Michelangelo is so
ignorant of the spiritual world, of the new body and its laws, that he
does not surely know whether the consecrated Host may not be the body of
Christ. And of all that range of sentiment he is the poet, a poet still
alive, and in possession of our inmost thoughts--dumb inquiry over the
relapse after death into the formlessness which preceded life, the
change, the revolt from that change, then the correcting, hallowing,
consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more
vague than the most definite thoughts men have had through three
centuries on a matter that has been so near their hearts, the new
body--a passing light, a mere intangible, external effect, over those
too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that lingers a moment,
retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless, helpless; a thing with
faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of touch; a breath, a flame in
the doorway, a feather in the wind.
The qualities of the great masters in art or literature, the combination
of those qualities, the laws by which they moderate, support, relieve
each other, are not peculiar to them; but most often typical standards,
or revealing instances, of the laws by which certain aesthetic effects
are produced.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142