Chapter XIII: Conclusion (2)

This affirmation of Plotinus and of neo-Platonism is the first true and proper affirmation of mystical Æsthetic, destined to such high fortunes in modern times, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. But the attempts at a true Æsthetic, excluding certain luminous but incidental observations to be found even in Plato: for instance, that the poet should weave fables, not arguments (μύθους άλλ' ού λόγους),[30] go back to Aristotle and are altogether independent of his few and feeble speculations as to the beautiful. Aristotle by no means agreed with the Platonic condemnation; he felt (as indeed Plato himself had suspected) that such a result could not be altogether true, and that some aspect of the problem must have been neglected. When in his turn he attempted to find a solution, he found himself in more advantageous conditions than his great predecessor, since he had already overcome the obstacle that arose from the Platonic doctrine of ideas, a hypostasis of concepts and abstractions. The ideas were for him simply concepts, and reality presented itself in a far more lively manner, not as a diminution of ideas, but as a synthesis of matter and form, it was thus much more easy for him to recognize the rationality of mimesis in his general philosophical doctrine and to assign to it its right place; and indeed it seems generally clear to Aristotle that mimesis, being proper to man by nature, is contemplation or theoretic activity; although he sometimes seems to forget this (as when he confuses imitation with the case of boys, who acquire their first knowledge by following an example[31]), and although his system, which admits practical sciences and poietic activities (distinguished from the practical as leaving a material object behind them), disturbed the firm and constant consideration of artistic mimesis and poetry as a theoretical activity. But if it is a theoretical activity, by what characteristic is poetry distinguished both from _scientific_ knowledge and from _historical_ knowledge? This is the way Aristotle states the problem concerning the nature of art, and this is the true and only way of stating it. Even we moderns ask ourselves in what way art is distinguished from history and from science, and what this artistic form can be, which has the ideality of science and the concreteness and individuality of history. Poetry, answers Aristotle, differs from history, because, while the latter draws things that have happened (τα γενόμενα), poetry draws things that may possibly happen (οια αν γένοιτο), and differs from science, because, although it regards the universal and not the particular (τα καθ' εκαστον) like history, it does not regard it in the same way as science, but in a certain measure, which the philosopher indicates by the word _rather_ (μαλλον τα καθόλου). The point then is to establish the precise meaning of the _possible,_ the _rather_ and the _historical particular._ But no sooner does Aristotle attempt to determine the meaning of these words, than he falls into contradictions and fallacies. That _universal_ of poetry, which is the _possible,_ seems to identify itself for him with the probable or the necessary (τα _κατά το είκος η το άναγκαΐον_), and the particular of history is not explained at all, except by giving instances: "that which Alcibiades did and what happened to him."[32] Aristotle, in fact, after having made so good a beginning in the discovery of the purely imaginative, proper to poetry, remains half-way, perplexed and uncertain. Thus he sometimes makes the truth of imitation consist in a certain learning and syllogizing that takes place when we look at imitations, by which we recognize that "this is that," that a copy answers to the original;[33] or, worse, he loses the grains of truth that he has found and forgets that poetry has for its content the possible, admitting, not only that it may also depict the _impossible_ (το αδύνατον), and even the _absurd_ (το άτοπον), seeing that both are _credible_ and that they do not injure the end of art, but even that we must prefer impossible probabilities to incredible possibilities.[34] Art, since it has to do even with the impossible and absurd, will not therefore have in it anything of the rational, but in accordance with the Platonic theory it will be an imitation of the appearance in which empty sense indulges itself; that is to say, a thing of pleasure. Aristotle does not attain to this result, because he does not attain to any clear and precise result in this part of the subject, but it is one of the results that can be deduced from what he has said, or that, at any rate he is not able to exclude. This means that he did not fulfil his tacitly assumed task, and that although he re-examined the problem with marvellous acuteness after Plato, he failed truly to rid himself of the Platonic definition, by substituting a firmly-established one of his own.

