|
|
| Etruscan Enchantments | |
|
|
|
|
“Incantevole linguaggio - esclama-incantevole! Fin da quando ho appreso che gli Etruschi chiamavano Fufluns il dio del vino, sono stato attratto irresistibilmente dal loro linguaggio. Fufluns - come incomparabilmente più appropriato di Bacco o Liber o Dioniso! Fufluns, Fufluns - ripeteva con deliziata enfasi. Non potrebbe essere più bello. Avevano un vero genio linguistico, quelle creature.” Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves.
|
 |
|
|
|
“Essi erano civili: conoscevano il segreto del vivere armonioso e completo, con tutto il loro essere… il Cristianesimo ci ha imbarbariti nell’anima, ed ora la scienza ci sta imbarbarendo nell’intelletto”.
Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point.
|
|
|
|
The tombs seem so easy and friendly, cut out of rock underground. One does not feel oppressed, descending into them. It must be partly owing to the peculiar charm of natural proportion which is in all Etruscan things of the unspoilt, unromanticized centuries. There is a simplicity, combined with a most peculiar, free-breasted naturalness and spontaneity in the shapes and movements of the underworld walls and spaces, that at once reassures the spirit. The Greeks sought to make an impression, and Gothic still more seeks to impress the mind. The Etruscans, no. The things they did, in their easy centuries, are as natural and easy as breathing. They leave the breast breathing freely and pleasantly with a certain fullness of life. Even the tombs. And that is the true Etruscan quality: ease, naturalness, and an abundance of life. Everything was in terms of life, of living... |
 |
|
|
|
It is a relief to think that even the slaves - and the luxurious Etruscans had many, in historical times - had their remains decently stored in jars and laid in a sacred place...nothing comparable to the vast dead-pits which lay outside Rome.... It is a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives lives by delicate sensitiveness. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is liked grass and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence.
|
|
|
|
Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. Long before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale will still sing. Because it is neither preaching nor teaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. Because a fool kills a nightingale with a stone, is he therefore greater than the nightingale? Because the Roman took the life out of the Etruscan, was he therefore greater than the Etruscan? Not he! Rome fell and the Roman phenomenon with it. Italy today is far more Etruscan in its pulse than Roman...The Etruscan element is like the grass of the field and the sprouting of corn, and it will always be so.....
|
 |
|
|
|
It is all small and gay and quick with life, spontaneous as only young life can be. If only the frescoes were not so much damaged, one would be happy, because here is the real Etruscan liveliness and naturalness. It is not impressive or grand. Buit if you are content with just a sense of the quick ripple of life, then here it is....
|
|
|
|
Once it was all bright and dancing: the delight of the underworld; honouring the dead with wine and flutes playing for a dance and limbs whirling and pressing. It was deep and sincere honour rendered to the dead and to the mysteries. It is contrary to our ideas, but the ancients had their own philosophy for it. As the pagan old writer says, " For no part of us nor of our bodies shall be, which doth not feel religion and let there be no lack of singing for the soul, no lack of leaping and dancing for the knees and heart, for all these know the gods.
|
 |
|
|
|
Which is very evident in the Etruscan dancers. They know the gods in their very finger-tips.
|
|
|
|
There is a haunting quality in the Etruscan representations. Those leopards...then the men with beards who recline on banqueting beds; how they hold up the mysterious egg. And the women with the conical head-dress, how strangely they lean forward, with caresses we no longer know! The naked slaves joyfully stoop to the wine-jars. Their nakedness is their own clothing, more easy than drapery. The curves of their limbs show pure pleasure in life, a pleasure that goes deeper still in the limbs of the dancers, in the big, long hands thrown out and cancing to the very ends of the fingers, a dance that surges from within, like a current in the sea. It is as if the current of some strong different life swept through them, different from our shallow current today: as if they drew their vitality from different depths that we are denied....And yet there still are a few wild flowers and creatures.
|
|
|
|
The natural flowering of life! It is not so easy for human beings as it sounds. Behind all the Etruscan liveliness was a religion of life, which the chief men were seriously responsible for. Behind all the dancing was a vision, and even a science of the universe which made men live to the depth of their capacity. To the Etruscan, all was alive; the whole universe lived and to draw life into himself, out of the wandering huge vitalities of the world. The cosmos was alive, like a vast creature. The whole thing breathed and stirred....The whole thing was alive and had a great soul, or anima: and in spite of one great soul, there were myriad roving, lesser souls: every man, every creature and tree and lake and mountain and stream was animate, had its own peculiar consciousness. And has it today....
|
 |
|
|
|
To us it may seem foolish. To them, hot blooded birds flew through the living universe as feelings and premonitions fly through the breast of a man or as thoughts fly through the mind. And since all things corresponded in the ancient world and man's bosom mirrored itself in the bosom of the sky, or vice versa, the birds were flying to a portentous goal, in the man's breast who watched as well as flying their own way in the bosom of the sky. If the augur could see the birds flying in his heart, then he would know which way destiny too was flying for him.
|
|
|
|
The science of augury was certainly no exact science. But it was as exact as our sciences of psychology or political economy. And the augurs were as clever as politicians who also must practice divination, if ever they are to do anything worth the name. There is no other way when you are dealing with life. And if you live by the cosmos, you look in the cosmos for you clue. If you live by a personal god, you pray to him. If you are rational, you think things over. But it all amounts to the same thing. Prayer or thought or studying the stars or watching the flight of birds or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, it is all the same process ultimately: divination. All it depends on is the amount of true, sincere religious concentration you can bring to bear on your object. An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon which will best focus your consciousness. The soul stirs and makes an act of pure attention and that is a discovery.
|
 |
|
|
|
But get over the strange desire we have for elegant convention and the vases and dishes of the Etruscans, especially many of the black bucchero ware, begin to open out like strange flowers with all the softness and rebellion of life against convention, or red-and-black flowers painted with amusing free, bold designs. It is there nearly always in Etruscan things, the naturalness verging on the commonplace, but usually missing it, and often achieving an originally so free and bold, and so fresh, that we, wholove convention and things reduced to a norm, call it a bastard art and commonplace. It is useless to look in Etruscan things for uplift If you want uplift, go to the Greek and the Gothic. If you want mass, go to the Roman. But if you love the odd spontaneous forms that are never to be standardised, go to the Etruscans.
|
|
|
|
That again is one of the charms of the Etruscan paintings: they really have the sense of touch; the people and the creatures are really in touch. It is one of the rarest qualities, in life as well as in art. There is plenty of pawing and laying hold, but no real touch. In pictures especially, the people may be in contact, embracing or laying hands on one another. But there is no soft flow of touch. The touch does not come from the middle of the human being. It is merely a contact of surfaces, and a juxtaposition of objects. This is what makes so many of the great masters boring, in spite of their clever composition. Here in this faded Etruscan painting, there is a quiet flow of touch that unites the man and the woman on the couch, the timid boy behind, the dog that lifts his nose, even the very garlands that hang from the wall
|
 |
|
|
|
Who wants object lessons about vanished races? What one wants is a contact. The Etruscans are not a theory or a thesis. If they are anything, they are an experience. And the experience is always spoilt: Museums, museums, museums with object lessons rigged out to illustrate the unsound theories of archaeologists, crazy attempts to coordinate and get into a fixed order that which has no fixed order and will not be coordinated... Why must even the vanished Etruscans be reduced to a system? They never will be.....”
D.H. Lawrence, Etruscans Places, 1927.
|
 |
|
| [63428 .visits] [0067 .today] [1 .online] |
| gio, 24 lug 2008
- 03:47:29
- @116
|
![]() |
)
)
)
)
)
)
)