[45] Steinthal, _Gesch. d. Sprachw.,_ 2nd ed., i. pp. 288, 293,
296-297.
II
ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE
[Sidenote: _Middle Ages, Mysticism, Ideas on the beautiful._]
Almost all the developments of ancient Æsthetic were continued by
tradition or reappeared by spontaneous generation in the course of the
Middle Ages. Neo-Platonic mysticism continued, entrusted to the care
of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (_De cœlesti hierarchia,
De ecclesiastica hierarchia, De divinis nominibus,_ etc.), to the
translations of these works made by John Scotus Eriugena, and to the
divulgations of the Spanish Jews (Avicebron). The Christian God took
the place of the Summum Bonum or Idea: God, wisdom, goodness, supreme
beauty, source of beautiful things in nature, which are a ladder to
the contemplation of the Creator. But these speculations continued to
recede further and further from the consideration of art, with which
Plotinus had connected them; and the empty definitions of the beautiful
by Cicero and other ancient writers were often repeated. Saint
Augustine defined beauty in general as unity (_omnis pulchritudinis
forma unitas est,_) and that of the body as _congruentia partium cum
quadam colons suavitate,_ and the old distinction between something
that is beautiful in itself and relative beauty reappeared in a book
of his, which has been lost, entitled _De pulchro et apto;_ the very
name shows that he reasserted the old distinction between the beautiful
in itself and the relatively beautiful, _quoniam apte accommodaretur
alicui._ Elsewhere he notes that an image is called beautiful _si
perfecte implei illud cujus imago est, et coaequatur ei._[1]
Thomas Aquinas varied but little from him in positing three requisites
for beauty: integrity or perfection, due proportion, and clearness;
following Aristotle, he distinguished the beautiful from the good,
defining the first as that which pleases in the mere contemplation of
it (_pulcrum ... id cujus ipsa apprehensio placet_); he referred to
the beauty that even base things possess if well imitated, and applied
the doctrine of imitation to the beauty of the Second Person of the
Trinity (_in quantum est imago expressa Patris_).[2] If it were wished
to discover references to the hedonistic conception of art, it would
be possible to do this, with a little goodwill, in some of the sayings
of jongleurs and troubadours. Æsthetic rigorism, the total negation
of art for religion or for divine and human science, shows itself in
Tertullian and among certain Fathers of the Church, at the entrance to
the Middle Ages; at their conclusion, in a certain crude scholastic
spirit, for example in Cecco d' Ascoli, who proclaimed against Dante:
"I leave trifles behind me and return to the _true_; fables are always
unpleasing to me," and later, in the reactionary Savonarola. But the
narcotic theory of pedagogic or moralistic art prevailed over every
other. It had contributed to send to sleep the æsthetic doubts and
inquiries of the ancients, and was well suited to a period of relative
decadence of culture. This was all the more the case, seeing that it
accorded well with the moral and religious ideas of the Middle Ages,
and afforded a justification not only for the new art of Christian
inspiration, but also for the surviving works of classical and pagan
art.
[Sidenote: _The pedagogic theory of art in the Middle Ages._]
The allegorical interpretation was again a means of salvation for these
last. The _De continentia Virgiliana_ of Fulgentius (sixth century)
is a curious monument to this fact. This work made Virgil compatible
with the Middle Ages and opened his way to that great reputation which
he was destined to attain, as the "gentle sage who knew all things."
