And, in the phrases themselves, what severity, what bareness
almost! It is in their return upon themselves, their weighty reiterance,
that their force and significance become revealed; and if, as Nietzsche
says, they end by hypnotising us, well, all art is a kind of hypnotic
process, a cunning absorption of the will of another.
"Parsifal" presents itself as before all things a picture. The music,
soaring up from hidden depths, and seeming to drop from the heights, and
be reflected back from shining distances, though it is, more than
anything I have ever heard, like one of the great forces of nature, the
sea or the wind, itself makes pictures, abstract pictures; but even the
music, as one watches the stage, seems to subordinate itself to the
visible picture there. And, so perfectly do all the arts flow into one,
the picture impresses one chiefly by its rhythm, the harmonies of its
convention. The lesson of "Parsifal" is the lesson that, in art, rhythm
is everything. Every moment in the acting of this drama makes a picture,
and every movement is slow, deliberate, as if automatic. No actor makes
a gesture, which has not been regulated for him; there is none of that
unintelligent haphazard known as being "natural"; these people move like
music, or with that sense of motion which it is the business of painting
to arrest.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246