The Soul of the Far East [32]
never beheld or even imagined. In front of you a flight of white stone steps leads up to a terrace whose parapet, also of stone, is diapered for half its height and open latticework the rest. This piazza gives entrance to a building or set of buildings whose every detail challenges the eye. Twelve pillars of snow-white wood sheathed in part with bronze, arranged in four rows, make, as it were, the bones of the structure. The space between the centre columns lies open. The other triplets are webbed in the middle and connected, on the sides and front, by grilles of wood and bronze forming on the outside a couple of
embrasures on either hand the entrance in which stand the guardian Nio, two colossal demons, Gog and Magog. Instead of capitals ,a frieze bristling with Chinese lions protects the top of the pillars. Above this in place of entablature rises tier upon tier of decoration, each tier projecting beyond the one beneath, and the topmost of all terminating in a balcony which encircles the whole second story. The parapet of this balcony is one mass of ornament, and its cornice another row of lions, brown instead of white. The second story is no less crowded with carving. Twelve pillars make its ribs, the spaces between being filled with elaborate woodwork, while on top rest more friezes, more cornices, clustered with excrescences of all colors and kinds, and guarded by lions innumerable. To begin to tell the details of so multi-faceted a gem were artistically impossible. It is a jewel of a thousand rays, yet whose beauties blend into one as the prismatic tints combine to white. And then, after the first dazzle of admiration, when the spirit of curiosity urges you to penetrate the centre aisle, lo and behold it is but a gate! The dupe of unexpected splendor, you have been paying court to the means of approach. It is only a portal after all. For as you pass through, you catch a glimpse of a building beyond more gorgeous still. Like in general to the first, unlike it in detail, resembling it only as the mistress may the maid. But who shall convince of charm by enumerating the features of a face! From the tiles of its terrace to the encrusted gables that drape it as with some rich bejewelled mantle falling about it in the most graceful of folds, it is the very eastern princess of a building standing in the majesty of her court to give you audience.
A pebbly path, a low flight of stone steps, a pause to leave your shoes without the sill, and you tread in the twilight of reverence upon the moss-like mats within. The richness of its outer ornament, so impressive at first, is, you discover, but prelude to the lavish luxury of its interior. Lacquer, bronze, pigments, deck its ceiling and its sides in such profusion that it seems to you as if art had expanded, in the congenial atmosphere, into a tropical luxuriance of decoration, and grew here as naturally on temples as in the jungle creepers do on trees. Yet all is but setting to what the place contains; objects of bigotry and virtue that appeal to the artistic as much as to the religious instincts of the devout. More sacred still are the things treasured in the sanctum of the priests. There you will find gems of art for whose sake only the most abnormal impersonality can prevent you from breaking the tenth commandment. Of the value set upon them you can form a distant approximation from the exceeding richness and the amazing number of the silk cloths and lacquered boxes in which they are so religiously kept. As you gaze thus, amid the soul-satisfying repose of the spot, at some masterpiece from the brush of Motonobu, you find yourself wondering, in a fanciful sort of way, whether Buddhist contemplation is not after all only another name for the contemplation of the beautiful, since devotees to the one are ex officio such votaries of the other.
Dissimilar as are these two glimpses of Japanese existence, in one point the bustling street and the hushed temple are alike,--in the nameless grace that beautifies both.
This spirit is even more remarkable for
embrasures on either hand the entrance in which stand the guardian Nio, two colossal demons, Gog and Magog. Instead of capitals ,a frieze bristling with Chinese lions protects the top of the pillars. Above this in place of entablature rises tier upon tier of decoration, each tier projecting beyond the one beneath, and the topmost of all terminating in a balcony which encircles the whole second story. The parapet of this balcony is one mass of ornament, and its cornice another row of lions, brown instead of white. The second story is no less crowded with carving. Twelve pillars make its ribs, the spaces between being filled with elaborate woodwork, while on top rest more friezes, more cornices, clustered with excrescences of all colors and kinds, and guarded by lions innumerable. To begin to tell the details of so multi-faceted a gem were artistically impossible. It is a jewel of a thousand rays, yet whose beauties blend into one as the prismatic tints combine to white. And then, after the first dazzle of admiration, when the spirit of curiosity urges you to penetrate the centre aisle, lo and behold it is but a gate! The dupe of unexpected splendor, you have been paying court to the means of approach. It is only a portal after all. For as you pass through, you catch a glimpse of a building beyond more gorgeous still. Like in general to the first, unlike it in detail, resembling it only as the mistress may the maid. But who shall convince of charm by enumerating the features of a face! From the tiles of its terrace to the encrusted gables that drape it as with some rich bejewelled mantle falling about it in the most graceful of folds, it is the very eastern princess of a building standing in the majesty of her court to give you audience.
A pebbly path, a low flight of stone steps, a pause to leave your shoes without the sill, and you tread in the twilight of reverence upon the moss-like mats within. The richness of its outer ornament, so impressive at first, is, you discover, but prelude to the lavish luxury of its interior. Lacquer, bronze, pigments, deck its ceiling and its sides in such profusion that it seems to you as if art had expanded, in the congenial atmosphere, into a tropical luxuriance of decoration, and grew here as naturally on temples as in the jungle creepers do on trees. Yet all is but setting to what the place contains; objects of bigotry and virtue that appeal to the artistic as much as to the religious instincts of the devout. More sacred still are the things treasured in the sanctum of the priests. There you will find gems of art for whose sake only the most abnormal impersonality can prevent you from breaking the tenth commandment. Of the value set upon them you can form a distant approximation from the exceeding richness and the amazing number of the silk cloths and lacquered boxes in which they are so religiously kept. As you gaze thus, amid the soul-satisfying repose of the spot, at some masterpiece from the brush of Motonobu, you find yourself wondering, in a fanciful sort of way, whether Buddhist contemplation is not after all only another name for the contemplation of the beautiful, since devotees to the one are ex officio such votaries of the other.
Dissimilar as are these two glimpses of Japanese existence, in one point the bustling street and the hushed temple are alike,--in the nameless grace that beautifies both.
This spirit is even more remarkable for