The Hovering Lines And Shape Never Became
Sufficiently Defined For Me To Know What Form It Could Be, Yet The
Colours And The Light Meant Something Which I Was Not Able To Fix.
I was
now sitting in a gallery of stone, with cold marbles, cold floors, cold
light from the windows.
Without there were only houses, the city of
Paris - a city above all other cities farthest from woods and meads. Here,
nevertheless, there came back to me this old thought born in the midst of
flowers and wind-rustled leaves, and I saw that with it the statue before
me was in concord. The living original of this work was the human
impersonation of the secret influence which had beckoned me on in the
forest and by running streams. She expressed in loveliness of form the
colour and light of sunny days; she expressed the deep aspiring desire of
the soul for the perfection of the frame in which it is encased, for the
perfection of its own existence.
The sun rolls on in the far dome of heaven, and now day and now night
sweeps with alternate bands over the surface of hill, and wood, and sea;
the sea beats in endless waves, which first began to undulate a thousand
thousand years ago, starting from the other rim of Time; the green leaves
repeat the beauty that gladdened man in ancient days. But for themselves
they are, and not for us. Their glory fills the mind with rapture but for
a while, and it learns that they are, like carven idols, wholly careless
and indifferent to our fate.
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