The World's Illusion, Volume 1 (of 2): EvaWassermann, Jakob
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The World's Illusion, Volume 1 (of 2): Eva
Wassermann, Jakob
German fiction -- Translations into English
He created gestures with her. And about every gesture he wove some
experience. He showed her the nature of flight, of pursuit, of parting,
of salutation, of expectancy and triumph and joy and terror; and there
was no motion of a finger in which the whole body did not have a part.
The play of the eyes and of facial expression entered this art so
little that the swathing of the face would not have diminished the
effect that was aimed at.
He drew the kernel from each husk; he demanded the quintessential only.
“Can you drink? Let me see you!” It was wrong. “Your gesture was a
shopworn phrase. The man who had never seen another drink did not drink
thus.”
“Can you pray? Can you pluck flowers, swing a scythe, gather grain,
bind a veil? Give me an image of each action! Represent it!” She could
not. But he taught her.
Whenever she fell into a flat imitation of reality he foamed with rage.
“Reality is a beast!” he roared, and hurled one of his crutches against
the wall. “Reality is a murderer.”
In the statues and paintings of great artists he pointed out to her
the essential and noble lines, and illustrated how all that had been
thus created and built merged harmoniously again with nature and her
immediacy of truth.
He spoke of the help of music to her art. “You need no melody and
scarcely tone. The only thing that matters is the division of time,
the audibly created measure which leads and restrains the violence,
wildness, and passion, or else the softness and sustained beauty of
motion. A tambourine and a fife suffice. Everything beyond that is
dishonesty and confusion. Beware of a poetry of effect that does not
issue from your naked achievement.”
At night he took her to wine rooms and taverns, where the girls of the
people danced their artless and excited dances. He revealed to her the
artistic kernel of each, and let her dance a bolero, a fandango, or
a tarantella, which in this new embodiment had the effect of cut and
polished jewels.
He reconstructed antique battle-dances for her, the Pyrrhic and the
Karpaian; the dance of the Muses about the altar of Zeus on Helicon;
the dance of Artemis and her companions; the dance of Delos, which
imitated the path of Theseus through the labyrinth; the dance of the
maidens in honour of Artemis, during which they wore a short chiton and
a structure of willow on their heads; the vintners’ dance preserved on
the cup of Hiero, which includes all the motions used by the gatherers
of the vine and the workers at the winepress. He showed her pictures
of the vase of François, of the geometrical vase of Dipylon, of many
reliefs and terracotta pieces, and made her study the figures that had
an entrancing charm and incomparable rhythm of motion. And he procured
her music for these dances, which Susan copied from old manuscripts,
and which he adapted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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