These Athenians haven’t worn new clothes in months, and when we hand them the costumes, they just hold them confused, rubbing them slowly like blind men, and then holding them up, smiles of naive delight, and it strikes me that they’ve returned to a second childhood. That suffering has stripped away the years in the way carpenters can uncover the youth of a tree by scraping the plane against the old bark. Yes, I think they’ve found a sort of innocence in their ruin.
