DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62133#0075
THE MIRACLE-PLAY AT OBER-AMMERGAU.
59
rage, with gestures of vengeance, horror, and contempt,
plot and decide upon his death ! He, meantime, sits calmly
at Bethany among his friends, and a woman, with beautiful
long hair falling around her, kisses his feet and anoints
them with precious ointment from her alabaster vase. And
now he sits at a long table, his friends on either side; John
leans upon his breast ; he breaks the bread Judas, seized
by his evil thought, rises from the table, wraps himself
closely in his mantle, bows his head, and passes out. Again
the scene changes. It is a garden. That sad, grave man
gazes with disappointed love upon his sleeping friend •, he
turns away and prays, bowed in agony. There is a tumult!
That figure wrapped in its flame-coloured robe again ap-
pears ! There is an encounter, a flash of swords ! and the
majestic, melancholy, violet-robed figure, with meekly
bowed head, is borne away ! And thus ends the first act of
this saddest of all tragedies.
We had come, expecting to feel our souls revolt at so
material a representation of Christ, as any representation
of him, we naturally imagined, must be in a peasant’s
miracle-play. Yet so far, strange to confess, neither horror,
disgust, nor contempt was excited in our minds. Such
an earnest solemnity and simplicity breathed throughout the
whole of the performance, that to me, at least, anything
like anger, or a perception of the ludicrous, would have
seemed more irreverent on my part than was this simple,
child-like rendering of the sublime Christian tragedy. We
felt at times as though the figures of Cimabue’s, Giotto’s,
and Perugino’s pictures had become animated, and were
moving before us there were the same simple arrangement
and brilliant colour of drapery,—the same earnest, quiet
dignity about the heads, whilst the entire absence of all
theatrical effect wonderfully increased the illusion. There
were scenes and groups so extraordinarily like the early
59
rage, with gestures of vengeance, horror, and contempt,
plot and decide upon his death ! He, meantime, sits calmly
at Bethany among his friends, and a woman, with beautiful
long hair falling around her, kisses his feet and anoints
them with precious ointment from her alabaster vase. And
now he sits at a long table, his friends on either side; John
leans upon his breast ; he breaks the bread Judas, seized
by his evil thought, rises from the table, wraps himself
closely in his mantle, bows his head, and passes out. Again
the scene changes. It is a garden. That sad, grave man
gazes with disappointed love upon his sleeping friend •, he
turns away and prays, bowed in agony. There is a tumult!
That figure wrapped in its flame-coloured robe again ap-
pears ! There is an encounter, a flash of swords ! and the
majestic, melancholy, violet-robed figure, with meekly
bowed head, is borne away ! And thus ends the first act of
this saddest of all tragedies.
We had come, expecting to feel our souls revolt at so
material a representation of Christ, as any representation
of him, we naturally imagined, must be in a peasant’s
miracle-play. Yet so far, strange to confess, neither horror,
disgust, nor contempt was excited in our minds. Such
an earnest solemnity and simplicity breathed throughout the
whole of the performance, that to me, at least, anything
like anger, or a perception of the ludicrous, would have
seemed more irreverent on my part than was this simple,
child-like rendering of the sublime Christian tragedy. We
felt at times as though the figures of Cimabue’s, Giotto’s,
and Perugino’s pictures had become animated, and were
moving before us there were the same simple arrangement
and brilliant colour of drapery,—the same earnest, quiet
dignity about the heads, whilst the entire absence of all
theatrical effect wonderfully increased the illusion. There
were scenes and groups so extraordinarily like the early