And shall Homer nevertheless have fallen into those barren descriptions
of material objects?
Let us hope that only a few such passages can be cited. And even those
few, I venture to assert, will be found really to confirm the rule, to
which they appear to form an exception.
The rule is this, that succession in time is the province of the poet,
coexistence in space that of the artist.
To bring together into one and the same picture two points of time
necessarily remote, as Mazzuoli does the rape of the Sabine women and
the reconciliation effected by them between their husbands and
relations; or as Titian does, representing in one piece the whole story
of the Prodigal Son,—his dissolute life, his misery, and repentance,—is
an encroachment of the painter on the domain of the poet, which good
taste can never sanction.
To try to present a complete picture to the reader by enumerating in
succession several parts or things which in nature the eye necessarily
takes in at a glance, is an encroachment of the poet on the domain of
the painter, involving a great effort of the imagination to very little
purpose.
Painting and poetry should be like two just and friendly neighbors,
neither of whom indeed is allowed to take unseemly liberties in the
heart of the other’s domain, but who exercise mutual forbearance on the
borders, and effect a peaceful settlement for all the petty
encroachments which circumstances may compel either to make in haste on
the rights of the other.
I will not bring forward in support of this the fact that, in large
historical pictures the single moment of time is always somewhat
extended, and that perhaps no piece, very rich in figures, can be found,
in which every character has exactly the motion and attitude proper to
him at that particular moment. The position of some belongs to a
preceding point of time, that of others to a later. This is a liberty
which the painter must justify by certain subtleties of arrangement,
such as placing his figures more in the foreground or background, and
thus making them take a more or less immediate interest in what is going
on. I will merely quote, in favor of my view, a criticism of Mengs on
Raphael’s drapery.[113] “There is a reason for all his folds, either in
the weight of the material or the tension of the limbs. We can often
infer from their present condition what they had been previously.
Raphael indeed aimed at giving them significance in this way. We can
judge from the folds whether, previously to the present posture, a leg
or an arm had been more in front or more behind, whether a limb had been
bent and is now straightening itself, or whether it had been
outstretched and is now bending.” Here unquestionably the artist unites
into one two distinct points of time. For, since the foot in its motion
forward is immediately followed by that portion of the garment which
rests upon it,—unless indeed the garment be of exceedingly stiff
material, in which case it is ill adapted to painting,—there can be no
moment at which the drapery assumes in the least degree any other fold
than the present posture of the limb demands. If any other be
represented, then the fold is that of the preceding moment while the
position of the foot is that of the present. Few, however, will be
inclined to deal thus strictly with the artist who finds it for his
interest to bring these two moments of time before us at once. Who will
not rather praise him for having had the wisdom and the courage to
commit a slight fault for the sake of greater fulness of expression?
A similar indulgence is due to the poet. The continuity of his imitation
permits him, strictly speaking, to touch at one moment on only a single
side, a single property of his corporeal objects. But if the happy
construction of his language enables him to do this with a single word,
why should he not sometimes be allowed to add a second such word? why
not a third, if it be worth his while, or even a fourth? As I have said,
a ship in Homer is either simply the black ship, or the hollow ship, or
the swift ship; at most the well-manned black ship. That is true of his
style in general. Occasionally a passage occurs where he adds a third
descriptive epithet:[114] Καμπύλα κύκλα, χάλκεα, ὀκτάκνημα, “round,
brazen, eight-spoked wheels.” Even a fourth: ἀσπίδα πάντοσε ἐΐσην,
καλήν, χαλκείην, ἐξήλατον,[115] “a uniformly smooth, beautiful, brazen,
wrought shield.” Who will not rather thank than blame him for this
little luxuriance, when we perceive its good effect in a few suitable
passages?
The true justification of both poet and painter shall not, however, be
left to rest upon this analogy of two friendly neighbors. A mere analogy
furnishes neither proof nor justification. I justify them in this way.
As in the picture the two moments of time follow each other so
immediately that we can without effort consider them as one, so in the
poem the several touches answering to the different parts and properties
in space are so condensed, and succeed each other so rapidly, that we
seem to catch them all at once.
Here, as I have said, Homer is greatly aided by his admirable language.
It not only allows him all possible freedom in multiplying and combining
his epithets, but enables him to arrange them so happily that we are
relieved of all awkward suspense with regard to the subject. Some of the
modern languages are destitute of one or more of those advantages. Those
which, like the French, must have recourse to paraphrase, and convert
the καμπύλα κύκλα, χάλκεα, ὀκτάκνημα of Homer into “the round wheels
which were of brass and had eight spokes,” give the meaning, but destroy
the picture. The sense is here, however, nothing; the picture every
thing. The one without the other turns the most graphic of poets into a
tiresome tattler. This fate has often befallen Homer under the pen of
the conscientious Madame Dacier. The German language can generally
render the Homeric adjectives by equally short equivalents, but it
cannot follow the happy arrangement of the Greek. It can say, indeed,
“the round, brazen, eight-spoked;” but “wheels” comes dragging after.
