In the riddle we have opened a practically limitless field for witty and striking conceits, which in their reference to any given circumstance, occurrence, or object take the form of a play upon words or an epigrammatical sentence. On the one hand we have presented an object trite to a degree, on the other some conceit of the mind which emphasizes unexpectedly with conspicuous force some aspect or relation, which we failed to perceive in that object on first confronting it, and which now attaches to it the light of a new significance.
2. THE ALLEGORY
The counterpart to the riddle in this sphere of comparative art, where the point of departure is from the generality of the significance, is the allegory. From a certain point of view this form, no less than the former, endeavours to make more visible to us the definite qualities of a general conception through qualities in materially concrete objects which are cognate therewith; but in contrast to that form this is not done in the interest of a partial concealment and a mysterious problem; rather it is now quite the other way with the express object of absolute revealment; to an extent, in fact, that all which is external, and is as such utilized by it, must become through and through transpicuous with the significance which has to make its appearance therein.
(a) It is therefore in the first place concerned to personify abstract conditions of a general character or similar qualities both from the human and the natural world, such as religion, love, justice, strife, fame, war, peace, the seasons, death, and the like, and conceive them under the mode of personality. This subjective aspect, however, is neither in respect to its content nor its external form in itself either a real subject or individual, but persists as the abstraction of a general conception, whose content is merely the barren form of subjectivity which may be called as truly a grammatical subject[90]. In other words an allegorical being, despite every attempt to clothe it in the lineaments of humanity, entirely falls short of concrete individuality, whether it be a Greek god, a saint, or any other genuine example. It is, in fact, so forced to pare away[91] from the substance of subjectivity, in order to make it conform with the abstract character of its significance, that all the true definition of individuality disappears. It is therefore only a just criticism of allegory to say that it is frosty and cold, and, having regard to the abstract quality of its significances, even in the point of invention, that it is rather the result of the matter-of-fact understanding than that of the complete vision and emotional depth of genuine imagination. Poets, such as Virgil, for example, are particularly ready to give us examples of allegorical individualization simply because they are unable to create gods of the Homeric type of personality.
(b) Secondly, however, the significant character of allegorical material is at once defined in its abstraction, and only by means of such definition is it intelligible; the expression of such particular aspects, for the reason that it is not immediately unfolded in that which is in the first instance a purely generalized conception of personality, is consequently forced to appear alongside of the subject, simply as the predicates which elucidate the same. This separation of subject from predicate, generality from particularity, is the second feature of the frostlike appearance of the allegory. The envisagement of the determinate and specific qualities is borrowed from the modes of expression, activity, and resultant effects which make their appearance in virtue of the significance, when that secures its realized form in concrete existence, or from the various means which subserve it in its true realization. For example, war is delineated through weapons, cannons, drums, and standards, etc.; the yearly seasons, by an enumeration of the flowers and fruits, which pre-eminently spring up under the favouring influence of the particular seasons. Objects of this kind may further receive purely symbolical relations, as, for instance, Justice may be brought home to our minds by means of the scales and fillet, Death by that of the hour-glass and scythe. For the reason, however, that the significance in allegory is the dominant factor, and the more specialized presentment is subordinate to it under an equally abstract form, for it is, after all, itself merely an abstraction, the embodiment of such definable characteristics only secures the validity of an attribute pure and simple.
(c) In this way the allegory is under both these aspects without vital warmth. Its general personification is empty, the definite mode of its externalization is only a sign, which taken independently has no longer any meaning, and the centrum, which is thus constrained to gather up the variety of the attributes into a focus does not possess the potency of a truly subjective unity which is itself self-embodied in its real and determinate existence inter-related throughout, but is rather a purely abstract form, for which the substantial filling-up with particular traits, which, as we have seen, never succeed in rising above the rank of the formal attribute, remains as something external. Consequently we may say that in so far as the allegory sets up any claim to real self-consistency, in which it personifies its abstraction and their delineation, it is not to be taken seriously. In other words, that which is both implicitly and explicitly self-substantive is unable really to conform with an allegorical being. The Dikê of the ancients, for instance, is not on all fours with allegorical individualization. She is universal Necessity personified, eternal Justice, the universally potent subject, the absolute substantivity of the relations which co-ordinate Nature and spiritual Life, that is, she is the absolute Self-subsistent itself, in the train of whom all other individuals are bound, whether gods or men. Herr Frederick von Schlegel has, it is true—we have already referred to the fact—ventured the opinion that every work of art must of necessity be an allegory. Such an expression of opinion is only true if limited to the sense that every work of art must contain a general idea and a significance which is itself essentially true. What we have above, on the contrary, included under the term allegory is a mode of presentation which only conforms to the notion of art incompletely, being itself no less in content than in form subordinate to it. Every human event and development, every relation in which life is concerned, possesses no doubt intrinsically an aspect of universality, which may be emphasized as such, but abstractions of this kind are already to be found in the general contents of consciousness, and merely to assert them in their prosaic aspect of generality and external delineation, which is the point where the allegory halts, is still to fall short of the true sphere of art.