Even John of Salisbury says of the Roman poet, that "_sub imagine
fabularum totius philosophiae exprimit veritatem._"[3] The process of
interpretation became fixed in the doctrine of the _four meanings,_
literal, allegorical, moral and anagogic, which Dante afterwards
transferred to vernacular poetry. It would be easy to accumulate
quotations from mediæval writers, repeating in all keys the theory
that art inculcates the truths of morality and of faith and constrains
hearts to Christian piety, beginning with those well-known verses of
Theodulf: "_In quorum dictis_ (that is to say, in the utterances of the
poets) _quamquam sint frivola multa, Plurima sub falso tegmine vera
latent,_" and so on, until we reach the doctrines and opinions of our
own great men, Dante and Boccaccio. For Dante, poetry "_nihil aliud est
quam fictio rhethorica in musicaque posita._"[4] The poet should have
a "reasoning" in his verses "under a cloak of figure or of rhetorical
colour"; and it would be a shameful thing for him, if, "when asked,
he were not able to divest his words of such a garment, in such a way
as to show that they possessed a true meaning."[5] Readers sometimes
stop at the external vesture alone, and this indeed suffices for
those who, like the vulgar, do not succeed in penetrating the hidden
meaning. Poetry will say to the vulgar, which does not understand "its
argument," what a song of Dante's says at its conclusion, "At least
behold how _beautiful_ I am": if you are not able to obtain instruction
from me, at least enjoy me as a pleasing thing. Many, indeed, "their
beauty more than their goodness will delight," in poems, unless they
are assisted by commentaries in the nature of the _Convivio,_ "a light
which will allow every shade of meaning to reach them."[6] Poetry was
the "gay science," "_un fingimiento_" (as the Spanish poet the Marquis
of Santillana wrote) "_de cosas utiles, cubiertas ó veladas con muy
fermosa cobertura, compuestas, distinguidas é scandidas, por cierto
cuento, pessoé medida._"[7]
It would not then be correct to say that the Middle Ages simply
identified art with theology and with philosophy. Indeed it sharply
distinguished the one from the other, defining art and poetry, like
Dante, with the words _fictio rhethorica_, "figure" and "rhetorical
colour," "cloak," "beauty," or like Santillana with those of
_fingimiento_ or _fermosa cobertura._ This pleasing falsity was
justified from the practical point of view, very much in the same way
as sexual union and love were justified and sanctified in matrimony.
This did not exclude, indeed it implied, that the perfect state was
certainly celibacy--that is to say, pure science, free from admixture
of art.
[Sidenote: _Hints of an Æsthetic in scholastic philosophy._]
The only tendency that had no true and proper representatives was
the sound scientific tendency. The _Poetics_ of Aristotle itself was
hardly known or rather it was ill-known, from the Latin translation
that a German of the name of Hermann made, not earlier than 1256, of
the paraphrase or commentary of Averroes. Perhaps the best of the
mediæval investigations into language is that supplied by Dante's _De
vulgari eloquentia,_ where the word is, however, still looked upon as
a sign ("_rationale signum et sensuale ... natura sensuale quidem,
in quantum sonus est, rationale vero in quantum aliquid significare
videtur ad piacitum_").[8] The study of the expressive, æsthetic,
linguistic faculty would, however, have found an appropriate occasion
and a point of departure in the secular debate between nominalism and
realism, which could not avoid touching to some extent the relations
between the word and the flesh, thought and language. Duns Scotus wrote
a treatise _De modis significandi seu_ (the addition is due perhaps to
the editors) _grammatica speculativa_.[9] Abelard had defined sensation
as _confusa conceptio,_ and _imaginatio_ as a faculty that preserved
sensations; the intellect renders discursive what is intuitive in the
preceding stage, and we have finally the perfection of knowledge in
the intuitive knowledge of the discursive. We find the same importance
attached to intuitive knowledge, perception, of the individual or
_species specialissima,_ in Duns Scotus, together with the progressive
denominations of the different sorts of knowledge as _confusæ,
indistinctæ_ and _distinctæ._ We shall see this terminology reappear,
big with consequences, at the very commencement of modern Æsthetic.[10]
[Sidenote: _Renaissance. Philography and philosophical and empirical
inquiries concerning the beautiful._]
It may be said that the literary and artistic doctrines and opinions
of the Middle Ages have, with few exceptions, a value rather for the
history of culture than for the general history of science. The like
observation holds good of the Renaissance, for here, too, the circle of
the ideas of antiquity was not overstepped. Culture increases; original
