FOOTNOTES:
[14] From the preface to the "Laocoön." Translated by E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern. An earlier translation of the "Laocoön" was made by William Ross in 1836.
II
OF SUFFERING HELD IN RESTRAINT[15]
Herr Winckelmann has pronounced a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, displayed in the posture no less than in the expression, to be the characteristic features common to all the Greek masterpieces of painting and sculpture. "As," says he, "the depths of the sea always remain calm, however much the surface may be raging, so the expression in the figures of the Greeks, under every form of passion, shows a great and self-collected soul.
"This spirit is portrayed in the countenance of Laocoön, and not in the countenance alone, under the most violent suffering; the pain discovers itself in every muscle and sinew of his body, and the beholder, while looking at the agonized contraction of the abdomen, without viewing the face and the other parts, believes that he almost feels the pain himself. This pain expresses itself, however, without any violence, both in the features and in the whole posture. He raises no terrible shriek, such as Virgil makes his Laocoön utter, for the opening of the mouth does not admit it; it is rather an anxious and supprest sigh, as described by Sadoleto. The pain of body and grandeur of soul are, as it were, weighed out, and distributed with equal strength through the whole frame of the figure. Laocoön suffers, but he suffers as the Philoctetes of Sophocles; his misery pierces us to the very soul, but inspires us with a wish that we could endure misery like that great man.
"The expressing of so great a soul is far higher than the painting of beautiful nature. The artist must have felt within himself that strength of spirit which he imprinted upon his marble. Greece had philosophers and artists in one person, and more than one Metrodorus. Philosophy gave her hand to art, and breathed into its figures more than ordinary souls."
The observation on which the foregoing remarks are founded, "that the pain in the face of Laocoön does not show itself with that force which its intensity would have led us to expect," is perfectly correct. Moreover, it is indisputable that it is in this very point where the half-connoisseur would have decided that the artist had fallen short of nature, and had not reached the true pathos of pain, that his wisdom is particularly conspicuous.
But I confess I differ from Winckelmann as to what is in his opinion the basis of this wisdom, and as to the universality of the rule which he deduces from it.