All pictures without external links were taken by the author during his visit to The Met Breuer, New York. Texts sourced from exhibit label scripts.

Though he was enjoying considerable professional success and increasing recognition in Germany by 1906, at this time his private life was plagued by anxiety, alcoholism, and despair, all of which led to his breakdown just two years later. Munch captures here his sense of acute loneliness and melancholy.

The seventy-seven-year-old artist, looking grim, stands next to a window at his house at Ekely on a winter day. Munch divided the canvas into the icy-cold, snow-covered landscape seen through the window and the rose-tinted warm interior on the left. He spent the final years of his life here at Ekely.

Trees from a dark mass along the coastline, and the diagonal fence creates space and depth. Heeding French symbolism, Munch presents landscape as an expression of mood.

Munch moved to Saint-Cloud, just outside Paris, in 1890. There he broke from naturalism and embraced French Symbolism, which favors emotional experience over objective observation. In this second version of the motif that he initially painted in Saint-Cloud three years earlier, a solitary figure sits near a window at night.

This work belongs to a group of winter views from Munch’s veranda at Ekely, his estate on the outskirts of Oslo. Light from the house creates shadows of the two figures who look out over the dark, snowy landscape. On the horizon shine lights from the city, while bright stars dance in the bluish sky.

Munch referred to the second half of his life as a “battle just to keep myself upright.” With hollow eyes and a somber expression, the stooped figure of the artist, in his house at Ekely at night, elicits feelings of restlessness and loneliness.

This work is a precursor to the first version of Munch’s famous painting The Scream (1893). In fact, the artist later referred to it as “the first Scream.” The dramatic diagonal perspective of the railing emphasizes the figure’s isolation and despair.

The third of six versions of The Sick Child, made between 1885 and 1927. Critics cared less for the motif than the artist’s embrace of an experimental, expressionistic technique, which involved the layering of short brushstrokes that seem to quiver with anxiety.

Munch used a radical technique of layering paint and then scraping away the color. He regarded The Sick Child as a breakthrough in his work, moving away from realism and Impressionism toward pure expression.

The most technically experimental example of the five paintings and two prints of this subject. Paint has been sprayed all over the surface, and only the body’s outline, face, hair, and halo have been treated with a brush. The delicate pale-blue and purple pigment form other halos around sensuous woman.

A revisit to his work in 1894 as part of his Frieze of Life series. A woeful man holds his head in his hands while a siren-like woman, dressed in red and white, exhibits her sensuous body. Behind them, a log has partly turned to ashes. Here, Munch depicts the flowering and passing of love.

The model Annie Fjeldbu bows her head while standing in front of a wicker chair in Munch’s studio. Unlike in other paintings, she has thrown off her gown and robe, displaying her naked body. The vertical format of the canvas accentuates her elongated pale nude body, which dominates the canvas.

This is the artist’s first full-length self-portrait and one of only three in which he shows himself with the tools of his trade. Wearing a dark painting smock, he looks confidently at the viewer.

序言

连我自己今天也不得不感到惊讶：我们竟将如此层出不穷的变故挤塞到一代人生活的短暂时间之内，那当然是一种极其艰难和充满险恶的生活——尤其是和我的祖先们的生活相比。我的父亲，我的祖父，他们又见到过什么呢？他们每个人都是以单一的方式度过自己的一生，自始至终过的是一种生活，没有飞黄腾达，没有式微衰落，没有动荡，没有危险，是一种只有小小的焦虑和令人察觉不到的渐渐转变的生活，一种用同样的节奏度过的生活，安逸而又平静，是时间的波浪将他们从摇篮送到坟墓。

太平世界

我知道，在一个只有通过手腕和逃避才能始终自由生活的世界里，在一个如歌德老人明智地所说“勋章和头衔能使人在倾轧中免遭挨打”的世界里，我父亲和我的那种迂腐拘谨是多么不合时宜。但是，我的父亲始终在我心中，我无法违背他的深藏于内心的那种自豪——为始终保持低调而自豪，是那种自豪促使我从不锋芒毕露。我今天真的要感谢我的父亲，是他给我留下了也许是今天唯一可靠的财富：感觉到自己内心的自由。