[Sidenote: _The concepts of imitation and of imagination after A ristotle. Philostratus._]

But the field of investigation toward which Aristotle had turned was generally neglected in antiquity: the very _Poetics_ of Aristotle does not seem to have been widely known or influential. Ancient psychology knew fancy or imagination as a faculty midway between sense and intellect, but always as conservative and reproductive of sensuous impressions or conveying conceptions to the senses, never properly as a productive autonomous activity. That faculty was rarely and with little result placed in relation with the problem of art. Several historians of Æsthetic attach singular importance to certain passages in the _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_ by the elder Philostratus, in which they believe that they discover a correction of the theory of _mimesis_ and the first affirmation in history of the conception of _imaginative creation._ Phidias and Praxiteles (says the extract in question) did not need to go to heaven to see the gods, in order to be able to depict them in their works, as would have been necessary according to the theory of imitation. Imagination, without any need of models, made them able to do what they did: imagination, which is a wiser agent than simple imitation (φαντασία ... σοφωτόρα μιμήσεως δημιουργός), and gives form, like the other, not only to what has been seen, but also to what has never been seen, imagining it on the basis of existing things and in that way creating Jupiters and Minervas.[35] However, the imagination of which Philostratus speaks here is not something different from the Aristotelian mimesis, which, as has been noted, was concerned not only with real things but also and chiefly with possible things. And had not Socrates observed (in the dialogue with the painter Parrhasius, preserved for us by Xenophon) that painters work by collecting what they need to form their figures from several bodies (εκ πολλων συνάγοντες τα εξ εκάστου καλλιστα)?[36] And was not the anecdote of Zeuxis, who was supposed to have taken the best of five Crotonian maidens in order to paint his Helen, and other anecdotes of a like sort, sufficiently widespread in antiquity? And had not Cicero eloquently explained, some years before Philostratus, how Phidias, when he was carving Jupiter, did not copy anything real, but kept his looks fixed upon "_species pulcritudinis eximia quaedam,_" which he had in his soul and which directed his art and his hand?[37] Nor can it be said that Philostratus opened the way to Plotinus, for whom the superior or intellectual imagination (νοητή), or eye of supersensible beauty, when it is not a new designation for beautiful imitation, is mystical intuition.

The vagueness of the concept of mimesis reached its apex in those writers who gave it as a general title to any sort of work that had nature for its object, employing the Aristotelian phrase to affirm that "_omnis ars naturae imitatio est,_"[38] or saying, like the painter Eupompus when he blamed his servile imitators, that "_natura est imitanda, non artifex._"[39] And those who wished to escape this vagueness did not know how to do so, save by conceiving the activity of imitation as the practical producer of duplicates of natural objects, a prejudice bora in the bosom of the pictorial and plastic arts, against which Philostratus perhaps intended to argue, in common with the other advocates of imagination.

[Sidenote: _Speculations on language._]

