Day 0077

Still not feeling well, exhausted after the evening out in the metropolis. A small silverpoint of a Raphael head was all I could manage today. Reminds me of the Raphael paintings in the Louvre with their lovely oval heads and tender gazes. Lots of eyelids.

My copy of Walter Pater's Renaissance arrived today. Whilst I had absolutely no idea what any of it meant when I was exposed to it years ago, the famous line about burning with a hard gemlike flame has stayed with me ever since, and I think about it often. I think I'm at the right stage in my life to understand what is being said now.

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike.Walter Pater, The Renaissance