Even in the glare of the sun the bridge at the centre of the cover picture, the centre of attention for all who beheld this picture, exhibited no more than a modest, dun appearance in perfect keeping with the incredible but sparing elegance of its structure, which spoke of an antiquity that must have come from a supernal realm, to which we cannot wait to rush. From a restrained crest in the middle of the watercourse, the two cantilevered sides declined with gentle grace to the sides of the big stream, where fenestrate stone houses surmounted with hipped roofs stood in a perpetuity of watch in the manner of turrets royal. Under those inclined arms of the bridge an arch made a lofty yet supple crown over the river much as a rainbow across the vault of Heaven makes a diadem for the earth. On the riverside, the stones of the house walls and the tiles of the roofs reflected more of the light of the day than the bridge did.
This cover picture of this book produced not just a veridical impression of another time, but of an entire, different world simple in its pleasures but happy in its mind. The harmonious bridge alone could have captured the eyes for hours on end, but it must have been the aestival element of the day and the frisking of a holiday, along with the silent but stolid houses of stone, that suggested all together something more than just a distant but pretty world: it seemed that one not just wished to live, but in truth really did live, in that world without for once renouncing one’s present existence.
On the pages coloured with age were images of icons to which votive offerings were made long in the past; the faces of the icons were serene but eternal, inspiring an instant humility and worship in the suffering heart. Shining relics of censer and candlestand, along with towering, encircling, mural images of godly saints, bespoke a very distant period of civilisation in which styles of worshipful depiction among one people influenced the religious arts of other peoples within a geographical proximity. The Son of God Himself was in depiction in a number of paintings from His life, which related the progress of His healing powers and miracles. Those creations showed the mischievous, peeling, upturning hands of Time in the photos on these very pages of a distinguished history; and yet, despite the encroachment, His face made a more immediate sympathy with the viewer than the countenances and representations of the high saints on windows and walls. Although these latter looked at the beholder with genuine piety they appeared already to have vanished into antiquity in the period when the artists made their meticulous portraits.
Byzantium was the influence and Byzantium had passed into decline. Other sources of inspiration would arrive from other lands; nevertheless the faces and robes that adorned the mullioned, ogival windows and the all-encircling, patterned friezes carried a lasting significance in terms of the awe and mystery they could make in the viewer as long as they stood. The emperors and their retinues too appeared verily superannuated though captivating might be the scenes painted of coronation and homage. These figures and icons rested immensely far placed in time, but this very removal brought a backdrop of charm and enigma to the period in which the photographs were made.
The succeeding pages of the hardbound book exhibited the ways of life of the ordinary folk. They worked hard and they talked hard, following their work and their discussion with a spirited turn of leisure in dance, drink and the outdoors. Although their rooms and their halls spoke not of a luxury of design and elegance, these constructions sufficed to perfection for the functions they were meant to uphold. Upon a simple bed with a starched counterpane of linen that heaves in the place of the pillow, a mother is sitting with her baby upon her stretched legs; a white kerchief is wound firmly across her head and her gaze is all upon her infant, whose lips are latched on the nipple of a bottle of milk. Looking down upon them from a wall that exhibits very few other objects, the icon of the cross with an image of the Saviour is embedded forever into the grain, as the house itself with its sparing yet inclusive embrace is installed in the memory of ages for generation after generation.
The rustic sartorial economy is reproduced in a group of family members who sit around the table in the cleanly living-cum-dining room of their urban apartment that is provided suitably with the basic comforts of the age; the father wears both a sleeveless undervest and, in common with his family, a smile of contentment that illuminates the person and gives the plain or barely patterned dress a perfect dignity. Elsewhere, under an array of small chandeliers that are afire all over, people are dancing in the gentle motion of the infant’s cradle as a natural function of their lives, whilst others seated at white-draped tables hold glasses and turn their heads to watch. In time more young people crowd onto the floor and it is the dapper garcons now who from the tables begin to eye the girls.
In the city the fez is not an uncommon sight as the glare of the sun beats upon rotund cobblestones and furrowed faces. Men sit in doorways and on the edges of fountains waiting to retire into a mosque or to spend out the last hours of the day. The sleeves of their outer black jackets fall just short of the arms of their under chemises, and their trousers hang out in parts that billow with a sudden breeze over the pathway. The women pass by in their long latticed vestments, carrying panniers in their arms and intent upon their clearer material destination. Minarets in the colour of chalk break the monotony of a hazed sky of summer.
Prosen, your writing is amazing.
How beautifully you write Prosenjit !