The speculations upon language had a close connexion with those upon the nature of art begun by the sophists, for whom it became a matter for wonder that sounds could signify colours or things inaudible; that is to say, _speech_ presented itself as a _problem._[40] It was then discussed whether language was by nature (φύσει or by convention νόμω). By nature was sometimes understood mental necessity, and by convention what we should call a merely natural fact, psychological mechanism or sensationalism. In that sense of the terms, language would have been better called φύσει than νόμω. But at other times the distinction led to the question whether language answers to objective or logical truth and to the real relations between things (όρθότης των ονομάτων); and in this case, those would seem to be nearer the truth who proclaimed it to be conventional or arbitrary in respect to logical truth: νόμω or θέσει, and not φύσει Two different questions were consequently being treated together, and both were confusedly and equivocally discussed. They find their monument in the obscure _Cratylus_ of Plato, which seems to fluctuate between different solutions. Nor did the later affirmation that the word is a sign (σημείον) of the thought solve anything, for it still remained to be shown in what way the sign was to be understood, whether φύσει or νόμω. Aristotle, who looked upon words as imitations (μιμηματα), in the same way as poetry,[41] made an observation of first-rate importance: in addition to the _enunciative_ propositions, which express the (logically) true or false, there are others which do not express either the (logically) true or false, as for example the expressions of aspirations and of desires (εύχή), which therefore belong, not to logical exposition, but to poetical and rhetorical exposition.[42] And in another place we find him affirming in opposition to Bryson (who had said that a base thing remained such with whatever word it were designated) that base things can be expressed both with words that place them beneath the eye in all their crudity, and with other words which surround them with a veil.[43] All this might have led to the separation of the linguistic faculty from the properly logical, and to its consideration in union with the poetical and artistic faculty; but here too the attempt stopped half-way. The Aristotelian logic assumed a verbal and formalistic character, which became more and more accentuated as time went on and formed an obstacle to the distinction between the two theoretical forms. Nevertheless, Epicurus asserted that the diversity of names designating the same thing with various peoples was due, not to convention and caprice, but to the fact that the impressions produced by things were different in each one of them.[44] And the Stoics, although they connected language with thought (διάνοια) and not with imagination, seem to have had a suspicion of the non-logical nature of language, for they interposed between thought and sound a _certain something_ which was indicated in Greek by the word λεκτόν, and by the words _effatum_ or _dicibile_ in Latin. But we are not sure what they really meant, and whether that vague concept were intended by them to distinguish the linguistic representation from the abstract concept (which would bring them into touch with the modern view), or the meaning of sound in general.[45]

We cannot collect any other germ of truth from the ancient writers. A philosophical Grammar, like a philosophical Poetics, remained unattainable in antiquity.

[1] See above, pp. 128-131. Quotations which give only the name of the author, or are otherwise abbreviated, refer to historical or critical works of which the complete title is given in the Bibliographical Appendix.

[2] Rosmini, _Nuovo saggio sull' origine delle idee,_ sections iii. and iv., where theories of knowledge are classified.

[3] See above, pp. 83-84.

[4] See above, p. 65.

[5] _Republic_, x. 607.

[6] _Republic_, x. 607.

[7] Plutarch, _De audiendis poetis_, ch. i.

[8] _Republic_ x.

[9] _Frogs,_ 1, 1055.

[10] Plato, _Laws,_ bk. ii.; Aristotle, _Poet._ ch. 14; _Polit,_ bk. viii.

[11] Strabo, _Geographica,_ i. ch. 2, §§ 3-9.

[12] Texts collected in E. Müller, _Gesch. d. Th. d. K._ i. pp. 57-85.

[13] Plutarch, _De aud. poetis,_ chs. 1-4, 14.

[14] _De rerum natura,_ i. 935-947.

[15] _Ad Pisones,_ 333-334.

[16] _Memorab._ iii. ch. 8; iv. ch. 6.

[18] _Hippias maior, passim._

[19] _Rhet._ i. ch. 9.

[20] _Metaphys._ xii. ch. 3.

[21] _Poet._ ch. 7.

[22] Diog. Lært. v. ch. i, § 20.

[23] _Tuscul. quæst._ bk. iv. § 13.

[24] _Poet._ ch. iv. 3.

[25] _De aud. poetis_, ch. 3.

[26] _Enneads,_ I. bk. vi. ch. i.

[27] _Enneads, loc. cit._ chs. 2-9.

[28] _Enneads,_ V. bk. viii. ch. i.

[29] _Enneads, loc. cit._ chs. 2-3.

[30] _Phædrus,_ ch. 4.

[31] Poet. ch. 4, § 2.

[32] Poet. ch. 9, §§ 1-4.

[33] Poet. ch. 4, §§ 4-5.

[34] Poet. chs. 24-25.

[35] _Apoll. vita,_ vi. ch. io.

[36] _Memorab._ iii. ch. io.

[37] _Orator ad Brutum,_ ch. 2.

[38] For example, Seneca, _Epist._ 65.

[39] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxiv. ch. 19.

