Читать книгу Salvation in My Pocket - Benjamin Myers - Страница 10

The six stained-glass panels of Marc Chagall’s America Windows were presented to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977, in celebration of the bicentennial of the United States.

1

For once you decided to avoid religious subjects. You said: I will show the city just as it is—its streets and parks, its art and culture. So you made a city, brought it forth in light and color, and when it was finished you stood back and looked, and what you saw were angels.

2

You saw the city of Chicago as creation. You saw creation aflame with life, alive with music, and all things—from trees and sun to stones and sidewalks—bright and whirling in a whirling dance.

3

Painter of motion and music, you also paint the silences: the book, the desk, the eyes, the little windows. And in the foreground a familiar face, a hand outstretched, five candles burning.

4

They say human society is only power and control. They say it is, at bottom, a stew of blood and violence and old bones. But your windows tell the truth: the world is music, poetry, dance, a book suspended in the sky, a dove beating her wings.

5

People speak of love. But let none say they have loved till they have loved a thing as you loved the color blue. What is blue? Blue is darkness and light, warmth and cold, night and day, inside and outside, earth and sky, singing and silence. Blue is all and in all, the living glow of interior light in every created thing. Blue is the secret fire of creation.

6

On the first day God separated darkness from light, blue from blue.

7

On the second day God separated the waters above from the waters below, blue from blue.

8

If in the beginning God had created nothing but blue, it would have been enough: all the marvelous varieties of that color would sing God’s glory, shout God’s Name.

9

“There is but one single color that gives meaning to life and art—the color of love” (Chagall).