Laszlo Krasznahorkai - Seiobo There Below

Praxiteles, he is at the center of everything here, or if you wish, he said, everything goes back to him, and if one looks away, i.e., looks away from this fact, everything is a mistake, or will immediately become a mistake — that was usually how he began if anyone in the crowd turned to him, or if one or another guideless group happened to surround him to get some kind of orientation as to what was going on in this room, Praxiteles, he answered, and he didn’t bother with what the question was — such questions, as what the statue was made of, or how old it was, why wasn’t it in its place on the ground floor, and why was it so renowned all over the world, and did he not know its Christian name, and so on — he was not annoyed by such questions, he did, however, immediately brush them aside, or more precisely, he didn’t even hear them, he didn’t notice them, but if he could, he just said Praxiteles, and inasmuch as it appeared that the person or group in question was not turning away from him, but demonstrating interest as to what he was getting at with this Praxiteles, then he just came forward with the center and with everything here going back to him, namely in this case he tried to explain — at times more briefly, at times more elaborately — just as much as he could, that Praxiteles, this extraordinary genius from late classical Greek antiquity, that Praxiteles, this genial creator from four centuries before Christ, this inimitable artist of the decades after Pheidas, created, with his statue of Aphrodite intended for the island of Knidos, the ultimate form, the ultimate sense, and the ultimate realization of Aphrodite as an extraordinary archaic cult, and just as Knidos, the capital city of the Doric Hexapolis partially built upon the island, became the starting point of the Aphrodite cult, so too did the Cnidian Aprodite — its name derived from this place — become the starting point of all the Aphrodite statues that were to follow, this was how he understood it, he looked around at the members of the group, or looked smilingly at the person posing the question; everyone, therefore, should be acquainted with the name of Praxiteles, everyone who wanted to know even just a little bit about, well, what the Venus de Milo was anyway, and since the one, or the ones, who had addressed him, were generally of that sort, they decided that they would continue to listen to the chatter of the museum guard; at this point he always without exception paused for just two brief seconds, and if the interest proved to be genuine and more sustained, he then continued by saying that well, of course, when one spoke of the cult of Aphrodite, then one had to add immediately that in point of fact we have no certain knowledge of what that Aphrodite cult even was, as one was also compelled to disclose immediately that in reality, certainly, not a single work of Praxiteles, but not a single one, but really not a single statue at all remained, only Roman copies — and here Chaivagne raised his index finger — or at most, copies created in the Hellenistic Period, from Alexander the Great to the beginning of the golden age of the Roman Empire, furthermore, here is the essence of the matter — these are works of art that grew out of the legacy of Praxiteles, as yet preserved, and in a word we know nothing about the original, as in so many cases, all we can do is to try to trace things back to this lost past, or — and then Chaivagne once again raised his index finger — we don’t look back at all, but we say here is the Venus de Milo, this statue originating most likely in the second century before Christ, which was discovered in pieces by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas in the nineteenth century, at least in two pieces and damaged, missing this or that; he found it on the Greek island of Melos, and although he supposedly also found an arm with an apple, or an apple by itself and also supposedly found a plinth with the name of the sculptor, unfortunately, from this point on, we cannot be convinced of what is true in the story, and we — speaking here as one of the personnel of the Louvre, Chaivagne winked with complicity at his audience — we cannot say any more than that, being bound in this case by self-evident loyalty; but enough about that, because in addition, if a person looks at this wondrous artwork, the whole story isn’t even interesting, rather what is interesting is how the path led from Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite to the Venus of Melos, or more correctly, how it leads backward, as one had to be aware as well that hypothetically, with the copies of Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite, with the numerous Aphrodites generated through its established tradition, the goddess is depicted in a certain place, a certain state, and a certain moment, namely in such a manner — Chaivagne leaned, in a courteous, friendly way, closer to his listeners, or to the one who happened to be there — she covers her modesty with her right hand, and with her left she generally holds up her robes falling down in folds, or raises them from a jug, which maybe had been added earlier, which is in contrast, is it not, to this one here — Chaivagne motioned toward Venus placed upon the high podium in the middle of the room — due to her missing arms, we cannot know what she is doing, but in all probability it is not the same thing ; although it can be imagined that with that right arm of hers she is reaching for the robe that is about to fall down, one cannot know, let us at least not speculate, there has been enough speculation, because you can just imagine what happened when we Frenchmen — in the persons of a certain Olivier Voutier and a certain Jules Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville — when we Frenchmen got hold of the Venus de Milo on Melos, and had it brought back via adventurous means and various individuals to the repulsive Louis XVII in Paris as a kind of gift, which is ridiculous, isn’t it, an artwork of Praxiteles as a gift; there were those who said this, and those who said that, the most varied kinds of reveries flared up, moreover, of course, there were those who created maquettes, Monsieur Ravaisson, for example, who pictured her with Ares, then came Adolf Furtwängler, who had her with her right arm, as I myself described a moment ago, reaching for her robe, and with her left arm leaning against a column, I won’t innumerate them all, because it is already obvious that in the sense in which we usually know something about an artwork, when it comes to this artwork, as a matter of fact, we know nothing that is essential, even the identity of the sculptor is doubtful, as the inscription on the damaged plinth, which later mysteriously disappeared — if it even really belonged to the statue at all — permits us to believe that the artist was Alexandros, but it also permits us to believe that it could have been anyone whose name ended in “. . andros” who came from Antioch, but you know, Chaivagne said in a more reticent manner to his auditor — if there was one at that moment, and of course, remaining, wished to hear more — you know, said Chaivagne, if I look at this magnificent goddess, namely if I — believe you me, nearly every blessed day, it’s been a long time now, already a very long time — if I look at her, then the least painful part for me is not knowing the name of the sculptor, who perhaps came from Antioch, and who maybe really was the son of Menides, as the plinth immortalized him, who knows; because then the least troubling for me is that I don’t know what the right arm was doing at one point, and what the left was doing, because I feel that instead what is important here is the connective thread that leads the Venus de Milo back to its own original, back to the one-time Aphrodite created by Praxiteles on Knidos, that is what is important to me; if I look at her — and here Chaivagne, sensing that he could no longer deprive his audience of their time, lowered his voice, as it were signaling that here he intended to conclude, and took one step backward — you know, if I look at her, he said softly, all that there is within me — and maybe this is truly a form of pain — is that this Aphrodite is so enchantingly, so ravishingly, so unspeakably beautiful.