[40] Gorgias in _De Xenoph., Zen. et Gorg._ (in Aristot., ed. Didot), chs. 5-6.

[41] _Rhet._ bk. iii. ch. 1.

[42] _Rhet._ bk. iii. ch. 2.

[43] _De interp._ ch. 4.

[44] Diog. Lært. bk. x. § 75.

[45] Steinthal, _Gesch. d. Sprachw.,_ 2nd ed., i. pp. 288, 293, 296-297.

II

ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE

[Sidenote: _Middle Ages, Mysticism, Ideas on the beautiful._]

Almost all the developments of ancient Æsthetic were continued by tradition or reappeared by spontaneous generation in the course of the Middle Ages. Neo-Platonic mysticism continued, entrusted to the care of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (_De cœlesti hierarchia, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, De divinis nominibus,_ etc.), to the translations of these works made by John Scotus Eriugena, and to the divulgations of the Spanish Jews (Avicebron). The Christian God took the place of the Summum Bonum or Idea: God, wisdom, goodness, supreme beauty, source of beautiful things in nature, which are a ladder to the contemplation of the Creator. But these speculations continued to recede further and further from the consideration of art, with which Plotinus had connected them; and the empty definitions of the beautiful by Cicero and other ancient writers were often repeated. Saint Augustine defined beauty in general as unity (_omnis pulchritudinis forma unitas est,_) and that of the body as _congruentia partium cum quadam colons suavitate,_ and the old distinction between something that is beautiful in itself and relative beauty reappeared in a book of his, which has been lost, entitled _De pulchro et apto;_ the very name shows that he reasserted the old distinction between the beautiful in itself and the relatively beautiful, _quoniam apte accommodaretur alicui._ Elsewhere he notes that an image is called beautiful _si perfecte implei illud cujus imago est, et coaequatur ei._[1]

Thomas Aquinas varied but little from him in positing three requisites for beauty: integrity or perfection, due proportion, and clearness; following Aristotle, he distinguished the beautiful from the good, defining the first as that which pleases in the mere contemplation of it (_pulcrum ... id cujus ipsa apprehensio placet_); he referred to the beauty that even base things possess if well imitated, and applied the doctrine of imitation to the beauty of the Second Person of the Trinity (_in quantum est imago expressa Patris_).[2] If it were wished to discover references to the hedonistic conception of art, it would be possible to do this, with a little goodwill, in some of the sayings of jongleurs and troubadours. Æsthetic rigorism, the total negation of art for religion or for divine and human science, shows itself in Tertullian and among certain Fathers of the Church, at the entrance to the Middle Ages; at their conclusion, in a certain crude scholastic spirit, for example in Cecco d' Ascoli, who proclaimed against Dante: "I leave trifles behind me and return to the _true_; fables are always unpleasing to me," and later, in the reactionary Savonarola. But the narcotic theory of pedagogic or moralistic art prevailed over every other. It had contributed to send to sleep the æsthetic doubts and inquiries of the ancients, and was well suited to a period of relative decadence of culture. This was all the more the case, seeing that it accorded well with the moral and religious ideas of the Middle Ages, and afforded a justification not only for the new art of Christian inspiration, but also for the surviving works of classical and pagan art.

[Sidenote: _The pedagogic theory of art in the Middle Ages._]

