But I will try to prove my conclusions by starting from first
principles.
I argue thus. If it be true that painting employs wholly different signs
or means of imitation from poetry,—the one using forms and colors in
space, the other articulate sounds in time,—and if signs must
unquestionably stand in convenient relation with the thing signified,
then signs arranged side by side can represent only objects existing
side by side, or whose parts so exist, while consecutive signs can
express only objects which succeed each other, or whose parts succeed
each other, in time.
Objects which exist side by side, or whose parts so exist, are called
bodies. Consequently bodies with their visible properties are the
peculiar subjects of painting.
Objects which succeed each other, or whose parts succeed each other in
time, are actions. Consequently actions are the peculiar subjects of
poetry.
All bodies, however, exist not only in space, but also in time. They
continue, and, at any moment of their continuance, may assume a
different appearance and stand in different relations. Every one of
these momentary appearances and groupings was the result of a preceding,
may become the cause of a following, and is therefore the centre of a
present action. Consequently painting can imitate actions also, but only
as they are suggested through forms.
Actions, on the other hand, cannot exist independently, but must always
be joined to certain agents. In so far as those agents are bodies or are
regarded as such, poetry describes also bodies, but only indirectly
through actions.
Painting, in its coexistent compositions, can use but a single moment of
an action, and must therefore choose the most pregnant one, the one most
suggestive of what has gone before and what is to follow.
Poetry, in its progressive imitations, can use but a single attribute of
bodies, and must choose that one which gives the most vivid picture of
the body as exercised in this particular action.
Hence the rule for the employment of a single descriptive epithet, and
the cause of the rare occurrence of descriptions of physical objects.
I should place less confidence in this dry chain of conclusions, did I
not find them fully confirmed by Homer, or, rather, had they not been
first suggested to me by Homer’s method. These principles alone furnish
a key to the noble style of the Greek, and enable us to pass just
judgment on the opposite method of many modern poets who insist upon
emulating the artist in a point where they must of necessity remain
inferior to him.
I find that Homer paints nothing but progressive actions. All bodies,
all separate objects, are painted only as they take part in such
actions, and generally with a single touch. No wonder, then, that
artists find in Homer’s pictures little or nothing to their purpose, and
that their only harvest is where the narration brings together in a
space favorable to art a number of beautiful shapes in graceful
attitudes, however little the poet himself may have painted shapes,
attitudes, or space. If we study one by one the whole series of pictures
proposed by Caylus, we shall in every case find proof of the justness of
these conclusions.
Here, then, I leave the Count with his desire to make the painter’s
color-stone the touchstone of the poet, and proceed to examine more
closely the style of Homer.
For a single thing, as I have said, Homer has commonly but a single
epithet. A ship is to him at one time the black ship, at another the
hollow ship, and again the swift ship. At most it is the well-manned
black ship. Further painting of the ship he does not attempt. But of the
ship’s sailing, its departure and arrival, he makes so detailed a
picture, that the artist would have to paint five or six, to put the
whole upon his canvas.
If circumstances compel Homer to fix our attention for a length of time
on any one object, he still makes no picture of it which an artist can
follow with his brush. By countless devices he presents this single
object in a series of moments, in every one of which it assumes a
different form. Only in the final one can the painter seize it, and show
us ready made what the artist has been showing us in the making. If
Homer, for instance, wants us to see the chariot of Juno, Hebe must put
it together piece by piece before our eyes. We see the wheels, the axle,
the seat, the pole, the traces and straps, not already in place, but as
they come together under Hebe’s hands. The wheels are the only part on
which the poet bestows more than a single epithet. He shows us
separately the eight brazen spokes, the golden fellies, the tires of
brass, and the silver nave. It would almost seem that, as there was more
than one wheel, he wished to spend as much more time in the description
as the putting on would require in reality.[101]
Ἥβη δ’ ἀμφ’ ὀχέεσσι θοῶς βάλε καμπύλα κύκλα,
χάλκεα ὀκτάκνημα, σιδηρέῳ ἄξονι ἀμφίς.
