Chapter 47 Part Three Revisiting the World as Appearance §47

Because there is "beauty" in addition to manners, which is the main subject of [body] sculpture, so sculpture likes nudity, and clothing is only allowed when it does not conceal the figure.Sculpture uses artistic pleated skirts not to conceal, but to indirectly express the figure.This method of expression requires a lot of effort from the understanding, because the understanding is only due to the direct effect, because of the folds of the dress, it is necessary to intuitively see the cause of the appearance, to see the figure.The kilt, then, is to sculpture what the miniature is to painting, within certain limits.Both are signs, but not symbols, but signs which, when they succeed, force the understanding to take as if they were mere signs.

Here, please allow me to insert a metaphor about the art of language by the way.That is to say, wearing less clothes or not wearing clothes at all is the most conducive to appreciating a beautiful figure, so if a beautiful person has both aesthetic taste and can act according to taste, what he likes most is wearing less clothes , and it is better to live almost naked, with as little clothing as the Greeks,--so every man of good heart and thought strives, at every When communicating to others, in order thereby to alleviate the loneliness he must feel in this world, he will often express himself only in the most natural, least circled, and simplest way.Conversely, the poor-minded, confused-minded, eccentric man adorns himself with far-fetched phrases, obscure idioms, in order to give [his] petty, commonplace, His thoughts are clumsy.It is like the man who has no majesty of beauty and tries to make up for this defect in dress, covering himself with the most untamed adornments of gold and silver friezes, feathers, curly hair, padded shoulder sleeves, and crane cloak. It's trivial and ugly.Some authors, when they force him to rewrite his [so grandiose and obscure] work, [in conformity with] the small, sweeping contents of it, do as one does when one is asked to walk naked. embarrassment.