sources are studied; the ancient writers are translated and commented
upon; many treatises are written and henceforth printed upon poetry
and the arts, grammars, rhetorics, dialogues, and dissertations upon
the beautiful: the proportions have increased, the world has become
bigger; but truly original ideas do not yet show themselves in the
domain of æsthetic science. The mystical tradition is refreshed and
strengthened by the renewed cult of Plato: Marsilio Ficino, Pico della
Mirandola, Cattani, Leon Battista Alberti, in the fifteenth century,
and Pietro Bembo, Mario Equicola, Castiglione, Nobili, Betussi, and
very many others in the following century, wrote upon the Beautiful
and upon Love. Among the most noteworthy productions of the sort, a
crossing of the mediæval and classical currents, is the book of the
_Dialogues of Love_ (1535), composed in Italian by the Spanish Jew
Leo, and translated into all the cultured languages of the time.[11]
The three parts into which it is divided treat of the nature and
essence, of the universality, and of the origin of love; and it is
demonstrated that every beautiful thing is good, but not every good
thing is beautiful; that beauty is a grace which dilates the soul and
moves it to love, and that knowledge of lesser beauties leads to that
of higher spiritual beauties. The author gave the name of "Philography"
to these and similar affirmations and effusions of which the book is
composed. Equicola's[12] work is also interesting, because it contains
historical accounts of those who wrote upon the subject before he did
so himself. The same intuition was versified and sighed forth by the
Petrarchists in their sonnets and ballads, while others, rebellious and
mocking, derided it in comedies, verses in _terza rima_ and parodies of
all sorts. Some mathematicians, reincarnations of Pythagoras, set to
work to determine beauty by exact relations: for instance Leonardo's
friend, Luca Paciolo, in the _De divina proportione_ (1509), in which
he laid down the pretended æsthetic law of the golden section.[13] And
side by side with these new Pythagoreans were those who revived the
canon of Polycletus as to the beauty of the human body, especially
of the female body, such as Firenzuola, Franco, Luigini, and Dolce.
Michæl Angelo fixed an empirical canon for painting in general, when
he stated that the means of giving movement and grace to figures[14]
consisted in the observance of a certain arithmetical relation. Others,
such as Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, investigated the symbolism or meaning
of colours. The Platonists generally placed beauty in the soul, the
Aristotelians rather in the physical qualities. The Averroist, Agostino
Nifo, amid much chatter and many inconclusive remarks, demonstrated
the existence of the beautiful in nature by describing the supremely
beautiful body of Joan of Aragon, Princess of Tagliacozzo, to whom the
book is dedicated.[15] Torquato Tasso, in the "Mintumo,"[16] imitated
the uncertainties of the _Hippias_ of Plato, not without making a free
use of the speculations of Plotinus. A chapter of the _Poetica_ of
Campanella possesses greater importance, where he describes the good as
_signum boni_ and the ugly as _signum mali,_ understanding by good the
three prime forces of Power, Wisdom and Love. Although Campanella was
still tied to the Platonic idea of the beautiful, the conception of a
sign or symbol, here introduced by him, represents progress. By this
means he succeeded in perceiving that material things or external facts
are neither beautiful nor ugly in themselves. "Mandricard called the
wounds in the bodies of his friends the Moors beautiful, for they were
large and gave evidence of the great strength of Roland who dealt them;
Saint Augustine called the gashes and the dislocations in the body of
Saint Vincent beautiful, because they were evidence of his endurance,
but they were on the other hand ugly in so far as they were signs of
the cruelty of the tyrant Dacianus and of his executioners. It is
beautiful to die fighting, said Virgil, for it is the sign of a strong
soul. The pet dog of his mistress will seem beautiful to the lover, and
doctors call even urine and fæces beautiful, when they indicate health.
Everything is both beautiful and ugly" (_quapropter nihil est quod non
sit pulcrum simul et turpe_).[17] In such observations as these we have
not a mere state of mystical exaltation, but to some extent a movement
in the direction of analysis.
[Sidenote: _The pedagogic theory of art and the Poetics of Aristotle._]
Nothing better serves to demonstrate that the Renaissance did not pass
beyond the confines of ancient æsthetic thought than the fact that
notwithstanding the renewed acquaintance with the thought of Aristotle,
the pedagogic theory of art not only persisted and triumphed, but was
transplanted bodily into the text of Aristotle, where its interpreters
read it with a certainty that we have to make efforts to achieve.
