Civilization, Medieval; Culture; Progress; Social history
As has been said above, the recreation quarter of the town is around a
square or garden a short distance from the central square. Here are
to be found the public baths and gymnasium, together with a number of
gay and attractive cafés and restaurants, the theatres, concert halls,
etc. To a very great extent all the music and drama are the product of
the people themselves. As has been said, music is almost the foundation
of the educational system, therefore trained as they are from earliest
childhood, good music, vocal, instrumental, orchestral, even operatic,
is a natural and even inevitable result. The same is true of the drama,
and nightly plays, operas, concerts are given by the townspeople
themselves which reach a standard comparable with that of professionals
elsewhere. Now and then, as a mark of special commendation, actors,
singers and musicians are invited by the Provost and Council to visit
the town, but as a general thing all is done by the people themselves.
The moving picture show is prohibited.
With all the rich pageantry of life in a Walled Town, the magnificent
church services, where all the arts assemble in the greatest æsthetic
synthesis man has ever devised, the religious and secular festivals
with their processions and merrymaking and dancing, the form and
ceremony of ecclesiastical and civic life, and the unbroken environment
of beauty, the craving for “shows” which holds without the walls and
must be satisfied by tawdry and sensational dramatic performances,
professional entertainers and the “movies,” is largely absent here
where all life is couched in terms of true drama and living beauty.
Here is no hard line of demarcation between a drab and sordid and
hustling daily life on the one hand, and “amusement” on the other.
All the arts are in constant use, and music and drama are merely
extensions of this common use into slightly different fields. The
same holds good of the other arts. An “art museum” is unknown, for it
is a contradiction in terms. The Walled Town is full of pictures and
sculpture and all the products of the art-crafts; but the latter are
in every household, while the pictures and sculptures are in all the
churches and public buildings, where they belong, and are constantly
and universally visible. If an old picture is obtained, or a Mediæval
statue or a tapestry, it is at once placed in a position similar to
that for which it was originally intended. It would be perfectly
impossible for the authorities to put a Bellini altar-piece in a
yawning museum, jostled by crowded others and visible on week-days on
payment of an admission fee, “Saturday afternoon and Sunday free.”
Instead it is placed over an altar in the parish church or in some
chapel. There are museums of sorts, but they are connected with the
guild halls and contain only models for instruction and emulation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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