The Pictures We Create

"Well, there are many saints I'm particularly fond of-Stephen, St. Francis and others. I often see pictures of them and of the Savior and the Virgin-such utterly lying and false and silly pictures-and I can put up with them just as little as you could with that picture of Goethe. When I see one of those sweet and silly Saviors of St. Fancises and see how other people find them beautiful and edifying, I feel it is an insult to the real Savior and it makes me think: Why did He live and suffer so terribly if people find a picture as silly as that satisfactory to them! But in spite of this I know that my own picture of the Savior or St. Francis is only a human picture and falls short of the original, and that the Savior Himself would find the picture I have of Him within me just as stupid as I do those sickly reproductions."

—Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)