The Marble Faun: Or, the Romance of Monte Beni

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Ticknor and Fields, 1860 - 288 стор.

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Сторінка 157 - Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Now-a-days, people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore,— as you must candidly confess,— cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he...
Сторінка 22 - All the pleasantness of sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures that dwell in woods and fields, will seem to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred qualities in the human soul. Trees, grass, flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man...
Сторінка viii - No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.
Сторінка 108 - Arcadian life, or, farther still, into the Golden Age, before mankind was burdened with sin and sorrow, and before pleasure had been darkened with those shadows that bring it into high relief, and make it happiness.
Сторінка 120 - Yet, let us trust, there may have been no crime in Miriam, but only one of those fatalities which are among the most insoluble riddles propounded to mortal comprehension ; the fatal decree by which every crime is made to be the agony of many innocent persons, as well as of the single guilty one.
Сторінка 216 - I did what ought to be done to a traitor ! " he replied. " I did what your eyes bade me do, when I asked them with mine, as I held the wretch over the precipice ! " These last words struck Miriam like a bullet. Could it be so? Had her eyes provoked or assented to this deed? She had not known it. But, alas ! looking back into the frenzy and turmoil of the scene just acted, she could not deny — she was not sure whether it might be so, or...
Сторінка 101 - ... a creature in a state of development less than what mankind has attained, yet the more perfect within itself for that very deficiency.
Сторінка 120 - Of so much we are sure, that there seemed to be a sadly mysterious fascination in the influence of this ill-omened person over Miriam ; it was such as beasts and reptiles of subtle and evil nature sometimes exercise upon their victims. Marvellous it was to see the hopelessness with which — being naturally of so courageous a spirit — she resigned herself to the thraldom in which he held her. That iron chain, of which some of the massive links were round her feminine waist, and the others in his...
Сторінка 241 - ... remorse, which perhaps is even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however, these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. But the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes: the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty death; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality, has grown as barren of the flowers of Paradise as it...
Сторінка 162 - Catching another glimpse, you beheld her as implacable as a stone, and cruel as fire. In a word, all Cleopatra— fierce, voluptuous, passionate, tender, wicked, terrible, and full of poisonous and rapturous enchantment— was kneaded into what, only a week or two before, had been a lump of wet clay from the Tiber. Soon, apotheosized in an indestructible material, she would be one of the images that men keep forever, finding a heat in them which does not cool down, throughout the centuries.

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