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6.

employing images no less for symbolic and associational values than for the beauty of their forms...His sculpture reaches its deepest significance in its capacity to move us with reference to the life of the spirit, beyond the ephemeral glitter of pure form. 8

Grierson's definition of metaphysical poetry is most certainly appropriate to the meaning of "Mother and Child."  "It ( metaphysical poetry and this work) has been inspired by a philosophical conception of the universe and the role assigned to the human spirit in the great drama of existence."  Or we might use John Crowe Ransom's definition that metaphysical poetry has "a single extended image to bear the whole weight of the conceptual structure," for in this work of Lipchitz's we have this single extended image of a mother and child which in truth does bear the whole weight of his concept.

Lipchitz unites all the arts in his Great Stream when he says, "The idea which pushes every artist to work is a sense of vitality and a desire to communicate it.  The music of all arts is the same, a communication of vitality through form."

Perhaps Lipchitz's meaning of the Great Stream should be explored for it is present in this monumental work of 1949.  As has been mentioned above, there are, in this piece of sculpture, forms, structures, innuendoes, and references to a kind of primordial existence, an intensely vital search on the artist's part for beginnings.  The unfolding of this aspect of the sculpture adds still another level to the multi-dimensional character of the mother and child theme.  Yet even as this level is revealed, still another is evolving and at