双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史37 古希腊最伟大的雕刻家

 
青铜雕像在时间的长河里完全被“吞噬”了。而大理石雕像除非被打碎，否则都能保存下来。 
37 THE GREATEST GREEK SCULPTOR古希腊最伟大的雕刻家
 
ORDINARY men we call “Mr.”—Mr. Smith; Mr. Jones, Great men we call by their full names without the “Mr.”— George Washington for instance. But the greatest men of all we call just by their last names. People have made lists of the hundred greatest men of all time—the greatest ruler, the greatest writer, the greatest painter, the greatest sculptor, but probably you have never heard of the greatest sculptor. He was a Greek. His name was Phidias—no first name, no middle name—just Phidias. 
Polyclitus and Myron made statues of men and women. Phidias made statues of gods and goddesses and god-like men and women. In Athens there is a huge, high rock called the Acropolis, which means the Upper City, and on this rock the old Greeks built a beautiful temple called the Parthenon. It was built just to hold a magnificent statue of Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, who the Athenians believed watched over them and their city as a mother watches over her children, and gave them many useful things. 
Phidias was chosen to make this statue of the goddess. Cold marble was not good enough material, so Phidias made the statue of gold and ivory, and he made it seven times as high as a human being. His Athene stood erect in a sleeveless robe that reached to the ground. On her bosom was a breastplate with a border of serpents because serpents were supposed to be the wisest of creatures. In the center of the breastplate was the head of Medusa. (You remember I told you that Athene helped Perseus to cut that head off.) Around the head of Medusa, between the serpents and the head, was shown a battle between the Amazons and the Greeks. Athene wore a helmet. On top of this helmet was a sphinx and on each side of the sphinx were winged horses. Athene’s left arm rested on a shield and carried a lance around which coiled another serpent. In her right hand Athene held a statue of Victory, who faced her and offered her a wreath of gold. The statue of Victory was about six feet high, so you see how big the statue of Athene herself must have been. 
This statue of Athene has entirely disappeared, probably stolen piece by piece for its gold and ivory. We know what it looked like only by a small, probably very poor, copy that was made of it and judging by the copy we have, we cannot quite agree that the statue was as beautiful as the old Greeks thought it. 
This statue, as I told you, was on the inside of the Parthenon. All around the four outside walls of the temple, high up near the roof, was a band or strip called a frieze, of sculptured figures in low relief. This frieze was almost a tenth of a mile long and showed in marble a parade or grand procession that took place in Athens once every four years. The object of the procession was to bear a gift of a golden veil made by the virgins of Athens for their goddess, and it was carried with great pomp and glory and ceremony to the temple. All Athenians —men, women, and children—took part in the procession. There were horsemen with their horses. There were animals to be sacrificed. There were girls and boys bearing gifts; there were musicians and singers. 
The sculptured picture of the procession starts at one end of the Parthenon and proceeds along both sides of the temple to the other end, where the entrance is. It is the most perfect relief work that we know anything about and though there are hundreds of figures of men, women, and animals, Phidias planned it all and with his pupils made it all. There is a tenth of a mile of it, and yet there is not a rough or unfinished part in the whole. 
When the relief was in its place on the Parthenon wall, it could just barely be seen, it was so high up and closed in by the portico of columns that surrounded the whole. That it might be seen better, the background and the figures were painted. But nothing except perfect work, whether it could be seen or not, was good enough for the temple of this goddess of the Athenians and even the parts that never could be seen were finished perfectly. 
 
No.37-1　FIGHTING CENTAUR METOPE（《争战的半人半马》） 
FROM THE PARTHENON（来自帕台农神庙的排档间饰） 
Above and between the columns which were around these walls were separate groups of figures in high relief illustrating battles, most of them between gods and fairy-tale animals called centaurs. A centaur had the body of a horse and the head and trunk of a man. There were ninety-two groups of these spaces, or metopes, and there is not one of these metope sculptures that is not now broken! An arm or a leg is off, a nose is broken, an ear or an eye is missing. So you have to use your imagination, if you have any, to understand what the figure looked like when it was perfect. If you have no imagination, you probably will exclaim, “What! You call that beautiful?” 
At each end of the Parthenon there is a large triangular space made by the sloping roof and in these two triangular spaces were groups of superb, heroic size figures of gods and goddesses. Heroic size means hero size—that is, bigger than real life. They are in the full round. That is, they stand free from the back. But, unfortunately again, little is left. The group in one triangular end represented the birth of Athene. 
Athene was not born as a tiny baby, but full grown and fully armed, and she came from the brain of the king of the gods—that is why she was so wise. Zeus, the chief of the gods, was in the center of this group. Vulcan, the blacksmith god, had just struck him on the head with his hammer, and according to the story, Athene in full armor sprang out of his head. On each side of this central group, the other gods and goddesses are looking on. Some are standing, some are sitting, some are lying down. The groups were planned to fit the triangular spaces. Of the statues remaining, one is Theseus, taken from the left corner, and the so-called Three Fates, from the right corner. The Three Fates are a good test of your imagination, for they have no heads, hands, or feet. Can you imagine what they once looked like? 
Lord Elgin, an English nobleman, saw these sculptures many years ago and thought them so beautiful that he wanted his country to have them. In the position in which the frieze was placed on the Parthenon, they could not be seen properly and they were gradually being destroyed, for there seemed to be no one interested enough to take any care of them. So he bought most of them for what amounted to one third of a million dollars and took them to England, where they were put in the British Museum. They are known now as the Elgin marbles. 
But the greatest of all the sculpture that Phidias made was not in Athens. It was in a temple at Olympia. For this temple he made a statue of Zeus. It too was made of gold and ivory, and it too has disappeared. A single lock of the statue’s “hair” is said to have been worth a thousand dollars. This statue of Zeus was so famous that every Greek hoped to see it before he died and it was called one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Phidias, when he had completed it, prayed Zeus to show in some way if he liked the statue of himself. Whereupon a thunderbolt shot down from the blue sky overhead and fell at the sculptor’s feet! 
 
No.37-2　THE THREE FATES（《命运三女神》）　　　　FROM THE PARTHENON（来自帕台农神庙） 
But the great Phidias, after all he had done, was put in prison. You’d never guess why! Just because he had cut a picture of himself on the shield of the Athene in the Parthenon. This, to the Athenians. was a terrible crime. A mortal to put a picture of himself on the shield of their goddess! And so in prison Phidias died. What an end for the greatest sculptor that ever lived!