By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Grand mountains, solitary and sublime, seem to call men for recollection and the serenity of the most high contemplations. At the feet of this sublimity, in vivid and agreeable contrast, graciousness smiles and blooms: an enchanting and almost conventional village in which one senses the measured but youthful pulse of a life full of peace, purity, happiness, and activity. One sees a small Baroque church, at once sublime for its significance and elevation; gracious for its harmony and beauty; unifying, concentrating within itself, and raising to a higher plane all the aspects of this scene whose central point it is.
Pictured here is the village of Mittenwald, in Bavaria, wherein is exercised an activity of artisans that demands a harmonious ambience and that, in turn, is a fountain of harmony, for its inhabitants produce violins famous all over the world.
The objective of these observations is not only to present an enchanting panorama, typical of Catholic Bavaria, but moreover to emphasize how propitious is an ambience of art and poetry for crafts and artistic work, especially when enlivened by the radiant presence of the Church.
Would it not be the lack of this ambience in today’s superdynamic, superexcited, and supertumultuous great cities that produces veritable artistic monsters?
Transl. of Produção artesanal ou artistica, e ambiente [Catolicismo” Nº 144 – Dezembro de 1962]. Also in TFP Mag., Jan.-Feb., 1993, p. 26.
