In The Pilgrim's Bowl, Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet explores the work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi and its power to evoke complex emotions and wonder.
Jacoté discusses his still lifes through the literary perspectives of Pascal and Leopardi, who influenced Morandi, but in fact Jacoté is famous for his obsessive search for the essence in literary criticism.
One of the remarkable things about Jacoté is that he avoids the temptation to explain his works of art in terms of materials and techniques.
Rather than analyzing the unique charm of Morandi's work, he is talking about what he himself feels.
To borrow Schumann's words about music, 'the best way to explain his paintings is to look at them again.'
Jacoté views Morandi's work within the artistic tradition of Western Europe.
Through this book, we gradually come to understand how Morandi established his own unique narrative through the seemingly simple art form called still life.
Wittgenstein's words, "The difficult thing in art is to say everything and act as if you had said nothing," still hold true in Morandi's work and Jacoté's book.
Although language is still imperfect and imprecise, it allows us to look more deeply into our vision of Morandi's work.

As I revisit the catalog from the exhibition held at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1991, my admiration grows with each page I turn.
His technique, which seems to be a mute, is paradoxically impressive, as is his technique that is almost non-existent.
From page to page, it doesn't exactly follow the passage of time, but as the years and months pass, his paintings seem to climb higher and higher towards the summit.
The first words that come to mind are ‘nobility’ and ‘elegance’.
This ascending action, this rising staircase, quite naturally brought to mind Dante and several passages from the Purgatorio and Paradiso of his Divine Comedy.
This does not mean that Morandi's paintings and Dante's writings are similar.
Mount Parnassus (a mountain in Greek mythology.
A limestone mountain that actually overlooks Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth, in central Greece.

--- pp.42-43