τῶν ἤτοι χρυσέη ἴτυς ἄφθιτος, αὐτὰρ ὕπερθεν
χάλκε’ ἐπίσσωτρα προσαρηρότα, θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι·
πλῆμναι δ’ ἀργύρου εἰσὶ περίδρομοι ἀμφοτέρωθεν.
δίφρος δὲ χρυσέοισι καὶ ἀργυρέοισιν ἱμᾶσιν
ἐντέταται, δοιαὶ δὲ περίδρομοι ἄντυγές εἰσιν.
τοῦ δ’ ἐξ ἀργύρεος ῥυμὸς πέλεν· αὐτὰρ ἐπ’ ἄκρῳ
δῆσε χρύσειον καλὸν ζυγόν, ἐν δὲ λέπαδνα
κάλ’ ἔβαλε, χρύσει’·
When Homer wishes to tell us how Agamemnon was dressed, he makes the
king put on every article of raiment in our presence: the soft tunic,
the great mantle, the beautiful sandals, and the sword. When he is thus
fully equipped he grasps his sceptre. We see the clothes while the poet
is describing the act of dressing. An inferior writer would have
described the clothes down to the minutest fringe, and of the action we
should have seen nothing.[102]
μαλακὸν δ’ ἔνδυνε χιτῶνα,
καλὸν νηγάτεον, περὶ δὲ μέγα βάλλετο φᾶρος·
ποσσὶ δ’ ὑπὸ λιπαροῖσιν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα,
ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄρ’ ὤμοισιν βάλετο ξίφος ἀργυρόηλον.
εἵλετο δὲ σκῆπτρον πατρώϊον, ἄφθιτον αἰεί·
How does he manage when he desires to give a more full and minute
picture of the sceptre, which is here called only ancestral and
undecaying, as a similar one in another place is only χρυσέοις ἥλοισι
πεπαρμένον,—golden-studded? Does he paint for us, besides the golden
nails, the wood, and the carved head? He might have done so, had he been
writing a description for a book of heraldry, from which at some later
day an exact copy was to be made. Yet I have no doubt that many a modern
poet would have given such heraldic description in the honest belief
that he was really making a picture himself, because he was giving the
painter material for one. But what does Homer care how far he outstrips
the painter? Instead of a copy, he gives us the history of the sceptre.
First we see it in the workshop of Vulcan; then it shines in the hands
of Jupiter; now it betokens the dignity of Mercury; now it is the baton
of warlike Pelops; and again the shepherd’s staff of peace-loving
Atreus.[103]
σκῆπτρον, τὸ μὲν Ἥφαιστος κάμε τεύχων·
Ἥφαιστος μὲν δῶκε Διὶ Κρονίωνι ἄνακτι,
αὐτὰρ ἄρα Ζεὺς δῶκε διακτόρῳ Ἀργειφόντῃ·
Ἑρμείας δὲ ἄναξ δῶκεν Πέλοπι πληξίππῳ,
αὐτὰρ ὃ αὖτε Πέλοψ δῶκ’ Ἀτρέϊ, ποιμένι λαῶν·
Ἀτρεὺς δὲ θνήσκων ἔλιπεν πολύαρνι Θυέστῃ,
αὐτὰρ ὃ αὖτε Θυέστ’ Ἀγαμέμνονι λεῖπε φορῆναι,
πολλῇσιν νήσοισι καὶ Ἄργεϊ παντὶ ἀνάσσειν.
And so at last I know this sceptre better than if a painter should put
it before my eyes, or a second Vulcan give it into my hands.
