But in
later years I understood that the arresting strangeness, the special
beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part played in each of them by
its symbols, while the fact that these were depicted, not as symbols (for
the thought symbolised was nowhere expressed), but as real things,
actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more
literal to their meaning, something more concrete and more striking to the
lesson they imparted. And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was
not our attention incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled
it; and in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in
the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure,
internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is,
as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces
them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a
difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to
which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?
There must have been a strong element of reality in those Virtues and
Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to be as much alive as the
pregnant servant-girl, while she herself appeared scarcely less
allegorical than they.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156