Thursday, January 03, 2019
Die Meistersinger
Letter of John Ruskin to Georgiana Burne-Jones (June 30, 1882):
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Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat — as far as the story and acting went — and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless, scrannelpipiest — tongs and boniest — doggrel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, as far as its sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember, in my life, by the stopping of any sound — not excepting railroad whistles — as I was by the cessation of the cobbler's bellowing; even the serenader's caricatured twangle was a rest after it.
