For years I have reflected on the linear beauty of ancient Greek sculpture accompanied by a complete lack of interiority in these sculptures. I wondered how such masterful artists could capture the marvels of the human physique but not simple facial mannerisms. But in my morning meditation I think I discovered something here.
Two times during my prep school years, I attained a level that I could only describe as bliss. The first was in my fifth form (junior year), I came early to the school year so that I could participate in football preparation. I had a rare single room and had recently purchased a stereo system. After I came back from football practice, I would turn on music and finish my summer reading list on the Italian renaissance. The second was at the end of my sixth form (senior year) when I simply quit doing any homework except for the reading of poetry in my Humanities class. The only real break was to go to track practice.
As I recall these periods, the bliss is the same - it felt civilized and composed. I did not feel the struggles with identity or goals or love. Instead, I marveled at what my be termed, oddly, a clean space. In my meditation, I realized that these were periods in which I had no sense of interiority and yet, at the same time, did not attempt to escape interiority. Instead, I had found a placement that put me at some harmony with my environment.
Given the importance of my interior space, I think that these periods may have borne witness to something the Greeks found - in the presence of physical engagement and artistic endeavor is a space that generates no struggle for the mind. The reason that these sculptures do not convey interiority is not a mistake. Instead, these artists were conveying that such a place exists for those fortunate enough to find it by participating in appropriately or humanistic-ally in art and sport.