Certainly, a Robortelli (1548) or a Castelvetro (1570) stopped short
at the simple, purely hedonistic solution, giving simple pleasure as
the end of art: poetry, says Castelvetro, "was discovered solely
for the purpose of delighting and of recreating ... the souls of the
rude multitude and of the common people."[18] And here and there
some were able to free themselves from both the pleasure theory and
that of the didactic end; but the majority, such as Segni, Maggi,
Vettori,[19] were for the _docere delectando._ Scaliger (1561) declared
that mimesis or imitation was "_finis medius ad illum ultimum qui est
docendi cum delectatione,_" and believing himself to be altogether in
agreement with Aristotle as to this, he continued, "_docet affectus
poeta per actiones, ut bonos amplectamur atque imitemur ad agendum,
malos aspernemur ad abstinendum._"[20] Piccolomini (1575) observed
that "It must not be thought that so many excellent poets and artists,
ancient and modern, would have devoted such care and diligence to this
most noble study, had they not known and believed that in so doing
they were aiding human life," and if "they had not thought that we
were to be instructed, directed, and well established by it."[21] The
"truth preserved in soft verses, which attracts and persuades the most
reluctant" (Tasso),[22] with the comparison from Lucretius attached,
is the conception that even Campanella repeats. Poetry is for him
"_Rhetorica quaedam figurata, quasi magica, quae exempla ministrat ad
suadendum bonum et dissuadendum malum delectabiliter iis qui simplici
verum et bonum audire nolunt, aut non possunt aut nesciunt._"[23] Thus
returned the comparison of poetry with oratory; according to Segni
they only differ because the first occupies a more lofty situation:
"for since imitation representing itself in act by means of poetry, in
mighty, chosen words, in metaphors, images, and indeed the whole of
figured speech, which is to be found more in poetry than in the art
of oratory, the metrical qualities that are also required in verse,
the subjects of which it treats, which have something of the great and
delightful, make it appear most beautiful and worthy of being held all
the greater marvel."[24] "Three most noble arts" (wrote Tassoni in
1620, and he repeated common opinion), "History, Poetics, and Oratory,
come under the heading of Politics and depend upon it; the first of
these has reference to the instruction of princes and gentlemen, the
second of the people, the third of those who give counsel in public
trials or defend private ones that come up for judgment."[25]
According to these views, the tragical catharsis was regarded as
designed in general to demonstrate the instability of fortune, or to
terrify by example, or to proclaim the triumph of justice, or to render
the spectators insensible to the strokes of fortune, owing to their
familiarity with suffering. The pedagogic theory, thus renewed and
sustained by the authority of the ancients, was popularized in France,
Spain, England and Germany, together with all the Italian poetic
doctrines of the Renaissance. The French writers of the period of Louis
XIV. are altogether penetrated with it. "_Cette science agréable qui
mêle la gravité des préceptes avec la douceur du langage_," is what La
Ménardière calls poetry (1640), in the same way as Le Bossu (1675), for
whom "_le premier but du poète est d'instruire_,"[26] as Homer taught,
when he wrote two interesting didactic manuals relating to military and
political events: the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey._
[Sidenote: _The "Poetics of the Renaissance."_]
This pedagogic theory has therefore been reasonably described by all
the modern critics in concert, as if by antonomasia, as the _Poetics
of the Renaissance._ It must, however, always be understood that it
did not appear for the first time in the fifteenth or sixteenth
century, but that it was prevalent and generally accepted at that
time. It may even be remarked, as has already been acutely done,[27]
that the Renaissance naturally did not distinguish the didactic kind
of poetry from the other kinds, since for it every kind of poetry was
didactic. But the Renaissance was not a real Renaissance, save when
and where it continued the interrupted spiritual work of antiquity,
and in this sense it would perhaps be more just to describe as its
Poetics, or rather, as the important element in its Poetics, not the
repetition of the pedagogic theory of antiquity and of the Middle Ages,
but the resumption, which also took place, of the discussions upon
the possible, the probable (_verisimile_, εικός) of Aristotle, on the
reasons of Plato's condemnation and on the procedure of the artist who
creates by imagining.
