In Tropic of Cancer, the creation and appreciation of art is not unlike the relationship that exists between the ascetic and the spiritual. Miller's self destruction finds rebirth within the New Jerusalem of writing and artistic creation. A true Dionysian who does not separate the pain from the ecstasy, the death that is necessary for the greater, larger life. A dualistic interpretation of the book's title suggesting this as well.

When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears. (253)


The legend is that when Leda was fecundated she gave birth to twins. Everybody is giving birth to something-- everybody but the Lesbian in the upper tier. Her head is uptilted, her throat wide open; she is all alert and tingling with the shower of sparks that burst from the radium symphony. Jupiter is piercing her ears. Little phrases from California, whales with big fins, Zanzibar, the Alcazar. When along the Guadalquiver there were a thousand mosques ashimmer. Deep in the icebergs and the days all lilac. The Money Street with two white hitching posts. The gargoyles...the man with the Jaworski nonsense...the river lights...the... (77)



It is only later, in the afternoon, when I find myself in the art gallery on the Rue de Seze, surrounded by the men and women of Matisse, that I am drawn back again to the proper precincts of the human world. On that threshold of that big hall whose walls are now ablaze, I pause a moment to recover from the shock which one experiences when the habitual gray of the world is rent asunder and the color of life splashes forth in song and poem.....Standing on the threshold of that world which Matisse has created I re-experienced the power of that revelation which has permitted Proust to so deform the picture of life that only those who, like himself, are sensible to the alchemy of sound and sense, are capable of transforming the negative reality of life into the substantial and significant outlines of art. Only those who can admit the light into their gizzards can translate what is there in the heart. (162-3)

[Blue Nude; Henri Matisse, 1952]