Three distinct predicates before any subject make but a confused,
uncertain picture. The Greek joins the subject with the first predicate
and lets the others follow. He says, “round wheels, brazen,
eight-spoked.” Thus we know at once of what he is speaking, and learn
first the thing and then its accidents, which is the natural order of
our thoughts. The German language does not possess this advantage. Or
shall I say, what really amounts to the same thing, that, although
possessing it, the language can seldom use it without ambiguity? For if
adjectives be placed after the subject (runde Räder, ehern und
achtspeichigt) they are indeclinable, differing in nothing from adverbs,
and if referred, as adverbs, to the first verb that is predicated of the
subject, the meaning of the whole sentence becomes always distorted, and
sometimes entirely falsified.
But I am lingering over trifles and seem to have forgotten the shield of
Achilles, that famous picture, which more than all else, caused Homer to
be regarded among the ancients as a master of painting.[116] But surely
a shield, it may be said, is a single corporeal object, the description
of which according to its coexistent parts cannot come within the
province of poetry. Yet this shield, its material, its form, and all the
figures which occupied its enormous surface, Homer has described, in
more than a hundred magnificent lines, so circumstantially and precisely
that modern artists have found no difficulty in making a drawing of it
exact in every detail.
My answer to this particular objection is, that I have already answered
it. Homer does not paint the shield finished, but in the process of
creation. Here again he has made use of the happy device of substituting
progression for coexistence, and thus converted the tiresome description
of an object into a graphic picture of an action. We see not the shield,
but the divine master-workman employed upon it. Hammer and tongs in hand
he approaches the anvil; and, after having forged the plates from the
rough metal, he makes the pictures designed for its decoration rise from
the brass, one by one, under his finer blows. Not till the whole is
finished do we lose sight of him. At last it is done; and we wonder at
the work, but with the believing wonder of an eyewitness who has seen it
a-making.
The same cannot be said of the shield of Æneas in Virgil. The Roman poet
either failed to see the fineness of his model, or the things which he
wished to represent upon his shield seemed to him not of such a kind as
to allow of their being executed before our eyes. They were prophecies,
which the god certainly could not with propriety have uttered in our
presence as distinctly as the poet explains them in his work.
Prophecies, as such, require a darker speech, in which the names of
those persons to come, whose fortunes are predicted, cannot well be
spoken. In these actual names, however, lay, it would seem, the chief
point of interest to the poet and courtier.[117] But this, though it
excuse him, does not do away with the disagreeable effect of his
departure from the Homeric method, as all readers of taste will admit.
The preparations made by Vulcan are nearly the same in Homer as in
Virgil. But while in Homer we see, besides the preparations for the
work, the work itself, Virgil, after showing us the god at work with his
Cyclops,
Ingentem clypeum informant ...
... Alii ventosis follibus auras
Accipiunt, redduntque; alii stridentia tingunt
Æra lacu. Gemit impositis incudibus antrum.
Illi inter sese multa vi brachia tollunt
In numerum, versantque tenaci forcipe massam,[118]
suddenly drops the curtain and transports us to a wholly different
scene. We are gradually led into the valley where Venus appears,
bringing Æneas the arms that in the mean while have been finished. She
places them against the trunk of an oak; and, after the hero has
sufficiently stared at them, and wondered over them, and handled them,
and tried them, the description or picture of the shield begins, which
grows so cold and tedious from the constantly recurring “here is,” and
“there is,” and “near by stands,” and “not far from there is seen,” that
all Virgil’s poetic grace is needed to prevent it from becoming
intolerable. Since, moreover, this description is not given by Æneas,
who delights in the mere figures without any knowledge of their import,
... rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet,
nor by Venus, although she might be supposed to know as much about the
fortunes of her dear grandson as her good-natured husband, but by the
poet himself, the action meanwhile necessarily remains at a stand-still.
Not a single one of the characters takes part; nor is what follows in
the least affected by the representations on the shield. The subtle
courtier, helping out his material with every manner of flattering
allusion, is apparent throughout; but no trace do we see of the great
genius, who trusts to the intrinsic merit of his work, and despises all
extraneous means of awakening interest. The shield of Æneas is
therefore, in fact, an interpolation, intended solely to flatter the
pride of the Romans; a foreign brook with which the poet seeks to give
fresh movement to his stream. The shield of Achilles, on the contrary,
is the outgrowth of its own fruitful soil. For a shield was needed; and,
since even what is necessary never comes from the hands of deity devoid
of beauty, the shield had to be ornamented. The art was in treating
these ornamentations as such, and nothing more; in so weaving them into
the material that when we look at that we cannot but see them. This
could be accomplished only by the method which Homer adopted. Homer
makes Vulcan devise decorations, because he is to make a shield worthy
of a divine workman. Virgil seems to make him fashion the shield for the
sake of the decorations, since he deems these of sufficient importance
to deserve a special description long after the shield is finished.