MOVING PICTURE

In my room, the world is beyond my

understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists

of three or four hills and a cloud.

THOSE lines by the late Poet Wallace Stevens, Connecticut insuranceman, might have seemed sheer Mandarin to most of his clients--but not to a Chinese. Chinese painters ignore the iron bonds of perspective (which imply a stationary viewer and make the picture frame a sort of window frame) and strive instead for the stroller's leisurely view.

Of all the Chinese landscapes in the U.S., the Southern Sung scroll on exhibition this week at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is outstanding. This 12th century masterpiece tells the complex story of an ancient war that matters little. What does matter is the opportunity it gives to roam outside the body in a dream world of blue, green and gold, moving to the subtle, silk-smooth music of the painter's brush. The almost full-scale detail opposite shows a typical climax in that music when the invading army winds menacingly forward to the water's edge, a captain on a black horse prances into view, and a gnarled pine dips its obscuring wing. The detail further shows that Chinese scroll paintings can be enjoyed a little at a time, as was intended. Ideally, the viewer unrolled the scroll from his left hand, very slowly, while rolling it up again with his right. Thus the scroll should be read like music (but from right to left), with its themes and counterthemes, its unexpected accents and climaxes.

Together the details of the scroll on the following pages reproduce about two-thirds of its 10-ft. length. It begins with a somber, gonglike flourish of pines. The long winding advance of the invading army is the main theme, announced by a menacing rush of pennants out of the mist. The peasant at the bridge is a contrasting grace note of peace. High above him the army has found a pass into southern lands, and now, serpentlike, it descends to the river. For a time its triumphal progress fades behind the soft, pine-muffled bulk of an island; then it reappears behind another island whose barren rocks are as abrupt as a cymbal crash. The picture opens out, like a swelling andante, into the expanse of the lake, the welcoming bridge. Above, square black flags are a dancing arpeggio. Movement of eye and mind is brought to a massive stop at the looming palace gate.

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