The older
son, not yet bitten, but probably not destined to escape, strives
to free himself from the coil about his ankle and at the same time
looks with sympathetic horror upon his father's sufferings.
No work of sculpture of ancient or modern times has given rise to
such an extensive literature as the Laocoon. None has been more
lauded and more blamed. Hawthorne "felt the Laocoon very
powerfully, though very quietly; an immortal agony, with a strange
calmness diffused through it, so that it resembles the vast rage
of the sea, calm on account of its immensity." [Footnote: "Italian
Note-books," under date of March 10,1858.] Ruskin, on the other
hand, thinks "that no group has exercised so pernicious an
influence on art as this; a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived,
and unnaturally treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of
execution and accumulation of technical knowledge," [Footnote:
"Modern Painters," Part II, Section II, Chap. III.] Of the two verdicts
the latter is surely much nearer the truth.
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