金光閃閃的泰國皇宮

20060720
金光閃閃的泰國皇宮

18圖文集

This is how Somerset Maugham describes Thai temples:

"...they are unlike anything in the world,

so you are taken aback,

and you cannot fit them in the scheme of the things you know.

It makes you laugh with delight to think that anything so fantastic could exist in this sombre earth.

They are gorgeous; they glitter with gold and whitewash, yet are not garish;

against that vivid sky, in that dazzling sunlight,

they hold their own,

defying the brilliancy of nature,

and supplementing it with the ingenuity and bold playfulness of man."

"The artists who developed them step by step from the buildings of the ancient Khmers

 had the courage to pursue their fantasy to the limit;

I fancy art meant little to them, they desired to express a symbol;

they knew no reticence, they cared nothing for good taste;

and if they achieved art, it is as men achieve happiness,

not by pursuing it,

but by doing with all their heart whatever in the day's work need doing."

"I do not know that in fact they achieved art;

I do know that these Siamese wats have beauty,

which they say is reserved and aloof and very refined;

all I know is that they are strange and gay and odd,

their lines infinitely distinguished,

like the lines of a proposition in a school boy's Euclid,

their colors flaunting and crude,

like the colors of vegetables in the green grocer's stall at the open market,

and, like a place where seven ways meet,

the open roads down which their imagination can make many a careless and unexpected journey."

毫不保留的華麗

色彩燦爛、金光閃閃的泰國皇宮...

想到拍照那天,眼睛還會刺痛呢!