THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE OF ART
The result we have now arrived at in the above consideration of the
Sublime, and in contradistinction to the strictly unpremeditated
type of symbolization, consists partly in the _separation_ of its
own independent Inwardness, consciously apprehended in its quality
of significance, from the concrete appearance that is thereby
distinguished from it, partly also in the direct or indirect
affirmation of the _incompatibility_ of the two above mentioned
aspects to one another, by which it appears that the significance as
the universal passes beyond the particular fact and its singularity.
But in the imagination of pantheism, no less than in the type of the
Sublime, the real content, that is the One universal substance of all
concrete existence, was unable to be presented to imaginative vision
or sense-perception without some relation to created existence, albeit
created under a mode inadequate to express the essence of that Unity.
This relation, however, was attached to the substance itself, which,
in the negativity of its accidents, supplied the proof of its Wisdom,
Goodness, Power, and Justice[76]. For this reason the relation between
significance and content is also in the case of the Sublime, at least
in a general way, of a kind that is both _essential_ and _necessary_,
and the two sides thus linked with each other are not yet, in the
strict sense of the term, external to each other. It is, however,
inevitable, for the reason that it is implicitly present in symbolism,
that this externality should come to be directly posited and appear
in the forms we have now to consider in this concluding chapter on the
art of symbolism. We may summarily describe them as _conscious_[77]
symbolism, or, in a still more direct way, the _comparative_ type of
art.
In other words, what we understand by conscious symbolism is this,
that the significance is not merely independently cognized, but is
_expressly_ set forth as distinct from the external mode, in which it
is represented. The significance then appears, as in the case of the
Sublime, to receive an independent expression which is not essentially
in the actual embodiment given to it under the mode employed[78].
The relation, however, of both to one another no longer continues
to be, as in the type last examined, a mode of relation which is
fundamentally due to the significance itself, but is a more or less
haphazard association, which may generally be expressed as the product
of the _subjectivity_ of the poet, the absorption of his spirit in an
external object, the result of his wit or invention; a mode, in short,
which enables the poet at one time rather to make a beginning directly
from a sensible phenomenon, and to imagine for it from his own mind
a spiritual significance cognate with it, and at another to select
in preference as his point of departure the real or only relatively
personal idea, with a view to embodying the same, or even to do nothing
more than relate one image with another, which presents characteristic
features of resemblance.
This kind of linking together must consequently be distinguished from
that still naïve and _unconscious_ symbolism in virtue of the fact that
now the individual recognizes the inward essence of the significances
he adopts for the content of his creation no less than, the positive
nature of the external objects, which he employs as means of comparison
for the more direct presentment of the same, placing both in this
juxtaposition with clear intention owing to the similarity he has
discovered between them. The distinction, on the other hand, between
the present type and that of the Sublime is rather to be traced to the
fact that though under one aspect it may be true that the separation
and juxtaposition of the significances with their concrete shaping in
the work of art is itself set forth in express relief to a less or
higher degree, yet, on the other hand, for the reason that it is no
longer the Absolute itself that is accepted as content, but any defined
and restricted significance whatever, the typical relation of the
Sublime falls away, and in its place a relation is set up within the
act of severance thus intentionally made between the real significance
and its embodiment, a relation which in effect produces the very result
in the sphere of premeditated comparison that we found unconscious
symbolism in its own way proposed as an object.
In one word, so far as _content_ is here concerned, the Absolute
itself, _the Lord of creation_, can no longer be conceived as the
significance which Art seeks after. That this is so is rendered
inevitable by the already obvious fact that on account of the
severation of more concrete existence from the notion, and further,
if only under the mode of comparison, the juxtaposition of both sides
thus separated, the category of_finitude_ is there and then accepted
by the artistic consciousness, in so far as it conceives this form
as the real and ultimate one; and for this reason, moreover, the
imagined significances, being selected wholly from the sphere of the
finite, have no further association whatever with the Absolute as the
fundamental significance of all created things. Sacred poetry stands
out in entire contrast to this, for in this God is the exclusive
significance of all things; as set over against Him, they have
no stability at all, but vanish or are nothing. If, however, the
significance is able to discover its image and parallel of resemblance
in that which is itself essentially _restricted_ and finite, it follows
that it must itself to that extent be limited in its range, as, in
fact, it is in the type of symbolic conception which now occupies our
attention, where that which is found is nothing more than an image,
necessarily external to the content, selected purely at random by the
poet for the sake of the _similarity_ it presents to the content, and
as such regarded as relatively adequate thereto. For this reason there
is but one trait left us in the comparative type of art, which is also
shared by that of the Sublime, and it is this that every image, instead
of embodying the fact and significance directly under a mode adequate
to their full reality, is only taken to present an image and similitude
of either.
For these reasons this kind of symbolization is, if we conceive it
apart as an independent whole, a generic class of subordinate rank.
The form which it supplies is merely the descriptive selection of a
portion of sensuous existence immediately perceived, or of a prosaic
idea of the mind[79], in other words, the significance is expressly to
be distinguished from it. And, further, in a measure such an employment
of comparison in works of art, which are shaped out of homogeneous
material, and in their specific form constitute an indivisible whole,
can only assert itself as relatively valid, that is, as mere ornament
and accessory, such as we find it, in fact, in the genuine products of
classic and romantic art.
It is a further consequence that if we regard the entire sphere of
this type as the union of the two stages which preceded it on the
ground that it not merely comprehends within itself the _separation_
of significance from external reality, which is the fundamental
_causa rationis_ of the Sublime, but also includes the _reference_ of
a concrete phenomenon to a universal import cognate with it, as we
have seen was asserted in the real type of symbolism, such a union
is notwithstanding in no way a higher type of art; it is, in truth,
despite its very clearness, a superficial way of apprehending things,
limited in its content and formally more or less prosaic, which falls
away into the consciousness of commonsense as fully remote from the
secretly fermenting depth of genuine symbolism as it is from the height
of the Sublime.
So far as the _classification_ of our present subject-matter is
concerned we may observe, first, that in this act of comparative
differentiation, which presupposes the significance independently,
and affirms either a sensuous or imaginary form in a relation of
opposition to it, there is the aspect held constantly throughout
that the significance is here accepted as of most importance, and
the form is solely the embodiment of the same and external to it;
but along with this the further difference makes its appearance,
namely, that it is sometimes the one aspect of this opposition which
is first pre-eminently emphasized, and made the significant point of
departure, while at other times it is the other. And owing to this
fact we have either the embodiment presented us as an independently
external, immediate fact or phenomenon of Nature, which is then
related by comparison to a significance of a more general bearing, or
the significance is independently come by in another way, and only
afterwards a mode of embodying it is selected from some external
source, it matters not what.
Relatively to the above distinctions we may classify our material under
the two first fundamental and a third and other supplementary divisions
as follows:
A. In the _first_ it is the _concrete phenomenon_, whether the
selection be made from Nature or human events, incidents, and actions,
which constitutes both the point of departure in the process of
artistic conception, and the substance of essential weight in the
reproduction. It is no doubt exhibited solely on account of the more
general significance, which it contains and signifies, and is only so
far unfolded, that it may contribute to the object of embodying this
significance in a specific occurrence or condition cognate with it. The
comparison, however, of the general significance and the particular
case is not as yet _expressly_ set forth as _subjective_ activity, and
the entire reproduction will not merely be the embellishment of a work
which actually possesses a substantive position without it, but is set
forth as itself claiming to give the character of an independent whole.
The types of this class are the fable, the parable, the apologue, the
proverb, and the metamorphosis.
B. In the _second_ phase the _significance_ on the contrary is that
which is first presented to consciousness, and the concrete embodiment
is that which is merely incidental or accessory to it, possessing no
independent subsistency of its own, but appearing as wholly subordinate
to the significance, so that we are now also made more immediately
aware of the element of personal caprice in the selection of this
rather than any other image. This mode of production is unable in the
great majority of cases to reach the point of a fully perfected work
of art, and is consequently forced to leave the forms it supplies as
appurtenant to other artistic images. The important types of this
class are the riddle, the allegory, the metaphor, the image, and the
simile.
C. _Thirdly_, and in conclusion, if rather by way of supplement, we
have yet further to include within our list the didactic poem, and
purely descriptive poetry, inasmuch as in these types of poetry we
find, on the one hand, that the presentment of the general character
of the objects in the clearness under which they are made intelligible
to commonsense[80], no less than on the other that the exhibition of
their concrete appearance receives a substantially independent form,
and by doing so effects with elaborate completeness the severation of
that which only in its union and really reciprocal fusion is capable of
giving us a genuine work of art.
This separation of the two phases essential to the process of
art-production carries with it the result that the various forms which
find their place in the entire subject-matter under discussion have
merely a claim to fall in as part of an inquiry into the modes of art
in virtue of the fact that poetry, and only poetry, is in a position
to express such a relation of self-contained independence as between
significance and form. As opposed to this it is the very problem of the
plastic arts to manifest such significant content in and through their
external form and viewed thus externally.
A. MODES OF COMPARISON, WHICH HAVE THEIR ORIGIN UPON THE SIDE OF
EXTERNALITY
The attempt to arrange the several kinds of poetic production which
are apportioned to this first stage of the comparative type of art
carries with it no little difficulty, and is a fruitful source
of embarrassment. They are, that is to say, hybrid species of a
subordinate rank, which in no way whatever mark out any necessary
aspect of art They stand in the domain of Aesthetic presenting features
analogous to certain animal types, and other exceptional phenomena
in natural science. In both spheres the difficulty consists in this
that in either case it is the notion of the science itself, which
is the ground of its classification and specific differences. As
differentia of the notion these are also at the same time distinctions
really adequate to the notional process, and intelligible as such;
with these latter such transitional modes are unable fully to conform
for the reason that they are merely defective types, which proceed
from a previous phase that is fundamental without being able to reach
the next one. This is no fault of the notion, nay, supposing that we
preferred to make such ancillary types the basis of our classification,
instead of pointing out their relation to the specific phases of the
_notional_ process of our subject-matter, we should have presented us
precisely that aspect of them which was inadequate to this process
as the irreproachable mode of their development. A true principle of
classification, on the contrary, is compelled to proceed from the true
notion, and such _hybrid_ types as those now discussed can only be
suitably placed where the genuine and independently stable ones show a
tendency to dissolve and pass over into others.
Apart from such considerations, however, the artistic types referred to
belong to the _forecourt_ of artistic symbolism, inasmuch as they are
generally incomplete, and to that extent _merely_ a search after art in
its truth. Such a movement no doubt presents the essential ingredients
of a genuine mode of configuration, but it lays hold of them in their
aspect of finitude, separation, and purely relative propinquity;
it fails consequently to rank on the same level. When we discuss,
therefore, the fable, apologue, and the rest we must treat these forms
not as though they belonged to _poetry_ in the specific sense, as it
differs among other things from music no less than the plastic arts,
but only with the view of pointing out the relation in which they stand
to the _generic_ types of art. It is only thus their specific character
can be elucidated. To such an object the notion of the genuine types of
the art of poetry, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic, will not assist us.
