Text engl. Incl. index. - Other ed.: Scranton, PA: W. W. Norton 1980. Pb. ed.: Berkeley et al.: University of California Press 1991. - "Dore Ashton's masterly analysis of modern art revolves around a number of clues, the most significant and persistent of which is provided by Balzac's brilliant and little know 'philosophic' story The Unknown Masterpiece, with its unexpected pointers towards Cezanne, Picasso and the abstract expressionists. This 'fable' is discussed not only within the context from which it emerged - early nineteenth-century romanticism - but also in relation to its embodiment of various attitudes art. Rilke, Schoenberg and Kandinsky are also drawn upon to illuminate the artist's yearning to express the inexpressible, to make the abstract concrete: Rilke's fascination with angelism, Schoenberg's absorption with Swedenborgianism, the influence of theosophy on Kandinsky. (Key Words: Modern Art, Dore Ashton, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arnold Schoenberg, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, Honore de Balzac, Lou Andreas-Salome, Paul Cezanne, Charles Baudelaire)