the body so disappearing, the poet previously conceals it in a mist. Not that a mist appeared in the place of the body which had been carried off, but because we think of what is enveloped in a mist as invisible. Accordingly, Homer sometimes inverts. the case, and, instead of describing the object as rendered invisible, makes the subject struck with blindness. Thus Neptune darkens the eyes of Achilles, when he rescues Æneas from his murderous hand, and, snatching him out of the midst of the melée, places him at once in the rear. In fact, however, the eyes of Achilles are here no more blinded, than, in the former passage, the rescued heroes were concealed in a cloud. But, in both cases, the poet has made these additions, in order to render more palpable to our senses that extreme swiftness of disappearance, which we call vanishing. But painters have appropriated the Homeric mist, not only in those cases where Homer has or would have used it, viz. when persons become invisible, or disappear; but, also, in all those, where it is intended that the spectator should be able to perceive, in a painting, anything, which the characters themselves, either all or part of them, cannot see. Minerva was visible to Achilles alone, when she prevented him from coming to actual blows with Agamemnon. I know no other way, says Caylus, to express this, than by concealing her, on the side nearest to the rest of e Iliad Y. xx. 321. the council, by a cloud. This is in complete opposition to the spirit of the poet. Invisibility is the natural condition of his divinities. There was needed no dazzling to render them invisible,-no cutting off of the ordinary beams of light(35); while, on the contrary, to render them visible, an enlightenment and enlargement of mortal vision was required. Thus it is not enough, that in painting the cloud is an arbitrary, and not a natural sign; this arbitrary symbol has not even a single, defined, meaning, which, as such, it is bound to have; for it is used indiscriminately, either to represent the visible as invisible, or the invisible as visible. CHAPTER XIII. IF Homer's works were entirely lost, and nothing remained to us of the Iliad and Odyssey, but a series of paintings similar to those, of which Caylus has sketched the outlines from them, should we be able, from these pictures, to form the idea we now possess, I do not say, of the whole poet, but merely of his descriptive talent? Let us put it to the test with the first piece we chance upon. Suppose it is the painting of the plague. What do we see upon the artist's canvass? Dead corpses, burning funeral piles, the dying busied with the dead, while the angered god is seated upon a cloud, and discharging his arrows. The great richness of this painting is poverty to the poet. For, if we were to restore Homer from it, what could we make him say? "Hereupon Apollo grew angry, and shot his arrows : among the army of the Greeks, of whom many 'died, and their bodies were consumed." Now let us read Homer himself. a Iliad, A. i. 44-53. Tableaux tirés de l' Iliade, p. 70. βῆ δὲ κατ' Ουλύμποιο καρήνων χωόμενος κῆρ, The poet is as far above the painter, as life is above the painting. Angered, armed with bow and quiver, Apollo descends from the peaks of Olympus. I not only see him coming down, I hear him. At every step of the indignant god, the arrows rattle upon his shoulders. He strides on, like the night; now he sits over against the ships, and shoots-fearfully clangs the silver bow-his first arrow at the mules and the hounds. Next with his poisonous dart he strikes the men themselves; and the funeral piles with their dead are everywhere ceaselessly blazing. The musical picture, which the words of the poet at the same time present, cannot be translated into another language. It is equally impossible even to guess at it from the material painting, although this is the least superiority, which the poetical description has over the latter. The principal one is this, that the poet conducts us to his last scene, the only part of his description, which the material painting exhibits, through a whole gallery of pictures. But perhaps the plague is not an advantageous subject for painting. Here is another, which possesses a greater charm for the eyes. The gods are engaged at what is, at once, a council, and a drinking festival. In an open, golden, palace, are seen arbitrary groups of the most beautiful and adorable forms, cup in hand, unto whom Hebe, the personification of eternal youth, is ministering. What architecture, what masses of light and shade, what contrasts, what variety of expression! Where am I to begin, and where to cease, feasting my eyes? If the painter thus charms me, how much more will the poet? I open him, and I find myself deceived. I find four good but simple verses, which might serve very well for a motto, at the bottom of a painting; but which, though they contain the materials for a picture, are no picture themselves. ̔Οι δὲ θεοὶ πὰρ Ζηνὶ καθήμενοι ἠγορόωντο Apollonius, or even a still more indifferent poet, could have said all this, as well as Homer, who here remains as far below the artist, as, in the former passage, the artist falls short of him. b Iliad A. iv. 1-4. Tableaux tirés de l' Iliade, p. 30. |