In the wide and numberless fields of creative art, size is a matter of spirit rather than of material bulk. A sonnet1 may be a masterpiece, and an epic2 rubbish; or an epic may be sublime3, a sonnet petty.
It is only affectation to confine one’s praise to small things. Because a poet delights in a brook4 chuckling5 through a thicket6 of birches he need not therefore despise Niagara. The word “colossal7” should not be surrendered entirely8 to the advertisers.
The Shakespeare of the sonnets9 wrote also “Hamlet” and “King Lear.” The Beethoven who wrote the giggling10 Scherzos wrote also the titanic11 Ninth and added its mighty12 chorus. Michelangelo did statuettes and sonnets, but also his “Day of Judgment” and his prodigious13 horned Moses.
To the sincere artist it is the idea that is vital. Once that has inflamed14 him, he seeks only to give it the shape and the size that its nature dictates15.
So Gutzon Borglum, being sensitive to all the moods of life, a born poet, with an innate16 love of form for its own sake, quick to glow with inspirations of every kind and determined17 to give each its unique and eloquent18 shape, has painted and carved without fear or favor the exquisite19 and the tremendous with equal fidelity20.
His genius shines in the little bas-relief of a nymph; in sardonic21 gargoyles22; in the tiny yet epic statuette of the dying Nero, a bloated coward tangled23 in his toga and drooping24 to his ignoble25 death; in the suave26 portrait of the seated Ruskin; the pathos27 of the old Boer warrior28; in the billowy rush of the stampeding “Mares of Diomedes”; in his colossal head of Lincoln; in his war memorial for Newark, New Jersey29, with its marvellously composed forty-two figures and two horses; his magnificent plan for the Stone Mountain, whose thwarting30 is one of the great tragedies of art; and finally in his supreme31 achievement, the Mount Rushmore Memorial, where he brought his art to the mountains and left there the four great faces for all eternity32.
This unparalleled accomplishment33 seems to have been not so much the carving34 of those vast heads upon the peaks as the beating away of the veiling, smothering35 stone and the releasing of the imprisoned36 statesmen so that they might look out upon the world and utter their lofty messages in a silence more pervasive37 and sonorous38 than any trumpet-tone.
The heads stand up there against the clouds like cloud-gods. Yet they are not offered as gods, but as plain men who glorified39 the plain man. Each of them is greater in magnitude than the so-called Egyptian Sphinx. The Sphinx represented an unanswerable riddle40 and she cruelly destroyed all who could not answer it. But these presidents of ours represent brave, clear thinking towards safety and dignity and happiness for all mankind.
The Sphinx was really a portrait, the largest portrait ever made till Borglum came along. It is the head of King Khafre set on the body of a crouching41 lion guarding the king’s tomb, with his pyramid back of it. Khafre had it built during a reign42 that ended over four thousand, seven hundred and fifty years ago.
Near the Sphinx and Khafre’s pyramid is the greater pyramid of King Khufu, better known to us as Cheops. He lived from 2898 to 2875 BC. and his pyramid contains over two million blocks of stone, of an average weight of two and a half tons. Herodotus was told that it took a hundred thousand men twenty years to build it.
Near Karnak there are still standing—or sitting—two portrait statues of Amenhotep III, who ruled fourteen hundred years B.C.—just about the time of Moses. These statues are seventy feet high.
One of the four colossal statues at Abu Simbel represents Rameses II, who died about two thousand, six hundred years ago. Lying on its side is a broken statue of Rameses II, once 90 feet high and carved from a single thousand-ton block. This and another statue of him in granite43 ninety feet high were, according to Breasted writing in 1905, “the greatest monolithic44 statues ever executed.”
But Borglum’s bust45 of Washington is larger than the whole figure of Rameses, Lincoln’s nose is 21 feet long and the sparkle in his eye is secured by a block of granite thirty inches long.
Some of the Egyptian portraits were carved upon their cliffs somewhat as Borglum’s statues are upon the peaks. At Abu Simbel there are four such statues of enormous bulk.
The Assyrians also built huge monuments, and inscribed46 the texts of whole histories on the faces of cliffs. Their kings were usually represented as enormous winged bulls with the heads of bearded men. These were called, strangely enough, “cherubs.”
The Greeks created for their greater gods statues of gold and ivory—whence the epithet47 “chryselephantine.” Such was the colossal Zeus that Pheidias made for Olympia. It was about fifty feet high. Pheidias made also two colossal figures of Athena for Athens, one in bronze that stood up like a lighthouse and was visible to sailors far 6 out to sea. The other had ivory flesh and robes of gold, and was seventy feet high.
