This is
the eternal issue.
Whether it is singing or dancing or play-acting or physical transport of
love, or vengeance or cruelty, or whether it is work or sorrow or
religion, the issue is always the same at last, into the radiant
negation of eternity. Hence the beauty and completeness, the finality of
the highland peasant. His figure, his limbs, his face, his motion, it is
all formed in beauty, and it is all completed. There is no flux nor hope
nor becoming, all is, once and for all. The issue is eternal, timeless,
and changeless. All being and all passing away is part of the issue,
which is eternal and changeless. Therefore there is no becoming and no
passing away. Everything is, now and for ever. Hence the strange beauty
and finality and isolation of the Bavarian peasant.
It is plain in the crucifixes. Here is the essence rendered in sculpture
of wood. The face is blank and stiff, almost expressionless. One
realizes with a start how unchanging and conventionalized is the face of
the living man and woman of these parts, handsome, but motionless as
pure form. There is also an underlying meanness, secretive, cruel.
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