and emotion like
the eve-changing outlines of mountain and forest? Never! People with
unsophisticated minds know that well enough. The population of the
coast always builds its houses with their backs to the sea.
"As a defence against the storms," Wilhelm interposed.
"That may be. But that is not the only reason. It is because the
sight of that eternal waste of waters, without a boundary line,
without the variety or movement of life upon it, bores them, and
they prefer to look out upon the country with all its expressive and
varying outlines."
"But the expression which you see in a landscape--you put that into
it yourself, by an effort of your own imagination. Forests and
mountains are in themselves as inanimate as the sea."
"Quite so; but the landscape has features which remind us of
something else, which play, as it were, upon the keyboard of our
associations, and it thus calls up the pictures with which we
proceed to enliven it. The sea does nothing of this, and the best
proof of that is, that no painter has ever yet used the sea by
itself for his model. Did you ever know of an artist who painted
nothing but the sea?" "Yes, Aiwasowky."
"Who is he?"
"A Russian who paints extraordinary sea pieces.
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