The famous bronze Colossus of Rhodes, erected48 about 274 B.C. by Chares of Lindus, was 105 feet high. It did not straddle a stream, as tradition has it. Half a century after it was set up, an earthquake overthrew49 it; in 656 A.D. it was sold for junk and carried off by a caravan50 of 900 camels.
In China one still sees enormous Buddhas51, and in our own world the Mayan monstrosities are being brought back from the jungle that swallowed them like a sea.
The statue of Liberty—a gift to us from France—is 151 feet high; with its pedestal it is 305 feet tall.
But none of the giants ancient or modern has approached the size of the greater works of Borglum.
This carver of mountains was himself a mountainy man, born in the mountainous state of Idaho on March 25, 1871. His full name was John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. His parents had come over from Denmark. His father, at first a woodcarver, became a physician and surgeon, also a breeder of horses on a 6000-acre ranch52. He had no money to give his children, but he gave them a love of form and a knowledge of the horse that not only inspired Gutzon Borglum to some of his most magnificent work, but also made a splendid career for his younger brother, Solon. Solon took fire from Gutzon’s fire, worked his way to Paris, won honors there, and came home to his West where he turned out a stream of important sculptures that perpetuate53 many poignant54 phases of Western life. His life was suddenly ended in 1922 by an attack of acute appendicitis55.
Gutzon’s indomitable will carried him from the Idaho ranch to an art school in San Francisco, thence to Paris. He began as both painter and sculptor56 and was accepted as both by the French salons57. In England, critics and royalty58 heaped honors on him. After painting a series of murals for a big hotel at Leeds and another series for a concert hall at Manchester, he began to abandon the brushes for the chisel59, and to turn out statuary in almost every field and almost every imaginable form.
From the first, his works won the highest honors. The Metropolitan60 Museum bought his “Mares of Diomedes” at once and the French Government promptly61 purchased a partial replica62 of it for the Luxembourg Gallery. Commissions rained on him and there was never any repetition in the spirit or treatment of his responses.
There is not space here for even a catalogue of his triumphs. He also wrote much and well. He was an engineer and an inventor, overcoming by his own skill supposedly unconquerable problems involved in the construction of his larger works. He was an orator63 of eloquence64 with a practical skill in politics. At times he was a statesman and the close associate of Paderewski and Masaryk in their re-creation of their lost republics. During the first World War he investigated and exposed the causes for a mysterious and dangerous failure in American aircraft manufacture. His career has a strange kinship in its versatility65 with that of Leonardo da Vinci, and I believe that his name will live as long.
In 1909 he married Mary Montgomery, a distinguished66 scholar in ancient Oriental languages, and a translator of cuneiform inscriptions67. A son and a daughter blessed this union of two great souls.
It was in 1907 that I first met Gutzon Borglum while preparing an article on his work, to which I paid complete homage68. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship of which I wrote him while he was glorifying69 the South Dakota mountains:
“I have always had an awe70 and a reverence71 for you that fought with my love for the simple, jovial72, twinkling-eyed friend you always were.”
He answered: “You have said your say about me and it is a wet eye that reads through the letter. You know how vandalism in the name of Civilization raids the tombs of our ancestors and destroys the records of History. One of my motives73 in this work was to carve these records of our great West-World adventure as high into the heavens as I could find the stone.”
As man and as sculptor he was passionately74 American and he has not only given to his country monuments of art that equal the greatest of other nations, but he has given artistic75 expression to the ideals that make America America.
The Sphinx and its temple have only recently been recovered from the sand that submerged them for thousands of years. Yet even now the worst tyrannies and cruelties of the Pharaohs have been revived and paralleled in Europe, just as our gentlest, noblest ideals were to be found co-existing with savagery76 in ancient Egypt.
I hope, I believe that in 7000 A.D. there will be pilgrimages to Mount Rushmore by Americans still keeping alive the flames of freedom kindled77 and rekindled78 by the four heroes Borglum had immortalized, immortalizing himself and his and their ideals along with them.
His Mount Rushmore Memorial presents to posterity79 four great Americans who upheld the rights and equalities of all mankind, and who were themselves the very personifications of Americanism.
Their noble heads are lofty enough to mingle80 with the clouds, and the parading lights of sun and moon and stars, and the processionals of rain and snow and mist give them a beauty that is always changing yet everlastingly81 changeless.
Only a great soul and a great artist could have conceived or achieved such a monument to them and to himself. His gifts of spirit and execution were, I feel, unsurpassed by anything of their kind in the history of the world.
