Again, Greek
sculpture deals almost exclusively with youth, where the
moulding of the bodily organs is still as if suspended between
growth and completion, indicated but not emphasised; where the
transition from curve to curve is so delicate and elusive, that
Winckelmann compares it to a quiet sea, which, although we
understand it to be in motion, we nevertheless regard as an image
of repose; where, therefore, the exact degree of development is so
hard to apprehend. If a single product only of Hellenic art were
to be saved in the wreck of all beside, one might choose perhaps
from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze, that line
of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud,
patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite
service. This colourless, unclassified purity of life, with its
blending and interpenetration of intellectual, spiritual, and
physical elements, still folded together, pregnant with the
possibilities of a whole world closed within it, is the highest
expression of the indifference which lies beyond all that is
relative or partial. Everywhere there is the effect of an awaking,
of a child's sleep just disturbed. All these effects are united in a
single instance--the adorante of the museum of Berlin, a youth
who has gained the wrestler's prize, with hands lifted and open,
in praise for the victory. Fresh, unperplexed, it is the image of a
man as he springs first from the sleep of nature, his white light
[219] taking no colour from any one-sided experience.
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