DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0064
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
the museum cannot help giving the object a false emphasis.
We only respond to childish things when fashion or fancy
tricks us into doing so, and are slow to perceive the qualities
of a relief which misuses painting. In consequence these
tomb-reliefs are actually more intelligible to our unpre-
judiced instincts, if one can call them instincts, than our own
altar-pieces. You can’t ever quite break through the hocus-
pocus of the Sienese, not even at Siena. The cult of the
Madonna in a Simone Martini attenuates the style to some-
thing like an incorporeal elegance. Or else you break through
too easily and wilt at the aridity of the formula; it becomes a
mere number, and nothing more. The limitations of the
motif played a great part, I know, in the development of our
art; but the whole outlook, which is inevitably involved with
a doomed culture and which must thus fence in its impulse
towards sportiveness, is equally limited. The prophylactic
measures of Catholicism lie behind it. The childishness
which the Egyptians poured out into nature can only emerge
among us by means of a thorny and circuitous path. One
day this circuitousness must be recognized as a cramping
restriction and be overridden. We have the Madonna, and
we love her. Isis and Osiris mean nothing to us; and yet we
find the images made to do honour to Isis and Osiris often
mean more to us than the glorifications of the Madonna.
Egyptian art, as Babuschka profoundly remarked, is a
remarkable affair, and one really ought to do something
about it.
At Marietta House we ran across the Behns, the whole
tribe of them, with a numerous suite, sumptuous and noisy,
in three motors. They were just confabulating about the
best place to have breakfast. Herr Behn voted for an al-
fresco meal; Frau Behn was in favour of the restaurant at
Marietta House. The suite had various opinions. The
luggage was waiting in one of the cars, in charge of Jean, the
valet. As we beat a hasty retreat, Herr Behn appeared and
54
the museum cannot help giving the object a false emphasis.
We only respond to childish things when fashion or fancy
tricks us into doing so, and are slow to perceive the qualities
of a relief which misuses painting. In consequence these
tomb-reliefs are actually more intelligible to our unpre-
judiced instincts, if one can call them instincts, than our own
altar-pieces. You can’t ever quite break through the hocus-
pocus of the Sienese, not even at Siena. The cult of the
Madonna in a Simone Martini attenuates the style to some-
thing like an incorporeal elegance. Or else you break through
too easily and wilt at the aridity of the formula; it becomes a
mere number, and nothing more. The limitations of the
motif played a great part, I know, in the development of our
art; but the whole outlook, which is inevitably involved with
a doomed culture and which must thus fence in its impulse
towards sportiveness, is equally limited. The prophylactic
measures of Catholicism lie behind it. The childishness
which the Egyptians poured out into nature can only emerge
among us by means of a thorny and circuitous path. One
day this circuitousness must be recognized as a cramping
restriction and be overridden. We have the Madonna, and
we love her. Isis and Osiris mean nothing to us; and yet we
find the images made to do honour to Isis and Osiris often
mean more to us than the glorifications of the Madonna.
Egyptian art, as Babuschka profoundly remarked, is a
remarkable affair, and one really ought to do something
about it.
At Marietta House we ran across the Behns, the whole
tribe of them, with a numerous suite, sumptuous and noisy,
in three motors. They were just confabulating about the
best place to have breakfast. Herr Behn voted for an al-
fresco meal; Frau Behn was in favour of the restaurant at
Marietta House. The suite had various opinions. The
luggage was waiting in one of the cars, in charge of Jean, the
valet. As we beat a hasty retreat, Herr Behn appeared and
54