XXV.
The second distinction mentioned by the critic just quoted, between disgust and other disagreeable emotions, appears in the distaste which deformity excites in us.
“Other disagreeable passions,” he says,[[157]] “may sometimes, in nature as well as in art, produce gratification, because they never arouse pure pain. Their bitterness is always mixed with satisfaction. Our fear is seldom devoid of hope; terror rouses all our powers to escape the danger; anger is mixed with a desire for vengeance; sadness, with the pleasant recollection of former happiness; and compassion is inseparable from the tender sentiments of love and good-will. The mind is at liberty to dwell now on the agreeable, and now on the disagreeable side, and thus to obtain a mingling of pleasure and pain, more delightful than the purest pleasure. Very little study of ourselves will furnish us with abundant instances. Why else is his anger dearer to an angry man and his sadness to a melancholy one, than all the cheerful images by which we strive to soothe him? Quite different is the case with disgust and its kindred sensations. Here the mind is conscious of no perceptible admixture of pleasure. A feeling of uneasiness gains the mastery, and under no imaginable conditions in nature or art would the mind fail to recoil with aversion from representations of this nature.”
Very true; but, since the critic acknowledges the existence of other sensations nearly akin to that of disgust, and producing, like that, nothing but pain, what answers more nearly to this description than emotions excited by the sight of physical deformity? These are not only kindred to that of disgust, but they resemble it in being destitute of all admixture of pleasure in art as well as in nature. Under no imaginable conditions, therefore, would the mind fail to recoil with aversion from such representations.
This aversion, if I have analyzed my feelings with sufficient care, is altogether of the nature of disgust. The sensation which accompanies the sight of physical deformity is disgust, though a low degree of it. This, indeed, is at variance with another remark of our critic, according to which only our more occult senses—those of taste, smell, and touch—are capable of receiving impressions of disgust. “The first two,” he says, “from an excessive sweetness, and the latter from an extreme softness of bodies which offer too slight resistance to the fibres coming in contact with them. Such objects, then, become intolerable to the sight, but solely through the association of ideas, because we remember how disagreeable they were to our sense of taste, smell, or touch. For, strictly speaking, there are no objects of disgust to the eyes.” I think, however, that some might be mentioned. A mole on the face, a hare-lip, a flattened nose with prominent nostrils, are deformities which offend neither taste, smell, nor touch. Yet the sight of them excites in us something much more nearly resembling disgust than we feel at sight of other malformations, such as a club-foot or a hump on the back. The more susceptible the temperament, the more distinctly are we conscious, when looking at such objects, of those motions in the body which precede nausea. That these motions soon subside, and rarely if ever result in actual sickness, is to be explained by the fact that the eye receives in and with the objects causing them such a number of pleasing images that the disagreeable impressions are too much weakened and obscured to exert any marked influence on the body. The more occult senses of taste, smell, and touch, on the contrary, cannot receive other impressions when in contact with the repulsive object. The element of disgust operates in full force, and necessarily produces much more violent effects upon the body.
The same rules hold of things loathsome as of things ugly, in respect of imitation. Indeed, since the disagreeable effect of the former is the more violent, they are still less suitable subjects of painting or poetry. Only because the effect is softened by verbal expression, did I venture to assert that the poet might employ certain loathsome traits as an ingredient in such mixed sensations as can with good effect be strengthened by the use of ugliness.
The ridiculous may be heightened by an element of disgust; representations of dignity and propriety likewise become ludicrous when brought into contrast with the disgusting. Examples of this abound in Aristophanes. I am reminded of the weasel that interrupted the worthy Socrates in his astronomical observations.[[158]]
ΜΑΘ. πρώην δέ γε γνώμην μεγάλην ἀφῃρέθη
ὑπ’ ἀσκαλαβώτου. ΣΤΡ. τίνα τρόπον; κάτειπέ μοι.
ΜΑΘ. ζητοῦντος αὐτοῦ τῆς σελήνης τὰς ὁδοὺς
καὶ τὰς περιφοράς, εἶτ’ ἄνω κεχηνότος
ἀπὸ τῆς ὀροφῆς νύκτωρ γαλεώτης κατέχεσεν.
ΣΤΡ. ἥσθην γαλεώτῃ καταχέσαντι Σωκράτους.