The allegorical interpretation was again a means of salvation for these last. The _De continentia Virgiliana_ of Fulgentius (sixth century) is a curious monument to this fact. This work made Virgil compatible with the Middle Ages and opened his way to that great reputation which he was destined to attain, as the "gentle sage who knew all things." Even John of Salisbury says of the Roman poet, that "_sub imagine fabularum totius philosophiae exprimit veritatem._"[3] The process of interpretation became fixed in the doctrine of the _four meanings,_ literal, allegorical, moral and anagogic, which Dante afterwards transferred to vernacular poetry. It would be easy to accumulate quotations from mediæval writers, repeating in all keys the theory that art inculcates the truths of morality and of faith and constrains hearts to Christian piety, beginning with those well-known verses of Theodulf: "_In quorum dictis_ (that is to say, in the utterances of the poets) _quamquam sint frivola multa, Plurima sub falso tegmine vera latent,_" and so on, until we reach the doctrines and opinions of our own great men, Dante and Boccaccio. For Dante, poetry "_nihil aliud est quam fictio rhethorica in musicaque posita._"[4] The poet should have a "reasoning" in his verses "under a cloak of figure or of rhetorical colour"; and it would be a shameful thing for him, if, "when asked, he were not able to divest his words of such a garment, in such a way as to show that they possessed a true meaning."[5] Readers sometimes stop at the external vesture alone, and this indeed suffices for those who, like the vulgar, do not succeed in penetrating the hidden meaning. Poetry will say to the vulgar, which does not understand "its argument," what a song of Dante's says at its conclusion, "At least behold how _beautiful_ I am": if you are not able to obtain instruction from me, at least enjoy me as a pleasing thing. Many, indeed, "their beauty more than their goodness will delight," in poems, unless they are assisted by commentaries in the nature of the _Convivio,_ "a light which will allow every shade of meaning to reach them."[6] Poetry was the "gay science," "_un fingimiento_" (as the Spanish poet the Marquis of Santillana wrote) "_de cosas utiles, cubiertas ó veladas con muy fermosa cobertura, compuestas, distinguidas é scandidas, por cierto cuento, pessoé medida._"[7]

It would not then be correct to say that the Middle Ages simply identified art with theology and with philosophy. Indeed it sharply distinguished the one from the other, defining art and poetry, like Dante, with the words _fictio rhethorica_, "figure" and "rhetorical colour," "cloak," "beauty," or like Santillana with those of _fingimiento_ or _fermosa cobertura._ This pleasing falsity was justified from the practical point of view, very much in the same way as sexual union and love were justified and sanctified in matrimony. This did not exclude, indeed it implied, that the perfect state was certainly celibacy--that is to say, pure science, free from admixture of art.

[Sidenote: _Hints of an Æsthetic in scholastic philosophy._]

The only tendency that had no true and proper representatives was the sound scientific tendency. The _Poetics_ of Aristotle itself was hardly known or rather it was ill-known, from the Latin translation that a German of the name of Hermann made, not earlier than 1256, of the paraphrase or commentary of Averroes. Perhaps the best of the mediæval investigations into language is that supplied by Dante's _De vulgari eloquentia,_ where the word is, however, still looked upon as a sign ("_rationale signum et sensuale ... natura sensuale quidem, in quantum sonus est, rationale vero in quantum aliquid significare videtur ad piacitum_").[8] The study of the expressive, æsthetic, linguistic faculty would, however, have found an appropriate occasion and a point of departure in the secular debate between nominalism and realism, which could not avoid touching to some extent the relations between the word and the flesh, thought and language. Duns Scotus wrote a treatise _De modis significandi seu_ (the addition is due perhaps to the editors) _grammatica speculativa_.[9] Abelard had defined sensation as _confusa conceptio,_ and _imaginatio_ as a faculty that preserved sensations; the intellect renders discursive what is intuitive in the preceding stage, and we have finally the perfection of knowledge in the intuitive knowledge of the discursive. We find the same importance attached to intuitive knowledge, perception, of the individual or _species specialissima,_ in Duns Scotus, together with the progressive denominations of the different sorts of knowledge as _confusæ, indistinctæ_ and _distinctæ._ We shall see this terminology reappear, big with consequences, at the very commencement of modern Æsthetic.[10]

[Sidenote: _Renaissance. Philography and philosophical and empirical inquiries concerning the beautiful._]

