But art in modern times has been allowed a far wider sphere. It has been affirmed that its limitations extend over the whole of visible nature, of which the beautiful is but a small part. And as nature is ever ready to sacrifice beauty to higher aims, so should the artist render it subordinate to his general design. But are there not other considerations which compel the artist to put certain limits to expression, and prevent him from ever drawing it at its highest intensity?
I believe that the fact that it is to a single moment that the material limits of art confine all its limitations, will lead us to similar views.
If the artist out of ever-varying nature can only make use of a single moment, while his works are meant to stand the test not only of a passing glance, but of a long and repeated contemplation, it is clear that this moment cannot be chosen too happily. Now that only is a happy choice which allows the imagination free scope. In the whole course of a feeling there is no moment which possesses this advantage so little as its highest stage. There is nothing beyond this, and the presentation of extremes to the eye clips the wings of fancy, prevents her from soaring beyond the impression of the senses, and compels her to occupy herself with weaker images. Thus if Laocoon sighs, the imagination can hear him shriek; but if he shrieks, it can neither rise above nor descend below this representation without seeing him in a condition which, as it will be more endurable, becomes less interesting. It either hears him merely moaning, or sees him already dead.
Of the frenzied Ajax of Timomachus we can form some judgment from the account of Philoctetes. Ajax does not appear raging among herds and slaughtering cattle instead of men; but the master exhibits him sitting wearied with these deeds of insanity, and that is really the raging Ajax. We can form the most lively idea of the extremity of his frenzy from the shame and despair which he himself feels at the thought of it. We see the storm in the wrecks and corpses which it had strewn on the beach.
II.—The Poet
Perhaps hardly any of the above remarks concerning the necessary limits of the artist would be found equally applicable to poetry. It is undeniable that the whole realm of the perfectly excellent lies open to the imitation of the poet, that excellence of outward form which we call beauty being only one of the least of the means by which he can interest us in his characters.
Moreover, the poet is not compelled to concentrate his picture into a single moment. He can take up every action of his hero at its source, and pursue it to its issue through all possible variations. Each of these, which would cost the artist a separate work, costs the poet but a single trait. What wonderful skill has Sophocles shown in strengthening and enlarging, in his tragedy of Philoctetes, the idea of bodily pain! He chose a wound, and not an internal malady, because the former admits of a more lively representation than the latter. This wound was, moreover, a punishment divinely decreed. But to the Greeks a wound from a poisoned arrow was but an ordinary incident. Why, then, in the case of Philoctetes only was it followed by such dreadful consequences?
Sophocles felt full well that, however great he made the bodily pain to his hero, it would not have sufficed of itself to excite any remarkable degree of sympathy. He therefore combined it with other evils—the complete lack of society, hunger, and all the hardships to which such a man under terrible privations is exposed when cast on a wild, deserted isle of the Cyclades.
Imagine, now, a man in these conditions, but give him health and strength and industry, and he becomes a Crusoe, whose lot, though not indifferent to us, has no great claim on our sympathy. On the other hand, imagine a man afflicted by a painful and incurable disease, but at the same time surrounded by kind friends. For him we should feel sympathy, yet this would not endure throughout. Only when both cases are combined do we see nothing but despair, which excites our amazement and horror. Typical beauty arises from the harmonious effect of numerous parts, all of which the sight is capable of comprehending at the same time. It requires, therefore, that these parts should lie near each other; and since things whose parts lie near each other are the peculiar objects of plastic beauty, these it is, and these only, which can imitate typical beauty. The poet, since he can only exhibit in succession its component parts, entirely abstains from the description of typical beauty. He feels that these parts, ranged one after the other, cannot possibly have the effect they produce when closely arranged together.