这里的氛围是那么轻松愉快，就像巴黎到处充满欢乐一样，只不过在这里能享受到更自然的生活罢了。谁都知道维也纳是一座享乐者的城市，而所谓文化不就是用最美好、最温情和最微妙的艺术和爱情美化赤裸裸的物质生活吗？

……我出生和长大成人的那个世纪并不是一个激情燃烧的世纪。那是一个阶层分明、按部就班、秩序井然的世界，一个从容不迫的世界。机器、汽车、电话、无线电、飞机等的新速度尚未影响到人们的生活节奏；岁月和年龄依然有着另一种尺度。

上个世纪的学校

在我头二十年的生涯中，我几乎没有好好看一看维也纳周围的美丽风光。当最美、最热的夏天来临时，城里空空荡荡，我们却更加迷恋这座城市，因为我们可以乘此机会在咖啡馆里读到内容更丰富多彩的报章杂志，到手也更快，种类也丰富。……我对我中学时代的那种狂热，对那种只用眼睛和脑子的生活从未后悔过。它曾把一种我永远不愿失去的求知热情注入我的血液之中。

大学生活

他们是豪侠，他们是只知为了生存而毫无人生目标的偏执狂人。也许人们会在我的长篇和短篇小说中觉察我对他们这种豪迈本性的偏爱。当然其中还有他们那种异国他乡人的神秘色彩。……一个年轻的俄国人为我翻译了当时在德国尚未著名的小说《卡拉玛佐夫兄弟》中最精彩的章节。一名年轻的瑞典女子使我第一次见到了蒙克的绘画；……所有这一切都使我感到大千世界的丰姿多彩，从不会令人厌倦。我在中学时代只和那些纯粹的公式、诗的韵律和诗句打交道，而现在接触的是人。……

这种非同一般的广泛接触想必会大大增加我的创作欲望，好像这样才合乎逻辑。而事实上却恰恰相反，我在中学时代由彼此的激励而培养起来的高昂的创作自觉性令人忧虑地消失了。……尽管我觉得那些在形式上精雕细琢的诗句应该说是好的和熟练的艺术品，其中一部分甚至可以说是相当出色，但是我总觉得它们的感伤基调是不真实的。

我的曲折道路

……把偶然的事件和命运等同起来，仅仅是青年时代最初几年的事。后来我知道，一个人的生活道路原来是由内在因素决定的；看来，我们的道路常常偏离我们的愿望，而且非常莫名其妙和没有道理，但它最终还是会把我们引向我们自己看不见的目标。

欧洲的光辉和阴霾

我为马克斯·赖因哈特争取到了维尔哈伦的一部新剧本。我们彼此之间的合作从来没有像当时那样诚挚、积极、满怀深情。在我们热情奔放的某些时刻，我们会飘飘然地以为我们已经给世界指出了正确的拯救道路呢。但是世界却很少关心文学家们的这样一些表现，它依然走自己险恶的路。

我向巴黎告别，那是一种漫不经心的告别、不动感情的告别，就像一个人离开自己的家几个星期一样。我知道我以后几个月的打算。但眼下我要先在奥地利——避居在乡间某个地方——赶写关于陀思妥耶夫斯基的那篇稿子，这样我也就可以完成《三大师》这本书了。然后我再到维尔哈伦那里去；也许到了冬天，计划已久的俄国之行便可实现，为的是在那里认识一群人，以增进我们思想上的互相了解。我觉得，我在三十二岁那一年一切都会顺利。在那阳光灿烂的夏天呈现出一片可喜的庄稼，世界显得美丽而又合乎情理。我热爱那个世界，为了她的那个时代和她的更伟大的未来。

可是，1914年6月28日在萨拉热窝的那一声枪响，刹那之间将一个太平而又充满理性的世界——我们在其中受教育、成长、栖身为家得世界——像一只土制的空罐似的击得粉碎。