It may be said that the literary and artistic doctrines and opinions of the Middle Ages have, with few exceptions, a value rather for the history of culture than for the general history of science. The like observation holds good of the Renaissance, for here, too, the circle of the ideas of antiquity was not overstepped. Culture increases; original sources are studied; the ancient writers are translated and commented upon; many treatises are written and henceforth printed upon poetry and the arts, grammars, rhetorics, dialogues, and dissertations upon the beautiful: the proportions have increased, the world has become bigger; but truly original ideas do not yet show themselves in the domain of æsthetic science. The mystical tradition is refreshed and strengthened by the renewed cult of Plato: Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Cattani, Leon Battista Alberti, in the fifteenth century, and Pietro Bembo, Mario Equicola, Castiglione, Nobili, Betussi, and very many others in the following century, wrote upon the Beautiful and upon Love. Among the most noteworthy productions of the sort, a crossing of the mediæval and classical currents, is the book of the _Dialogues of Love_ (1535), composed in Italian by the Spanish Jew Leo, and translated into all the cultured languages of the time.[11] The three parts into which it is divided treat of the nature and essence, of the universality, and of the origin of love; and it is demonstrated that every beautiful thing is good, but not every good thing is beautiful; that beauty is a grace which dilates the soul and moves it to love, and that knowledge of lesser beauties leads to that of higher spiritual beauties. The author gave the name of "Philography" to these and similar affirmations and effusions of which the book is composed. Equicola's[12] work is also interesting, because it contains historical accounts of those who wrote upon the subject before he did so himself. The same intuition was versified and sighed forth by the Petrarchists in their sonnets and ballads, while others, rebellious and mocking, derided it in comedies, verses in _terza rima_ and parodies of all sorts. Some mathematicians, reincarnations of Pythagoras, set to work to determine beauty by exact relations: for instance Leonardo's friend, Luca Paciolo, in the _De divina proportione_ (1509), in which he laid down the pretended æsthetic law of the golden section.[13] And side by side with these new Pythagoreans were those who revived the canon of Polycletus as to the beauty of the human body, especially of the female body, such as Firenzuola, Franco, Luigini, and Dolce. Michæl Angelo fixed an empirical canon for painting in general, when he stated that the means of giving movement and grace to figures[14] consisted in the observance of a certain arithmetical relation. Others, such as Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, investigated the symbolism or meaning of colours. The Platonists generally placed beauty in the soul, the Aristotelians rather in the physical qualities. The Averroist, Agostino Nifo, amid much chatter and many inconclusive remarks, demonstrated the existence of the beautiful in nature by describing the supremely beautiful body of Joan of Aragon, Princess of Tagliacozzo, to whom the book is dedicated.[15] Torquato Tasso, in the "Mintumo,"[16] imitated the uncertainties of the _Hippias_ of Plato, not without making a free use of the speculations of Plotinus. A chapter of the _Poetica_ of Campanella possesses greater importance, where he describes the good as _signum boni_ and the ugly as _signum mali,_ understanding by good the three prime forces of Power, Wisdom and Love. Although Campanella was still tied to the Platonic idea of the beautiful, the conception of a sign or symbol, here introduced by him, represents progress. By this means he succeeded in perceiving that material things or external facts are neither beautiful nor ugly in themselves. "Mandricard called the wounds in the bodies of his friends the Moors beautiful, for they were large and gave evidence of the great strength of Roland who dealt them; Saint Augustine called the gashes and the dislocations in the body of Saint Vincent beautiful, because they were evidence of his endurance, but they were on the other hand ugly in so far as they were signs of the cruelty of the tyrant Dacianus and of his executioners. It is beautiful to die fighting, said Virgil, for it is the sign of a strong soul. The pet dog of his mistress will seem beautiful to the lover, and doctors call even urine and fæces beautiful, when they indicate health. Everything is both beautiful and ugly" (_quapropter nihil est quod non sit pulcrum simul et turpe_).[17] In such observations as these we have not a mere state of mystical exaltation, but to some extent a movement in the direction of analysis.

