Читать книгу The Story of My Heart - Richard Jefferies - Страница 15

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For Jefferies, the human form is nature at its zenith. He wrote this chapter suffering from tuberculosis, the illness that would kill him a few years later. “How despicable in comparison I am” to “Swart Nubian, white Greek, delicate Italian, massive Scandinavian.” How devastating it must have been for this rigorous man to have been nearly bedridden for the last four years of his life. Jefferies was known to keep a strict schedule that included walking eight to ten miles every day.

He loved the human form and loved the statues that captured it, particularly those carved in marble from Greece. “The smallest fragment of marble carved in the shape of an arm will wake the desire I felt in my hill-prayer.” Sparta, the ancient city-state in Greece, was the standard of perfection for Jefferies, where “the most perfect human families” lived.