But are we not robbing poetry of too much by taking from her all
pictures of physical beauty?
Who seeks to take them from her? We are only warning her against trying
to arrive at them by a particular road, where she will blindly grope her
way in the footsteps of a sister art without ever reaching the goal. We
are not closing against her other roads whereon art can follow only with
her eyes.
Homer himself, who so persistently refrains from all detailed
descriptions of physical beauty, that we barely learn, from a passing
mention, that Helen had white arms[138] and beautiful hair,[139] even he
manages nevertheless to give us an idea of her beauty, which far
surpasses any thing that art could do. Recall the passage where Helen
enters the assembly of the Trojan elders. The venerable men see her
coming, and one says to the others:[140]—
Οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ’ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν·
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν.
What can give a more vivid idea of her beauty than that cold-blooded age
should deem it well worth the war which had cost so much blood and so
many tears?
What Homer could not describe in its details, he shows us by its effect.
Paint us, ye poets, the delight, the attraction, the love, the
enchantment of beauty, and you have painted beauty itself. Who can think
of Sappho’s beloved, the sight of whom, as she confesses, robs her of
sense and thought, as ugly? We seem to be gazing on a beautiful and
perfect form, when we sympathize with the emotions which only such a
form can produce. It is not Ovid’s minute description of the beauties of
his Lesbia,—
Quos humeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos!
Forma papillarum quam fuit apta premi!
Quam castigato planus sub pectore venter!
Quantum et quale latus! quam juvenile femur!
that makes us fancy we are enjoying the same sight which he enjoyed; but
because he gives the details with a sensuousness which stirs the
passions.
Yet another way in which poetry surpasses art in the description of
physical beauty, is by turning beauty into charm. Charm is beauty in
motion, and therefore less adapted to the painter than the poet. The
painter can suggest motion, but his figures are really destitute of it.
Charm therefore in a picture becomes grimace, while in poetry it remains
what it is, a transitory beauty, which we would fain see repeated. It
comes and goes, and since we can recall a motion more vividly and easily
than mere forms and colors, charm must affect us more strongly than
beauty under the same conditions. All that touches and pleases in the
picture of Alcina is charm. Her eyes impress us not from their blackness
and fire, but because they are—
Pietosi a riguardar, a mover parchi,
they move slowly and with gracious glances, because Cupid sports around
them and shoots from them his arrows. Her mouth pleases, not because
vermilion lips enclose two rows of orient pearls, but because of the
gentle smile, which opens a paradise on earth, and of the courteous
accents that melt the rudest heart. The enchantment of her bosom lies
not so much in the milk and ivory and apples, that typify its whiteness
and graceful form, as in its gentle heavings, like the rise and fall of
waves under a pleasant breeze.
Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ avorio fatte,
Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo,
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.
I am convinced that such traits as these, compressed into one or two
stanzas, would be far more effective than the five over which Ariosto
has spread them, interspersed with cold descriptions of form much too
learned for our sensibilities.
Anacreon preferred the apparent absurdity of requiring impossibilities
of the artist, to leaving the image of his mistress unenlivened with
these mobile charms.
τρυφεροῦ δ’ ἔσω γενείου
περὶ λυγδίνῳ τραχήλῳ
Χάριτες πέτοιντο πᾶσαι.
He bids the artist let all the graces hover about her tender chin and
marble neck. How so? literally? But that is beyond the power of art. The
painter could give the chin the most graceful curve and the prettiest
dimple, _Amoris digitulo impressum_ (for the ἔσω here seems to me to
mean dimple); he could give the neck the softest pink, but that is all.
The motion of that beautiful neck, the play of the muscles, now
deepening and now half concealing the dimple, the essential charm
exceeded his powers. The poet went to the limits of his art in the
attempt to give us a vivid picture of beauty, in order that the painter
might seek the highest expression in his. Here we have, therefore, a
fresh illustration of what was urged above, that the poet, even when
speaking of a painting or statue, is not bound to confine his
description within the limits of art.