“In that case,” said Alfred, “I should think the process of coloring and the newness of the material would interest one so much as to draw one’s attention away from the statue.”
“I don’t think it is only that,” I answered; “for surely wax works, which are quite common, with all their lifelike color and softness, do not give us the thrill of reality and beauty that we get from a marble statue.”
“I think,” said Henry, “it is just the coldness and hardness of marble, changed by the artist into shapes of life and warmth, that make it beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “exactly. The sculptor expresses his idea in every curve of the human form, and makes human shapes say universal things. They express by attitude and line power, beauty, tenderness. In the ‘Mercury,’ the lines of that headlong figure, to half-shut eyes, represent the curve and angle of flight itself.”
Virginia now spoke of Michael Angelo, and his misdrawing of figures, which are none the less beautiful and powerful. I said he was so great a genius that his genius, as often happens, overshadowed his shortcomings as a craftsman.
Here we came, I know not how, on the subject of drama. I said that to me it could never seem a perfect form of art—that is, the acted drama—because the actors usually obtruded their personality, and so broke in on the unity of expression—the creation of one mind—necessary to art. But the children, better at the art of looking on than I, and not so quick to note the significance of personality, said they forgot entirely the actors themselves, and felt as though the thing were a piece of life. Virginia and Florence said they felt as if they were the author, as if by being spectators they took part, and Virginia said she always did hate the villains!
Of architecture we observed that it appealed directly to the emotions, like music; that it made us feel, we knew not why, glad or sad, or calm or overawed. Virginia spoke of the Palais de Justice in Brussels, which made her feel very tiny; and this naturally brought us to speak of the feeling of reverence and awe.
“Whenever we feel small,” I said, “and see another thing as vast, that vastness is in our minds, it is our own immense other self which overawes us.”
They said they did not know what the feeling was. Virginia said: “When I have it, if I try to think of what it is, it is already gone. But the next time I see the same thing, perhaps some beautiful picture, that feeling is there again.”
Virginia and Florence said they never had any reverence for particular people, because they were older, for instance. But, I said, at least they must have reverence for people, as such, for the self in all people. They granted that.