[Sidenote: _Dispute concerning the universal and the probable in art._]
It is in such discussions that is to be found the true contribution of
that epoch, not to learning, but to the formation of the science of
Æsthetic. The ground was prepared and enriched through the work of the
interpreters and commentators of Aristotle and of the new writers on
Poetics, especially the Italians, and it was also enriched with some
seed that was destined to sprout and to become a vigorous plant in
the future. The study of Plato also contributed not a little to call
attention to the function of the idea, or of the universal, in poetry.
What meaning was to be attached to the statement that poetry should aim
at the universal and history at the particular? What was the meaning of
the proposition that poetry should proceed according to _probability_?
What could that _certain idea_ consist of, which Raphæl said that he
followed in his painting?
[Sidenote: _Fracastoro._]
Girolamo Fracastoro was among the first to ask himself this question
seriously, in the dialogue _Naugerius, sive De poetica_ (1555). He
disdainfully rejected the thesis that the end of poetry is pleasure:
far be from us, he exclaimed, so bad an opinion of the poets, who the
ancients said were the inventors of all the good arts. Nor did the
end of instruction seem to him to be acceptable, which is the task,
not of poetry, but of other faculties, such as geography, history,
agronomy, philosophy. The poet's task is to represent or to imitate,
and he differs from the historian, not in the matter, but in the manner
of representation. The others imitate the particular, the poet the
universal: the others are like the painters of portraits, the poet
produces things as he contemplates the universal and most beautiful
idea of them: the others say only what they need to say for their
purposes, the poet that he may say everything beautifully and fully.
But the beauty of a poem must always be understood as relative to
the class of subject of which it treats; it is the most beautiful
in this class, not the supremely beautiful: one must be careful to
guard against the equivocal or double meaning of this word "beauty"
(_æquivocatio illius verbi_). A poet never utters what is false or
expresses what does not exist, for his words inevitably harmonize in
appearance or signification either with the opinions of men or with the
universal. Nor can we accept the Platonic axiom that the poet has no
knowledge of the things of which he treats; he does know them, but in
his own poet's manner.[28]
[Sidenote: _L. Castelvetro._]
While Fracastoro strives to elaborate the important passage in
Aristotle touching the universal of poetry, and though somewhat
vague in his treatment, keeps fairly close to the mark; Castelvetro,
on the contrary, judges the Aristotelian fragment with the freedom
and superior knowledge of the true critic. He recognizes that the
_Poetics_ is merely a notebook recording certain principles and
methods of compiling the art, not the art fully compiled. He remarks,
moreover, not without logical acumen, that Aristotle having adopted
the criterion of probability or of that "which presents an appearance
of historic truth," should have applied his theory in the first
case to history, not to poetry; for history being a "narrative
according to truth of memorable human actions," and poetry a narrative
according to probability of events which might possibly occur, the
second cannot receive "all its radiance" from the first. Nor does it
escape him that Aristotle describes two different things by the one
word "imitation": (_a_) "following the example of another," which is
"acting in exactly the same way as another without knowing the reason
of such action": and (_b_) the imitation "demanded by poetry," which
"does things in a manner totally different from that in which they
have been done hitherto and proposes a new example for imitation."
Nevertheless Castelvetro cannot extricate himself from the confusion
between the imaginary and the historical; for he himself says "the
realm of the former is generally that of certainty," but "the field
of certainty is often crossed with bars of uncertainty just as the
field of uncertainty is often crossed with bars of certainty." Also
what can be said of this curious interpretation of the Aristotelian
theory of pleasure experienced in the imitation of ugly models, that
such pleasure is based on the fact that since an imitation is always
imperfect, it is incapable of exciting the disgust and fear which would
arise from the contemplation of real ugliness? And what of his remark
that the characteristics of painting and poetry are so diverse as to
be in opposition one to the other; imitation of objects giving rise
to great pleasure in the former art and as great displeasure in the
latter? And so on in numberless cases of bold but scarcely felicitous
subtleties.[29]
[Sidenote: _Piccolomini and Pinciano._]