A certain strangeness,
something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in
all true works of art: that they shall excite or surprise us is
indispensable. But that they shall give pleasure and exert a
charm over us is indispensable too; and this strangeness must be
sweet also--a lovely strangeness. And to the true admirers of
Michelangelo this is the true type of the Michelangelesque--
sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an energy of
conception which seems at every moment about to break through
all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a
loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural things--ex
forti dulcedo.
In this way he sums up for them the whole character of medieval
art itself in that which distinguishes it most clearly from classical
work, the presence of a convulsive energy in it, becoming [74]
in lower hands merely monstrous or forbidding, and felt, even in
its most graceful products, as a subdued quaintness or grotesque.
Yet those who feel this grace or sweetness in Michelangelo might
at the first moment be puzzled if they were asked wherein
precisely such quality resided. Men of inventive temperament--
Victor Hugo, for instance, in whom, as in Michelangelo, people
have for the most part been attracted or repelled by the strength,
while few have understood his sweetness--have sometimes
relieved conceptions of merely moral or spiritual greatness, but
with little aesthetic charm of their own, by lovely accidents or
accessories, like the butterfly which alights on the blood-stained
barricade in Les Miserables, or those sea-birds for whom the
monstrous Gilliatt comes to be as some wild natural thing, so that
they are no longer afraid of him, in Les Travailleurs de la Mer.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93