From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Mar 26 2002 - 14:10:12 MST
"There are many tombs. When we have seen one, up we go, a little
bewildered, into the afternoon sun, across a tract of rough,
tormented hill, and down again to the underground, like rabbits in a
warren. The hilltop is really a warren of tombs. And gradually the
underworld of the Etruscans becomes more real than the above day of
the afternoon. One begins to live with the painted dancers and
feasters and mourners, and to look eagerly for them.
[...]
A very lovely dance tomb is the Tomba del Triclinio, or del Convito,
both of which mean: Tomb of the Feast. In size and shape this is much
the same as the other tombs we have seen. It is a little chamber
about fifteen feet by eleven, six feet hight at the walls, about
eight feet at the centre. It is again a tomb for one person, like
nearly all the old painted tombs here. So there is no inner
furnishing. Only the farther half of the rock-floor, the pale
yellow-white rock, is raised two or three inches, and on one side of
this raised part are the four holes where the feet of the
sarcophagus stood. For the rest, the tomb has only its painted walls
and ceiling.
And how lovely these have been, and still are! The band of dancing
figures that go round the room still is bright in colour, fresh, the
women in thin spotted dresses of linen muslin and coloured mantles
with fine borders, the men merely in a scarf. Wildly the bacchic
woman throws back her head and curves out her long, strong fingers,
wild and yet contained within herself, while the broad-bodied young
man turns round to her, lifting his dancing hand to hers till the
thumbs all but touch. They are dancing in the open, past little
trees, and birds are running, and a little fox-tailed dog is
watching something with the naive intensity of the young. Wildly and
delightedly dances the next woman, every bit of her, in her soft
boots and her bordered mantle, with jewels on her arms; till one
remembers the old dictum, that every part of the body and of the
anima shall know religion, and be in touch with the gods. Towards
her comes the young man piping on the double flute, and dancing as
he comes. He is clothed only in a fine linen scarf with a border,
that hangs over his arms, and his strong legs dance of themselves,
so full of life. Yet, too, there is a certain solemn intensity in
his face, as he turns to the woman beyond him, who swoops in a bow
to him as vibrates her castanets.
[...]
There is a haunting quality in the Etruscan representations. Those
leopards with their long tongues hanging out: those flowing
hippocampi; those cringing spotted deer, struck in flank and neck;
they get into the imagination, and will not go out. And we see the
wavy edge of the sea, the dolphins curving over, the diver going
down clean, the little man climbing up the rock after him so
eagerly. Then the men with beards who recline on the banqueting
beds: how they hold up the mysterious egg! And the women with the
conical head-dress, how strangely they lean forward, with caresses
we no longer know! The naked slaves joyfully stoop to the wine-jars.
Their nakedness is its own clothing, more easy than drapery. The
curves of their limbs show pure pleasure in life, a pleasure that
goes deeper still in the limbs of the dancers, in the big long hands
thrown out and dancing to the very ends of the fingers, a dance that
surges from within, like a current in the sea. It is as if the
current of some strong different life swept through them, different
from our shallow current to-day: as if they drew their vitality from
different depths that we are denied.
[...]
The natural flowering of life! It is not so easy for human beings as
it sounds. Behind all the Etruscan liveliness was a religion of
life, which the chief men were seriously responsible for. Behind
all the dancing was a vision, and even a science of life, a
conception of the universe and man's place in the universe which made
men live to the depth of their capacity.
To the Etruscan all was alive; the whole universe lived; and the
business of man was himself to live amid it all. He had to draw life
into himself, out of the wandering huge vitalities of the world. The
cosmos was alive, like a vast creature. The whole thing breathed and
stirred. Evaporation went up like breath from the nostrils of a
whale, steaming up. The sky received it in its blue bosom, breathed
it in and pondered on it and transmuted it, before breathing it out
again. Inside the earth were fires like the heat in the hot red
liver of a beast. Out of the fissures of the earth came breaths of
other breathing, vapours direct from the living physical underearth,
exhalations carrying inspiration. The whole thing was alive, and had
a great soul, or anima: and in spite of one great soul, there were
myriad roving, lesser souls; every man, every creature and tree and
lake and mountain and stream was animate, had its own peculiar
consciousness."
D. H. Lawrence _Etruscan Places_, 1932
(You can see pictures of some Etruscan Tombs on the Web,
but it's nothing like experiencing them for yourself.)
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin
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