CHAPTER XVII. BUT, it will be answered, the signs, which the poet used, viz. language, not only render his description necessarily progressive, but are also arbitrary; and, as arbitrary signs, are certainly capable of representing bodies, as they exist in space. are cited from Homer himself; Examples of this whose shield of Achilles, say they, furnishes us with the most decisive instance, how circumstantially, and yet poetically, a single object may be described by its parts, placed near one another. I will reply to this two-fold objection. I call it two-fold; because a justly drawn conclusion must stand even without an example; and, on the other hand, an example of Homer would be of great weight with me, even if I did not know any argument by which to justify it. It is true that, since language is arbitrary, it is quite possible, that by it the parts of a body may be made to follow upon one another just as easily and perfectly, as they stand near one another in Nature. But this is a peculiarity of language and its signs generally, and not in so far forth, as they are most adapted to the aim of Poetry. The poet does not ୮ merely wish to be intelligible; the prose writer indeed is contented with simply rendering his descriptions clear and distinct, but the poet has a higher aim. He must awaken in us conceptions so lively, that, from the rapidity with which they arise, the same impression should be made upon our senses, which the sight of the material objects, that these conceptions represent, would produce. In this moment of illusion, we should cease to be conscious of the instruments, by which this effect is obtained,—I mean words. This is the substance of the above explanation of poetical description or painting. But a poet should always produce a picture; and we will now proceed to enquire how far bodies, according to their parts near one another, are adapted for this painting. How do we attain to a distinct conception of an object in space? First, we look at its parts singly; then at their combination; and, lastly, at the whole. The different operations are performed by our senses with such astonishing rapidity, that they appear but one; and this rapidity is indispensable, if we are to form an idea of the whole, which is nothing more than the result of the parts and their combination. Supposing, therefore, that the poet could lead us, in the most beautiful order, from one part of the object to another; supposing that he knew how to make the combination of these parts ever so clear to us; still much time would be spent in the process. The eye takes in at a glance, what he enumerates slowly and by degrees; and it often happens that we have already forgotten the first traits, before we come to the last; yet from these traits we are to form our idea of the whole. To the eye the parts once seen are continually present; it can run over them time after time, at its will; while the ear, on the contrary, entirely loses those parts it has heard, if they are not retained in the thought. And even if they are thus retained, what trouble and effort it costs us, to renew their whole impression in the same order, and with the same liveliness, as we at first received it; or to pass them at one time under review with but moderate rapidity, in order to attain anything that can be called an idea of the whole ! I will illustrate this position by an example, which is deservedly thought a masterpiece of its kind.a "There towers the noble gentian's lofty head, A whole flower people 'neath its standard serves, Gleams with the watery diamond's varied light. And body fair a fairer soul contain ! I a Haller's Alps. Here, like the grey mist, creeps a lowly herb, The lovely flower two golden bills displays, These are herbs and flowers, which the learned poet describes with great art, and faithfulness to nature; paints, but paints without illusion. I will not say that any one who had never seen these herbs and flowers could not possibly form an adequate conception of them from his description; for it may be that all poetical descriptions require a previous acquaintance with their object; nor will I deny that, if any one has the advantage of this acquaintance, the poet might awaken in him a more lively idea of some of the parts. The question at issue is, what is the case with respect to the conception of the whole? If this also is to be vivid, no individual prominence must be given to single parts, but the higher light must seem distributed to all; and our imagination must have the power of running over all with the same speed, that it may at once frame out of them that which can be at once seen in nature. Is this the case here? And if it is not, how can it be said, that the most faithful delineation of a painter, would prove weak, and obscure, in comparison with this poetical description ?" It is far below the expression, which lines and colours upon a surface are capable of producing; and the critic, who bestowed this exaggerated praise upon it, must have contemplated it from an entirely false point of view; he must have looked to the foreign ornaments, which the poet has interwoven with it, to its elevation above vegetable life, and to the development of those inner perfections, for which external beauty serves merely as the shell, more than to this beauty itself, and the degree of liveliness and faithfulness in the representation of it, which the painter and poet can respectively produce. Yet it is the last only that is important here; and any one who would say, that the mere lines, The flower's clear gold, in beamed curvature, Towers on the stem, and crowns its garments grey; The leaves' smooth white, with deepest green bestreaked Gleams with the watery diamond's varied light. Any one, I say, who could assert, that these lines, in point of the impression they create, can vie with the imitation of an Huysum, must either have never b Breitinger's Art of Criticism, Vol. ii. page, 807. |