[Sidenote: _The pedagogic theory of art and the Poetics of Aristotle._]

Nothing better serves to demonstrate that the Renaissance did not pass beyond the confines of ancient æsthetic thought than the fact that notwithstanding the renewed acquaintance with the thought of Aristotle, the pedagogic theory of art not only persisted and triumphed, but was transplanted bodily into the text of Aristotle, where its interpreters read it with a certainty that we have to make efforts to achieve. Certainly, a Robortelli (1548) or a Castelvetro (1570) stopped short at the simple, purely hedonistic solution, giving simple pleasure as the end of art: poetry, says Castelvetro, "was discovered solely for the purpose of delighting and of recreating ... the souls of the rude multitude and of the common people."[18] And here and there some were able to free themselves from both the pleasure theory and that of the didactic end; but the majority, such as Segni, Maggi, Vettori,[19] were for the _docere delectando._ Scaliger (1561) declared that mimesis or imitation was "_finis medius ad illum ultimum qui est docendi cum delectatione,_" and believing himself to be altogether in agreement with Aristotle as to this, he continued, "_docet affectus poeta per actiones, ut bonos amplectamur atque imitemur ad agendum, malos aspernemur ad abstinendum._"[20] Piccolomini (1575) observed that "It must not be thought that so many excellent poets and artists, ancient and modern, would have devoted such care and diligence to this most noble study, had they not known and believed that in so doing they were aiding human life," and if "they had not thought that we were to be instructed, directed, and well established by it."[21] The "truth preserved in soft verses, which attracts and persuades the most reluctant" (Tasso),[22] with the comparison from Lucretius attached, is the conception that even Campanella repeats. Poetry is for him "_Rhetorica quaedam figurata, quasi magica, quae exempla ministrat ad suadendum bonum et dissuadendum malum delectabiliter iis qui simplici verum et bonum audire nolunt, aut non possunt aut nesciunt._"[23] Thus returned the comparison of poetry with oratory; according to Segni they only differ because the first occupies a more lofty situation: "for since imitation representing itself in act by means of poetry, in mighty, chosen words, in metaphors, images, and indeed the whole of figured speech, which is to be found more in poetry than in the art of oratory, the metrical qualities that are also required in verse, the subjects of which it treats, which have something of the great and delightful, make it appear most beautiful and worthy of being held all the greater marvel."[24] "Three most noble arts" (wrote Tassoni in 1620, and he repeated common opinion), "History, Poetics, and Oratory, come under the heading of Politics and depend upon it; the first of these has reference to the instruction of princes and gentlemen, the second of the people, the third of those who give counsel in public trials or defend private ones that come up for judgment."[25]

According to these views, the tragical catharsis was regarded as designed in general to demonstrate the instability of fortune, or to terrify by example, or to proclaim the triumph of justice, or to render the spectators insensible to the strokes of fortune, owing to their familiarity with suffering. The pedagogic theory, thus renewed and sustained by the authority of the ancients, was popularized in France, Spain, England and Germany, together with all the Italian poetic doctrines of the Renaissance. The French writers of the period of Louis XIV. are altogether penetrated with it. "_Cette science agréable qui mêle la gravité des préceptes avec la douceur du langage_," is what La Ménardière calls poetry (1640), in the same way as Le Bossu (1675), for whom "_le premier but du poète est d'instruire_,"[26] as Homer taught, when he wrote two interesting didactic manuals relating to military and political events: the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey._

[Sidenote: _The "Poetics of the Renaissance."_]

This pedagogic theory has therefore been reasonably described by all the modern critics in concert, as if by antonomasia, as the _Poetics of the Renaissance._ It must, however, always be understood that it did not appear for the first time in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, but that it was prevalent and generally accepted at that time. It may even be remarked, as has already been acutely done,[27] that the Renaissance naturally did not distinguish the didactic kind of poetry from the other kinds, since for it every kind of poetry was didactic. But the Renaissance was not a real Renaissance, save when and where it continued the interrupted spiritual work of antiquity, and in this sense it would perhaps be more just to describe as its Poetics, or rather, as the important element in its Poetics, not the repetition of the pedagogic theory of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, but the resumption, which also took place, of the discussions upon the possible, the probable (_verisimile_, εικός) of Aristotle, on the reasons of Plato's condemnation and on the procedure of the artist who creates by imagining.

