From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Ruskin -- commentary that itself yields a.e.'s
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 13:50:50 EST
I still maintain no comment, printed appreciation, or "explanation" has
ever
caused me to derive an "a.e." from a work that had not so served me before.
Still,
some commentaries are written with such rhetorical verve and adroitness
that
the commentaries themselves have occasioned a series of minor a.e.'s.
As an example, I offer the following by John Ruskin. It's from his MODERN
PAINTERS written in the 1840s when Ruskin was, if you can believe it, in
his
mid-twenties.
I was twenty when I read first read this, still unfamiliar with "Grand
Style"
writing, and I scribbled a chain of exclamation marks in the margins of the
anthology, which I still have. You have to read this for what it is --
Ruskin
conveying an impassioned and convulsive awe that uncannily matches the
heaving,
excessive, and unlimited sea he was describing. (Notice how seldom he stops
to end a sentence.)
****
Few people have ever seen the effect on the sea of a powerful gale
continued
without intermission for three or four days and nights; and to those whose
have not, I believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force and
size
of
the surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit between sea and
air. The water, from its prolonged agitation, is beaten, not into mere
creaming
foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in accumulated ropes
and
wreaths from wave to wave, and, where one curls over to break, form a
festoon
like a drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in
dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which
make
the
air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long
each;
the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath,
making
them white all through, as the water is under a great cataract, and their
masses, being half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind
whenever
they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles
like
actual waterb&.imagine also the low rain clouds brought down to the very
level of
the sea, as I have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and
fragments
from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges themselves in their
utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves
in
precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this
chaos;
and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between
the
sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural
evidence
of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud,
and that you can no farther see in any direction than you could see through
a
cataract. Suppose the effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show
this
annihilation to itself, and you have the sea picture of the Academy, 1842
--
The Snowstorm , one of the very grandest statements of sea motion, mist and
light that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner. Of course it was
not
understood; his finest works never are; but there was some apology for the
public's
not comprehending this, for few people have had the opportunity of seeing
the
sea at such a time, and, when they have, cannot face it. To hold by a mast
or
rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which few people
have courage to go through. To those who have it is one of the noblest
lessons
in
nature.
But I think the noblest sea that Turner ever painted, and if so, the
noblest
certainly ever painted by man, is that of The Slave Ship, the chief Academy
picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on the Atlantic after
prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and
streaming
rain
clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the
night. The whole surface of the sea included in the picture is divided into
two
ridges of enormous swell, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the
lifting
of
its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between
these
two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing
it
with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which
burns
like gold and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley the
tossing
waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided lift themselves
in
dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow
behind
it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhereb&water now lighted
with green and lamp-light fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining
sun,
now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the
burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet and
give
to
the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flyingb&.the guilty
ship
as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon
the
sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which
signs
the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight, and,
cast
far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the
multitudinous sea.
**************
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