OF IDEAS OF IMITATION.
Sec. 1. False use of the term "imitation" by many writers of art.
Fuseli, in his lectures, and many other persons of equally just and
accurate habits of thought, (among others, S. T. Coleridge,) make a
distinction between imitation and copying, representing the first as the
legitimate function of art--the latter as its corruption; but as such a
distinction is by no means warranted, or explained by the common meaning
of the words themselves, it is not easy to comprehend exactly in what
sense they are used by those writers. And though, reasoning from the
context, I can understand what ideas those words stand for in their
minds, I cannot allow the terms to be properly used as symbols of those
ideas, which (especially in the case of the word Imitation) are
exceedingly complex, and totally different from what most people would
understand by the term. And by men of less accurate thought, the word is
used still more vaguely or falsely. For instance, Burke (Treatise on the
Sublime, part i. sect. 16) says, "When the object represented in poetry
or painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality,
then we may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the
power of _imitation_." In which case the real pleasure may be in what we
have been just speaking of, the dexterity of the artist's hand; or it
may be in a beautiful or singular arrangement of colors, or a thoughtful
chiaroscuro, or in the pure beauty of certain forms which art forces on
our notice, though we should not have observed them in the reality; and
I conceive that none of these sources of pleasure are in any way
expressed or intimated by the term "imitation."
But there is one source of pleasure in works of art totally different
from all these, which I conceive to be properly and accurately expressed
by the word "imitation:" one which, though constantly confused in
reasoning, because it is always associated in fact, with other means of
pleasure, is totally separated from them in its nature, and is the real
basis of whatever complicated or various meaning may be afterwards
attached to the word in the minds of men.
Sec. 2. Real meaning of the term.
Sec. 3. What is requisite to the sense of imitation.
I wish to point out this distinct source of pleasure clearly at once,
and only to use the word "imitation" in reference to it. Whenever
anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance being so great as
_nearly_ to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable surprise, an
agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its nature as that
which we receive from juggling. Whenever we perceive this in something
produced by art, that is to say, whenever the work is seen to resemble
something which we know it is not, we receive what I call an idea of
imitation. _Why_ such ideas are pleasing, it would be out of our present
purpose to inquire; we only know that there is no man who does not feel
pleasure in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such
surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner than by the evidence
that a thing is not what it appears to be.[4] Now two things are
requisite to our complete and more pleasurable perception of this:
first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to a deception;
secondly, that there be some means of proving at the same moment that it
_is_ a deception. The most perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are,
therefore, when one sense is contradicted by another, both bearing as
positive evidence on the subject as each is capable of alone; as when
the eye says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat; they are,
therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in painting, where
appearance of projection, roughness, hair, velvet, etc., are given with
a smooth surface, or in wax-work, where the first evidence of the senses
is perpetually contradicted by their experience; but the moment we come
to marble, our definition checks us, for a marble figure does not look
like what it is not: it looks like marble, and like the form of a man,
but then it _is_ marble, and it _is_ the form of a man. It does not look
like a man, which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is.
Form is form, _bona fide_ and actual, whether in marble or in
flesh--not an imitation or resemblance of form, but real form. The chalk
outline of the bough of a tree on paper, is not an imitation; it looks
like chalk and paper--not like wood, and that which it suggests to the
mind is not properly said to be _like_ the form of a bough, it _is_ the
form of a bough. Now, then, we see the limits of an idea of imitation;
it extends only to the sensation of trickery and deception occasioned by
a thing's intentionally seeming different from what it is; and the
degree of the pleasure depends on the degree of difference and the
perfection of the resemblance, not on the nature of the thing resembled.
The simple pleasure in the imitation would be precisely of the same
degree, (if the accuracy could be equal,) whether the subject of it were
the hero or his horse. There are other collateral sources of pleasure,
which are necessarily associated with this, but that part of the
pleasure which depends on the imitation is the same in both.
Sec. 4. The pleasure resulting from imitation the most contemptible that
can be derived from art.
Ideas of imitation, then, act by producing the simple pleasure of
surprise, and that not of surprise in its higher sense and function, but
of the mean and paltry surprise which is felt in jugglery. These ideas
and pleasures are the most contemptible which can be received from art;
first, because it is necessary to their enjoyment that the mind should
reject the impression and address of the thing represented, and fix
itself only upon the reflection that it is not what it seems to be. All
high or noble emotion or thought are thus rendered physically
impossible, while the mind exults in what is very like a strictly
sensual pleasure. We may consider tears as a result of agony or of art,
whichever we please, but not of both at the same moment. If we are
surprised by them as an attainment of the one, it is impossible we can
be moved by them as a sign of the other.
Sec. 5. Imitation is only of contemptible subjects.
Ideas of imitation are contemptible in the second place, because not
only do they preclude the spectator from enjoying inherent beauty in the
subject, but they can only be received from mean and paltry subjects,
because it is impossible to imitate anything really great. We can "paint
a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could take them up;" but
we cannot imitate the ocean, or the Alps. We can imitate fruit, but not
a tree; flowers, but not a pasture; cut-glass, but not the rainbow. All
pictures in which deceptive powers of imitation are displayed are
therefore either of contemptible subjects, or have the imitation shown
in contemptible parts of them, bits of dress, jewels, furniture, etc.
Sec. 6. Imitation is contemptible because it is easy.
Thirdly, these ideas are contemptible, because no ideas of power are
associated with them; to the ignorant, imitation, indeed, seems
difficult, and its success praiseworthy, but even they can by no
possibility see more in the artist than they do in a juggler, who
arrives at a strange end by means with which they are unacquainted. To
the instructed, the juggler is by far the more respectable artist of the
two, for they know sleight of hand to be an art of immensely more
difficult acquirement, and to imply more ingenuity in the artist than a
power of deceptive imitation in painting, which requires nothing more
for its attainment than a true eye, a steady hand, and moderate
industry--qualities which in no degree separate the imitative artist
from a watch-maker, pin-maker, or any other neat-handed artificer. These
remarks do not apply to the art of the Diorama, or the stage, where the
pleasure is not dependent on the imitation, but is the same which we
should receive from nature herself, only far inferior in degree. It is a
noble pleasure; but we shall see in the course of our investigation,
both that it is inferior to that which we receive when there is no
deception at all, and why it is so.
Sec. 7. Recapitulation.
Whenever then in future, I speak of ideas of imitation, I wish to be
understood to mean the immediate and present perception that something
produced by art is not what it seems to be. I prefer saying "that it is
not what it seems to be," to saying "that it seems to be what it is
not," because we perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of
imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the subsequent
perception of its being something else--flat, for instance, when we
thought it was round.
FOOTNOTES
[4] [Greek: syllogismos ettig, hoti touto ekeino].--Arist. Rhet. 1,
11, 23.