Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870Ruskin, John
Philosophy
Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870
Ruskin, John
Sculpture
35. "There came to me, in the healing[13] night, a divine dream, so
clear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, and still after
all this time, the shapes of what I saw remain in my sight, and the
sound of what I heard dwells in my ears"--(note the lovely sense of
[Greek: enaulos]--the sound being as of a stream passing always by in
the same channel)--"so distinct was everything to me. Two women laid
hold of my hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that
I had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out against one
another,--the one, that she resolved to have me to herself, being indeed
her own; and the other, that it was vain for her to claim what belonged
to others;--and the one who first claimed me for her own was like a hard
worker, and had strength as a man's; and her hair was dusty, and her
hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about her, and
the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that she looked just
as my uncle used to look when he was filing stones: but the other was
pleasant in features, and delicate in form, and orderly in her dress;
and so, in the end, they left it to me to decide, after hearing what
they had to say, with which of them I would go; and first the
hard-featured and masculine one spoke:--
36. "'Dear child, I am the Art of Image-sculpture, which yesterday you
began to learn; and I am as one of your own people, and of your house,
for your grandfather' (and she named my mother's father) 'was a
stone-cutter; and both your uncles had good name through me: and if you
will keep yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that
come from this creature,' (and she pointed to the other woman,) 'and
will follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be brought up
as a man should be, and have strong shoulders; and, besides that, you
shall be kept well quit of all restless desires, and you shall never be
obliged to go away into any foreign places, leaving your own country and
the people of your house; _neither shall all men praise you for your
talk_.[14] And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my
body, neither this meanness of my dusty dress; for, pushing on in their
strength from such things as these, that great Phidias revealed Zeus,
and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and Myron was praised, and Praxiteles
marveled at: therefore are these men worshiped with the gods.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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