DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0089
THE FAMILY IN THE CAIRO MUSEUM
the results of this manipulative skill are not sketches and
fragments but complete realities. The latent aspects, how-
ever, which connect them with our own works and without
which we should be unmoved, the motive power within the
work which sustains us, the element which we have to supply
upon reaching the common limit of the senses - in a word,
their associations: these, too, they possess and cherish.
Their associations — one must complete the idea behind the
awkward expression — come across to us without any baroque
assistance, without the slightest help from any stimulants,
but in complete tranquillity at a distance of goodness knows
how many centuries.
Our Family is partly naked; but the rhythm of their forms
clothes them for us. Their forms are those which we can use
in order to clothe people with our affection for them. I love
the odd dignity of the two young men, the noble figure of
their father and the unadorned comeliness of his face, with
the brow behind which there is no room for any mean thoughts.
I love the rounded but slender limbs of the woman, whose
love was smiling and supple. But better than all is their
mutual tenderness and pleasure in each other’s company.
A convention again; but one that sees nothing but beauty
and wonder without hindrance. I associate it with what
appears to be an anachronistic conception. It belongs to the
city; or rather, since the foreign word is more comprehensive,
I would call it urbane. And the implications of that carry us
further and further into the distance, I fancy.
Naturally enough, this and every convention are funda-
mentally alien to our mannerless age; still we can feel their
echo, and even by a sort of romantic connoisseurship can
identify ourselves with them. The further away it is in actual
fact the more firmly we grasp the principle and draw near
in our dreams to this ideal family relationship. Thus would
we be, with and without a family, had we the opportunity of
living another life. It is impossible, I know. Our native
77
the results of this manipulative skill are not sketches and
fragments but complete realities. The latent aspects, how-
ever, which connect them with our own works and without
which we should be unmoved, the motive power within the
work which sustains us, the element which we have to supply
upon reaching the common limit of the senses - in a word,
their associations: these, too, they possess and cherish.
Their associations — one must complete the idea behind the
awkward expression — come across to us without any baroque
assistance, without the slightest help from any stimulants,
but in complete tranquillity at a distance of goodness knows
how many centuries.
Our Family is partly naked; but the rhythm of their forms
clothes them for us. Their forms are those which we can use
in order to clothe people with our affection for them. I love
the odd dignity of the two young men, the noble figure of
their father and the unadorned comeliness of his face, with
the brow behind which there is no room for any mean thoughts.
I love the rounded but slender limbs of the woman, whose
love was smiling and supple. But better than all is their
mutual tenderness and pleasure in each other’s company.
A convention again; but one that sees nothing but beauty
and wonder without hindrance. I associate it with what
appears to be an anachronistic conception. It belongs to the
city; or rather, since the foreign word is more comprehensive,
I would call it urbane. And the implications of that carry us
further and further into the distance, I fancy.
Naturally enough, this and every convention are funda-
mentally alien to our mannerless age; still we can feel their
echo, and even by a sort of romantic connoisseurship can
identify ourselves with them. The further away it is in actual
fact the more firmly we grasp the principle and draw near
in our dreams to this ideal family relationship. Thus would
we be, with and without a family, had we the opportunity of
living another life. It is impossible, I know. Our native
77