By the same hand that carved the big Christ, a little further
on, at the end of a bridge, was another crucifix, a small one. This
Christ had a fair beard, and was thin, and his body was hanging almost
lightly, whereas the other Christ was large and dark and handsome. But
in this, as well as in the other, was the same neutral triumph of death,
complete, negative death, so complete as to be abstract, beyond cynicism
in its completeness of leaving off.
Everywhere is the same obsession with the fact of physical pain,
accident, and sudden death. Wherever a misfortune has befallen a man,
there is nailed up a little memorial of the event, in propitiation of
the God of hurt and death. A man is standing up to his waist in water,
drowning in full stream, his arms in the air. The little painting in its
wooden frame is nailed to the tree, the spot is sacred to the accident.
Again, another little crude picture fastened to a rock: a tree, falling
on a man's leg, smashes it like a stalk, while the blood flies up.
Always there is the strange ejaculation of anguish and fear, perpetuated
in the little paintings nailed up in the place of the disaster.
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