"For me one of the greatest moments in Balthazar is almost parenthetical: when the vagabond Arnold, knowing that he is dying, says farewell to the road marker, then the telephone pole. Conversation with inanimate objects is of course habitual with alcoholics, but Arnold’s bonding with his surroundings acknowledges the way we all invest objects we love with a kind of sacred life; they become precious precisely because they will outlive us, and that is why when a loved one dies, the furniture, the paintings, treasured objects come to seem inhabited by their spirit."
