Abstract
As Donatello roared when he drilled marble to shape the massive chest and free the soul of the prophet Habakkuk, I cry: Speak, damn you, speak. No use. He peers, teeming with words unformed, and guards his silence. How he looms over me in cloud-gray marble, weighty yet airy, lithe, the legs unseen but poised to spring, the enormous feet straining his sandals, caught in a shadowy niche. I think he’d find my gaze irreverent, too close to idol worship, the unholy holy custom. I search my Bible: Don’t tell stone to rise, or wood to wake. Create your images of rocks and seas, but never worship them, Habakkuk charges. And yet here, Donatello woke the rock mined from a quarry. He chiseled it and hammered out a living Habakkuk until he stood unmoving in his studio and waited for the sage to draw a breath. What could he say? That which he’d wailed before:
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