Back to the Palazzo Grassi, this time
To see ‘The Greeks in the West’. At first, I’d not
Intended to go: it hardly sounded prime
Viewing – some sandstone fragments, a pale pot
Or two. But there, re-oriented, it dawned on me
And my muddled, senescent brain what a colossal show
This was. It supplied, through a lucid exege-
sis in the best tradition, a sense of how what we know
As the Classical was forged – from the origin of the Doric
To the perfecting of the temple’s majestic hexastyle.
Moreover, each room directed my attention
To the inescapable fact that much of this historic
Achievement was the work of the margins: while
Athens fiddled, the colonies burned with invention.
To see ‘The Greeks in the West’. At first, I’d not
Intended to go: it hardly sounded prime
Viewing – some sandstone fragments, a pale pot
Or two. But there, re-oriented, it dawned on me
And my muddled, senescent brain what a colossal show
This was. It supplied, through a lucid exege-
sis in the best tradition, a sense of how what we know
As the Classical was forged – from the origin of the Doric
To the perfecting of the temple’s majestic hexastyle.
Moreover, each room directed my attention
To the inescapable fact that much of this historic
Achievement was the work of the margins: while
Athens fiddled, the colonies burned with invention.
(4.4.1997)