We propose now to differentiate these forms in the following order;
we shall begin with the _fable_, proceed after that to discuss the
_parable_, _apologue_, and _proverb_, and conclude our inquiry with the
_metamorphosis._
1. THE FABLE
Hitherto we have throughout merely dwelt upon the formal aspect of the
relation of an expressed significance to its embodiment; we have now
furthermore to elucidate the content, which declares its suitability
for such a mode.
In our previous consideration of the various aspects of the _Sublime_
we saw that at the point where we have now arrived, it is no longer a
matter of any importance to envisualize the Absolute and One in its
indivisible Power by means of the nothingness and impotency of the
created thing to rise up to that infinite transcendency. We are now
on the plane of the finite consciousness, and have only to concern
ourselves with a finite content. If we direct our attention conversely
to the genuine symbolical type, to which the comparative is under
a certain aspect equally related, we find that here that _inward_
aspect, which stands in opposition to the form up to this point
always immediately presented, the natural shape, that is to say, is
the spiritual, a truth that even in Egyptian symbolism received ample
illustration. To the extent, however, that everything natural is left
standing, and preconceived in its position of isolated _solidarity_,
the spiritual is also something both _finite_ and _defined_, that is
to say man and his finite aims and the natural maintains a certain,
albeit theoretical[81], relationship to these objects, a significant
suggestion and revelation of the same to the use and weal of mankind.
The phenomena of Nature, storms, flight of birds, the constitution
of the intestines of animals and so forth, in the significance they
possess for human interests, are now accepted in a totally different
sense to that they figured in the conceptions of Parsees, Hindoos, or
Egyptians, for whom the Divine is still linked to the Natural under
the mode that man, as an integral part of Nature, moves to and fro in
a world full of gods, and his personal action consists in the display
through his activities of this very identity of Life, whereby this
doing of his, in so far as it is compatible with the natural existence
of the Divine, appears itself as a revelation and bringing forth of
the Divine in mankind. When, however, man is withdrawn into himself,
and intuitively seeks for his freedom within the closed doors of his
own substance[82], he becomes intrinsically the object of his own
personality; he acts, transacts his affairs, and works as he himself
wills; he possesses a personal life of his own, and feels the essential
character of his aims as part of himself, to which the natural is only
related as something outside him. Consequently Nature becomes insulated
around him, serves him under such an aspect that in his attitude to the
Divine he no longer secures an envisagement of the Absolute in her, but
simply regards her as a means, through which the gods enable him to
discover such a knowledge of themselves as may contribute most to his
advantage, unveiling their will to the human spirit through the medium
of Nature and suffering the purpose thereof to declare itself through
mankind. An identity of the Absolute and Nature is here presupposed, an
identity in which _human aims_ are pre-eminently emphasized. A type of
symbolism such as this, however, is not within the province of art, but
that of religion. That is to say, the _vates_ or prophet subordinates
every significant relation of natural events, pre-eminently to the
service of practical ends, whether it be in the interest of the
particular designs of individuals, or in that of the common action of
an entire people. Poetry, on the contrary, is bound to recognize and
express even the practical situations and relations in a more universal
form adapted to contemplation.
What we have, however, to deal with now is a natural phenomenon, an
occurrence, which, in its passage, exhibits a particular relation,
which maybe accepted as symbol for a general significance in the
circle of human deeds and dealings, in other words for an ethical
maxim, a saw, for a significance, therefore, whose content unfolds
a reflection over the nature of the course which either is taken or
ought to be taken in human matters, that is, facts which are related to
volition. Here it is no longer the Divine will, which is self-revealed
in its essential nature to mankind through natural events, and their
religious import. We have nothing more than a quite ordinary course of
everyday occurrences, from the isolated reproduction of which we are
able to abstract in a way commonly intelligible an ethical _dictum_,
a warning, ensample, or rule of prudence, by whatever name we choose
to call it, which is set before us in a form that appeals to our
imagination for the sake of the reflection it carries with it. And this
is just the way in which we ought to regard the fables of Aesop.
(_a_) In other words, the fables of Aesop in their original form are
just such a mode of conceiving a natural relation or event between
single natural objects generally, mainly between animals, whose
intercourse with one another is based on the same practical necessities
of life that are the motive force in that of humanity. This relation or
occurrence, as viewed in its more general characters, is consequently
of a kind that may happen in the sphere of human life, and as such
carries with it a significance for man.
As thus explained the genuine fable of Aesop is therefore the
reproduction of a condition of animate or inanimate life, of some
occurrence in the animal world for example, which is not by any
means composed at haphazard, but is put together in conformity with
natural fact and genuine observation, and so reproduced in the form of
narrative that, in its relation to human existence, and particularly
the practical aspect of the same, a general maxim may be deduced from
it. The requirement of _primary_ importance that it implies, therefore,
is that the particular case in question, which is to supply the
so-called moral, must not be purely _imaginary_, that is to say, first
and foremost the substance of the composition must not present facts
which run _counter_ to the mode of their appearance in real life. The
narrative may be further and yet more clearly characterized in this
that it does not record the particular case itself in its universality,
but rather the mode under which this, taken in its concrete singularity
and as a real fact, is in such external reality the type for all action
based upon analogous circumstances.
This original form of the fable leaves upon it, and this is the
_third_ point to which we direct attention, the impress of most
_naïveté_, because in it the didactic aim and the deduction of general
significances of utilitarian colour do not appear to be that which was
the original intention of the narrator, but rather something which
turned up afterwards. For this reason the most attractive among
the so-called fables of Aesop will be those which correspond most
emphatically with this naïve tone and narrate actions, if such an
expression may here be used, or at least relations and events, which
in part are founded upon animal instinct, partly are the expression of
some other natural relation and partly are generally put together for
their own sake rather than exclusively composed as the fancy of the
moment happened to dictate. For this reason it is further sufficiently
obvious that the motto _fabula docet_, which has attached itself to
these fables as we now have them presented us, either takes the true
spirit out of them, or frequently is something like a fist in our
eyes[83], so that quite as often as not we are inclined to deduce the
intended maxim's opposite, or one or two as good if not better.
In further elucidation of this conception of these Greek fables we
propose now to offer a few illustrations. The oak and the reed stand
in the teeth of the storm-wind. The slender reed merely bows before
it, the stubborn oak snaps. This is a frequent enough occurrence in
a great storm. In its ethical suggestion what we have here is some
man of high position and inflexible temper as opposed to one of more
modest station who, through his natural pliancy, is able in misfortune
to keep himself secure on such ordinary levels, while the great man
goes to ground through his pride and obstinacy. An analogous case is
the fable of the swallows which we find in the Phaedrus. The swallows
and other birds with them see a rustic sowing the flax seed, from the
growth of which the bird-snare is to be made. The provident swallows
fly away, the other birds think nothing of the morrow; they abide
at home and are caught. A real phenomenon of Nature is also at the
bottom of this fable. It is a notorious fact that in autumn swallows
are off to southerly climes, and consequently are absent when birds
are snared. The same thing may be said of the fable about the bat,
which is despised by day and night, because it belongs to neither the
one nor the other. A more general human significance is attributed to
real prosaic incidents of this class, much as pious people are only
too ready nowadays to interpret everything that occurs in a sense
that is edifying or useful. It is, however, not essential to such a
purpose that in every case the true fact of Nature should appear at
once as obvious. In the fable, for instance, of the fox and the raven
we are unable at first blush to recognize the natural fact, although
it is not wholly absent. It is, in truth, a genuine characteristic
both of ravens and crows that they set about cawing when they happen
to catch sight of strange objects, whatever they may be, whether man
or beast, in sudden motion. Natural relations of a similar kind lie
at the root of the fable of the thorn-bush, which plucks the wool off
the passer-by, or wounds the fox that seeks refuge there, or that
of the countryman who warms a snake in his bosom. Others set forth
occurrences which may naturally form part of animal experience; take,
for instance, the first example of the fables of Aesop where the eagle
devours the cubs of the fox and carries off a hot coal attached to the
sacrificial flesh which sets his nest on fire. And, in conclusion, we
find that others contain traits of old myths, such as the fable of
the dung-beetle, eagle, and Jupiter, where the circumstance borrowed
from natural history--we will pass it by for what it is worth--appears
to be referable to the different seasons of the year when the eagle
and dung-beetle respectively lay their eggs; at the same time we may
observe a clear intimation here of the traditional importance of the
scarab, which, however, even in our present example, is already treated
with an inclination toward comedy, an inclination still more pronounced
in Aristophanes. As an excuse for not entering more fully here into the
question how many of these fables can actually be traced to Aesop we
mention the already well-established fact that only of quite a small
minority--the last-cited one of dung-beetle and the eagle is among
them--can it be shown that they date from Aesop's time, or that in
general terms there is any flavour of antiquity about them to support
the view that Aesop is in fact their author.
Of Aesop himself we are informed that he was a deformed and humpbacked
slave; and for his place of residence we are transported into Phrygia,
the very land, that is, which marks the passage from the immediately
symbolical and the existence still fettered on Nature, to a land in
which man begins to take real hold of the spiritual and himself as
the source of the same. In our present connection, no doubt, he does
not behold the animal and natural world in the way the Hindoos and
Egyptians beheld it, that is, as something of itself, superior and
Divine. He regards it with prosaic vision as something whose relations
are only of service in the presentment of a picture of human act and
avoidance. His conceits are further merely the reflections of wit,
without real energy of soul or depth of insight and a fundamental grasp
of reality, without poetry and philosophy, in fact. His opinions and
maxims are, in consequence, fairly rich in sensuous image and traits of
cleverness, but we never get beyond the digging away into mere trifles,
which, instead of creating free shapes from the unfettered life of
spirit, is contented to discover some additional aspect that is new
in material already close at hand, such as the specific instincts and
habits of animals or other daily occurrences of little moment; and this
is so because that which he would teach he is still afraid to express
freely, and is only able to make it intelligible in a kind of riddle
which is at the same time always being solved. Prose has its origin
in the slave, and in the same way prose clings to the entire type of
conception with which we are now concerned.
Despite this fact, however, the experience of almost all nations and
times has in one form or another run through these old tales; and
however much any particular people whose literature is generally well
versed in fable may pride itself as possessing more than one fabulist
of distinction, we shall find that their poetry is for the most part
merely a reflection of these primary sallies of invention, merely
translated into the vernacular of the age. All that has since been
added to the general heritage of such conceits falls far behind the
original legacy in real merit.
(_b_) There are, however, among these fables of Greek descent a
number which betray the greatest poverty of invention and execution,
being mere pegs on which to hang the instructive moral, so that the
contents, whether they refer to gods or animals, have merely a formal
significance. Yet even these are far enough removed from the modern
tendency of doing violence to the animal world as we find it in
Nature. An example of this tendency is that fable of Pfeffel about
a marmot which collected provisions in autumn, an act of foresight
which another marmot neglected, and so was brought to the condition
of beggary and starvation. Or there is that other of the fox, the
bloodhound, and the lynx, of whom it is narrated that they presented
themselves before Jupiter, together with the talents which exclusively
belonged to them of cunning, keen scent, and clear sight, and requested
that these gifts should be equally divided between them; the fable goes
on that they obtained such consent under these rather surprising terms:
"The fox gets a blow on the forehead, the bloodhound is good for no
more hunting, the Argus Lynx receives a cataract." That a marmot should
cease to make provision for its wants, or that the three animals above
mentioned should ever incidentally meet with, or be naturally capable
of receiving, a proportionate division of their respective gifts is
contrary to all reason and consequently meaningless. A better fable
than those above cited is that of the ant and the grasshopper, or that
other of the deer with the beautiful horns and the slender legs.
Conformably to the tenor of fables of this kind we have grown, as
a rule, accustomed to accept the moral of the fable as that which
is of first importance, and to regard the narrative as _merely_ an
external form, and consequently an event entirely _composed_ with a
view to expound that moral. Embodiments of this sort, however, more
particularly when the occurrence described is wholly at variance with
the natural character of specific animals, are in the highest degree
insipid, attempts at invention which mean less than nothing. The real
ingenuity of a fable consists exclusively in this that it is able to
impart to that which already exists in determinate form a further and
more universal significance than that which is immediately presented.
The question has further been raised, in reference to the general
assumption that the essence of a fable consists in setting before us
the actions and speech of animals rather than those of mankind, as to
what it is precisely which attracts us in this allusion. We cannot
suppose, however, that there is after all much that is attractive in
such a furbishing up of our humanity in animal form, even though it
should exceed or at least differ from that of a comedy of apes and
dogs, where, apart from the sight of the general cleverness of the
dressing up, the entire interest consists rather in the deliberate
contrast between animal nature as it really is and appears, and that
represented as taking part in human affairs. On grounds of this sort
Breitinger finds the attraction to consist entirely in the element
of the _marvellous._ In the original type of the fable, however, the
appearance of animals endowed with speech is _not_ put before us as
anything uncommon or surprising. And for this very reason Lessing is
of the opinion that the introduction of animals is really of great use
in helping us to understand and _assisting_ the poet to _abridge_ his
exposition; in other words we are well acquainted with the qualities
of animals, the cuteness of the fox, the magnanimity of the lion, the
voracity and violence of the wolf, and are consequently able to set
before our minds a concrete image in place of such abstract qualities.
An advantage of this kind, however, in no essential degree mitigates
the triviality of the relation when it has become one purely of form,
and generally it is even a disadvantage to place animals thus before
us instead of men, for the reason that the animal form remains a mask,
which, so far as intelligibility is concerned, _veils_ fully as much as
it _declares_ the significance.
The most important fable of this kind should be in that case the
old history of Reinecke, the fox, which is notwithstanding strictly
speaking no fable at all.
(_c_) In other words we may in conclusion add a _third_ type of the
fable, in which we find that there is already a tendency to pass beyond
the real boundaries of the type. The ingenuity of a fable consists, as
already pointed out, in the discovery of particular cases among the
variety of natural phenomena, which we are able to use as evidential
support of general reflections upon human action and behaviour, without
essentially displacing the animal and natural world from its own native
mode of existence. For the rest this general application or adaptation
of the particular case to the so-called moral is an exercise of
personal caprice, or shall we say native wit, and is therefore to all
intents and purposes an affair of pleasantry. It is this aspect which
receives the main emphasis in the type of fable now before us. The
fable is in fact accepted as a witty jest. Goethe has written many a
delightful and ingenious poem in this vein. The following lines occur
in one of them, which is entitled "The Barking Dog":
/$
Down every road afield we ride
On business bent or pleasure;
And ever in our wake full-cry
A hound's bark beats the measure.
Loosed from our horse's stable he
_Will_ always gallop beside us:
And this is what his clamour proves!
We ride, are with the riders.
$/
It is equally necessary here, as in the case of Aesop's fables, that
objects which are borrowed from Nature should receive their native
aspect, and only bring before us in their action and habits human
circumstances, passions, and traits, which have a close affinity to
those of the animal world. The story of Reinecke is one of this kind,
and is really more a fairy-tale than a fable in the strict sense.
We find in the content of this the reflection of an age of disorder
and lawlessness, of evil generally, weakness, baseness, violence,
and shamelessness, of unbelief in religion, that merely retains the
appearance of a mastery, or indeed an established position in the
world-drama; and the result is that craft, cunning, and selfishness
have it all their own way. It is, in fact, the condition of the
Middle Ages, more especially as developed in Germany. The powerful
vassals pay, it is true, some appearance of respect to the king; but
practically every man does as he pleases--robs, murders, oppresses
the weak, betrays the king, finds a way somehow to the favours of the
queen, so that if the community just holds together that is about
all. Such is the human content, which by this fable is preserved,
not in a mere abstract proposition but in an entire _complexus_ of
conditions and characters, and by reason of its baseness fits in with
the animal nature exactly, under the forms of which it is unfolded.
For this reason we find nothing embarrassing in the fact that it is
without any reserves transferred to the animal realm; and for the same
reason the particular form it takes does not so much appear as an
exceptional case cognate with it; rather we are inclined to feel the
singularity of it make way for a certain breadth of universality, a
vision emphasizing the general truth: "Such is the way things happen
in the world." The comical side consists in the forms under which the
whole is put together, drollery and jest being freely mingled with the
bitter earnestness of the situation; the general effect of which is
that we not only have human meanness admirably depicted through that
of animals, but we are further made a present of the most entertaining
traits, and most characteristic anecdotes wholly peculiar to animal
life, so that, despite all tartness to the palate, our final view
is that of a comedy whose main intention is neither bad nor purely
capricious, but one that has genuine earnestness to support it.
2. PARABLE, PROVERB, APOLOGUE
(_a_) _The Parable_
_Parable_ has this general affinity with _fable_, that it accepts
events from the circle of common life, but also makes them the
depositors of a higher and more universal significance, expressly with
a view that the same shall become intelligible and objective by means
of that daily occurrence in its ordinary guise. A difference, however,
at once asserts itself between the parable and fable, and it is this,
that the former selects such occurrences in _human_ action and habits,
as we have them every day before our eyes, rather than in Nature and
the animal world; it then expands the particular case selected, which
appears trite enough at first as such a particular, to the range of
wider interest, by suggesting through it a higher kind of significance.
For this reason the range and the importance of the significances in
wealth of _content_ can materially be increased and deepened[84],
while, if we take the point of view of form, it is clear that the
subjective process of intentional comparison and setting out of a
generally instructive reflection already marks the acceptance and
appearance of a more advanced type.
As a parable, still united to a wholly practical end, we may view
the means of persuasion used by Cyrus to induce the Persians to
rebel (Herod., I, cap. 126). His letter to the Persians advised them
to betake themselves to a certain spot provided with sickles. When
there he set them all on the first day to clear with hard labour a
certain field overgrown with thistles. On the following day, however,
after they had rested and bathed, he conducted them to a meadow
and supplied them with ample cheer in the shape of food and wine.
Finally, at the close of the feast, he asked of them which of the two
days had proved the most enjoyable. All voted naturally for to-day
rather than yesterday; the former had brought them only good things,
while the latter had been a day of weariness and toil. On this Cyrus
exclaimed: "Follow me, and many will be the good days such as the
present has brought you. Refuse to follow me, and countless labours
are in store quite a match for those of yesterday." Of a type akin
to the above, though of profoundest interest and the widest range
considered relatively to their significance, are the parables we meet
with in the Gospels. Take, for example, that of the sower, a narrative
which as such possesses the most unimportant subject-matter, and
whose significance centres throughout in the comparison it supplies
to the preaching of the kingdom of heaven. The significance in these
parables is wholly a religious gospel, to which the human occurrences,
wherein such is imaginatively presented, stand in a relation similar
to that between the animal and human world in the fables of Aesop,
where the former elicits the meaning of the latter. Of a like breadth
of content is the famous story of Boccaccio, which Lessing converted
in his "Natham" into the parable of the three rings. The substance of
the narrative is also in this case taken by itself nothing remarkable;
the extraordinarily wide, reach of its content arises wholly from the
way the differences between and the relative validity of the three
religions, namely, the Jewish, the Mohammedan, and the Christian, are
suggested by it. The same thing may be said of the latest novelties in
this type of art, the parables of Goethe for example. Take that of the
"cat-pasty." In this a famous _chef_, in order to prove himself hunter
no less than cook, went out hunting, but shot a tom-cat instead of
a hare, which he then served up to the company sauced with his most
consummate art. This is no doubt a reference to the Light theory of
Newton. We have here under the guise of the hare-pie which the cook
tried in vain to elaborate out of a cat a reflection of that abortive
type of physical science which the mathematician will assume to be
something better than it is. These parables of Goethe frequently have
a strong touch of drollery about them, an aspect which they share with
his fables by the help of which he was wont to shed himself of life's
disappointments.
(_b_) _The Proverb_
The _proverb_ forms as it were the middle point of this sphere. In the
form of their execution, that is to say, proverbs lean at one time in
the direction of the fable, at another to that of the apologue. They
give us a particular case selected for the most part from the daily
walk of mankind, which, however, is to be interpreted universally. Take
the example, "One hand washes the other," or those others, "Every one
wheels before his own door," "Who digs a grave for another, falls into
it himself," "Bake a pudding for me and I will staunch your thirst,"
and others like them. To wise saws of this type belong the many
apophthegems that Goethe has contributed to modern literature, often
of exquisite grace and profound to a degree. These are not modes of
comparison of the type that the general significance and the concrete
phenomenon are opposed to one another in separation, but the former is
immediately expressed with the latter.
(_c_) _The Apologue_
The _apologue_ may be regarded as a parable, which not only serves
in the way of _comparison_ to render visible a general significance,
but rather in this its very form reproduces and expresses the general
moral, the same being actually included in the particular case,
which is, however, related as only a single example. Conformably to
this definition we may call Goethe's "Der Gott und die Bajadere" an
apologue. Here we find the Christian tale of the repentant Magdalene
reclothed in accordance with Hindoo ideas. The Bajadere[85] exemplifies
the same humility, a like strength of love and faith; God puts her to
the proof, an ordeal she completely sustains, and her exaltation and
reconciliation follows. In the apologue also narrative is so extended
that the outcome of it furnishes the moral itself, bare of any parallel
to support it, as may be illustrated from "The Treasure-Finder":
/$
Work by day and guests at night,
Weeks of moil, feasts of delight,
Such the Future's spell for thee.
$/
3. THE METAMORPHOSIS[86]
The _third_ mode we have to discuss in its contrast to the fable,
parable, proverb, and apologue, is the _metamorphosis._ This is no
doubt of a kind which is both symbolical and mythological; it sets
forth, however, expressly furthermore the natural in its opposition
to the spiritual. That is to say, it confers on an object immediately
present to sense such as a rock, animal, flower, or spring the
peculiar significance of being a _delapsus_ and a _punishment_ of
spiritual existences. Such are the examples of Philomela, the Pieredes,
Narcissus, and Arethusa, all of whom, through some false step, passion,
transgression or the like, became subject to irreparable guilt or pain,
and for this reason were deprived of the freedom of spiritual life,
and united to the substance of physical nature. From one point of view
Nature is not regarded merely under its external and prosaic aspect,
simply, that is, as mountain, river-source, tree and so forth, but it
further receives a content which is bound up with some action or event
of spiritual life. The rock is not simply stone, but Niobe herself, who
weeps for her children. From the other point of view this human action
implies guilt of some kind, and this metamorphosis into the physical
phenomenon is accepted as a degradation of Spirit.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish these metamorphoses of human
individuals or gods very sharply from the genuine type of _unconscious
symbolism._ To return to Egypt, for example, the Divine is here in
part immediately envisaged in the mysterious and secluded intension
of animal life, partly, too, the real symbol is here a natural form
which is immediately associated with a wider significance cognate to
it, despite the fact that this form is unable to supply the determinate
existence fully commensurate with it; and this is so for the reason
that neither in respect to its form or its content has unconscious
symbolism arrived at the free outlook of Spirit. Metamorphosis, on
the contrary, emphasizes the essential distinction between Nature and
Spirit, and by doing so marks the _passage_ from that which is both
symbolical and mythological to that which is in the _strict sense_
mythological, under, that is to say, a conception of the latter, which,
albeit that it proceeds in its myths from a concrete fact of Nature
such as sun, sea, rivers, trees, earth, and the like, nevertheless,
further and expressly sets this purely natural aspect on one side and
apart, divesting such natural phenomena of their inner content and
individualizing the same as a spiritual Power in the adequate artistic
form of gods clothed in the lineaments of humanity, whether we regard
them as external shape or spiritual activity. In this sense Homer and
Hesiod have given to the Greeks their mythology, a mythology which
by no means merely consists in the revelation of the significance of
such gods, by no means is merely an exposition of moral, physical,
theological, or speculative doctrine, but one that is a mythology in
the strict sense, that is the origin of a spiritual religion under the
genuine guise of our humanity.
In the Metamorphoses of Ovid the most heterogeneous material is brought
together quite apart from the entirely modern spirit in which myth is
treated. Beside the mere aspect of metamorphosis, which could here in
general terms only be conceived as a kind of mythical representation,
we have the specific character[87] of this type raised in an
exceptional way in these narrations, in which embodiments of this sort,
which are commonly accepted as symbolical, or are already received in
their entirely mythical character, appear to have been converted into
metamorphoses, and that which is elsewhere united is so presented as to
assert an opposition between its significance and form, and the passage
of the one into the other. In this way, for instance, the Phrygian
or Egyptian symbol, the wolf, is so separated from its intrinsic
significance, that the same is converted into a previous existence if
not actually into the kingship of the Sun, and the existence of the
wolf is conceived as resulting from an act of that human existence. In
the same way in the song of the Pierides the Egyptian gods, the ram,
the cat, and so forth are imaged as such animal forms, in which the
mythical gods of Greece, Jupiter, Venus, and the rest have concealed
themselves from sheer fright. The Pierides themselves, however, by
way of punishment, in that they dared to rival the Muses with their
singing, are changed into woodpeckers.
Looked at from another side it is equally necessary, with a view to
securing the more accurate definition, which the content wherein the
significance consists essentially carries, that we distinguish the
metamorphosis from the fable. That is to say in the fable the binding
together of the moral with the natural fact is an association that is
_harmless_; for in this the thing of Nature, regarded under the mode
in which it differs in its natural aspect from Spirit, does not affect
the significance, although there are certainly single examples of the
fables of Aesop, which, with but slight alteration, would be instances
of metamorphosis. As such may be cited the forty-second fable of the
bat, the thorn-bush, and the diver, whose instincts are explained as
due to the ill-luck of former experiences.
And here we must end our passage through this the first circle of the
comparative type of art. It started from that which was immediately
present to sense, that is, the concrete phenomenon. We proceed now from
the point we have arrived at to examine a further kind of significance
which the type unfolds.
B. COMPARISONS, WHICH IN THEIR IMAGINATIVE PRESENTMENT HAVE THEIR
ORIGIN IN THE SIGNIFICANCE.
Forasmuch as the severation of significance from embodiment is the
hypostasized form for consciousness, within which the relation of both
originates independently, it is both possible and inevitable that in
the articulation of the self-subsistency of one side no less than
the other a start should be made not only from external existence,
but conversely and as emphatically from that which is _immediately
present_ to the conscious subject, in other words general conceptions,
reflections, emotions, and principles of thought. For this inward
aspect is equally with the images of external objects a subject-matter
present to consciousness and in its independence of that which is
external proceeds on its way from its own resources. In the case,
then, where we find the significance is the point of departure, the
expression, that is, the reality, appears as the _modus formulandi_,
which is abstracted from the concrete world in order to give a visible
and sensuously defined shape to the significance regarded as abstract
content.
Owing, however, to the reciprocally indifferent relation under which
both sides confront each other, this association which binds the two
sides together is, as we have already seen, no essentially explicit and
necessary union; consequently the relation, such as it is, that is no
actual reflection of objective fact, is rather a _product_ of _active
mind_, which no longer even disguises this its fundamental character,
but rather deliberately exposes it in the form of its representation.
The very embodiment possesses this binding together of form and
content, soul and body, under the guise of concrete _animation_[88],
as essentially and explicitly the substantial union of both sides
in the soul as in the body, in the content as in the form. In the
case before us, however, what is presupposed by consciousness is the
dislocation of the two sides, and consequently their association is the
vivification of the significance simply for consciousness by means of
a shape external to it, and an indication of a real existence, equally
subjective in its character through the relation of the same to the
general conceptions, emotions, and thoughts common to humanity. For
this reason what is mainly emphasized in these forms of comparative art
is the subjective art of _the poet_ in his creative capacity, and in
complete works of art we have mainly in our attitude to this particular
aspect of them to separate that which strictly is appurtenant to their
subject-matter and its necessary embodiment from that which is attached
to them by the poet as mere ornament and embellishment. Such accessory
detail, which we cannot fail to distinguish, that is, consisting
mainly of images, similes, allegories, and metaphor, is precisely
that part of his work in virtue of which he earns his title to fame
with most people, a tendency which is all the more common because it
indirectly bears witness to the insight and subtlety which enables such
critics to discover our poet and draw attention to that aspect of his
invention which is so entirely his own. But for all that, as we have
already observed, in genuine works of art such forms as those we are
discussing can only be regarded as accessory, although we doubtless do
find in previous works on _Poetics_ such incidental features treated as
precisely those which go to make the poet.
Furthermore however, though unquestionably in the first instance
the two sides which have to be associated stand in a relation of
indifference to one another, yet in order to justify the subjective
relation and comparison, the embodiments must also in the character of
its content itself include the same relations and qualities under a
cognate mode to that which the significance intrinsically possesses;
the grasp of this similarity is, in fact, the one sure ground upon
which the setting forth of the significance in union with this specific
form rather than any other, and the envisagement of such import by
its means is based. Lastly, inasmuch as we begin here, not from the
concrete phenomenon, by the abstraction of a general characteristic
from that, but conversely from this universal itself, which the
intention is to have reflected in an image, the significance secures
the position which makes it stand out actually as the real object, and
as such is predominant over the sensuous picture which is the _modus_
of its envisagement.
The series in which we propose now to examine the particular types we
have mentioned as belonging to this phase of comparative art may be
indicated as follows:
_First_ in order, as most cognate to the previous stage, the _riddle_
will enlist our attention.
_Secondly_, we have to examine the _allegory_, in which as the main
feature we shall find the abstract significance assert a mastery over
the external form.
_Thirdly_, we have the class of the comparison in its strict sense;
_metaphor, image_, and _simile._
1. THE RIDDLE
The true symbol is essentially enigmatical in so far as the
externality, by means of which a general significance is made apparent,
still differs from the import it is intended to express: in other words
it thereby raises the doubt as to what is the exact signification
applicable to the form. The riddle, however, appertains to conscious
symbolism, and an obvious distinction between it and the genuine
symbol is to be found in the fact that in the former case the meaning
is clearly and fully _recognized_ by the propounder of it, and the
form which veils that which is to be interpreted by it is therefore
_intentionally_ selected for this very purpose. The genuine symbol is
both before and after the act of selection an unsolved problem, the
riddle, on the contrary, is essentially a problem that is solved. It is
therefore with very good reason that Sancho Panza exclaims: "I should
much prefer to hear the solution first and the riddle afterwards."
(_a_) _First_, then, in the invention of the riddle, the point from
which the process starts, is the apprehended meaning, the signification
of it.
(_b_) The _second_ step consists in the intentional selection of
traits of character and other qualities from the common experience of
the external world, which--such is always the aspect of Nature and
external objects of every kind--are placed relatively to one another
in piecemeal fashion, and in thus setting them forth in disparate
contiguity, which makes their singularity the more striking. And
inasmuch as they are so placed they are without the enfolding unity
of mind, and their array and association intentionally distract has so
far no intrinsic significance whatever. And yet for all that, and this
is the other aspect of the riddle, they do expressly point to a unity
in relation to which even traits to all appearance most heterogeneous
contain, notwithstanding, both a real sense and significance.
(_c_) This unity, which may be styled the subject of these distract
predicates, is just the simple preconception, the word that solves
our riddle, to discover or divine which from the apparently confused
medley of the mode under which it is propounded is the riddle's
problem. Thus interpreted we may call the riddle the facetiousness of
symbolism, aware that it is such which puts to the proof acuteness
of insight and aptness at putting things together, and finally, by
stimulating the zest of solution, breaks into and destroys the very
mode of presentation it has itself set up. In the main we shall find
this, form, therefore, most employed in human speech, though we
may find exceptional examples of it also in the plastic arts[89],
architecture, horticulture, and painting. With regard to its historical
appearance the East is first and foremost responsible, and we may date
its advent in that intermediate and transitional period out of the
more obtuse type of symbolism into one of more intelligent knowledge
and comprehension. Entire peoples and historical epochs have taken
delight in the solution of such problems. It also plays an important
part in the Middle Ages among the Arabs and the Scandinavians, and as a
particular example it is much in evidence in the minstrel tourneys on
the Wartburg. In modern times it is mainly under the more modest guise
of recreation and purely social pleasantry that we cross it.
In the riddle we have opened a practically limitless field for
witty and striking conceits, which in their reference to any given
circumstance, occurrence, or object take the form of a play upon words
or an epigrammatical sentence. On the one hand we have presented
an object trite to a degree, on the other some conceit of the mind
which emphasizes unexpectedly with conspicuous force some aspect
or relation, which we failed to perceive in that object on first
confronting it, and which now attaches to it the light of a new
significance.
2. THE ALLEGORY
The counterpart to the riddle in this sphere of comparative art, where
the point of departure is from the generality of the significance,
is the _allegory._ From a certain point of view this form, no less
than the former, endeavours to make more visible to us the definite
qualities of a general conception through qualities in materially
concrete objects which are cognate therewith; but in contrast to that
form this is not done in the interest of a partial concealment and
a mysterious problem; rather it is now quite the other way with the
express object of absolute revealment; to an extent, in fact, that all
which is external, and is as such utilized by it, must become through
and through transpicuous with the significance which has to make its
appearance therein.
(_a_) It is therefore in the first place concerned to personify
abstract conditions of a general character or similar qualities
both from the human and the natural world, such as religion, love,
justice, strife, fame, war, peace, the seasons, death, and the like,
and conceive them under the mode of _personality._ This subjective
aspect, however, is neither in respect to its content nor its external
form in itself either a real subject or individual, but persists as
the abstraction of a general conception, whose content is merely
the _barren_ form of subjectivity which may be called as truly a
grammatical subject[90]. In other words an allegorical being, despite
every attempt to clothe it in the lineaments of humanity, entirely
falls short of concrete individuality, whether it be a Greek god, a
saint, or any other genuine example. It is, in fact, so forced to
pare away[91] from the substance of subjectivity, in order to make it
conform with the abstract character of its significance, that all
the true definition of individuality disappears. It is therefore only
a just criticism of allegory to say that it is frosty and cold, and,
having regard to the abstract quality of its significances, even in the
point of invention, that it is rather the result of the matter-of-fact
understanding than that of the complete vision and emotional depth
of genuine imagination. Poets, such as Virgil, for example, are
particularly ready to give us examples of allegorical individualization
simply because they are unable to create gods of the Homeric type of
personality.
(_b_) _Secondly_, however, the significant character of allegorical
material is at once _defined_ in its abstraction, and only by means of
such definition is it intelligible; the expression of such particular
aspects, for the reason that it is not immediately unfolded in that
which is in the first instance a purely _generalized_ conception of
personality, is consequently forced to appear alongside of the subject,
simply as the predicates which elucidate the same. This separation of
subject from predicate, generality from particularity, is the second
feature of the frostlike appearance of the allegory. The envisagement
of the determinate and specific qualities is borrowed from the modes of
expression, activity, and resultant effects which make their appearance
in virtue of the significance, when that secures its realized form
in concrete existence, or from the various means which subserve it
in its true realization. For example, war is delineated through
weapons, cannons, drums, and standards, etc.; the yearly seasons, by
an enumeration of the flowers and fruits, which pre-eminently spring
up under the favouring influence of the particular seasons. Objects
of this kind may further receive purely symbolical relations, as, for
instance, Justice may be brought home to our minds by means of the
scales and fillet, Death by that of the hour-glass and scythe. For the
reason, however, that the significance in allegory is the dominant
factor, and the more specialized presentment is subordinate to it
under an equally abstract form, for it is, after all, itself merely
an abstraction, the embodiment of such definable characteristics only
secures the validity of an _attribute_ pure and simple.
(_c_) In this way the allegory is under both these aspects without
vital warmth. Its general personification is empty, the definite mode
of its externalization is only a sign, which taken independently has
no longer any meaning, and the _centrum_, which is thus constrained to
gather up the variety of the attributes into a focus does not possess
the potency of a truly subjective unity which is itself self-embodied
in its real and determinate existence inter-related throughout, but is
rather a purely abstract form, for which the substantial filling-up
with particular traits, which, as we have seen, never succeed in rising
above the rank of the formal attribute, remains as something external.
Consequently we may say that in so far as the allegory sets up any
claim to real self-consistency, in which it personifies its abstraction
and their delineation, it is not to be taken seriously. In other
words, that which is both implicitly and explicitly self-substantive
is unable really to conform with an allegorical being. The _Dikê_
of the ancients, for instance, is not on all fours with allegorical
individualization. She is universal Necessity personified, eternal
Justice, the universally potent subject, the absolute substantivity of
the relations which co-ordinate Nature and spiritual Life, that is, she
is the absolute Self-subsistent itself, in the train of whom all other
individuals are bound, whether gods or men. Herr Frederick von Schlegel
has, it is true--we have already referred to the fact--ventured the
opinion that every work of art must of necessity be an allegory. Such
an expression of opinion is only true if limited to the sense that
every work of art must contain a general idea and a significance which
is itself essentially true. What we have above, on the contrary,
included under the term allegory is a mode of presentation which only
conforms to the notion of art incompletely, being itself no less
in content than in form subordinate to it. Every human event and
development, every relation in which life is concerned, possesses no
doubt intrinsically an aspect of universality, which may be emphasized
as such, but abstractions of this kind are already to be found in the
general contents of consciousness, and merely to assert them in their
prosaic aspect of generality and external delineation, which is the
point where the allegory halts, is still to fall short of the true
sphere of art.
Winckelmann has also written an immature work on allegory, in which he
has ranged together a large number of examples, but failed for the
most part to distinguish those which exemplify the symbol and allegory
respectively.
Among the particular arts within which we find examples of the
allegory, poetry is really acting contrary to its laws when it takes
refuge in such a mode of presentment; sculpture on the contrary is in
most directions barely complete without it, more especially modern
sculputure, which freely admits of that which is native to portraiture,
and so must avail itself of allegorical figures in order to delineate
more closely the relative aspects under which the individual
presentment is posed. On Blucher's monument, for example, which has
been raised to him here in Berlin, we find both the genius of Fame and
Victory, although, having regard to the general treatment of the war of
liberation, this allegorical aspect is once more set aside by means of
a series of particular scenes such as the departure of the army, its
march, and victorious return. Generally speaking, however, where the
subject of sculpture is portraiture the sculptor will avail himself
gladly of allegorical representation as offering to the simplicity
of his central figure the contrast of environment and variety. The
ancients on the other hand, on their sarcophagi for example, more
frequently made use of general mythological representations of such
figures as Sleep, Death, and the like.
Allegory generally is far less common in the antique than it is in
the romantic art of the Middle Ages, although it must be added that
such romance as it possesses is not really referable to allegory. The
frequent appearance of allegorical conception at this particular epoch
of human history is to be thus explained. From a certain point of
view we find that the content of the Middle Ages is preoccupied with
particular types of individuality and the personal aims, generally
focussed in love and honour, and resulting in vows, wanderings, and
adventures, which are common to them. Individuals of this type and the
events of such lives invariably offer the imagination a wide scope
for the inventive faculties, and the composition of accidental and
capriciously imagined collisions and their resolution. On the other
hand, in direct contrast to this motley show of worldly adventure we
have the universal, taking it here as the stability of the ordinary
relations and conditions of life, a universal which is not, as was
the case in the ancient world, individualized in the figures of
self-subsistent gods; consequently we find it freely and naturally
emphasized in independent isolation as such universality alongside
of these particular types of personality and their specific modes
of appearance and activity. If the artist therefore happens to have
before his mind the general conditions of life we have adverted to,
and assuming that he is desirous of giving artistic embodiment to them
in some form other than the accidental mode common to his age, that
he wishes, in short, to emphasize their universality, he has no other
alternative than to accept the allegorical type of presentment. This is
precisely what we find in the sphere of religion.
The Virgin Mary, Christ, the actions and dramatic events of apostolic
history, the saints with their penances and martyrdoms, are, it is
true, even here individualities in the full sense; but Christendom
is also to an equal extent concerned with the general conceptions of
abstract spiritual qualities, such as will not comply with the concrete
definition of actual persons inasmuch as the relation of _universality_
is precisely the mode under which they are presented, of which examples
are Love, Faith, and Hope. And generally the truths and dogmas of
Christendom are independently cognized by the religious consciousness,
and a main interest even of their poetry consists in this that these
doctrines are emphasized in their _universal_ aspect, that Truth is
known and believed in as _universal_ truth. In that case, however, it
is necessary that the concrete presentation should remain a subordinate
factor, itself external to the content, and allegory is just the form
which satisfies this want in the easiest and most sufficient way.
Conformably to this the divine comedy of Dante is full of allegorical
matter. Theology, for example, in this poem is run together in fusion
with the image of his beloved lady Beatrice. This personification,
however, wavers in the lines of its delineation; and this uncertainty
of outline is that which constitutes the beauty of it, and places it
halfway between genuine allegory and a vision of his youthful love.
In the ninth year of his life he looked on her for the first time:
she appeared to him no daughter of mortal men, but of God. His fiery
Italian nature conceived a passion for her, which the years failed to
extinguish. And conscious that it was she who awoke in him the genius
of poetry he finally sets himself the task, after he had lost in her
that which was most loved in the fairest flower of its promise, of
composing that wonderful monument of the most intimate and personal
religion of his heart in the poetic masterpiece of his life.
3. METAPHOR, IMAGE, SIMILE
The _third_ sphere of content attached to the riddle and the allegory
consists in the _imaged thing_ generally. The riddle veiled the still
independently cognized significance and the mode of its shaping in
cognate, albeit heterogeneous and distantly placed traits of definition
was still of most importance. Allegory on the contrary emphasized
the perspicuity of the significance so strongly as the predominant
aim, that the personification and its attributes appear deposed to
the rank of mere signs. The imaged thing now connects this clarity of
allegorical expression with that impulse of the riddle to envisage the
significance which stands out clearly before the mind in the form of an
externality cognate with it; the result, however, is not that it gives
rise to problems which have first of all to be solved, but rather that
the imaged shape appears, by means of which the preconceived conception
is revealed with absolute transparency, notifying itself as that which
it really is.
(_a_) _The Metaphor_
The _first_ point we have to draw attention to in the _metaphor_ is
this, that it may be accepted at once as essentially a simile, in so
far as it expresses clear and self-subsistent significance in a similar
phenomenon of reality comparable with it. In the comparison as such,
however, both sides of the comparison, that is the real meaning and
the image, are definitely kept apart from each other, while on the
contrary in the metaphor this separation, albeit it is essentially
present, is _not_ as yet clearly _posited._ For this reason Aristotle
long ago distinguished comparison and metaphor by his statement that
a "how" is added to the former which is absent from the latter. In
other words the metaphorical expression specifies but _one_ aspect,
the image. In the context, however, to which the image is attached,
the real significance which is intended lies so near that it is at
the same time immediately asserted without any direct separation of
it from the image. When it is said, for example: "the Spring-time
of these cheeks," or "a sea of tears," we are inevitably forced to
accept such an expression as an image rather than an actual fact,
an image whose significance the context at the same time expressly
designates. In the symbol and allegory the relation of actual meaning
to external form is not asserted either so immediately or necessarily.
From the fact that an Egyptian staircase consists of nine stages,
and a hundred other circumstances of similar pregnancy, it is only
the adept, the connoisseur, and the professor who will derive a
symbolical significance, and doubtless will scent out and discover
much that is both mystical and symbolical into the bargain, which is
so much ingenuity of research thrown away for the reason that what is
discovered is not there. This may have happened often enough to my
honoured friend Creutzer, no less than our latter-day Platonists and
the commentators of Dante.
(_a_) In range and variety of form it is impossible to exhaust the
resources of metaphor; its definition, however, is simple. It is a
wholly abbreviated comparison, in which we find, as a fact, image and
significance are not as yet set in opposition to one another, but only
the image is introduced by it; at the same time, however, the meaning
which is thus attached to the image is not its real meaning; this is as
it were effaced, and by virtue of the content in which it is set we are
enabled to recognize the significance which is really intended in the
image itself, albeit that meaning is not expressly asserted.
For the reason, however, that the meaning that is thus rendered
intelligible under the image only comes to light by virtue of the
context, the significance which is expressed in metaphor cannot claim
the importance of an independent artistic presentation; their mode of
appearance is purely incidental, so that metaphors, in a still more
emphatic degree, can only be employed as the external embellishment of
an essentially independent work of art.
(_β_) The metaphor is mainly used in the expressions of speech, which
we may usefully consider in this relation under the following aspects.
(_αα_) In the first place every language includes within its own
compass a host of metaphors. They arise from the fact that a word,
which in the first instance merely designates something entirely
sensuous, is carried over into a spiritual sphere. "_Grasp"_,
"_comprehend"_[92], and generally a number of words connected with
the processes of thought, have in regard to their original meaning a
content that is wholly sensuous, which is consequently abandoned and
exchanged for the meaning applicable to mind; the first meaning is
sensuous, the second spiritual.
(_ββ_) By degrees, however, the metaphorical aspect disappears in the
general use of such a word, which as the current coin of language is
converted from an expression which is not strictly accurate to one that
is so, the effect of this process being that image and import, owing
to the habitual frequency with which the latter is only conceived in
the former, cease to differ from one another, and the image merely
immediately presents the abstract significance itself instead of a
concrete mode of vision[93].
When we take, for example, the word "grasp" in the sense applicable to
mental life it entirely escapes us that there is any sensuous relation
implied between the hand and external objects[94]. In living languages
this distinction between genuine metaphor and words which already
through usage have fallen to the level of a mere means of expression
is readily established; the reverse is the case with dead languages,
for the reason that here mere etymology is unable finally to bring our
minds to a decision, inasmuch and in so far as the question does not
depend on the original source of that word, and its general development
in speech, but first and foremost on the fact whether a word which
has all the appearance of being used in a picturesque and metaphorical
sense had or had not already lost by habitual usage under a meaning
applying exclusively to spirit, and in the speech when alive, its first
sensuous significance and been absorbed wholly in that higher sense.
(_γγ_) When this takes place the invention of new metaphors, which
are the exclusive product of the poetical imagination becomes for the
first time a vital necessity. That in which this invention is mainly
concerned consists _first_ in transferring the phenomena, activities,
and conditions of a higher level of fact in a way that illustrates
the content of less important material, and in bringing to light
significances of such inferior matter in the form and image which
stands above them. The organic, for example, is by itself essentially
of higher importance than the inorganic, and to carry forward that
which has no life within, the range of vital phenomenal enhances its
expression. We may illustrate this with the saying of Ferdusi: "The
keenness of my sword _devours_ the brain of the lion, and _drinks_ the
dark blood of the courageous." In a yet more enhanced degree we find
the same result when that which is of Nature and sensuous is imaged,
and thereby raised and ennobled in the form of _spiritual_ phenomena.
So we have such common turns of speech as "_smiling_ fields," and
"_angry_ flood," or in the language of Calderon: "The waves _sigh_
beneath the burden of ships." In these examples that which exclusively
applies to humanity is diverted to the expression of Nature. The Latin
poets use such metaphorical language often enough, as we may find
in our Virgil, take the example: _Quum graviter tunsis gemit area
frugibus_ (Georg., III, 132).
Conversely and in the _second_ place that which pertains to mind is
brought in the same way more close to our powers of vision through the
image of natural objects. Such fanciful presentations, however, can
very readily degenerate into mere trifling and far-fetched conceits,
when that which is essentially without life receives notwithstanding
every appearance of individuality, and really spiritual activities are
assigned to it with perfect seriousness. The Italians more especially
have given themselves over to illusive trickery of this kind, and even
Shakespeare is not wholly free from them, as in that passage from
"Richard II" (Act V, sc. I), where he makes the King say to the Queen
on parting:
/$
For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue
And in compassion weep the fire out;
And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black
For the deposing of a rightful king.
$/
(_γ_) Finally, if we look at the aim and interest of that which is
metaphorical, the first thing which strikes us is that a word in the
strict sense is an independently intelligible expression, the metaphor
otherwise. The question consequently presents itself, what is the
reason of this twofold means of expression, or, to put it another way,
why is it that we have the metaphorical which essentially implies
this division? The common explanation is that metaphors are used to
give vivacity to poetical composition, and this animating effect is
the ground in virtue of which Heyne, in particular, insists on their
value. The vivacity consists in the support they offer to imaginative
vision in the direction of clear definition, divesting the word, which
is always something generalized, of its purely indefinite character,
and bringing it home to sense by means of an image. No doubt a greater
degree of vivacity is to be found in metaphors than in the strict
expressions of ordinary speech; genuine vitality, however, is not to
be sought for in metaphors, whether in isolation or combination, whose
figurative plasticity, it is true, may frequently include a relation,
which by good chance attaches at the same time to the expression an
increased perspicuity and a higher definition, but quite as often, if
every detail of the process of thought is thus figuratively emphasized
in isolation, makes the whole unwieldy, overloading it thus with its
emphasis on singular aspects.
The genius of metaphorical diction is consequently, as we shall have to
elucidate more closely in our consideration of simile, to be regarded
as responding to a need and potency of mind and the emotional life,
which will not rest satisfied with that which is entirely simple,
ordinary, and homely, but make an effort beyond this and over into
something more recondite under the attraction which distinction offers
and the impulse to co-ordinate contrasted effects. This binding
together has itself again various causes, which may be notified as
follows.
(_αα_) _First_, we have it for the sake of _reinforcing_ an effect. The
emotional life, under the pressure and movement of its passions, gives
visible utterance to these forces by means of the piling up of sensuous
image. More than this, it strives to express its own whirl and tumble,
or persistence in the ideas which crowd upon it by means of a similar
letting itself go into phenomena cognate with such a condition, and its
own free movement among images of the greatest variety. In Calderon's
supplication to the Cross Julia utters the following words when she
looks upon the dead body of her only just deceased brother, and her
lover, Eusebio, the man who has killed Lisardo, stands before her:
/$
O that I might close for ever
Eyes before this blood here guiltless,
Blood which cries for vengeance with its
Flooding stream of purple flowers!
Would that I could deem thee pardoned
In the rush of tears that blind thee:
Wounds and eyes are mouths which swallow
Lies which seek admittance never, etc.
$/
With a still more vehement burst of passion Eusebio starts back from
the sight of her, when Julia finally is for surrendering herself to
him, as he exclaims:
/$
Flaming sparks thine eyeballs scatter;
Every sigh is breath that scorches;
Every word is a volcano,
Every hair a scribbled lightning,
Every word is Death, and every
Soft caress is Hell's own anguish;
Such the horror stirs within me
As I see--O awful symbol,
Crucifix thy bosom carries.
$/
The human soul on the swell of its emotion keeps adding image on image
to that immediately confronting it, and with all this impetuous seeking
to and fro for new means of expression barely lays to rest its own
tumult.
(_ββ_) A _second_ rationale of the metaphorical consists in this that
the human soul, after adding to its own depth by this the motion of
its own life into the varied survey of objects cognate with it, is
stirred at the same time to cast itself free of the externality of
such objects, to the extent that it seeks to rediscover itself in what
is external; it transmutes that external in its own free activity,
and by clothing both itself and its passions in the forms of beauty,
proclaims furthermore its power to present in visible semblance its own
exaltation above the bare fact.
(_γγ_) A _third_ ground of figurative expression, and one of at
least equal force, may be found in the purely ribald exuberance of
the phantasy, which is unable to set before us an object in its own
outlines for what they are worth, or a significance in its unadorned
simplicity, but on all occasions hankers after some concrete embodiment
cognate with it, or is overmastered by the ingenuity of a personal
caprice, which, in order to escape the commonplace, abandons itself to
the charms of the piquant novelty, a caprice that is never satisfied
until it has discovered for us points of affinity in material the most
remote apparently from that before us, and has thereby related the same
to the most distant objects.
And we may here observe that it is not so much the _prosaic_ and
_poetic_ style generally as the style of the _classic_ world in
contrast with that of later periods which presents such a marked
difference in the pre-eminent importance they attach to genuine or
metaphorical expression respectively. It is not merely the Greek
philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, or the great historians and
orators, such as Thucydides and Demosthenes, but also the great poets,
Homer and Sophocles, who, albeit we find examples of the simile in all
them, remain on the whole, and without exception, constant in the use
of their direct form of expression[95]. Their plastic severity and
sterling substance will not permit them such a multifarious product,
as is bound up with the use of metaphor, nor will it suffer them, even
for the sake of gathering the so-called flowers of expression, to waver
fitfully in devious ways from their ideal mintage of the completely
simple and co-ordinate result as of one metal cast in one mould. The
metaphor, in fact, is always an interruption to the logical course of
conception and invariably to that extent a distraction, because it
starts images and brings them together, which are not immediately
connected with the subject and its significance, and for this reason
tend to a like extent to divert the attention from the same to matter
cognate with themselves, but strange to both. The prose of ancient
writers in the extraordinary clarity and flexibility of its utterance
and their poetry in the repose of its completely unfolded content[96],
are equally removed from the frequent use of metaphor by modern writers.
On the other hand it is particularly in the East, and above all the
later literature of Mohammedan poetry, which makes use of the indirect
or figurative modes of expression, and, indeed, finds them essential.
The same thing may be said, if less emphatically, of modern European
literature. The diction of Shakespeare, for instance, is full of
metaphor. The Spaniards, too, are very fond of this flowery region,
and, indeed, have wandered off into it to the point of the most
tasteless exaggeration and superfluity. Jean Paul falls under the
same charge. Goethe by virtue of the equal strength and clarity of
his vision to a less extent. Schiller, however, is even in his prose
exceedingly rich both in image and metaphor; in his case this is rather
due to his effort to bring really profound ideas within the range of
the imaginative vision without being forced to expound all they imply
for the mind in the technical language of philosophy. We behold and
find there the essential unity of the speculative reason reflected on
the mirror of Life as it stands before us.
(_b_) _The Image_
We may place the _image_ midway between the metaphor and the simile.
It has, in fact, so close an affinity with the metaphor that we may
regard it as merely a metaphor _fully amplified_[97], an aspect which
at the same time marks its very close resemblance to the simile; there
is, however, this distinction, that in the case of the image as such
the significance is not set forth in its independent opposition to
the concrete external object expressly compared with it. That which
we term the image arises when two phenomena or conditions, which by
themselves stand substantially apart, are placed in concurrence so that
one condition supplies the significance which is made intelligible
by means of the other. The first, that is to say, the fundamental
_modus_ of the definition constitutes here the relation of _independent
consistency_[98], and is the line of _division_ of the spheres in
their separation, from which both the significance and its image are
deduced; and that which is common to them, the qualities and relations
and so forth, are not, as in the symbol, the indefinite universal and
substantive itself, but the self-defined concrete existence on the one
side no less than on the other[99].
(_a_) Under a relation such as this the image may possess as its
significance a whole series of conditions, activities, contrasts, and
modes of existence, and manifest the same through a series of a similar
nature from an independent if cognate source, without emphasizing in
so many words the significance as such within the limits of the image.
The poem of Goethe, entitled "The Song of Mahomet," is of this kind.
It is merely the title here which shows us that in the image of a
rocky water-spring which, in the freshness of youth, leaps over the
cliff's edge into the abyss, and which then spreads away with the rush
of tributary springs down the plain, ever and anon taking up fraternal
rivers, which gives further a name to localities, and sees whole
towns subject to its glory, until it finally bears in the tumultuous
folds of its rapturous heart all these splendours, the brothers, its
possessions, its children, to the great source that awaits them--it
is, we repeat, merely the title which explains to us that in this
comprehensive and radiant image of a mighty river we have the first
bold appearance of Mahomet, then the rapid spread of his teaching,
and, finally, the deliberately planned attempt to bring all nations
to the _one_ faith set forth with such singular directness. We may
view in a similar way many of the Xenien of Goethe and Schiller, those
sentences edged in part with scorn, but as often the mere vehicle of
good spirits, which were flung at the public and its weak authors in
particular. Take the pair of distiches which follow, as an example:
/$
Stille kneteten wir Salpeter, Kohlen und Sewefel,
Bohrten Röhren, gefall' nun auch das Feuer work euch!
Einige steigen als leuchtende kugeln und andere zünden,
Manche auch werfen wir nur spielend das Aug' zu erfreun[100].
$/
Ay, we have in truth seen not a few rockets of this order changed
to dull ash, to the exceeding entertainment of the better half of
public opinion, only too delighted when the rabble of commonplace and
miserable quality, which had for a long time spreadeagled it far and
wide and laid down the law, received a genuine smack in the mouth and a
bucket of cold water over its precious body into the bargain.
(_β_) In these last examples there is, however, already a _second_
aspect brought to view, which in our consideration of the image
should be emphasized. In other words the content is in these cases
an _individual_ which acts, brings before us objects, experiences
specific states, etc., and then is reflected in the _image_ not as
such a subject, but merely with a reference to his particular actions,
workings, and experiences. The individual himself as subject is, on
the contrary, introduced without an image, and it is only his actions
and relations strictly viewed which contain the form of indirect
expression. Here, too, as in the case of the image generally, it is
not the _entire_ significance which is separated from its mode of
embodiment, but the subject is alone set forth independently, while
the definite content of that subject receives at the same time the
form of an image; and the result is that the subject is imagined in
such a way as though it was itself the means which supplied the imaged
form of their existence to the objects and actions in question. The
metaphorical relation is, in fact, ascribed to the individual subject
expressly named. This confusion, or at least interfusion of the direct
and indirect modes of expression has frequently been the subject of
adverse criticism, but we do not find very solid ground to support
it[101].
(_γ_) Orientals are to an extraordinary degree distinguished by the
bold use they make of this type of imagery. They will unite together
and intertwine in one image entirely _independent_ forms of existence.
Take for example this sentence of Hafiz: "The life-course of the
world is a bloodstained dagger, and the drops which fall therefrom
are crowns." Or that other: "The sword of the sun drips in the red of
morning with the blood of Night, over which it has won the victory."
Or again this: "No one has yet drawn aside the veil from the cheeks of
thought as Hafis since the day when the tips of the locks of the Word's
bride were curled." The meaning of this image may be apparently thus
expanded. Thought is the bride of the word; so Klopstock calls the word
the twin-brother of Thought, and since this bride has been adorned by
man with delicately turned words, no one is likely to be more competent
than Hafis to suffer the thought thus adorned to appear in the clarity
of its unveiled beauty.
(_c_) _The Simile_
From this last type of imagery we may proceed without a break to
the consideration of _simile._ For in the image we already find the
initial appearance of the independent and imageless expression of
this significance, the subject of the image being here designated.
The two types are, however, distinguished by this that in the simile
everything which exclusively manifests the image in a figurative form
is furthermore able to receive an independently subsistent mode of
expression as significance, which thereby appears alongside of its
image and is placed in comparison with the same. The metaphor and image
declare the significances without making that declaration explicit,
so that it is only the context, in which either metaphor or image
occur, which shows without disguise what their meaning veritably is
intended to be. In the simile, on the contrary, both aspects, image and
significance, albeit no doubt we find at one time it is the image, and
at another the significance which is most clearly and fully emphasized,
are kept completely apart and set forth each in its isolation, and only
then, and in such severation are related to one another in virtue of
the similarity of their content.
Viewed in this relation it is possible to characterize the simile as
to some extent merely a vain _repetition_, in so far, that is, as one
and the same content is reproduced in a twofold, or it may be threefold
or fourfold form. In part, too, we may even see in it a frequently
wearisome _superfluity_, for the reason that the significance is
already there as an independent factor, and requires no further mode
of figuration to render it intelligible. The question consequently
presses upon us here with even more insistence than in the case of the
image and metaphor, what essential interest and object there may be in
the employment of isolated examples or a whole number of similes. For
their use is not to be justified on the commonly received ground of
mere vivacity, and the contention that they increase the lucidity of
expression will assist us just as little. On the contrary similes make
a poem only too frequently insipid and overweighted, and an image or
metaphor by itself can possess a clarity fully as pronounced without
there being any previous necessity to attach the significance to either
as something still outside.
We must consequently conceive the object of the simile to consist in
this, that the subjective[102] imagination of the poet, however much
it has brought home to the artist's consciousness the content, which
it seeks to express, with distinctive emphasis according to its more
abstract generality and expresses it in this universal aspect, yet it
finds itself equally under a constraint to seek out a concrete form
for it, and to envisualize for itself in the phenomena of sense that
which already is clearly before the mind as its significance. Looked
at in this way we shall find that the simile is, no less than the
image and the metaphor, indicative of the bravery which invariably
distinguishes imaginative power when it faces its object, it matters
not what, it may be a single object of sense-perception, a definite
condition, or a general significance--the enterprise, that is, to bind
together with its own activity that which lies remote from it in its
external environment, and by so doing to carry away by force objects of
the greatest variety, and unite them to the interest which its unified
content possesses, and generally to annex to the matter in hand a whole
world of diversified phenomena. And this power of the imagination
continually to find out the new plastic shape, and cement together
heterogeneous material by means of the relations and associations of
sense is, in general terms, also the rational basis of the simile.
(_α_) In the _first_ place, then, this impulse to compare can find
satisfaction simply by virtue of the demand which it satisfies, without
bringing to light, that is to say, anything else in the brilliancy of
its images than the bravery of the imagination itself. And this is but
the same thing as that revelry[103] of imaginative power, which, more
particularly in the East, with all the easy-going tranquillity of the
South regales itself in the wealth and splendour of its images nor
seeks any other object, while it seduces the hearer to give himself up
to the same spirit. At the same time we are frequently astounded by
the amazing force, with which the poet surrenders himself to ideas of
the most startling contrasts, and displays a cunning of combination
which far exceeds all the effort of mere wittiness as an indication of
genius. Calderon, too, supplies us with many comparisons of this type,
more particularly in his pictures of important and splendid pageants
and festive processions, in his descriptions of chargers and cavaliers,
or in his reference to ships, which on one occasion he calls "birds
without pinions, and fish without fins."
(_β_) A _second_ and more intimate aspect of these comparisons is that
in virtue of which we find them to be a _tarrying by_ one and the same
object, which becomes thereby the substantial centre of a series of
other ideas remote from it, by pointing to or illuminating which the
interest of the content compared receives a tangible increase.
This protraction of the interest round one centre may be explained in
several ways.
(_αα_) As the _first_ we may draw attention to the _absorption_ of
the soul in the content, which is the source of its _animation_, and
which attaches itself so intimately to it, that it is unable to detach
itself from the permanent interest thus excited. We may at the same
time observe that a fundamental difference once more asserts itself in
this respect between the poetry of the East and the West resembling
that we have already adverted to our discussion of Pantheism. In
other words the Oriental is in his absorption less dominated by the
personal relation, and consequently without the languish and yearning
of self-interest: his longing, such as it is, remains a more impersonal
delight in the object under comparison, and consequently more of a
contemplation. He looks about him with a free mind, sees in everything
which surrounds him, everything which stirs either his mental faculties
or his heart, an existing image of that which actively concerns his
sense-life and his spiritual forces, and with which he abounds. This
type of the imagination which is free from all mere self-obsession,
delivered, I mean, from all morbid introspection discovers its
satisfaction in the figurative conception of the object itself, and
most of all when that object, by virtue of the comparison instituted,
is extolled, exalted, and declared in line with that which is most
glorious and beautiful. The West is in its general contrast more remote
from this impersonal spirit, and in its grief and pain more inclined to
languish and yearn itself away.
This dallying, as we may call it, is then pre-eminently an interest
of the _emotional_ life, more particularly of love, which delights
to take refuge in the objects of its suffering and its raptures; and
as often as it finds itself unable to break loose from such feelings
finds naught that is wearisome in the task of repainting the object
ever anew. The lover is above all things the prodigal in wishes, hopes,
and ever changing conceits. Among such conceits we have to reckon
the simile, to which love and the emotions generally have recourse,
all the more readily for the reason that they take up and absorb
the entire soul, and are themselves the independently motive source
of comparison. Whatever is their immediate content, is, that is to
say, a beautiful object arrested in its singularity, whether it be
the mouth, the eye, or the hair of the beloved. In such a state the
human soul is active, restless, and the states of joy and pain are
neither without life nor in repose, but full of activity and motion,
are up and down, which at least is continuous in this that it is for
ever bringing all material of whatever kind into relation with the
one emotional centre of the world of the heart. In other words the
interest of comparison has its root in the feeling itself, which is
insistently conscious of the fact, for example, that there are other
objects in Nature which are beautiful, or have given rise to pain and
so on. Consequently love draws these objects with the aid of the simile
into the sphere of its own content, and makes the same wider and more
universal thereby. If the object of the simile is, however, entirely
_isolated_ in its _material_ form, and brought into juxtaposition with
objects of a similar nature, we shall find, and particularly so where
similes of this sort are piled one on the top of another, that such
a composition is due to emotion of a still rather superficial order,
and to reflection equally wanting in depth; the result will be that
the variety which merely plays round an external material will readily
appear to us insipid and of no vital interest, because we have here
no spiritual relation interpenetrating it. We may illustrate such an
effect from the fourth chapter of the Song of Solomon where we find
the words: "Behold thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou
hast doves' eyes within thy locks; thy hair is as a flock of goats,
that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep
that are even shorn, which came up from the washing, whereof everyone
bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread
of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of
pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like a tower of David builded
for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of
mighty men. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,
which feed among the lilies[104]. Until the day break and the shadows
flee away." This _naïveté_ is to be met with in many of the comparisons
of Ossian. Take for example the words: "Thou art as snow on the
heather; thine hair is as mist on the kromla, when he curls himself up
on the rock, and glistens toward the gleam in the West; thine arms are
as two arrows in the halls of the mighty Fingal."
Of the same kind, only here in wholly a rhetorical way, are the
following words Ovid places in the mouth of Polyphemus (Met. XIII,
vv. 789-807): "Thou art more white, O Galatea, than the leaf of the
snow-white meadowland; more blooming than the fields, more slender than
the elm; more brilliant than glass, more arch than the tender little
roebuck; smoother than the shell ever-polished by the sea; more dear
than Winter's sun, or the shade in Summer; nobler than the fruit-tree,
more comely than the lofty plane." And so on through all the nineteen
hexameters, a description not wanting in rhetorical beauty, but as
the presentation of an emotion, which rouses little interest, itself
equally lacking in interest.
We may find many examples of this style of comparison in Calderon,
although a halt, by the way, of this kind is more suitable to lyrical
emotion simply, and fetters the march of drama far too insistently,
if it is not actually motived by the subject-matter. Don Juan, for
instance, during the progress of the action, describes at length in
this way the beauty of a veiled lady whom he had followed. This is what
he says to a third person:
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Natheless in despite and often
Through the gross and barriered darkness
Of that intranslucent veil,
Flashed a hand of sheen most splendid,
Mistress pure of rose and lily,
Princess, to whose matchless glory
E'en the snow's gleam paid obeisance,
Slave all murk of Aethiop moulding.
$/
The matter is wholly different, however, when any one capable of
_profound_ emotion, expresses his life through images and similes,
in which the most secret folds of spiritual feeling are unveiled,
the soul here either identifying itself with some scene of external
Nature, or making such a scene the counterfeit of a spiritual content.
We may cite Ossian once again in illustration of this better use of
image and comparison, although the range of objects which serve him
in such similitude is jejune, mainly restricted to clouds, mists,
storms, trees, streams, thistles, grasses, and other facts equally
obvious. Here is one of them: "The Present[105] brings joy to us, O
Fingal; it is as the sun on Kromla, when the hunter has mourned its
absence a whole year long and now it breaks forth from the clouds." In
another passage of the same writer we find these words: "Did not Ossian
hearken but now to a voice? Is it then the voice of the days that are
no longer? Ofttimes, oft as the evening suns, comes the memory of times
that are gone into my soul." And for another instance take this bit of
narration: "Pleasant are the words of song, saith Kuchullin, and dear
to the heart are the tales of times far away. They are as the quiet
dew of the morning on the hill of the roe-deer, when the sun trembles
faintly on his flank, and the pool lies motionless and blue in the
dale." In the case of Ossian this halting by the same emotions, and
their similitudes expresses the attitude of an old age which out of
weariness and exhaustion turns to sorrowful and painful memories. And
generally a recourse to comparisons is evidence of an inclination to
melancholy and effeminate emotion. The desire and interest of such a
soul lies far away and foregone; and for this reason we find as a rule
that, instead of bracing itself up manfully, it yields to its longing
to lose itself in something else. Many of the figurative expressions
of Ossian consequently are quite as much a response to this wholly
personal mood as they are a reflection of ideas mostly of a mournful
colour, and of the restricted circle beyond which he is unable to pass.
But, conversely, it is quite possible that _passion_, in so far as
it is able to concentrate its forces on one content, despite its own
unrest, with the object of finding a counterfeit of the soul in the
natural world around it, may fluctuate to and fro in a variety of
images and similitudes, which are all purely conceits of the fancy
over one and the same object. A fine example of this we have in that
monologue of Juliet from "Romeo and Juliet," in which she apostrophizes
the night as follows:
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Come, night; come Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back:
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
$/
(_ββ_) The similes of epic poetry as they come before us over and
over again in Homer stand out in a marked contrast to the above type
of almost purely lyrical simile in which sentiment is absorbed in the
heart of its content. In the former case the aim of the poet, when
he may by any chance wish to dally with the comparative mode around
some specific object, is, on the one hand, interested in raising us
over the active curiosity, expectancy, hope, and fear, by which we are
moved relatively to the several situations and exploits of his heroes
during the actual progress of events over, that is to say, the general
concurrencies of cause, action, and consequence, and in fixing our
attention upon the images which he places before us in their plastic
repose, purely for our contemplation, serene as the works of sculpture.
This repose, this absolution from the merely practical interest that
we may enter into that which he places visibly before our eyes comes
upon us with all the more force in so far as everything with which
he compares the object is taken from a field entirely remote from
it. Moreover, this halting round the simile possesses the further
significance that by virtue of this kind of twofold painting of the
same object its importance is emphasized, and is thus not permitted
to be whirled away in the mere shifting stream of the song and the
events it celebrates. Take, for example, what Homer says of Achilles,
when that hero, fired with anger, confronts Aeneas ("Iliad," XX, vv.
164-175):
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As when the harmful king of beasts (sore threatened to be slain
By all the country up in arms) at first makes coy disdain
Prepare resistance, but at last when anyone hath led
Bold charge upon him with his dart, he then turns yawning head,
Fell anger lathers in his jaws, his great heart swells, his stern
Lasheth his strength up, sides and thighs waddle with stripes to learn
Their own power, his eyes glow, he roars, he leaps to kill,
Secure of killing: so his power then rous'd up to his will
Matchless Achilles, coming on to meet Anchises' son[106].
$/
Much in the same spirit he speaks of Pallas, when she averted the arrow
which Pandaros had let fly against Menelaus ("Iliad," IV, vv. 130-131):
"She did not forget him, and warded off the arrow e'en as a mother
flicks away some fly from her son, as he lies in sweet slumber."
And again further on when the arrow, notwithstanding, wounds Menelaus
(vv. 141-146):
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Yet forth the blood flow'd, which did much his royal person grace,
And show'd upon his ivory skin, as doth a purple dye
Laid, by a dame of Caïra, or lovely Maeony,
On ivory, wrought in ornaments to deck the cheeks of horse;
Which in her marriage room must lie; whose beauties have such force,
That they are wish'd of many knights, but are such precious things,
That they are kept for horse that draw the chariots of kings;
Which horse, so deck'd, the charioteer esteems a grace to him;
Like these, in grace, the blood upon thy solid thighs did swim,
O Menelaus, etc[107].
$/
(_γ_) A _third_ motive cause of similes, quite distinct from that
of purely imaginative riot as also the self-absorbed sentiment or,
under its other aspect, the dallying round important objects with
the figurative power of the fancy, we have now to emphasize with
particular reference to dramatic poetry. The content of the drama is
made up of the conflict of passions, activities, pathos, actions, and
the accomplishment of the thing willed by the soul, a content which
does not, as in the case of the epic, take the form of a narrative of
past events, but the dramatic poet places the individuals themselves
before our eyes and makes them unfold their emotions personally in
an objective form, and their actions as taking place in the present:
his mediate position between ourselves and the objects represented
therefore ceases. Looked at from this point of view it would appear as
though in order to make this presence in Nature clear to us a primary
requirement of drama would be that the expression of passions and
the vehemence of their grief, consternation, and delight should be
painted as naturally as it was possible to paint it, and consequently
the simile would be here out of place. To let individuals, on the
very plane of their action, in the full storm of emotion, and in the
continuous strain of the busy world, speak much in the language of
metaphor or image is obviously, from the commonsense point of view,
an unnatural proceeding and injurious to the directness aimed at.
We are by the simile diverted from the immediate situation, and the
characters, whose actions and emotions are involved in it, to something
external and strange to it, which in short does not strictly belong to
it, as part of its own present; consequently the general course of the
dialogue must unavoidably appear to lag under the interruption thus
imposed. And for this reason it came about also in Germany when at
last our young bloods were all for freeing themselves from the fetters
of French rhetorical taste, that the Spaniards, Italians, and French
were regarded as artists who did nothing more than place their own
personal flights of fancy or witticism, their own conventional attitude
to society and elegance of speech in the mouth of their dramatic
characters in situations, too, when the very tempest of emotion cried
out for Nature's most direct expression to the exclusion of all other.
We find as a result of such an insistence on the principle of realism
that in many dramas, which hail from this time, the outcry of emotion,
with all the exclamatory signs and hyphens which may render its nudity
more visible, takes the place of a noble and dignified diction, rich
in image and simile. In much the same sense even English critics
have often charged Shakespeare with a superabundant and too varied
recourse to the simile, some of which he not unfrequently will attach
to characters in the full strain of personal bereavement, where the
stress of emotion least of all admits of the tranquillity necessary to
reflection, the attitude of mind which is indispensable to this type of
comparison. We may no doubt admit that now and again we meet with in
Shakespeare an exaggerated tendency to pile up image upon image, and
that his diction is thereby overweighted. At the same time we shall
see, if we examine the matter in all its bearings, that even in drama
the simile is entitled to a position essential to this form of poetry
and vital to its action.