Experience shows that the poet can produce this degree of illusion by
the representation of other than visible objects. He therefore has at
his command whole classes of subjects which elude the artist. Dryden’s
“Ode on Cecilia’s Day” is full of musical pictures, but gives no
employment to the brush. But I will not lose myself in examples of this
kind, for they after all teach us little more than that colors are not
tones, and ears not eyes.
I will confine myself to pictures of visible objects, available alike to
poet and painter. What is the reason that many poetical pictures of this
class are unsuitable for the painter, while many painted pictures lose
their chief effect in the hands of the poet?
Examples may help us. I revert to the picture of Pandarus in the fourth
book of the Iliad, as one of the most detailed and graphic in all Homer.
From the seizing of the bow to the flight of the arrow every incident is
painted; and each one follows its predecessor so closely, and yet is so
distinct from it, that a person who knew nothing of the use of a bow
could learn it from this picture alone.[100] Pandarus brings forth his
bow, attaches the string, opens the quiver, selects a well-feathered
arrow never before used, adjusts the notch of the arrow to the string,
and draws back both string and arrow; the string approaches his breast,
the iron point of the arrow nears the bow, the great arched bow springs
back with a mighty twang, the cord rings, and away leaps the eager arrow
speeding towards the mark.
Caylus cannot have overlooked this admirable picture. What, then, did he
find which made him judge it no fitting subject for an artist? And what
in the council and carousal of the gods made that seem more adapted to
his purpose? The subjects are visible in one case as in the other, and
what more does the painter need for his canvas?
The difficulty must be this. Although both themes, as representing
visible objects, are equally adapted to painting, there is this
essential difference between them: one is a visible progressive action,
the various parts of which follow one another in time; the other is a
visible stationary action, the development of whose various parts takes
place in space. Since painting, because its signs or means of imitation
can be combined only in space, must relinquish all representations of
time, therefore progressive actions, as such, cannot come within its
range. It must content itself with actions in space; in other words,
with mere bodies, whose attitude lets us infer their action. Poetry, on
the contrary—