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Etruscan Places |
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written
by zinnia / 10.24.2005 |
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Part 1: |
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The author praises the ancient people’s worship and celebration of nature. Romans put a great deal of emphasis on being eternally living through the memories of their future generations. For example, he describes their durable architecture as a lump and a burden and a bore. Unlike the Romans’ monuments that aim for permanence, thereby achieving their aspiration of immortality, Etruscans preferred their temples and architecture to be small and simple. Made with wood for the most part, their buildings blend in with the surroundings and “preserve the natural humour of life”.
In reading Lawrence’s articles about Etruscan civilization, he bears an envious attitude towards the Etruscan lifestyle. Through observing the Etruscan people’s tombs and burial places, one gains an understanding of their general lifestyle. The paintings on the walls at the burial place depict the most spirited of life: people happily dancing, luxurious banquets filled with laughter and delight. On the sarcophagi lies a carved figure of the deceased, as if alive, the effigies prop themselves up from the top with their elbow; it resembles the posture of the buried when him/her is at a banquet. There seems to be an overall acceptance of death in Etruscan culture. Death is not met with fear and the underworld not thought as how people nowadays perceive hell; they believe that the same activities can be enjoyed in the afterlife, and that afterlife is a continuance of the living.
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Part 2: |
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My dominant image of Lawrence’s Tarquinia writing is life. Lawrence repeatedly writes about a feeling of liveliness he sensed from Tarquinia’s tomb paintings. Throughout his accounts of Tarquinia, “quick ripple of life” and “limbs full of life” and the like keep reappearing in his description of the people and animals in the paintings. He observes “flights of bird [with] draught of life […] in their wings”. Lawrence perceives life from every little detail in every single tomb, regardless of the severe damages of the paintings. Furthermore, with passages such as “[the] great dolphin leaps behind the boat”, the author describes the still-life arts as if they are films in motion. According to him, the “paintings are fresh and alive”.
Although Lawrence describes the tombs with so much detail about the spirit and vivacity that’s portrayed, they are nonetheless tombs. Family members of the deceased lighten their sorrow by adorning the deceased’s tomb with depictions of a delightful and worry-free afterlife, convincing themselves that their loved one moved on to a better life with death; but no one looks forward to a permanent separation from all that he/she treasures. As I walked in and out of each tomb, most noticeable to me were the half obliterated fresco figures missing an arm, hand, and sometime even heads. The paintings shone in their fullest form once upon a time, but all that remain now are pieces of fragmented, color-faded fresco desperately reminding people of its past glory. After visiting Tarquinia’s painted tombs, a walk in the city itself brightened my mood up. In nature I maybe realistic and take note on solid facts, but the reality of things is too often depressing, an aspect of life I least want to deal with. In the case of the dilapidated Tarquinia tombs, I focus my attention on the pleasant little city with its beautiful scenery so that I can stop lingering on the dark side of reality.
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