. Chats on Japanese prints. ed his keen realistic power merely as ascaffolding, and has proceeded to build up on it awork that goes over almost into the region ofsymbolism. In the slender delicacy of this figure,the splendid black of her elaborate coiffure, thedrooping fragility of her body, the sensuous graceand refinement, the languor and exhaustion—in allthese speak the super-sensible gropings and hungersof Utamaro himself. Out of a living woman hecreated his disturbing symbol of the impossible desiresthat are no less subtle or painful because they are bornof the flesh. With nerves keyed be
. Chats on Japanese prints. ed his keen realistic power merely as ascaffolding, and has proceeded to build up on it awork that goes over almost into the region ofsymbolism. In the slender delicacy of this figure,the splendid black of her elaborate coiffure, thedrooping fragility of her body, the sensuous graceand refinement, the languor and exhaustion—in allthese speak the super-sensible gropings and hungersof Utamaro himself. Out of a living woman hecreated his disturbing symbol of the impossible desiresthat are no less subtle or painful because they are bornof the flesh. With nerves keyed beyond the healthypitch, he dreamed this melody whose strange minorchords alone could stir the satiated spirit. He caughtand idealized the lines and colours of mortal weariness. Woman, says Von Seidlitz, had always playeda prominent part in the popular art of the country,but now Utamaro placed one type of the sex in theabsolute centre of all attention—the type, namely, ofthe courtesan initiated into all the refinements of. UTAMARO : WOMAN SEATED ON A 13x8. Signed Utamaro, hitsu. Plate 40. 291 FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 293 mantal culture as well as of bodily enchantment,and then playing in the life of Japan such a partas she must have played in Hellas during the golden^age of Greek civilization. For expressing the i<(-^expressible, the simple rendering of nature did notsuffice; the figures must needs be lengthened to givethe impression of supernatural beings; they musthave a pliancy enabling them to express vividly thetenderest as well as the most intense emotions ofthe soul; lastly, they must be endowed with awholly peculiar and therefore affected language foruttering the wholly peculiar sensations that filledthem. ... It is true that soon after he yielded tothe general tendency of his age . . and graduallyinsisted on these attributes to exaggeration, even toimpossibility, while his fame of having been thefirst to give such morbid inclinations completelysat
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