-
because of those painted oil cloths which were imported from America
-
in the old days to be hung above washstands in central European nurseries,
-
and which fascinated a drowsy child at bedtime with the rustic green
-
views they depicted: opaque, curly trees, a barn, cattle, a brook,
-
the dull white of vague orchards in bloom,
-
and perhaps a stone fence, or hills of greenish gouache.
-
So, so far the American landscape is already a work of art,
-
already part of a European memory.
-
Then something else happens: "But gradually the models of those
-
elementary rusticities became stranger and stranger to the eye,
-
the nearer I came to know them.
-
Beyond the tilled plain"-- in other words, the already worked-over,