The Diaries of Paul Klee [antikvár]

Preface The reader of the four diaries of Paul Klee in this volume will be initiated— being presumably an outsider—into a mysterious, rare, individual, and watchful world, that of Paul Klee the "painter." Indeed, the entries in his diaries were not originally intended for publication, but merely for his own reflection. During his lifetime my father allowed no one, not even myself, access to his most personal confession. Shortly after the First World War Paul Klee moved into the limelight of public notice, and after the Second World War he attracted the attention of the whole western world. Along with this great interest, partly critical in character, partly full of the most positive praise, went naturally a growing curiosity about his life. In the recently published book by Dr. Will Grohman we find a wealth of biographical material and much instructive information, but this most personal confession of Paul Klee will have a far more compelling effect on the observer. So far as I know, Paul Klee, who was always a fanatic about orderliness, kept a diary from the year 1898, when he was nineteen years old. He gave each chapter a running number and date. However, in the course of 1,134 numbers Klee skipped several figures in the series. About 1911, my father began to make a clean copy of these very diverse notes in two notebooks, which were to be followed later by two more, final, copies. With great pleasure, and with a full appreciation of my responsibility, I gave my consent in the summer of 1955 to the plan to publish the diaries of my father, Paul Klee. For quite a while many art lovers, who knew of the diary from excerpts that had appeared in several books about my father, had expressed their strong interest in a separate edition of the unabridged text. My first task was to decide whether the many private and personal notes of Klee could be of value to outsiders. After a detailed examination I felt that I could assume this responsibility and undertook a review of the whole text. I should now like to transmit some comments to the reader based on this work: 1. Various parts of the text were written by Klee in Swiss German, the vii