Charlotte Salomon quotes
Charlotte: 'I have some more [paintings she recently made] to show you'.
Daberlohn: Well, let's meet this evening.....
Isn't it absurd to address each other so formally? You're such a baby – here, let me hold your hand.... Real painter's hands'.
Charlotte: 'To me they're just ugly'....'You would be a wonderful subject for a portrait -'
Daberlohn (to himself) : 'Little girl, if you only knew what one has to go through to be able to paint.
Charlotte Salomon
Daberlohn's diagnosis [about the etching she made as his portrait] holds encouragement for Charlotte.... Daberlohn (in his letter) 'In my opinion you are destined to create something above average.'
....'Above average.' She is elated by his letter and really feels quite proud... While beginning to paint the buttercup-strewn meadow where she happens to be sitting, she decides to make his prophecy come true and actually create something 'above average'.
Charlotte Salomon
![My life began when my grandmother decided to take hers, when I found out that my mother's whole family did the same thing [told bij het grandfather c. 1941], when I found out that I am the only one surviving, and when I felt the same inclination deep inside of me, craving for despair and death. (Charlotte Salomon)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/86/charlotte-salomon-begin-craving-961986.webp)
.. Thus in the presence of the scorching sun, purple sea, and luxuriant blossoms, the memory of an experience of her fervid early love [Daberlohn = Alfred Wolfsohn ] came back to her. And she tried to visualize that face, that figure. And Io, she succeeded, and she noticed that this was a very interesting occupation. For she discovered that that figure...
Charlotte Salomon
The tri-coloured play with music begins' (in Deutsch: Das Drei Farben Singespiel beginnt..)
the cast is as follows
Dr. and MRS. Knarre, a married couple
Franziska and Charlotte, their daughters
Dr. Kahn, a physician
Charlotte Kahn, his daughter
Paulinka Bimbam, a singer
Dr. Singsong, a versatile person
Professor Klingklang, a famous conductor
An Art teacher
Professor and Students at an art academy
and Chorus..
.. The action takes places during the years 1913 to 1940 in Germany, later in Nice, France.
Charlotte Salomon
...his book, Orpheus, or the Way to a Death Mask, of which he had said that he regretted not having written it as a poem.
And with dream-awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew: she had to vanish for a while from the human plane and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.
Charlotte Salomon
...might possibly preserve her from suicide inasmuch as she remembered one of Amadeus's favorite utterances: Love, know thyself first in order to love thy neighbour. And then: one has to go into oneself - into one's childhood - to be able to go out of oneself. And he felt that the movie was the machine of modern man as a means of going out of oneself. And finally she recalled the famous couple embracing under a bathrobe, functioning as one person.
Charlotte Salomon
And now something strange happened to our Charlotte. While busy painting, as she always was, she fell asleep in the midday sun. And when she awoke, the finished portrait of her once so ardently beloved Daberlohn [ = Alfred Wolfsohn ] lay before her. However, she tore the sheet into a hundred thousand shreds.... she sought for an explanation... Then her glace fell on one of her old paintings representing Death and the Maiden. And suddenly she knew...
Charlotte Salomon
![.. even happens that each character has to sing a different text, resulting in a chorus. The varied nature of the paintings should be attributed less to the author than to the varies nature of the characters to be portrayed. The author [= Charlotte Salomon] has tried.... to go completely out of herself to allow the characters to sing or speak in their own voices. In order to achieve this, many artistic values had to be renounced, but I hope that.... this will be forgiven. (Charlotte Salomon)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/96/charlotte-salomon-author-character-961996.webp)
The creation of the following paintings is to be imagined as follows: A person is sitting beside the sea. She is painting. A tune suddenly enters her mind. As she starts to hum it, she notices that the tune exactly matches what she is trying to commit to paper. A texts forms in her head, and she starts to sing the tune, with her own words, over and over again in a loud voice until the painting seems complete. Frequently, several texts take shape, and the result is a duet, or it..
Charlotte Salomon
...two things. First that Daberlohn's eyes seemed to say: 'Death and the Maiden, that is the two of us;' and second, that she still loved him as much as ever. And if he was Death, then everything was alright, then she did not have to kill herself like her ancestors... So she was in fact the living model for his theories, and she remembered...
Charlotte Salomon
