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it appears again. We will see later on how much that means for our modern art^a, this duality of the tragic AND the vital self-affirmation of man. QN: What do these naturalistic pictures signify because they have been represented in artistic symbols as over against what they would signify just as they exist before they were painted? PT: Excuse me, I was not able to understand. QN: What is added to the subject matter of these pictures by their having been painted? PT: Oh. Have you ever seen comedians like that in such a landscape, in such a kind of oscillating light and darkness, in some atmosphere of mist which is natural and non-natural at the same time? You remember from my lecture about the symbols of art^b: they are taken from nature, from the world as we encounter it, but then they lead, by a special way of using this material, into

a level which is not the level of our ordinary encounter with reality. That is what the artist does, beyond that which happens. This is the first step. Now I go one step beyond this: I say [that] in this way something which we also can have often, in meeting nature, reveals itself in a special way, namely ultimate reality^c in NON-ultimate reality. And here the traits of non-ultimate reality come out in the unity of the comic and the tragic, which we see especially in this picture. But before we come to this analysis, the FIRST step has to be made, namely the step to the artistic symbols, AS artistic symbols, which use the material but make something new out of it, and NOW--perhaps this is one of the reasons for your question--we are able, with our eyes (which are educated by the history of art), to see with the eyes of Watteau^d a reality which we encounter in