I
Imagine It Came Less For My Sake Than For The Companionship Of Boecklin.
They Were Comrades In The Spirit; They Understood.
What one had heard,
the other beheld - shapes of mystery, that peer out of forest gloom and
the blue hush of midday and out of glassy waters - shapes that shudder
and laugh.
No doubt you may detect a difference between Boecklin's
creations and those of classic days; it is as if the light of his
dreamings had filtered through some medium, some stained-glass window in
a Gothic church which distorted their outlines and rendered them
somewhat more grotesque. It is the hand of time. The world has aged. Yet
the shapes are young; they do but change their clothes and follow the
fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal
can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the
serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway
region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the
greatest jest in the universe. At us....
That lake of Conterano - the accent is on the ante-penultima - it looked
appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I
pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among
wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are
so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other,
fringed with the common English reed - two, rather, lying side by side,
one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious
circular depressions in the limestone.
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