Herr Winckelmann has pronounced a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur,
displayed in the posture no less than in the expression, to be the
characteristic features common to all the Greek masterpieces of
painting and sculpture. "As," says he, "the depths of the sea always
remain calm, however much the surface may be raging, so the expression
in the figures of the Greeks, under every form of passion, shows a
great and self-collected soul.
[Footnote 15: From Chapter I of the "Laocoön." Translated by E. C.
Beasley and Helen Zimmern.]
"This spirit is portrayed in the countenance of Laocoön, and not in
the countenance alone, under the most violent suffering; the pain
discovers itself in every muscle and sinew of his body, and the
beholder, while looking at the agonized contraction of the abdomen,
without viewing the face and the other parts, believes that he almost
feels the pain himself. This pain expresses itself, however, without
any violence, both in the features and in the whole posture. He raises
no terrible shriek, such as Virgil makes his Laocoön utter, for the
opening of the mouth does not admit it; it is rather an anxious and
supprest sigh, as described by Sadoleto. The pain of body and grandeur
of soul are, as it were, weighed out, and distributed with equal
strength through the whole frame of the figure. Laocoön suffers, but
he suffers as the Philoctetes of Sophocles; his misery pierces us to
the very soul, but inspires us with a wish that we could endure misery
like that great man.
"The expressing of so great a soul is far higher than the painting of
beautiful nature. The artist must have felt within himself that
strength of spirit which he imprinted upon his marble. Greece had
philosophers and artists in one person, and more than one Metrodorus.
Philosophy gave her hand to art, and breathed into its figures more
than ordinary souls."
The observation on which the foregoing remarks are founded, "that the
pain in the face of Laocoön does not show itself with that force which
its intensity would have led us to expect," is perfectly correct.
Moreover, it is indisputable that it is in this very point where the
half-connoisseur would have decided that the artist had fallen short
of nature, and had not reached the true pathos of pain, that his
wisdom is particularly conspicuous.
But I confess I differ from Winckelmann as to what is in his opinion
the basis of this wisdom, and as to the universality of the rule
which he deduces from it.
I acknowledge that I was startled, first by the glance of disapproval
which he casts upon Virgil, and secondly by the comparison with
Philoctetes. From this point then I shall set out, and write down my
thoughts as they were developed in me.
"Laocoön suffers as Sophocles' Philoctetes." But how does the latter
suffer? It is curious that his sufferings should leave such a
different impression behind them. The cries, the shrieking, the wild
imprecations, with which he filled the camp, and interrupted all the
sacrifices and holy rites, resound no less horribly through his desert
island, and were the cause of his being banished to it. The same
sounds of despondency, sorrow, and despair fill the theater in the
poet's imitation. It has been observed that the third act of this
piece is shorter than the others; from this it may be gathered, say
the critics, that the ancients took little pains to preserve a
uniformity of length in the different acts. I quite agree with them,
but I should rather ground my opinion upon another example than this.
The sorrowful exclamations and the moanings, of which this act
consists, must have been pronounced with tensions and breakings off
altogether different from those required in a continuous speech, and
doubtless made this act last quite as long in the representation as
the others. It appears much shorter to the reader, when seen on paper,
than it must have done to the audience in a theater.
A cry is the natural expression of bodily pain. Homer's wounded heroes
frequently fall with cries to the ground. He makes Venus, when merely
scratched, shriek aloud; not that he may thereby paint the effeminacy
of the goddess of pleasure, but rather that he may give suffering
Nature her due; for even the iron Mars, when he feels the lance of
Diomedes, shrieks so horribly that his cries are like those of ten
thousand furious warriors, and fill both armies with horror, Tho
Homer, in other respects, raises his heroes above human nature, they
always remain faithful to it in matters connected with the feeling of
pain and insult, or its expression through cries, tears, or
reproaches. In their actions they are beings of a higher order, in
their feelings true men.
I know that we, more refined Europeans, of a wiser and later age, know
how to keep our mouths and eyes under closer restraint. We are
forbidden by courtesy and propriety to cry and weep; and with us the
active bravery of the first rough age of the world has been changed
into a passive. Yet even our own ancestors, tho barbarians, were
greater in the latter than in the former. To suppress all pain, to
meet the stroke of death with unflinching eye, to die laughing under
the bites of adders, to lament neither their sins nor the loss of
their dearest friends--these were the characteristics of the old
heroic courage of the north. Palnatoki forbade his Jomsburgers either
to fear or so much as to mention the name of fear.
Not so the Greek. He felt and feared. He gave utterance to his pain
and sorrow. He was ashamed of no human weaknesses, only none of them
must hold him back from the path of honor, or impede him in the
fulfilment of his duty. What in the barbarian sprang from habit and
ferocity arose from principle in the Greek. With him heroism was as
the spark concealed in flint, which, so long as no external force
awakens it, sleeps in quiet, nor robs the stone either of its
clearness or its coldness. With the barbarian it was a bright
consuming flame, which was ever roaring, and devoured, or at least
blackened, every other good quality. Thus, when Homer makes the
Trojans march to the combat with wild cries, the Greeks, on the
contrary, in resolute silence, the critics justly observe that the
poet intended to depict the one as barbarians, the other as a
civilized people. I wonder that they have not remarked a similar
contrast of character in another passage. The hostile armies have made
a truce; they are busied with burning their dead; and these rites are
accompanied on both sides with the warm flow of tears. But Priam
forbids the Trojans to weep. He forbade them to weep, says Dacier,
because he feared the effect would be too softening, and that on the
morrow they would go with less courage to the battle. True! But why, I
ask, should Priam only fear this result? Why does not Agamemnon also
lay the same prohibition on the Greeks? The poet has a deeper meaning;
he wishes to teach us that the civilized Greek could be brave at the
same time that he wept, while in the uncivilized Trojan all human
feelings were to be previously stifled.
It is worth observing that among the few tragedies which have come
down to us from antiquity two are found in which bodily pain
constitutes not the lightest part of the misfortune which befalls the
suffering heroes--the Philoctetes and the dying Hercules. Sophocles
paints the last also as moaning and shrieking, weeping and crying.
Thanks to our polite neighbors, those masters of propriety, no such
ridiculous and intolerable characters as a moaning Philoctetes or a
shrieking Hercules will ever again appear upon the stage. One of their
latest poets has indeed ventured upon a Philoctetes, but would he have
dared to exhibit the true one?
Even a Laocoön is found among the lost plays of Sophocles. Would that
fate had spared it to us! The slight mention which some old
grammarians have made of it affords us no ground for concluding how
the poet had handled his subject; but of this I feel certain, that
Laocoön would not have been drawn more stoically than Philoctetes and
Hercules. All stoicism is undramatical; and our sympathy is always
proportioned to the suffering exprest by the object which interests
us. It is true if we see him bear his misery with a great soul, this
grandeur of soul excites our admiration; but admiration is only a cold
emotion, and its inactive astonishment excludes every warmer passion
as well as every distinct idea.
I now come to my inference; if it be true that a cry at the sensation
of bodily pain, particularly according to the old Greek way of
thinking, is quite compatible with greatness of soul, it can not have
been for the sake of expressing such greatness that the artist avoided
imitating this shriek in marble. Another reason therefore must be
found for his here deviating from his rival, the poet, who expresses
it with the highest purpose.