Such are, in brief, the three attitudes of the head and the eyes, which I have named colorless, affectional, sensual.
Henceforth I possessed completely the law of the inclinations of the head, a law which derives from its very complexity the fertility of its applications.
Episode V.
Semeiotics of The Shoulder.
When I found myself the possessor of this law whose triple formula is of a nature to defy every objection, I sought to appropriate to myself, before the mirror, all its applications.
But there arose yet another difficulty that I had not foreseen.
I, indeed, reproduced, and at the proper time, the movements of the head already described, but they remained awkward and lifeless.
What was the cause of this awkwardness and coldness of which I was well aware, but which I could not help? I strove unceasingly to reproduce the examples that lived so vividly in my memory, but all these laborious reproductions, these efforts from memory, were futile. The stubbornness of an indomitable will, however, led only to a negative result. I was vexed at an awkwardness the reason of which I could not find.
One day, almost discouraged by the lack of success in my researches, I sorrowfully said to myself: "What shall I do? Alas! the more I labor, the less clearly I see; am I incapable of reproducing nature--is the difficulty that holds me back invincible?"
As I uttered the preceding words, I noticed that, under the sway of the grief which dictated them, my shoulders were strangely lifted up, and, as then I found myself in the attitude which I had previously tried to render natural, the unexpected movement of my shoulders, joined to that attitude, suddenly impressed it with an expression of life so just, so true, so surprising, that I was overwhelmed.
Thus I gained possession of an æsthetic fact of the first rank, and I was as amazed at my discovery as I was surprised that I had not observed sooner a self-evident movement, whose powerful and expressive character seems fundamentally connected with the actions of the head. "How stupid I am," I thought, "not to have remarked so evident an action of an agent which leads the head itself. How could I let this movement of the shoulder escape me!" And I revelled in the pleasurable triumph of reproducing and contemplating expressions which I could not have rendered previously without dishonoring them. Thenceforth I understood without a doubt all the importance of this latest discovery. But this importance, clearly proven as it was, was not yet fully explained to me.