回到祖国奥地利

……生活的飞轮始终以自己的节奏在旋转，毫不停顿，也从不关心个别人的命运。面包师烤他的面包，鞋匠做他的皮靴，作家写他的书，农民耕他的地，列车正常运行，报纸在每天早晨按时送到门口，那些娱乐场所、酒吧间和剧院一直座无虚席。正因为以往最稳定的货币现在天天贬值——这件意想不到的事，才使人们更看重生活——工作、爱情、友谊、艺术和自然风光——的真正价值。……我们以前认为重要的东西，在那几年里变得更加重要了；我们在奥地利从来没有比在那混乱的几年里更加热爱艺术，因为由于钞票极不可靠，我们反倒觉得自己心中认为永恒的东西——艺术才真正可靠。

Seed of Dreams

What for many people is a stereotype — the paradise of childhood — was for me a reality, although doubtless since that time this reality has been embellished by distance and nostalgia.

Without the wonderment that I felt when I discovered the richness of shades, allusions, perspectives, harmonies and ambiguities of his prose, and the absolutely original way in which he organised his stories, I would never have dared to rearrange ‘real’ narrative chronology in my own work, or to present an episode from different points of view and levels of complexity, as I did in … …, nor would I have written a book like The Green House, in which the words are so visible, and sometimes more visible, a presence as the characters themselves — a landscape for the story – and in which the construction — the perspectives, the flow of time and the changing narrators — is all of labyrinthine complexity.

Mrs Dalloway: The Intense and Sumptuous Life of Banality

What is significant about the story is not this episode, or the myriad small events and memories that make up the story as a whole, but the fact that all this is narrated from inside the mind of one of the characters, that subtle and impalpable reality where life becomes impression, enjoyment, suffering, memory.

In Mrs Dalloway, reality has been reinvented from a perspective that mainly, but not completely, expresses the point of view and condition of a woman. And for that reason, it is the feminine experiences of the story that are most vivid in the reader’s memory, that seem to us essentially true, … …

The balance between the form and content of the tale is perfect, and readers never feel that they are witnessing what this book is as well, a daring experiment; only that they are witnessing the delicate and uncertain network of events that happen to a handful human beings on a hot summer’s day in the streets, parks and houses of central London. Life if always there, on each line, in each syllable of the book, brimming with grace and refinement, prodigious and incommensurable, rich and diverse in all its aspects.

What gives a novel its originality — marks its difference from the real world — is the added element that the fantasy and art of the writer provide he or she transforms objectivity and historical experience into fiction. The added element is never just a plot, a style, a temporal order, a point of view; it is always a complex combination of factors that affects the form and content and the characters of a story, and which gives it is autonomous existence. Only failed fictions reproduce reality: successful fictions abolish and transfigure reality.

The narrator is always the central characters in a fiction. Invisible or present, singular or multiple, embodied in the first or second or third person, omniscient god or implied witness in the novel, the narrator is the first and most important character that a novelist must invent in order to make the tale convincing … … The narrator of the novel is always located in the private world of the characters, never in the outside world.

La Condition humaine: The Hero, the Buffoon and History

Concise, sharp, the style never says too much, always too little. Every episode is like the tip of an iceberg; but they radiate such intensity that the reader’s imagination can reconstruct the totality of the action from this sparse description without difficulty, the place where it occurs as well as the state of mind and secret motivations of the protagonists. This synthetic method gives the novel a great density and an epic breadth.

An excess of intelligence is often fatal in a novel because it can work against the persuasive power of the fiction.

Tropic of Cancer: The Happy Nihilist

In Tropic of Cancer we see the flip side of this story. Its world is Parisian, but it is light years away from that society of winners and prosperous optimists: it is made up of pariahs, pseudo-painters, pseudo-writers, drop-outs and parasites who live on the margins of the city, … … Many use vague ideas about art to justify themselves — I have to write the important novel, to paint redemptive pictures, etc. — but in fact the only seriousness the group displays is their lack of seriousness, their promiscuity, their passive indifference and their slow disintegration.