点击收听单词发音
1 sonnet | |
n.十四行诗 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 epic | |
n.史诗,叙事诗;adj.史诗般的,壮丽的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 sublime | |
adj.崇高的,伟大的;极度的,不顾后果的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 brook | |
n.小河,溪;v.忍受,容让 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 chuckling | |
轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 thicket | |
n.灌木丛,树林 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 colossal | |
adj.异常的,庞大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 sonnets | |
n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 giggling | |
v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 titanic | |
adj.巨人的,庞大的,强大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 prodigious | |
adj.惊人的,奇妙的;异常的;巨大的;庞大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 inflamed | |
adj.发炎的,红肿的v.(使)变红,发怒,过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 dictates | |
n.命令,规定,要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 );口授;支配;摆布 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 innate | |
adj.天生的,固有的,天赋的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 eloquent | |
adj.雄辩的,口才流利的;明白显示出的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 fidelity | |
n.忠诚,忠实;精确 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 sardonic | |
adj.嘲笑的,冷笑的,讥讽的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 gargoyles | |
n.怪兽状滴水嘴( gargoyle的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 drooping | |
adj. 下垂的,无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 ignoble | |
adj.不光彩的,卑鄙的;可耻的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 suave | |
adj.温和的;柔和的;文雅的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 pathos | |
n.哀婉,悲怆 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 warrior | |
n.勇士,武士,斗士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 jersey | |
n.运动衫 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 thwarting | |
阻挠( thwart的现在分词 ); 使受挫折; 挫败; 横过 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 eternity | |
n.不朽,来世;永恒,无穷 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 accomplishment | |
n.完成,成就,(pl.)造诣,技能 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 carving | |
n.雕刻品,雕花 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 smothering | |
(使)窒息, (使)透不过气( smother的现在分词 ); 覆盖; 忍住; 抑制 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 imprisoned | |
下狱,监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 pervasive | |
adj.普遍的;遍布的,(到处)弥漫的;渗透性的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 sonorous | |
adj.响亮的,回响的;adv.圆润低沉地;感人地;n.感人,堂皇 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 glorified | |
美其名的,变荣耀的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 riddle | |
n.谜,谜语,粗筛;vt.解谜,给…出谜,筛,检查,鉴定,非难,充满于;vi.出谜 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 crouching | |
v.屈膝,蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 reign | |
n.统治时期,统治,支配,盛行;v.占优势 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 granite | |
adj.花岗岩,花岗石 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 monolithic | |
adj.似独块巨石的;整体的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 bust | |
vt.打破;vi.爆裂;n.半身像;胸部 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 inscribed | |
v.写,刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 );内接 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 epithet | |
n.(用于褒贬人物等的)表述形容词,修饰语 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 ERECTED | |
adj. 直立的,竖立的,笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立,建立 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 overthrew | |
overthrow的过去式 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 caravan | |
n.大蓬车;活动房屋 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 Buddhas | |
n.佛,佛陀,佛像( Buddha的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 ranch | |
n.大牧场,大农场 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 perpetuate | |
v.使永存,使永记不忘 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 poignant | |
adj.令人痛苦的,辛酸的,惨痛的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 appendicitis | |
n.阑尾炎,盲肠炎 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 sculptor | |
n.雕刻家,雕刻家 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 salons | |
n.(营业性质的)店( salon的名词复数 );厅;沙龙(旧时在上流社会女主人家的例行聚会或聚会场所);(大宅中的)客厅 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 royalty | |
n.皇家,皇族 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 chisel | |
n.凿子;v.用凿子刻,雕,凿 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 metropolitan | |
adj.大城市的,大都会的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 replica | |
n.复制品 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 orator | |
n.演说者,演讲者,雄辩家 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 eloquence | |
n.雄辩;口才,修辞 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 versatility | |
n.多才多艺,多样性,多功能 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 inscriptions | |
(作者)题词( inscription的名词复数 ); 献词; 碑文; 证劵持有人的登记 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 homage | |
n.尊敬,敬意,崇敬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 glorifying | |
赞美( glorify的现在分词 ); 颂扬; 美化; 使光荣 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
70 awe | |
n.敬畏,惊惧;vt.使敬畏,使惊惧 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
71 reverence | |
n.敬畏,尊敬,尊严;Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称;v.尊敬,敬畏,崇敬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
72 jovial | |
adj.快乐的,好交际的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
73 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
74 passionately | |
ad.热烈地,激烈地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
75 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
76 savagery | |
n.野性 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
77 kindled | |
(使某物)燃烧,着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 ); 激起(感情等); 发亮,放光 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
78 rekindled | |
v.使再燃( rekindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
79 posterity | |
n.后裔,子孙,后代 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
80 mingle | |
vt.使混合,使相混;vi.混合起来;相交往 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
81 everlastingly | |
永久地,持久地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |