But, as already observed, the realm of art has in modern times been
greatly enlarged. Its imitations are allowed to extend over all visible
nature, of which beauty constitutes but a small part. Truth and
expression are taken as its first law. As nature always sacrifices
beauty to higher ends, so should the artist subordinate it to his
general purpose, and not pursue it further than truth and expression
allow. Enough that truth and expression convert what is unsightly in
nature into a beauty of art.
Allowing this idea to pass unchallenged at present for whatever it is
worth, are there not other independent considerations which should set
bounds to expression, and prevent the artist from choosing for his
imitation the culminating point of any action?
The single moment of time to which art must confine itself, will lead
us, I think, to such considerations. Since the artist can use but a
single moment of ever-changing nature, and the painter must further
confine his study of this one moment to a single point of view, while
their works are made not simply to be looked at, but to be contemplated
long and often, evidently the most fruitful moment and the most fruitful
aspect of that moment must be chosen. Now that only is fruitful which
allows free play to the imagination. The more we see the more we must be
able to imagine; and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.
But no moment in the whole course of an action is so disadvantageous in
this respect as that of its culmination. There is nothing beyond, and to
present the uttermost to the eye is to bind the wings of Fancy, and
compel her, since she cannot soar beyond the impression made on the
senses, to employ herself with feebler images, shunning as her limit the
visible fulness already expressed. When, for instance, Laocoon sighs,
imagination can hear him cry; but if he cry, imagination can neither
mount a step higher, nor fall a step lower, without seeing him in a more
endurable, and therefore less interesting, condition. We hear him merely
groaning, or we see him already dead.
Again, since this single moment receives from art an unchanging
duration, it should express nothing essentially transitory. All
phenomena, whose nature it is suddenly to break out and as suddenly to
disappear, which can remain as they are but for a moment; all such
phenomena, whether agreeable or otherwise, acquire through the
perpetuity conferred upon them by art such an unnatural appearance, that
the impression they produce becomes weaker with every fresh observation,
till the whole subject at last wearies or disgusts us. La Mettrie, who
had himself painted and engraved as a second Democritus, laughs only the
first time we look at him. Looked at again, the philosopher becomes a
buffoon, and his laugh a grimace. So it is with a cry. Pain, which is so
violent as to extort a scream, either soon abates or it must destroy the
sufferer. Again, if a man of firmness and endurance cry, he does not do
so unceasingly, and only this apparent continuity in art makes the cry
degenerate into womanish weakness or childish impatience. This, at
least, the sculptor of the Laocoon had to guard against, even had a cry
not been an offence against beauty, and were suffering without beauty a
legitimate subject of art.
Among the old painters Timomachus seems to have been the one most fond
of choosing extremes for his subject. His raving Ajax and infanticide
Medea were famous. But from the descriptions we have of them it is clear
that he had rare skill in selecting that point which leads the observer
to imagine the crisis without actually showing it, and in uniting with
this an appearance not so essentially transitory as to become offensive
through the continuity conferred by art. He did not paint Medea at the
moment of her actually murdering her children, but just before, when
motherly love is still struggling with jealousy. We anticipate the
result and tremble at the idea of soon seeing Medea in her unmitigated
ferocity, our imagination far outstripping any thing the painter could
have shown us of that terrible moment. For that reason her prolonged
indecision, so far from displeasing us, makes us wish it had been
continued in reality. We wish this conflict of passions had never been
decided or had lasted at least till time and reflection had weakened her
fury and secured the victory to the maternal sentiments. This wisdom on
the part of Timomachus won for him great and frequent praise, and raised
him far above another artist unknown, who was foolish enough to paint
Medea at the height of her madness, thus giving to this transient access
of passion a duration that outrages nature. The poet[24] censures him
for this, and says very justly, apostrophizing the picture, “Art thou
then for ever thirsting for the blood of thy children? Is there always a
new Jason and a new Creusa to inflame thy rage? To the devil with the
very picture of thee!” he adds angrily.
Of Timomachus’ treatment of the raving Ajax, we can judge by what
Philostratus tells us.[25] Ajax was not represented at the moment when,
raging among the herds, he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking
them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these crazy
deeds of heroism, and meditating self-destruction. That was really the
raving Ajax, not because he is raving at the moment, but because we see
that he has been raving, and with what violence his present reaction of
shame and despair vividly portrays. We see the force of the tempest in
the wrecks and corpses with which it has strewn the beach.