posted by Aleph Null at 4:22 PM
"...The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life..." (Jack London)
2 Comments:
How oddly appropriate! I am reading 'The Agony And The Ecstasy' - the part where Michealangelo dissects corpses to learn anatomy. Now when I look at The Pieta, I can't but help notice the shape of Jesus' legs, the way each contour (eg: ones near the knee and ankle) has been fashioned, the way the cloth folds in where Mary holds Jesus (to name a few) - Maybe thats what makes it so moving - life like but minus the curse of transience...
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
-- Keats, Ode On a Grecian Urn.
Just happened to stumble across your blog!
I've seen this sculpture at the St.Peter's Basilica. It's a truly divine piece of work... did you know that he took a year to complete this and he was only 22 when he did it?!
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