Winckelmann has also written an immature work on allegory, in which he has ranged together a large number of examples, but failed for the most part to distinguish those which exemplify the symbol and allegory respectively.
Among the particular arts within which we find examples of the allegory, poetry is really acting contrary to its laws when it takes refuge in such a mode of presentment; sculpture on the contrary is in most directions barely complete without it, more especially modern sculputure, which freely admits of that which is native to portraiture, and so must avail itself of allegorical figures in order to delineate more closely the relative aspects under which the individual presentment is posed. On Blucher's monument, for example, which has been raised to him here in Berlin, we find both the genius of Fame and Victory, although, having regard to the general treatment of the war of liberation, this allegorical aspect is once more set aside by means of a series of particular scenes such as the departure of the army, its march, and victorious return. Generally speaking, however, where the subject of sculpture is portraiture the sculptor will avail himself gladly of allegorical representation as offering to the simplicity of his central figure the contrast of environment and variety. The ancients on the other hand, on their sarcophagi for example, more frequently made use of general mythological representations of such figures as Sleep, Death, and the like.
Allegory generally is far less common in the antique than it is in the romantic art of the Middle Ages, although it must be added that such romance as it possesses is not really referable to allegory. The frequent appearance of allegorical conception at this particular epoch of human history is to be thus explained. From a certain point of view we find that the content of the Middle Ages is preoccupied with particular types of individuality and the personal aims, generally focussed in love and honour, and resulting in vows, wanderings, and adventures, which are common to them. Individuals of this type and the events of such lives invariably offer the imagination a wide scope for the inventive faculties, and the composition of accidental and capriciously imagined collisions and their resolution. On the other hand, in direct contrast to this motley show of worldly adventure we have the universal, taking it here as the stability of the ordinary relations and conditions of life, a universal which is not, as was the case in the ancient world, individualized in the figures of self-subsistent gods; consequently we find it freely and naturally emphasized in independent isolation as such universality alongside of these particular types of personality and their specific modes of appearance and activity. If the artist therefore happens to have before his mind the general conditions of life we have adverted to, and assuming that he is desirous of giving artistic embodiment to them in some form other than the accidental mode common to his age, that he wishes, in short, to emphasize their universality, he has no other alternative than to accept the allegorical type of presentment. This is precisely what we find in the sphere of religion.
The Virgin Mary, Christ, the actions and dramatic events of apostolic history, the saints with their penances and martyrdoms, are, it is true, even here individualities in the full sense; but Christendom is also to an equal extent concerned with the general conceptions of abstract spiritual qualities, such as will not comply with the concrete definition of actual persons inasmuch as the relation of universality is precisely the mode under which they are presented, of which examples are Love, Faith, and Hope. And generally the truths and dogmas of Christendom are independently cognized by the religious consciousness, and a main interest even of their poetry consists in this that these doctrines are emphasized in their universal aspect, that Truth is known and believed in as universal truth. In that case, however, it is necessary that the concrete presentation should remain a subordinate factor, itself external to the content, and allegory is just the form which satisfies this want in the easiest and most sufficient way. Conformably to this the divine comedy of Dante is full of allegorical matter. Theology, for example, in this poem is run together in fusion with the image of his beloved lady Beatrice. This personification, however, wavers in the lines of its delineation; and this uncertainty of outline is that which constitutes the beauty of it, and places it halfway between genuine allegory and a vision of his youthful love. In the ninth year of his life he looked on her for the first time: she appeared to him no daughter of mortal men, but of God. His fiery Italian nature conceived a passion for her, which the years failed to extinguish. And conscious that it was she who awoke in him the genius of poetry he finally sets himself the task, after he had lost in her that which was most loved in the fairest flower of its promise, of composing that wonderful monument of the most intimate and personal religion of his heart in the poetic masterpiece of his life.