If what fell into the open mouth had not been disgusting, there would be nothing ludicrous in the story.
An amusing instance of this occurs in the Hottentot story of Tquassouw and Knonmquaiha, attributed to Lord Chesterfield, which appeared in the “Connoisseur,” an English weekly, full of wit and humor. The filthiness of the Hottentots is well known, as also the fact of their regarding as beautiful and holy what excites our disgust and aversion. The pressed gristle of a nose, flaccid breasts descending to the navel, the whole body anointed with a varnish of goat’s fat and soot, melted in by the sun, hair dripping with grease, arms and legs entwined with fresh entrails,—imagine all this the object of an ardent, respectful, tender love; listen to expressions of this love in the noble language of sincerity and admiration, and keep from laughing if you can.[[159]]
The disgusting seems to admit of being still more closely united with the terrible. What we call the horrible is nothing more than a mixture of the elements of terror and disgust. Longinus[[160]] takes offence at the “Τῆς ἐκ μὲν ῥινῶν μύξαι ῥέον (mucus flowing from the nostrils) in Hesiod’s picture of Sorrow;[[161]] but not, I think, so much on account of the loathsomeness of the trait, as from its being simply loathsome with no element of terror. For he does not seem inclined to find fault with the μακροὶ δ’ ὄνυχες χείρεσσιν ὑπῆσαν, the long nails projecting beyond the fingers. Long nails are not less disgusting than a running nose, but they are at the same time terrible. It is they that tear the cheeks till the blood runs to the ground:
... ἐκ δὲ παρειῶν
αἶμ’ ἀπελείβετ’ ἔραζε....
The other feature is simply disgusting, and I should advise Sorrow to cease her crying.
Read Sophocles’ description of the desert cave of his wretched Philoctetes. There are no provisions to be seen, no comforts beyond a trampled litter of dried leaves, an unshapely wooden bowl, and a tinder-box. These constitute the whole wealth of the sick, forsaken man. How does the poet complete the sad and frightful picture? By introducing the element of disgust. “Ha!” Neoptolemus draws back of a sudden, “here are rags drying full of blood and matter.”[[162]]
NE. ὁρώ κενὴν οἴκησιν ἀνθρώπων δίχα.
ΟΔ. οὐδ’ ἔνδον οἰκοποιός ἐστί τις τροφή;
ΝΕ. στείπτή γε φυλλὰς ὡς ἐναυλίζοντί τῳ.
OΔ. τὰ δ’ ἄλλ’ ἔρημα, κοὔδέν ἐσθ’ ὑπόστεγον;
ΝΕ. αὐτόξυλόν γ’ ἔκπωμα φαυλουργοῦ τινὸς
τεχνήματ’ ἀνδρὸς, καὶ πυρεῖ’ ὁμοῦ τάδε.
OΔ. κείνου τὸ θησαύρισμα σημαίνεις τόδε.
ΝΕ. ἰοὺ, ἰού· καὶ ταῦτά γ’ ἄλλα θάλπεται
ῥάκη, βαρείας του νοσηλείας πλέα.
So in Homer, Hector dragged on the ground, his face foul with dust, his hair matted with blood,
Squalentem barbam et concretos sanguine crines,
(as Virgil expresses it[[163]]) is a disgusting object, but all the more terrible and touching.
Who can recall the punishment of Marsyas, in Ovid, without a feeling of disgust?[[164]]
Clamanti cutis est summos direpta per artus:
Nec quidquam, nisi vulnus erat; cruor undique manat:
Detectique patent nervi: trepidæque sine ulla
Pelle micant venæ: salientia viscera possis,
Et perlucentes numerare in pectore fibras.
But the loathsome details are here appropriate. They make the terrible horrible, which in fiction is far from displeasing to us; since, even in nature, where our compassion is enlisted, things horrible are not wholly devoid of charm.
I do not wish to multiply examples, but this one thing I must further observe. There is one form of the horrible, the road to which lies almost exclusively through the disgusting, and that is the horror of famine. Even in ordinary life we can convey no idea of extreme hunger save by enumerating all the innutritious, unwholesome, and particularly disgusting things with which the stomach would fain appease its cravings. Since imitation can excite nothing of the feeling of actual hunger, it has recourse to another disagreeable sensation which, in cases of extreme hunger, is felt to be a lesser evil. We may thus infer how intense that other suffering must be which makes the present discomfort in comparison of small account.
