“The father’s double pangs, both for himself And sons convulsed; to Heaven his rueful look, Imploring aid, and half accusing, cast; His fell despair, with indignation mixed, As the strong curling monsters from his side His full-extended fury cannot tear.”
None of the tragic horror of the scene is lost. It can be said with absolute candour,
“Such passion here, Such agonies, such bitterness of pain, Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone That the touched heart engrosses all the view.”
None of us at once realize the reason we are so moved by a mere echo of an old myth. When the truth dawns upon us, we see that the awful admiration with which “[The Laocoon]” has always been regarded, finds its source deep down in the human heart. The emotions we experience do not depend upon the sufferings of the priest of Neptune. Laocoon is mankind himself. His fight with death is an emblem of the far more general struggle which every human being must share—the struggle which is the price we pay for life. “[The Laocoon]” is not unique in this respect. On the contrary, a similar dominating idea is enshrined in all the greatest examples of Hellenic sculpture. The “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” is more than a woman. The statue is the incarnation of the idea of womanly love.
It is the presence of a dominating idea of this kind which distinguishes “[The Laocoon]” of Rhodes from “[The Tyche of Antioch].” Admitting its presence places the sculpture beyond and above both criticism and praise. A sentence, however, of Walter Pater suggests a point of critical vantage which the student of the history of sculpture cannot disregard. He says: “‘[The Laocoon],’ with all that patient science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects, legitimate, because delightful, only in painting.”
No man had a truer appreciation of Greek art than Walter Pater, and no opinion is more entitled to thoughtful consideration. But in view of the fact that the extreme classical school of criticism has always tended to depreciate the value of all Hellenistic art, we may regret that Pater’s argument was not illustrated by a lesser work of the Rhodian school. The suggestion that the Laocoon myth borders upon the illegitimate as far as sculptural treatment is concerned, seems to demand the qualification that supreme success justifies the disregard of any canon of art.
THE NILE
Vatican, Rome
Pater’s judgment, however, applies with real force to other works by sculptors of Rhodes. It might, for instance, be used of “The Farnese Bull,” now in the National Museum at Naples. The group was found in the baths of Caracalla at Rome during the sixteenth century, and has been so largely restored that criticism is, perhaps, unjust. If the present work can be regarded as embodying the ideas of its authors, we see a passion which has degenerated from the dramatic to the theatrical.