It is
the emotion of children, naked sensation, not yet clothed by
civilisation. Only the body speaks in it, the mind is absent; and the
body abandons itself completely to the animal force of its instincts.
With a great artist like Sada Yacco in the death scene of "The Geisha
and the Knight," the effect is overwhelming; the whole woman dies before
one's sight, life ebbs visibly out of cheeks and eyes and lips; it is
death as not even Sarah Bernhardt has shown us death. There are moments,
at other times and with other performers, when it is difficult not to
laugh at some cat-like or ape-like trick of these painted puppets who
talk a toneless language, breathing through their words as they whisper
or chant them. They are swathed like barbaric idols, in splendid robes
without grace; they dance with fans, with fingers, running, hopping,
lifting their feet, if they lift them, with the heavy delicacy of the
elephant; they sing in discords, striking or plucking a few hoarse notes
on stringed instruments, and beating on untuned drums. Neither they nor
their clothes have beauty, to the limited Western taste; they have
strangeness, the charm of something which seems to us capricious, almost
outside Nature.
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