Spargeasi per la guancia delicata
Misto color di rose e di ligustri,
he may show himself to be a perfect master of color,—a very Titian.[132]
His comparing Alcina’s hair to gold, instead of calling it golden hair,
may be taken as proof that he objected to the use of actual gold in
coloring.[133] We may even discover in the descending nose the profile
of those old Greek noses, afterwards borrowed by Roman artists from the
Greek masterpieces.[134] Of what use is all this insight and learning to
us readers who want to fancy we are looking at a beautiful woman, and
desire to feel that gentle quickening of the pulses which accompanies
the sight of actual beauty? The poet may know the relations from which
beauty springs, but does that make us know them? Or, if we know them,
does he show them to us here? or does he help us in the least to call up
a vivid image of them?
A brow that forms a fitting bound,
Che lo spazio finia con giusta meta;
A nose where envy itself finds nothing to amend,
Che non trova l’ invidia, ove l’ emende;
A hand, narrow, and somewhat long,
Lunghetta alquanto, e di larghezza angusta;
what sort of a picture do these general formulæ give us? In the mouth of
a drawing-master, directing his pupils’ attention to the beauties of the
academic model, they might have some meaning. For the students would
have but to look at the model to see the fitting bounds of the gay
forehead, the fine cut of the nose, and the slenderness of the pretty
hand. But in the poem I see nothing, and am only tormented by the
futility of all my attempts to see any thing.
In this respect Virgil, by imitating Homer’s reticence, has achieved
tolerable success. His Dido is only the most beautiful (_pulcherrima_)
Dido. Any further details which he may give, have reference to her rich
ornaments and magnificent dress.
Tandem progreditur ...
Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo:
Cui pharetra ex auro, crines nodantur in aurum,
Aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem.[135]
If, on this account, any should apply to him what the old artist said to
one of his pupils who had painted a gayly decked Helen,—“Since you could
not paint her beautiful, you have painted her rich,”—Virgil would
answer: “I am not to blame that I could not paint her beautiful. The
fault lies in the limits of my art, within which it is my merit to have
kept.”
I must not forget here the two odes of Anacreon wherein he analyzes the
beauty of his mistress and of Bathyllus.[136] The device which he uses
entirely justifies the analysis. He imagines that he has before him a
painter who is working from his description. “Thus paint me the hair,”
he says; “thus the brow, the eyes, the mouth; thus the neck and bosom,
the thighs and hands.” As the artist could execute but one detail at a
time, the poet was obliged to give them to him thus piecemeal. His
object is not to make us see and feel, in these spoken directions to the
painter, the whole beauty of the beloved object. He is conscious of the
inadequacy of all verbal expression; and for that reason summons to his
aid the expression of art, whose power of illusion he so extols, that
the whole song seems rather a eulogium of art than of his lady. He sees
not the picture but herself, and fancies she is about to open her mouth
to speak.
ἀπέχει· βλέπω γὰρ αὐτήν.
τάχα, κηρέ, καὶ λαλήσεις.
So, too, in his ode to Bathyllus, the praises of the beautiful boy are
so mingled with praises of art and the artist, that we are in doubt in
whose honor the song was really written. He selects the most beautiful
parts from various pictures, the parts for which the pictures were
remarkable. He takes the neck from an Adonis, breast and hands from a
Mercury, the thighs from a Pollux, the belly from a Bacchus, until he
has the whole Bathyllus as a finished Apollo from the artist’s hand.
μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω,
τὸν Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν,
ἐλεφάντινος τράχηλος·
μεταμάζιον δὲ ποίει
διδύμας τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ,
Πολυδεύκεος δὲ μηρούς,
Διονυσίην δὲ νηδύν.
· · · · ·
τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα δὲ τοῦτον
καθελών, ποίει Βάθυλλον.
Thus Lucian, to give an idea of the beauty of Panthea, points to the
most beautiful female statues by the old sculptors.[137] What is this
but a confession that here language of itself is powerless; that poetry
stammers, and eloquence grows dumb, unless art serve as interpreter.