… … I really can appreciate the feat of transforming this milieu into literature, of transforming these people, these rituals and all this asphyxiating mediocrity, into the dramatic and heroic characters that appear in the novel. But what is perhaps most noteworthy is that in this milieu, that was eaten away by inertia and defeatism, it was possible to conceive and complete a creative project as ambitious as Tropic of Cancer.

It is a fine book, and its somewhat naive philosophy touches us. Of course no civilization can sustain such intransigent and extreme individualism, unless it is prepared to go back to the days when men held clubs and grunted. But, even so, we still feel nostalgia as we read this summons to total irresponsibility, to the great disorders of life and sex that preceded society, rules, prohibitions, the law …

L’Estranger: The Outsider Must Die

One of the great merits of The Outsider is the economy of the prose … … It is so clear and precise that it does not seem written but spoken or, better still, heard. The absolute way in which the style is stripped of all adornments and self-indulgence is what contributes decisively to the versimilitude of this implausible story.

The one seemingly lasting legacy of the revolution of May 1968 — that movement of idealistic, generous and confused young people ad odds with their time and their society — is that human desires are now emerging from the hiding places where they had been confined by society, and are beginning to acquire acceptability.

… … There is no doubt that Western civilization has torn down many barriers and now is much freer and less repressive, … … than the society that (perhaps) cut off Meursault’s head. But at the same time we cannot say that the freedom that has been won in different spheres has led to a marked increase in the quality of life, to an enrichment of culture for all or, at least, for the great majority. Quite the reverse, it would seem that in so many cases these barely won freedoms have been turned into forms of behaviors that cheapen and trivialize them, and into new forms of conformity by their fortunate beneficiaries.

The Outsider, like other good novels, was ahead of its time, anticipating the depressing image of a man who is not enhanced morally or culturally by the freedom that he enjoys. Instead this freedom has stripped him of spirituality, enthusiasm and ambition, making him passive, unadventurous and instinctive, to an almost animalistic degree.

Lolita: Lolita Thirty Years On

Perhaps even more than the seduction of the young nymph by a cunning man, the most provocative aspect of the novel is the way it reduces all of humanity to laughable puppets … … It has been said that the novel is, above all, a ferocious critique of middle-class America, a satire of its tasteless motels, its naive rituals and inconsistent values, a literary abomination that Henry Miller termed the ‘air-conditioned nightmare’ … …

I am not sure that Nabokov invented this story with symbolic intentions. My impression is that within him, as in Borges, there was a sceptic who was scornful of modernity and of life, and who observed both with irony and distance, from a refugee of ideas, books and fantasies, where both writers could remain protected, removed from the world through their prodigious inventive games that diluted reality into a labyrinth of words and phosphorescent images. For both writers, who were so similar in the way they understood culture and approached the task of writing, the distinguished art they created was not a criticism of the existing world but a way of disembodying life, dissolving it into a gleaming mirage of abstractions.

Literature and Life

Borges always got annoyed when he was asked: ‘What is the use of literature?’ He thought it a stupid question and would reply: ‘Nobody thinks of asking what is the use of the song of canary or the crimson glow of a sunset!’ Indeed, if these beautiful things exist and, thanks to them, life, albeit for a moment, is less ugly and less sad, isn’t it rather small-minded to seek practical justifications?

If we want to prevent literature — this source that powers our imagination and our sense of dissatisfaction, that refines our sensibilities and teaches us to speak with elegance and precision, that makes us free and gives us richer and more intense lives — from disappearing or being relegated to the attic

A Dream Factory

There are people who go to galleries to study a period, find out about customs and important events, get to know the faces of their forebears and the fashions of the women. They are perfectly entitled to do so, … … We go to a museum as we go to the cinema or to the opera, to step out of real, pedestrian life and live a sumptuous unreality, to have our fantasies embodied in other people’s fantasies, to travel outside ourselves, to discover the ghosts that are lurking in our innermost being, to change skin and to become other men and women in other times and other places, to flee the precise limitations of the human condition and what is possible … …