Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/119

 desire of Thrym, the astounded giants, the amused Loke; all furnish an endless variety of excellent material for the brush of the painter. The plastic art can find no more exquisite group than Loke bound upon three stones, and his loving wife, Sigyn, leaning over him with a dish, wherein she catches the drops of venom that would otherwise fall into his face and intensify his agonies. A volume of themes might be presented, but it is not necessary. Suffice it then to say that for poetry, painting and the plastic arts, there is in the Norse mythology a fountain of delight whose waters but few have tasted, but which no man can drain dry.

We promised to say something about nude art. It is this: We Goths are, and have forever been, a chaste race. We abhor the loathsome nudity of Greek art. We do not want nude figures, at least not unless they embody some very sublime thought. The people of southern Europe differ widely from us Northerners in this respect; and this difference reaches far back into our respective mythologies, adding additional proof to the fact that the myths foreshadow the social life of a nation or race of people. The Greek gods were generally conceived as nude, and hence Greek art would naturally be nude also. Whether the licentiousness and lasciviousness of the Greek communities were the primary causes of the unæsthetical features of their mythology or their Bacchanalian revels sprang from the mythology, it is difficult to determine. We undoubtedly come nearest the truth when we say that the same primeval causes produced both the social life and mythology of the Greeks; that there thenceforward was an active reciprocating influence between the religion on the one side and the popular life on the other, an influence that