Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

opens

another so closely, and yet are so distinctly entered upon, that a person, who did not know how a bow was managed, might learn it merely from this picture(38). Pandarus takes out his bow; bends it; the quiver; chooses an arrow well feathered, and still unused; draws the string and the notch of the arrow back together; the string is close to the breast; the iron point of the arrow to the bow; the great, round-shaped bow, clanging, parts asunder; the arrow speeds away; and eagerly flies towards its destination.

It is impossible that Caylus can have overlooked this excellent picture. What then did he find there, to make him esteem it incapable of affording employment to his artists? And why was it, that the assembly of the gods, drinking in council, seemed to him more suitable for that purpose? In the one, as well as in the other, there are visible objects; and what more has the artist need of, to occupy his canvass?

The difficulty must be this; although both objects, as visible, are alike capable of being subjects of painting in its strict sense; still, there is this important difference between them, that the action of one is visible and progressive, its different parts happening one after another, in the sequence of time; while the action of the other is visible and stationary, its different parts developing themselves near one another, in space. But, if painting, owing to its signs,

or means of imitation, which it can combine in space only, is compelled entirely to renounce time, progressive actions, as such, cannot be classed among its subjects, but it must be content with simultaneous actions, or with mere figures, which, by their posture, lead us to conjecture an action. Poetry, on the contrary.

CHAPTER XVI.

STILL, I will endeavour to deduce our conclusions from their first principles.

I reason thus: if it is true that painting and poetry, in their imitations, make use of entirely different media of expression, or signs-the first, namely, of form and colour in space, the second of articulated sounds in time;-if these signs indisputably require a suitable relation to the thing betokened, then it is clear, that signs arranged near to one another, can only express objects, of which the wholes or parts exist near one another; while consecutive signs can only express objects, of which the wholes or parts are themselves consecutive.

Objects, whose wholes or parts exist near one another, are called bodies. Consequently, bodies, with their visible properties, are the peculiar objects of painting.

Objects, whose wholes or parts are consecutive, are called actions. Consequently, actions are the peculiar subject of poetry.

Still, all bodies do not exist in space only, but also in time. They endure, and, in each moment of their duration, may assume a different appearance,

or stand in a different combination. Each of these momentary appearances and combinations is the effect of a preceding action, may be the cause of a subsequent one, and is therefore, as it were, the centre of an action. Consequently, painting too can imitate actions, but only indicatively, by means of bodies.

On the other hand, actions cannot exist by themselves, they must depend on certain beings. So far, therefore, as these beings are bodies, or are treated as such, poetry paints bodies, but only indicatively, by means of actions.

In its coexisting compositions, painting can only make use of a single instant of an action, and must therefore choose the one, which is most pregnant, and from which what has already taken place, and what is about to follow, can be most easily gathered.

In like manner, poetry, in its progressive imitations, is confined to the use of a single property of a body, and must, therefore, choose that which calls up the most sensible image of that body, in the aspect in which he makes use of it.

From this flows the rule, that there should never be more than one epithet; and from it too has arisen the scarcity of descriptions of bodily objects.

I should put but little confidence in this dry chain of reasoning, did I not find it completely confirmed by the practice of Homer; or, I might even say, had it not been Homer himself who led

me to it. It is only on these principles that the sublime style of the Greek poet can be determined, and explained, in such a manner, as to expose in its full absurdity the directly opposite style of so many modern poets, who have endeavoured to rival the painter in a department, in which he must necessarily vanquish them.

I find that Homer describes nothing but progressive actions; and that, when he paints bodies, and single objects, he does it only as contributary to such, and, then, only by a single touch. It is no wonder then, that the artist finds least to employ his pencil, where Homer paints, and that his harvest is only to be found, where the story assembles a number of beautiful bodies, in beautiful attitudes, and in a space advantageous to art; though the poet himself may paint these forms, these attitudes, and this space, as little as he pleases. If we go through the whole series of paintings, as Caylus proposes them, piece by piece, we shall find in each a proof of the foregoing observation.

I here quit the Count, who would make the pallet of the artist the touchstone of the poet, in order to explain the style of Homer more closely.

Homer, I say, generally describes an object by a single characteristic; with him it is at one time the black, at another the hollow, at another the swift ship, at most the well-rowed black ship.

« ZurückWeiter »