Such as they are, they are so once for all;
whereas, the turn of a curl makes all the difference with women of less
grave physique. Italians are not uneasy.
Signora Duse has this immunity, but she has a far nobler deliverance from
vanities, in her own peculiar distance and dignity. She lets her
beautiful voice speak, unwatched and unchecked, from the very life of the
moment. It runs up into the high notes of indifference, or, higher
still, into those of _ennui_, as in the earlier scenes of _Divorcons_; or
it grows sweet as summer with joy, or cracks and breaks outright, out of
all music, and out of all control. Passion breaks it so for her.
As for her inarticulate sounds, which are the more intimate and the truer
words of her meaning, they, too, are Italian and natural. English women,
for instance, do not make them. They are sounds _a bouche fermee_,
at once private and irrepressible. They are not demonstrations intended
for the ears of others; they are her own. Other actresses, even English,
and even American, know how to make inarticulate cries, with open mouth;
Signora Duse's noise is not a cry; it is her very thought audible--the
thought of the woman she is playing, who does not at every moment give
exact words to her thought, but does give it significant sound.
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