"Here an exhausted stag plunges towards a waterfall leading out of a mountain loch pursued by two hounds, one of whom still clings to its ear, while the other is all but submerged in the water. The upturned head and fainting eye of the stag are as pathetic as any Christian martyr, and we can only pity the death of such a sublime creature. Whether death is to come at the hands of the waterfall or the bullet remains unclear. William Scrope, a friend and fellow sportsman of the artist, describes a similar scene in his well-known book, The Art of Deer Stalking. A stag had been turned at bay by the edge of a waterfall:
Just at the edge of the precipice, and as it seemed on the very brink of eternity, the dogs were baying him furiously; one rush of the stag would have sent them down into the chasm, and in their fury they seemed wholly unconscious of their danger. All drew in their breath, and shuddered at the fatal chance that seemed momentarily to take place. "
-- from The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands, Richard Ormond
Sir Edwin Landseer.
(At the Tate Britain)
"[...] It might seem that these modulations of sound carry some connection with the nature of the things they represent, and are not merely arbitrary; because the natural cries of all animals, even of those with whom we have not been acquainted, never fail to make themselves sufficiently understood; this cannot be said of language. The modifications of sound, which may be productive of the sublime, are almost infinite. Those I have mentioned, are only a few instances to shew, on what principle they are built." -- Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful(1759), Section XX, The Cries of Animals
SHOFAR?
--BGK.
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