stream *

The asterisk refers to Notebook M p.48L where Ruskin begins a passage in which he considers where the stream of Gothic started. He writes there as if the stream starts with a pure, simple and perfect Gothic which becomes corrupted over time. The image of water, as ice, as a stream, as damp, and as the eddies and tides and mud flats of the lagoon, is important in M. Elsewhere, for example at Works, 9.40 in a different version of the water image, Gothic is the result of the confluence in Northern Italy of different styles and different civilisations, glaciers or lava streams.

[Version 0.05: May 2008]