DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51520#0038
a little tether, has come to seem to me but a
grimace; and the pale mountains no more
mysterious than a globe or map seem at a little
distance.
The “Mona Liza” is a sort of riddle, an
acrostic, a poetical decoction, a ballade, a
rondel, a villanelle, or ballade with double
burden, a sestina—that is what it is like, a
sestina or chant royal. The “Mona Liza,”
being literature in intention rather than paint-
ing, has drawn round her many poets. We
must forgive her many mediocre verses for
the sake of one incomparable prose passage.
She has now passed out of that mysterious
misuse of oil paint, that arid glazing of terre
^ertey and has come into her possession of
eternal life, into the immortality of Pater’s
prose. The “ Mona Liza ” and Degas’s
“Leqon de Danse” are intellectual pictures,
they were painted with the brains rather than
with the temperaments; and what is any
intellect compared to a gift like Manet’s ?
The intellectual pleasure that we receive from
a mind so curiously critical, inquisitive, and
mordant as Degas’s withers, but the joy we get
from the gift of painting like Manet’s is a joy
that lasts for ever. Of what value are Degas’s
descriptions of washer-women and dancers and
race-horses compared with that fallen flower,
that Aubusson carpet, above all the footstool ?
The pleasure of an early Degas, the “Semi-
ramis,” is more lasting than that which we get
from the dancers plunging forward in the blaze
28
grimace; and the pale mountains no more
mysterious than a globe or map seem at a little
distance.
The “Mona Liza” is a sort of riddle, an
acrostic, a poetical decoction, a ballade, a
rondel, a villanelle, or ballade with double
burden, a sestina—that is what it is like, a
sestina or chant royal. The “Mona Liza,”
being literature in intention rather than paint-
ing, has drawn round her many poets. We
must forgive her many mediocre verses for
the sake of one incomparable prose passage.
She has now passed out of that mysterious
misuse of oil paint, that arid glazing of terre
^ertey and has come into her possession of
eternal life, into the immortality of Pater’s
prose. The “ Mona Liza ” and Degas’s
“Leqon de Danse” are intellectual pictures,
they were painted with the brains rather than
with the temperaments; and what is any
intellect compared to a gift like Manet’s ?
The intellectual pleasure that we receive from
a mind so curiously critical, inquisitive, and
mordant as Degas’s withers, but the joy we get
from the gift of painting like Manet’s is a joy
that lasts for ever. Of what value are Degas’s
descriptions of washer-women and dancers and
race-horses compared with that fallen flower,
that Aubusson carpet, above all the footstool ?
The pleasure of an early Degas, the “Semi-
ramis,” is more lasting than that which we get
from the dancers plunging forward in the blaze
28