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The Soul of the Far East-Part14_Percival Lowell(1855-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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fall, would in the Far East be as out of keeping with fancy as with

fact. To a Japanese, who never personifies anything, such innocent



irony is unmeaning. Besides, it would be also untrue. For his May

carries no suggestion of unfulfilment in its name.



Those Far Eastern paintings which have to do with man fall for the

most part under one of two heads, the facetious and the historical.



The latter implies no particularly intimate concern for man in

himself, for the past has very little personality for the present.



As for the former, its attention is, if anything, derogatory to him,

for we are always shy of making fun of what we feel to be too



closely a part of ourselves. But impersonality has prevented the

Far Oriental from having much amour propre. He has no particular



aversion to caricaturing himself. Few Europeans, perhaps, would

have cared to perpetrate a self-portrait like one painted by the



potter Kinsei, which was sold me one day as an amusing tour de force

by a facetious picture-dealer. It is a composite picture of a new



kind, a Japanese variety of type face. The great potter, who was

also apparently no mean painter, has combined three aspects of



himself in a single representation. At first sight the portrait

appears to be simply a full front view of a somewhat moon-faced



citizen; but as you continue to gaze, it suddenly dawns on you that

there are two other individuals, one on either side, hob-nobbing in



profile with the first, the lines of the features being ingeniously

made to do double duty; and when this aspect of the thing has once



struck you, you cannot look at the picture without seeing all three

citizens simultaneously. The result is doubtless more effective as



a composition than flattering as a likeness.

Far Eastern sculpture, by its secondary importance among Far Eastern



arts, witnesses again to the secondary importance assigned to man at

our mental antipodes. In this art, owing to its necessary



limitations, the representation of nature in its broader sense is

impossible. For in the first place, whatever the subject, it must



be such as it is possible to present in one continuous piece;

disconnected adjuncts, as, for instance, a flock of birds flying,



which might be introduced with great effect in painting, being here

practically beyond the artist's reach. Secondly, the material being



of uniform appearance, as a rule, color, or even shading, vital

points in landscapeportrayal, is out of the question, unless the



piece were subsequently painted, as in Grecian sculptures, a custom

which is not practised in China or Japan. Lastly, another fact



fatal to the representation of landscape is the size. The reduced

scale of the reproduction suggests falsity at once, a falsity whose



belittlement the mind can neither forget nor forgive. Plain

sculpture is therefore practically limited to statuary, either of



men or animals. The result is that in their art, where landscape

counts for so much, sculpture plays a very minor part. In what



little there is, Nature's place is taken by Buddha. For there are

two classes of statues, divided the one from the other by that step



which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, namely, the

colossal and the diminutive. There is no happy human mean. Of the



first kind are the beautiful bronze figures of the Buddha, like the

Kamakura Buddha, fifty feet high and ninety-seven feet round, in



whose face all that is grand and noble lies sleeping, the living

representation of Nirvana; and of the second, those odd little



ornaments known as netsuke, comical carvings for the most part,

grotesque figures of men and monkeys, saints and sinners, gods and



devils. Appealing bits of ivory, bone, or wood they are, in which




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