I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.

A strong naked arm – a tanned powerful neck a young woman rests her head on the arching chest. | She closes her eyes and listens with open and quivering lips to the words he whispers into her long flowing hair. | I should paint that image just as I saw it – but in the blue haze. | Those two at that moment, no longer merely themselves, but simply a link in the chain binding generation to generation. | People should understand the significance, the power of it. They should remove their hats like they do in church. | There should be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting. | There would be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved. | I felt impelled – it would be easy. The flesh would have volume – the colours would be alive. | There was an interval. The music stopped. I was a little sad. I remembered how many times I had had similar thoughts – and that once I had finished the painting – they had simply shaken their heads and smiled. | Once again I found myself out on the Boulevard des Italiens. [written in Saint Cloud, 1889] | Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 120 -121