My supposition that the artists imitated the poet is no disparagement to
them. On the contrary the manner of their imitation reflects the
greatest credit on their wisdom. They followed the poet without
suffering him in the smallest particular to mislead them. A model was
set them, but the task of transferring it from one art into another gave
them abundant opportunity for independent thought. The originality
manifested in their deviations from the model proves them to have been
no less great in their art than the poet was in his.
Now, reversing the matter, I will suppose the poet to be working after
the model set him by the artists. This is a supposition maintained by
various scholars.[44] I know of no historical arguments in favor of
their opinion. The work appeared to them of such exceeding beauty that
they could not believe it to be of comparatively recent date. It must
have been made when art was at its perfection, because it was worthy of
that period.
We have seen that, admirable as Virgil’s picture is, there are yet
traits in it unavailable for the artist. The saying therefore requires
some modification, that a good poetical description must make a good
picture, and that a poet describes well only in so far as his details
may be used by the artist. Even without the proof furnished by examples,
we should be inclined to predicate such limitation from a consideration
of the wider sphere of poetry, the infinite range of our imagination,
and the intangibility of its images. These may stand side by side in the
greatest number and variety without concealment or detriment to any,
just as the objects themselves or their natural symbols would in the
narrow limits of time or space.
But if the smaller cannot contain the greater it can be contained in the
greater. In other words, if not every trait employed by the descriptive
poet can produce an equally good effect on canvas or in marble, can
every trait of the artist be equally effective in the work of the poet?
Undoubtedly; for what pleases us in a work of art pleases not the eye,
but the imagination through the eye. The same picture, whether presented
to the imagination by arbitrary or natural signs, must always give us a
similar pleasure, though not always in the same degree.
But even granting this, I confess that the idea of Virgil’s having
imitated the artists is more inconceivable to me than the contrary
hypothesis. If the artists copied the poet, I can account for all their
deviations. Differences would necessarily have arisen, because many
traits employed by him with good effect would in their work have been
objectionable. But why such deviations in the poet? Would he not have
given us an admirable picture by copying the group faithfully in every
particular?[45]
I can perfectly understand how his fancy, working independently, should
have suggested to him this and that feature, but I see no reason why his
judgment should have thought it necessary to transform the beauties that
were before his eyes into these differing ones.
It even seems to me that, had Virgil used this group as his model, he
could hardly have contented himself with leaving the general embrace of
the three bodies within the serpents’ folds to be thus guessed at. The
impression upon his eye would have been so vivid and admirable, that he
could not have failed to give the position greater prominence in his
description. As I have said, that was not the time to dwell upon its
details; but the addition of a single word might have put a decisive
emphasis upon it, even in the shadow in which the poet was constrained
to leave it. What the artist could present without that word, the poet
would not have failed to express by it, had the work of art been before
him.
The artist had imperative reasons for not allowing the sufferings of his
Laocoon to break out into cries. But if the poet had had before him in
the marble this touching union of pain with beauty, he would certainly
have been under no necessity of disregarding the idea of manly dignity
and magnanimous patience arising from it and making his Laocoon suddenly
startle us with that terrible cry. Richardson says that Virgil’s Laocoon
needed to scream, because the poet’s object was not so much to excite
compassion for him as to arouse fear and horror among the Trojans. This
I am ready to grant, although Richardson appears not to have considered
that the poet is not giving the description in his own person, but puts
it into the mouth of Æneas, who, in his narration to Dido, spared no
pains to arouse her compassion. The cry, however, is not what surprises
me, but the absence of all intermediate stages of emotion, which the
marble could not have failed to suggest to the poet if, as we are
supposing, he had used that as his model. Richardson goes on to say,
that the story of Laocoon was meant only as an introduction to the
pathetic description of the final destruction of Troy, and that the poet
was therefore anxious not to divert to the misfortunes of a private
citizen the attention which should be concentrated on the last dreadful
night of a great city.[46] But this is a painter’s point of view, and
here inadmissible. In the poem, the fate of Laocoon and the destruction
of the city do not stand side by side as in a picture. They form no
single whole to be embraced at one glance, in which case alone there
would have been danger of having the eye more attracted by the Laocoon
than by the burning city. The two descriptions succeed each other, and I
fail to see how the deepest emotion produced by the first could
prejudice the one that follows. Any want of effect in the second must be
owing to its inherent want of pathos.
Still less reason would the poet have had for altering the serpents’
coils. In the marble they occupy the hands and encumber the feet, an
arrangement not less impressive to the imagination than satisfactory to
the eye. The picture is so distinct and clear that words can scarcely
make it plainer than natural signs.
Micat alter et ipsum
Laocoonta petit, totumque infraque supraque
Implicat et rabido tandem ferit ilia morsu.
· · · · ·
At serpens lapsu crebro redeunte subintrat
Lubricus, intortoque ligat genua infima nodo.
These lines are by Sadolet. They would doubtless have come with greater
picturesqueness from Virgil, had his fancy been fired by the visible
model. Under those circumstances he would certainly have written better
lines than those we now have of him.
Bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum
Terga dati, superant capite et cervicibus altis.
These details satisfy the imagination, it is true; but not if we dwell
upon them and try to bring them distinctly before us. We must look now
at the serpents, and now at Laocoon. The moment we try to combine them
into one picture, the grouping begins to displease, and appear in the
highest degree unpicturesque.
But these deviations from his supposed model, even if not unfortunate,
were entirely arbitrary. Imitation is intended to produce likeness, but
how can likeness result from needless changes? Such changes rather show
that the intention was not to produce likeness, consequently that there
has been no imitation.
Perhaps not of the whole, some may urge, but of certain parts. Good; but
what are the parts so exactly corresponding in the marble and in the
poem, that the poet might seem to have borrowed them from the sculptor?
The father, the children, and the serpents, both poet and sculptor
received from history. Except what is traditional in both, they agree in
nothing but the single circumstance that father and sons are bound by
the serpents’ coils into a single knot. But this arose from the new
version, according to which father and sons were involved in a common
destruction,—a version, as already shown, to be attributed rather to
Virgil, since the Greek traditions tell the story differently. If, then,
there should have been any imitation here, it is more likely to have
been on the side of the artist than of the poet. In all other respects
their representations differ, but in such a way that the deviations, if
made by the artist, are perfectly consistent with an intention to copy
the poet, being such as the sphere and limitations of his art would
impose on him. They are, on the contrary, so many arguments against the
supposed imitation of the sculptor by the poet. Those who, in the face
of these objections, still maintain this supposition, can only mean that
the group is older than the poem.