United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the fourteenth century there was an extraordinary development in the art of painting under the guidance and inspiration of the first great Italian painter, Giotto. Before his time the frescoes, like the illuminations in the manuscripts of which we have spoken in a previous chapter, were exceedingly stiff and unlifelike. With Giotto there comes a change.
But this, as I have tried to show above, is a baseless complaint. Chance is a constant factor in life, now aiding, now thwarting, the will. To eliminate it altogether would be to produce a most unlifelike world. It is only when the playwright so manipulates and reduplicates chance as to make it seem no longer chance, but purposeful arrangement, that we have the right to protest.
While, compared with later sculpture, they seem somewhat stiff and unlifelike, they harmonize wonderfully with the whole building, and the best of them are full of charm and dignity. So far we have spoken only of the church architecture, and that was by far the most important during the period with which we have been dealing.
I had not recalled this dream on waking: the recollection of it came to me now for the first time. It was a usual enough dream, wandering and unlifelike, not worth the telling; and I had been thinking so constantly of Mrs. Harman that there was nothing extraordinary in her worthless ex-husband's being part of it.
Could one set the real person behind the frame and suddenly fix them for ever with one of those passing expressions on their faces, however natural it might have been at the moment, fixed for ever it is terrible, and most unlifelike. As we have already said, a few lines scribbled on a piece of paper by a consummate artist would give a greater sense of life than this fixed actuality.
And the wink was almost as unlifelike and uncanny as the bird. And the gray crows and the ravens gulped and quarreled, with one eye upon the eagle and one upon their job; and Pig Head Pig Head sat and cursed that eagle, from his horny beak to his barred tail, through chattering and aching teeth. But the eagle never moved a feather. We are told that Alexander sighed for other worlds to conquer.
The author who undertakes to resuscitate and clothe with flesh and blood the dry bones of his ancestors, has indeed this advantage, that, however unlifelike his characters may be, there is no one in a position to prove it; it is not 'a difference of opinion between himself and twelve of his fellow-countrymen, or a matter on which he can be condemned by overwhelming evidence; but, on the other hand, he creates for himself unnecessary difficulties.
I want my box of cigarettes on one side and my vanity case on the other, and I should like to listen to the plot of your play." He obeyed her behests with scrupulous care, leaned back in his chair and brought into the foreground of his mind the figures of those men and women who had told his story, finding them, to his dismay, unexpectedly crude and unlifelike. And the story itself.
She also relieves her pent-up idealism in plays or books in high-wrought, "strong" novels, not in adventures in society such as the kitchen admires, but in stories with violent moral and emotional crises, whose characters, no matter how unlifelike, have "strong" thoughts, and make vital decisions; succeed or fail significantly.
"No, Phyllie," he answered in a queer, unlifelike way. "Please find blind eyes and read all about them to me." "Oh, they are not interesting," I said, and the lump rose so I could hardly breathe. "Let me read measles, if you don't think you will like mumps. Do you remember that experiment about cutting away a piece of the heart itself that the man tried? Let me read that again."
Word Of The Day