Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/44

 rest, was in all its spiritual asceticism with repentance and belief; the gigantic divinity in bronze, of folded hands and inclined head in heavenly meditation, over whom time and change (Summer heat, of course) have no power to stir its silence, is self-denial itself. Oh, let my heart bum in storm and confession like the hearts of a thousand cicadas whose songs almost shake the valley and trees; we might get the spiritual ascendency out of physical exhaustion; it makes at least one step nearer our salvation. The autumnal rest ot silence can only be gained after having all the summer heart-cry; isn’t Daibutsu’s self-denial the heart-cry strengthened into silence?

There is in this statue a great subtlety, speaking of it as a creation of art, which might result, let me define it arbitrarily, from a good balance of the masses of idealism and what we generally understand as realism; as the latter is indeed so slight, even our modern imagination whose rush always proves to be disturbing, has enough room here to play to its content. The proof that the said idealism and realism melt into one another in such a perfection is Rh