But these spiritualities, felt rather than seen, can but
lurk about architectural form as volatile effects, to be gathered from it
by reflexion; their expression is not really sensuous at all. As human
form is not the subject with which it deals, architecture is the mode in
which the artistic effort centres, when the thoughts of man concerning
himself are still indistinct, when he is still little preoccupied with
those harmonies, storms, victories, of the unseen and intellectual world,
which, wrought out into the bodily form, give it an interest and
significance communicable to it alone. The art of Egypt, with its supreme
architectural effects, is, according to Hegel's beautiful comparison, a
Memnon waiting for the day, the day of the Greek spirit, the humanistic
spirit, with its power of speech. Again, painting, music, and poetry,
with their endless power of complexity, are the special arts of the
romantic and modern ages. Into these, with the utmost attenuation of
detail, may be translated every delicacy of thought and feeling,
incidental to a consciousness brooding with delight over itself.
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