solitude…
Nor were the 2 men’s personal working styles dissimilar. Both came to terms early on with loneliness of the creative effort. As Einstein wrote some years late, “I live in the solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” Picasso recalled the “Unbelievable solitude” he felt when working on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
many influences…
In this provincial hotbed of modernist debate, he found himself discussing Friedrich Nietzsche, Henrik Obsen, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Schopenhauer, all read in Spanish translation. … … God is a creation of one’s mind, and so the mind is the highest level of existence. Such ideas, on the threshold of the new century, were inspiration to produce new and strikingly different art and literary forms.
Wonder… and curiosity….
Einstein’s first inkling of such worlds has occurred at age 4 or 5. Ill in bed, his father bought home a compass for his entertainment. Einstein was amazed: No matter which way he turned the compass, its needle always pointed in the same direction. … … The boy concluded that “something deeply hidden has to be behind things.” Later Einstein referred to a phenomenon that dramatically conflicts with our everyday expectations as a “wonder”.
in search of…
Thus, while Uncle Jakob supplied mathematical grist for Einstein’s mill, Max Talmud broadened his horizons to include issues of science and philosophy. This potent mix exploded the boy’s “religious paradise of youth.” Einstein realised that “Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independantly of is human beings and which stands before us like a grea, eternal riddle, at least partically accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.” Einstein had found his calling: solve the riddle.