XVIII.
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.