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Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU The Utah Statesman Students 5-1903 Student Life, May 1903, Vol. 1 No. 7 Student Life Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/newspapers Recommended Citation Life, Student, "Student Life, May 1903, Vol. 1 No. 7" (1903). The Utah Statesman. 5. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/newspapers/5 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Students at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Utah Statesman by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT LIFE_ MAY, 1903. Because of You. Flashed with the fire of love and life and joy, Sweet is the breath of the lilac, Thy smile created heavens of the And the young grass bending with skies dew, Which arch our lives, yet like some And the earth has a note worthless toy Like a song in the th roat Thy life is cast aside, when well we O f a bi rd, because of you. know That those are spared whom death had Pillar of light in the desert best destroy,- Is your white soul leading me through, There is no God, else this would not And I feel not a fear be so. For the heaven~ bend Ilear II. To the earth, because of you. Fair, sinless Dead, thy work is done I At last Strong for the tempest and battle, Thy feet unstained may touch the other And to God more trusting and true, shore; With a smile for the scars, All fea r of future danger now is past, And a face to the stars, And fierce temptation tears thy heart no o my lovc! because of you. morc; -Annie Pike. God saved thee ere the world had proved a fraud- This peaceful smile thy face nc'er wore The Two Watchers. before-- I. Who can see this and say there is no Beautiful Dead! but yestere'cn thine GOO? eyes -Annie Pike. tt • • tt . RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF ART. The Fine Arts illustrate religion willing~ temper of mind which takes pleasure in Ir, because it affords good subjects, and God's work, and all those various fonns there is nothing in the artistic spirit in of religious fanaticism which condemn any way incompatible with the purest beauty and pleasure as sinful. The health ~ !'pirit of devotion. Tndeed, art draws us iest tcmper of art is to rejoice in the sight continually towa rds a state of mind akin of all visible bcauty, fully, heartily, and to the devotional, hy so IllIlCh time being exquisitely. T he tendency of religious spent in the conscious contemplation of fanaticism is to turn away from all earth the work of the Supreme Artist. But ly loveliness and to mortify the desire of there is a vast difference between the the eyes. 122 STUDENT LIFE From the very earliest times, when of the body became marred or mutilated man was just beginning to rise above the in any way, tho~e same paris of the new lower animals, and by growth of intellect Immortal body would bear like marks and perceptions had begun to be im and scars. So it was their first desire to pressed, terrified or awed by the clements preserve the latter intact and perfect, un and forces of nature around him, we til the day of resurrection. To be denieo fin d him, as a result of this, beginning to the ri ght of burial was the heaviest pun conceive of a superior power, a Deity and Ishment which could be inflicted upon an a future life. We find him erecting huge Egyptian. From this arose the embalm columns and pillars of stone in honor of IIlg of the dead with myrrh, cassia, or bi this God; at first by placing hllge bould tumen, baths; the covering of the mum ers one above the other, afterwards by Illy with sheets of gold, pitch and var roughly carving a single block with rude ni~h; the wrapping in ai r-tight bandages uncouth figures" to embody in plastic of linen ; and the sealing away in the form his mental conception of this unseen depths of mountain sepulchres or in pyr powp.r, by creating an image in wood or amids. stone; he has also built a wall of large From their religion sprung the first, rocks enclosing a certain area within the art, the art displayed in the tombs. At center of which is placed a crude table first the Gods were symbolized by signs made of large slabs of stone which rep and figures. This gave rise to a lan resent an altar at which he offers up sac guage whereby each thing, material or rifices in order to gain the favor or ap Immaterial, was symbolized by a sign or pease the anger of this Deity. In time figure or combination of them. Upon these walls support a roof and architec the sides and lid of the mummy-case, ture has begun. From the belief in a and upon the walls of the sepulchre power which could create and control his wherein it was laid, were written in these life there came also the belief that the life s ~mbo ls the history of the mummy's life, would be recreated or continued in 2 the account of the death and burial, and hereafter; and so in that early age, whell scenes attending these ntes. the warrior died, they buried him with h:s They carved in wood the portrait of weapons of the chase and all his earthly the dead, gave it eyes of glass, painted belongings, and erected over him as a It tu resemble life and placed it on the protection for his body a tumuhlS of mummy case; on the outer wrappings stOlle, which, lat er on, in the hi story of lhey painted the symbol of immortality, man, developed all a vastly enlarged fig-ures of protecting gods and vignettes scale into the pyr:unids of Egypt and the frOIll the Book of the Dead. T hey placed 5arcophagi of Greece. within the sepulchre busts and figu res If we go on to the time of the representing the dead, made of wood, Eg-yptian epoch. we fi nd these people with !'tone and bronze. Rude sculpture prob a firm and certain belief in a future life. ably came into existence before painting The Aaln-fic\ds beyond the Lybian des and it was through the coloring of these ert were the Islands of the Blest, after busts that Rat painting developed and wards adopted and believed in by the was applied to the walls. So we filld that Greeks, where the body renewed its life the first sculpture and pai nting were sep Rnd became immortal. With this arose ulchural. The fi rst buildings erected the further belief that the soul remained were the temples, designed as a secluded III or near the body, and that if any part place where they might practice their re- STUDENT LIFE 123 li g- iollS rites; and these are but enlarge· but in their highest period of civilization, ments and elaborations of the primiti\'e the Periclean Age, both architecture and affairs built during the savage age. With· sculpture rcached their greatest height. in these massive structures were placed The Parthenon, the temple dedicated to statues of the different gods; upon the the Goddess Athena, is without doubt the walls were painted their images and the most perfect structure ever erected. The portraits of the Pharaohs with the acts of marbles designed by Phidias, which were their lives, for the Pharaoh was consid placed in this temple, represent in idea ered to be divine and was supposed to and subject the loftiest conceptions be descended from the Sun. known to the Greek mind-their greatest So we see that the art' of Egypt, the gods. first art, including architecture, sculpture Tn the realization of the universal, ab.. and painting, was essentially religious in stract conception of the race, the~e sculp· spirit and purpose. tures are the most ideal creations which \Ve now pass over into Greece and we have ever been produced, and stand with shall find the same sympathies and spirit the most sublime art produced in any reflected in their arts, but on an intelkc epoch. When the human mind rises tual plane of the highest possible order, above the level of image worship, art im For art was the prophet of Greek myth provcs by being restricted to its legiti ology. Through it alone the great gods mate sphere. Animated by loftier views became approachable and before the sta of God, it perceives more clearly its du tues, as rcpresenl:ltives of Deity, the peo· ties and capacities, and aspires not to rep pic prayer! atld offered up sacrifices. sent the Unreprcsentable, but to sug From the earliest ages a religion akin g<'st lIis attributes. From the beginning to that of Egypt had been known to the with the savage, through the Egyptian Greeks, and a constellation of Gods whom age into the early Greek, we find that they callet! the relatives of those of Egypt the first idea prevailed, the same con hau been established to whom hymns of vcntional unvarying type being handed praise and sacrifices were offered. Re down and used to represent the many dif li~ious belief in the wisdom and power ferent gods; but in the greatest intellec of the gods was universal and compul tual height we find art struggling to sroy, and unbelief, was punishable by suggest those attributes which belonged dtath.