The sculptor who
worked there, whoever he may have been, had profited doubtless by the
study of Myron's famous work. For what purpose he made it, does not
appear;--as [286] an architectural ornament; or a votive offering;
perhaps only because he liked making it. In hyperbolic epigram, at
any rate, the animal breathes, explaining sufficiently the point of
Pliny's phrase regarding Myron--Corporum curiosus. And when he came
to his main business with the quoit-player, the wrestler, the runner,
he did not for a moment forget that they too were animals, young
animals, delighting in natural motion, in free course through the
yielding air, over uninterrupted space, according to Aristotle's
definition of pleasure: "the unhindered exercise of one's natural
force." Corporum tenus curiosus:--he was a "curious workman" as far
as the living body is concerned. Pliny goes on to qualify that
phrase by saying that he did not express the sensations of the mind--
animi sensus. But just there, in fact, precisely in such limitation,
we find what authenticates Myron's peculiar value in the evolution of
Greek art. It is of the essence of the athletic prizeman, involved
in the very ideal of the quoit-player, the cricketer, not to give
expression to mind, in any antagonism to, or invasion of, the body;
to mind as anything more than a function of the body, whose healthful
balance of functions it may so easily perturb;--to disavow that
insidious enemy of the fairness of the bodily soul as such.
Pages:
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333