I still maintain no comment, printed appreciation, or "explanation" has ever caused me to derive an "a.e." from a work that had not so served me before. Still, some commentaries are written with such rhetorical verve and adroitness that the commentaries themselves have occasioned a series of minor a.e.'s.
As an example, I offer the following by John Ruskin. It's from his MODERN PAINTERS written in the 1840s when Ruskin was, if you can believe it, in his mid-twenties. I was twenty when I read first read this, still unfamiliar with "Grand Style" writing, and I scribbled a chain of exclamation marks in the margins of the anthology, which I still have. You have to read this for what it is -- Ruskin conveying an impassioned and convulsive awe that uncannily matches the heaving, excessive, and unlimited sea he was describing. (Notice how seldom he stops to end a sentence.) **** Few people have ever seen the effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and nights; and to those whose have not, I believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force and size of the surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water, from its prolonged agitation, is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in accumulated ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and, where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water is under a great cataract, and their masses, being half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual waterb&.imagine also the low rain clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can no farther see in any direction than you could see through a cataract. Suppose the effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea picture of the Academy, 1842 -- The Snowstorm , one of the very grandest statements of sea motion, mist and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner. Of course it was not understood; his finest works never are; but there was some apology for the public's not comprehending this, for few people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and, when they have, cannot face it. To hold by a mast or rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which few people have courage to go through. To those who have it is one of the noblest lessons in nature. But I think the noblest sea that Turner ever painted, and if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of The Slave Ship, the chief Academy picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on the Atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of the sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhereb&water now lighted with green and lamp-light fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flyingb&.the guilty ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight, and, cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea. ************** AOL Search: Your one stop for directions, recipes and all other Holiday needs. Search Now. (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=http ://searchblog.aol.com/2008/11/04/happy-holidays-from -aol-search/?ncid=emlcntussear00000001)
