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Nicholeto Chordiman Directory 11
Page 02
Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to find highly-finished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing. A wooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats of paint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even those few that were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to have attention concentrated on themselves alone. As mere wood-carving the Saas-Fee chapels will not stand comparison, for example, with the triptych of unknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne at Gliss, close to Brieg. But, in the first place, the work at Gliss is worthy of Holbein himself: I know no wood-carving that can so rivet the attention; moreover it is coloured with water-colour and not oil, so that it is tinted, not painted; and, in the second place, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date (1519) when artists held neither time nor impressionism as objects, and hence, though greatly better than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards a certain Japanese curiousness of finish and naivete of literal transcription, it cannot even enter the lists with the Saas work as regards elan and dramatic effectiveness. The difference between the two classes of work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubens or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto; the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of the other. Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of the designer is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirable skill; whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of OberAmmergau than of the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not a little drowned in that of his mouthpiece. If, however, the reader will bear in mind these somewhat obvious considerations, and will also remember the pathetic circumstances under which the chapels were designed--for Tabachetti when he reached Saas was no doubt shattered in body and mind by his four years' imprisonment--he will probably be not less attracted to them than I observed were many of the visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee with whom I had the pleasure of examining them.
Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth. Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself, she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in the development of everything distinctively native. The native religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now, multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.
From the first there was promise of a battle to the end between Goshonne and Das Lan. Goshonne well knew that if the new cult gained a firm footing he would lose his influence and at best be but a mediocre medicine-man. Das Lan, on the other hand, knew that he must break the power of such a man as Goshonne, if he was to assume the leadership. Goshonne scoffed and scorned, and would have none of the new belief. Still, he was an Indian, and the prophecies of his rival gradually filled him with superstitious fear, while his followers were either deserting him openly or were secretly joining the ranks of the enemy. Death was predicted for the members of Goshonne's own family, and well could Das Lan make such prophecies, for Goshonne's two brothers were already stricken with tuberculosis. First one died, then the other. Das Lan could now point to him and say, "That is what Kuterastan does to those who do not believe!" It was thus that Goshonne's power finally was broken and Das Lan became a seer.
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