Theocritus, too, often strikes
a note of romantic sadness. But what a blithe and steady poise, above
these discouragements, in a clear and sunny stratum of the air!
Into this stage of Greek achievement Winckelmann did not enter. Supreme
as he is where his true interest lay, his insight into the typical unity
and repose of the highest sort of sculpture seems to have involved
limitation in another direction. His conception of art excludes that
bolder type of it which deals confidently and serenely with life,
conflict, evil. Living in a world of exquisite but abstract and
colourless form, he could hardly have conceived of the subtle and
penetrative, but somewhat grotesque art of the modern world. What would
he have thought of Gilliatt, in Victor Hugo's Travailleurs de la Mer, or
of the bleeding mouth of Fantine in the first part of Les Miserables,
penetrated as it is with a sense of beauty, as lively and transparent as
that of a Greek? There is even a sort of preparation for the romantic
temper within the limits of the Greek ideal itself, which Winckelmann
failed to see.
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