But, it may be urged, the signs employed in poetry not only follow each
other, but are also arbitrary; and, as arbitrary signs, they are
certainly capable of expressing things as they exist in space. Homer
himself furnishes examples of this. We have but to call to mind his
shield of Achilles to have an instance of how circumstantially and yet
poetically a single object can be described according to its coexistent
parts.
I will proceed to answer this double objection. I call it double,
because a just conclusion must hold, though unsupported by examples, and
on the other hand the example of Homer has great weight with me, even
when I am unable to justify it by rules.
It is true that since the signs of speech are arbitrary, the parts of a
body can by their means be made to follow each other as readily as in
nature they exist side by side. But this is a property of the signs of
language in general, not of those peculiar to poetry. The prose writer
is satisfied with being intelligible, and making his representations
plain and clear. But this is not enough for the poet. He desires to
present us with images so vivid, that we fancy we have the things
themselves before us, and cease for the moment to be conscious of his
words, the instruments with which he effects his purpose. That was the
point made in the definition given above of a poetical picture. But the
poet must always paint; and now let us see in how far bodies, considered
in relation to their parts lying together in space, are fit subjects for
this painting.
How do we obtain a clear idea of a thing in space? First we observe its
separate parts, then the union of these parts, and finally the whole.
Our senses perform these various operations with such amazing rapidity
as to make them seem but one. This rapidity is absolutely essential to
our obtaining an idea of the whole, which is nothing more than the
result of the conception of the parts and of their connection with each
other. Suppose now that the poet should lead us in proper order from one
part of the object to the other; suppose he should succeed in making the
connection of these parts perfectly clear to us; how much time will he
have consumed?
The details, which the eye takes in at a glance, he enumerates slowly
one by one, and it often happens that, by the time he has brought us to
the last, we have forgotten the first. Yet from these details we are to
form a picture. When we look at an object the various parts are always
present to the eye. It can run over them again and again. The ear,
however, loses the details it has heard, unless memory retain them. And
if they be so retained, what pains and effort it costs to recall their
impressions in the proper order and with even the moderate degree of
rapidity necessary to the obtaining of a tolerable idea of the whole.
Let us take an example which may be called a masterpiece of its kind.
Dort ragt das hohe Haupt vom edeln Enziane
Weit übern niedern Chor der Pöbelkräuter hin,
Ein ganzes Blumenvolk dient unter seiner Fahne,
Sein blauer Bruder selbst bückt sich und ehret ihn.
Der Blumen helles Gold, in Strahlen umgebogen,
Thürmt sich am Stengel auf, und krönt sein grau Gewand,
Der Blätter glattes Weiss mit tiefem Grün durchzogen,
Strahlt von dem bunten Blitz von feuchtem Diamant.
Gerechtestes Gesetz! dass Kraft sich Zier vermähle,
In einem schönen Leib wohnt eine schön’re Seele.
Hier kriecht ein niedrig Kraut, gleich einem grauen Nebel,
Dem die Natur sein Blatt im Kreuze hingelegt,
Die holde Blume zeigt die zwei vergöldten Schnäbel,
Die ein von Amethyst gebildter Vogel trägt.
Dort wirft ein glänzend Blatt, in Finger ausgekerbet,
Auf einen hellen Bach den grünen Wiederschein;
Der Blumen zarten Schnee, den matter Purpur färbet,
Schliesst ein gestreifter Stern in weisse Strahlen ein.
Smaragd und Rosen blühn auch auf zertretner Heide,
Und Felsen decken sich mit einem Purpurkleide.[106]
The learned poet is here painting plants and flowers with great art and
in strict accordance with nature, but there is no illusion in his
picture. I do not mean that a person who had never seen these plants and
flowers could form little or no idea of them from his description.
Perhaps all poetical pictures require a previous knowledge of their
subject. Neither would I deny that a person possessing such knowledge
might derive from the poet a more vivid idea of certain details. I only
ask how it is with a conception of the whole. If that is to become more
vivid, none of the separate details must stand in undue prominence, but
the new illumination must be equally shared by all. Our imagination must
be able to embrace them all with equal rapidity in order to form from
them in an instant that one harmonious whole which the eye takes in at a
glance. Is that the case here? If not, how can it be said, “that the
most exact copy produced by a painter is dull and faint compared with
this poetical description?”[107] It is far inferior to what lines and
colors can produce on canvas. The critic who bestowed upon it this
exaggerated praise must have regarded it from an entirely false point of
view. He must have looked at the foreign graces which the poet has woven
into his description, at his idealization of vegetable life, and his
development of inward perfections, to which outward beauty serves but as
the shell. These he was considering, and not beauty itself or the degree
of resemblance and vividness of the image, which painter and poet
respectively can give us. Upon this last point every thing depends, and
whoever maintains that the lines,
Der Blumen helles Gold in Strahlen umgebogen,
Thürmt sich am Stengel auf, und krönt sein grau Gewand,
Der Blätter glattes Weiss, mit tiefem Grün durchzogen,
Strahlt von dem bunten Blitz von feuchtem Diamant,
can vie in vividness of impression with a flowerpiece by a Huysum, must
either never have analyzed his own sensations, or must wilfully ignore
them. It might be very pleasant to hear the lines read if we had the
flowers in our hand; but, taken by themselves, they say little or
nothing. I hear in every word the laborious poet, but the thing itself I
am unable to see.
Once more, then, I do not deny that language has the power of describing
a corporeal whole according to its parts. It certainly has, because its
signs, although consecutive, are nevertheless arbitrary. But I deny that
this power exists in language as the instrument of poetry. For illusion,
which is the special aim of poetry, is not produced by these verbal
descriptions of objects, nor can it ever be so produced. The coexistence
of the body comes into collision with the sequence of the words, and
although while the former is getting resolved into the latter, the
dismemberment of the whole into its parts is a help to us, yet the
reunion of these parts into a whole is made extremely difficult, and not
infrequently impossible.
Where the writer does not aim at illusion, but is simply addressing the
understanding of his readers with the desire of awakening distinct and,
as far as possible, complete ideas, then these descriptions of corporeal
objects, inadmissible as they are in poetry, are perfectly appropriate.
Not only the prose writer, but the didactic poet (for in as far as he is
didactic he is no poet) may use them with good effect. Thus Virgil, in
his Georgics, describes a cow fit for breeding:—
Optima torvæ
Forma bovis, cui turpe caput, cui plurima cervix,
Et crurum tenus a mento palearia pendent.
Tum longo nullus lateri modus: omnia magna:
Pes etiam, et camuris hirtæ sub cornibus aures.
Nec mihi displiceat maculis insignis et albo,
Aut juga detractans interdumque aspera cornu,
Et faciem tauro propior; quæque ardua tota,
Et gradiens ima verrit vestigia cauda.[108]