It would not surprise me to find that some one of Homer’s old
commentators had admired this passage as a perfect allegory of the
origin, progress, establishment, and final inheritance of monarchical
power among men. I should smile indeed were I to read that the maker of
the sceptre, Vulcan, as fire, as that which is of supreme importance to
the maintenance of mankind, typified the removal of the necessities
which induced the early races of men to subject themselves to a single
ruler; that the first king was a son of Time (Ζεὺς Κρονίων), revered and
venerable, who desired to share his power with a wise and eloquent man,
a Mercury (Διακτόρῳ Ἀργειφόντῃ), or to resign it wholly to him; that the
wise speaker, at the time when the young state was threatened by foreign
enemies, delivered his supreme authority to the bravest warrior (Πέλοπι
πληξίππῳ); that the brave warrior, after having subdued the enemies and
secured the safety of the realm, let this power play into the hands of
his son, who, as a peace-loving ruler, a beneficent shepherd of his
people (ποιμὴν λαῶν), introduced comfort and luxury; that thus the way
was opened, after his death, for the richest of his relations (πολύαρνι
Θυέστῃ) to obtain by gifts and bribery, and finally to secure to his
family for ever, as a piece of property obtained by purchase, that
authority which had originally been conferred as a mark of confidence,
and had been regarded by merit rather as a burden than an honor. I
should smile at all this, but it would increase my respect for a poet to
whom so much could be attributed.
But this is a digression. I am now considering the history of the
sceptre as a device for making us linger over a single object, without
entering into a tiresome description of its various parts. Again, when
Achilles swears by his sceptre to be revenged on Agamemnon for his
contemptuous treatment, Homer gives us the history of this sceptre. We
see it still green upon the mountains, the axe severs it from the parent
trunk, strips it of leaves and bark, and makes it ready to serve the
judges of the people, as the token of their godlike office.[104]
ναὶ μὰ τόδε σκῆπτρον, τὸ μὲν οὔ ποτε φύλλα καὶ ὄζους
φύσει, ἐπειδὴ πρῶτα τομὴν ἐν ὄρεσσι λέλοιπεν,
οὐδ’ ἀναθηλήσει· περὶ γάρ ῥά ἑ χαλκὸς ἔλεψεν
φύλλά τε καὶ φλοιόν· νῦν αὐτέ μιν υἷες Ἀχαιῶν
ἐν παλάμῃς φορέουσι δικασπόλοι, οἵτε θέμιστας
πρὸς Διὸς εἰρύαται.
Homer’s object was not so much to describe two staves of different shape
and material, as to give us a graphic picture of the different degrees
of power which these staves represented. One the work of Vulcan, the
other cut upon the hills by an unknown hand; one the old possession of a
noble house, the other destined to be grasped by the first comer; one
extended by a monarch over many islands and over all Argos, the other
borne by one from among the Greeks, who, in connection with others, had
been intrusted with the duty of upholding the laws. This was in fact the
difference between Agamemnon and Achilles; and Achilles, even in the
blindness of his passion, could not but admit it.
Not only when Homer’s descriptions have these higher aims in view, but
even when his sole object is the picture, he will yet break this up into
a sort of history of the object in order that the various parts, which
we see side by side in nature, may just as naturally follow each other
in his picture, and, as it were, keep pace with the flow of the
narrative.
He wants, for instance, to paint us the bow of Pandarus. It is of horn,
of a certain length, well polished, and tipped at both ends with gold.
What does he do? Does he enumerate these details thus drily one after
another? By no means. That would be telling off such a bow, setting it
as a copy, but not painting it. He begins with the hunting of the wild
goat from whose horns the bow was made. Pandarus had lain in wait for
him among the rocks and slain him. Owing to the extraordinary size of
the horns, he decided to use them for a bow. They come under the
workman’s hands, who joins them together, polishes, and tips them. And
thus, as I have said, the poet shows us in the process of creation, what
the painter can only show us as already existing.[105]
τόξον ἐύξοον ἰξάλου αἰγὸς
ἀγρίου, ὅν ῥά ποτ’ αὐτὸς στέρνοιο τυχήσας
πέτρης ἐκβαίνοντα, δεδεγμένος ἐν προδοκῇσιν,
βεβλήκει πρὸς στῆθος· ὁ δ’ ὕπτιος ἔμπεσε πέτρῃ.
τοῦ κέρα ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἑκκαιδεκάδωρα πεφύκει·
καὶ τὰ μὲν ἀσκήσας κεραοξόος ἤραρε τέκτων,
πᾶν δ’ εὖ λειήνας, χρυσέην ἐπέθηκε κορώνην.
I should never have done, were I to try to write out all the examples of
this kind. They will occur in numbers to every one familiar with Homer.