Ovid says of the Oread whom Ceres sent to meet Famine,[[165]]—
Hanc (Famem) procul ut vidit....
... refert mandata deæ; paulumque morata
Quanquam aberat longe, quanquam modo venerat illuc,
Visa tamen sensisse famem....
This is an unnatural exaggeration. The sight of a hungry person, even of Hunger herself, has no such power of contagion. Compassion and horror and loathing may be aroused, but not hunger. Ovid has not been sparing of this element of the horrible in the picture of Famine; while both he and Callimachus,[[166]] in their description of Erisichthon’s starvation, have laid chief emphasis upon the loathsome traits. After Erisichthon has devoured every thing, not sparing even the sacrificial cow, which his mother had been fattening for Vesta, Callimachus makes him fall on horses and cats, and beg in the streets for crumbs and filthy refuse from other men’s tables.
Καὶ τὰν βῶν ἔφαγεν, τὰν Ἑστίᾳ ἔτρεφε μάτηρ,
Καὶ τὸν ἀεθλοφόρον καὶ τὸν πολεμήιον ἵππον,
Καὶ τὰν αἴλουρον, τὰν ἔτρεμε θηρία μικκά—
Καὶ τόχ’ ὁ τῶ βασιλῆος ἐνὶ τριόδοισι καθῆστο
αἰτίζων ἀκόλως τε καὶ ἔκβολα λύματα δαιτός.
Ovid represents him finally as biting into his own flesh, that his body might thus furnish nourishment for itself.
Vis tamen illa mali postquam consumserat omnem
Materiam ...
Ipse suos artus lacero divellere morsu
Cœpit· et infelix minuendo corpus alebat.
The hideous harpies were made loathsome and obscene in order that the hunger occasioned by their carrying off of the food might be the more horrible. Hear the complaints of Phineus in Apollonius:[[167]]—
τυτθὸν δ’ ἦν ἄρα δή ποτ’ ἐδητύος ἄμμι λίπωσι,
πνεῖ τόδε μυδαλέον τε καὶ οὐ τλητὸν μένος ὀδμῆς.
οὔ κέ τις οὐδὲ μίνυνθα βροτῶν ἄνσχοιτο πελάσσας,
οὐδ’ εἰ οἱ ἀδάμαντος ἐληλαμένον κέαρ εἴη.
ἀλλά με πικρὴ δῆτά κε καὶ ἄατος ἐπίσχει ἀνάγκη
μίμνειν, καὶ μίμνοντα κακῇ ἐν γαστέρι θέσθαι.
I would gladly excuse in this way, if I could, Virgil’s disgusting introduction of the harpies. They, however, instead of occasioning an actual present hunger, only prophesy an inward craving; and this prophecy, moreover, is resolved finally into a mere play upon words.
Dante not only prepares us for the starvation of Ugolino by a most loathsome, horrible description of him together with his former persecutor in hell, but the slow starvation itself is not free from disgusting features, as where the sons offer themselves as food for the father. I give in a note a passage from a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, which might have served me in the stead of all other examples, were it not somewhat too highly drawn.[[168]]
I come now to objects of disgust in painting. Even could we prove that there are no objects directly disgusting to the eye, which painting as a fine art would naturally avoid, it would still be obliged to refrain from loathsome objects in general, because they become through the association of ideas disgusting also to the sense of sight. Pordenone, in a picture of the entombment, makes one of the by-standers hold his nose. Richardson[[169]] objects to this on the ground that Christ had not been long enough dead for corruption to set in. In the raising of Lazarus, however, he would allow the painter to represent some of the lookers-on in that attitude, because the narrative expressly states that the body was already offensive. But I consider the representation in both cases as insufferable, for not only the actual smell, but the very idea of it is nauseous. We shun bad-smelling places even when we have a cold in the head. But painting does not employ loathsomeness for its own sake, but, like poetry, to give emphasis to the ludicrous and the terrible. At its peril! What I have already said of ugliness in this connection applies with greater force to loathsomeness. This also loses much less of its effect in a visible representation than in a description addressed to the ear, and can therefore unite less closely with the elements of the ludicrous and terrible in painting than in poetry. As soon as the surprise passes and the first curious glance is satisfied, the elements separate and loathsomeness appears in all its crudity.