[Sidenote: _Dispute concerning the universal and the probable in art._]

It is in such discussions that is to be found the true contribution of that epoch, not to learning, but to the formation of the science of Æsthetic. The ground was prepared and enriched through the work of the interpreters and commentators of Aristotle and of the new writers on Poetics, especially the Italians, and it was also enriched with some seed that was destined to sprout and to become a vigorous plant in the future. The study of Plato also contributed not a little to call attention to the function of the idea, or of the universal, in poetry. What meaning was to be attached to the statement that poetry should aim at the universal and history at the particular? What was the meaning of the proposition that poetry should proceed according to _probability_? What could that _certain idea_ consist of, which Raphæl said that he followed in his painting?

[Sidenote: _Fracastoro._]

Girolamo Fracastoro was among the first to ask himself this question seriously, in the dialogue _Naugerius, sive De poetica_ (1555). He disdainfully rejected the thesis that the end of poetry is pleasure: far be from us, he exclaimed, so bad an opinion of the poets, who the ancients said were the inventors of all the good arts. Nor did the end of instruction seem to him to be acceptable, which is the task, not of poetry, but of other faculties, such as geography, history, agronomy, philosophy. The poet's task is to represent or to imitate, and he differs from the historian, not in the matter, but in the manner of representation. The others imitate the particular, the poet the universal: the others are like the painters of portraits, the poet produces things as he contemplates the universal and most beautiful idea of them: the others say only what they need to say for their purposes, the poet that he may say everything beautifully and fully.

But the beauty of a poem must always be understood as relative to the class of subject of which it treats; it is the most beautiful in this class, not the supremely beautiful: one must be careful to guard against the equivocal or double meaning of this word "beauty" (_æquivocatio illius verbi_). A poet never utters what is false or expresses what does not exist, for his words inevitably harmonize in appearance or signification either with the opinions of men or with the universal. Nor can we accept the Platonic axiom that the poet has no knowledge of the things of which he treats; he does know them, but in his own poet's manner.[28]

[Sidenote: _L. Castelvetro._]

While Fracastoro strives to elaborate the important passage in Aristotle touching the universal of poetry, and though somewhat vague in his treatment, keeps fairly close to the mark; Castelvetro, on the contrary, judges the Aristotelian fragment with the freedom and superior knowledge of the true critic. He recognizes that the _Poetics_ is merely a notebook recording certain principles and methods of compiling the art, not the art fully compiled. He remarks, moreover, not without logical acumen, that Aristotle having adopted the criterion of probability or of that "which presents an appearance of historic truth," should have applied his theory in the first case to history, not to poetry; for history being a "narrative according to truth of memorable human actions," and poetry a narrative according to probability of events which might possibly occur, the second cannot receive "all its radiance" from the first. Nor does it escape him that Aristotle describes two different things by the one word "imitation": (_a_) "following the example of another," which is "acting in exactly the same way as another without knowing the reason of such action": and (_b_) the imitation "demanded by poetry," which "does things in a manner totally different from that in which they have been done hitherto and proposes a new example for imitation." Nevertheless Castelvetro cannot extricate himself from the confusion between the imaginary and the historical; for he himself says "the realm of the former is generally that of certainty," but "the field of certainty is often crossed with bars of uncertainty just as the field of uncertainty is often crossed with bars of certainty." Also what can be said of this curious interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of pleasure experienced in the imitation of ugly models, that such pleasure is based on the fact that since an imitation is always imperfect, it is incapable of exciting the disgust and fear which would arise from the contemplation of real ugliness? And what of his remark that the characteristics of painting and poetry are so diverse as to be in opposition one to the other; imitation of objects giving rise to great pleasure in the former art and as great displeasure in the latter? And so on in numberless cases of bold but scarcely felicitous subtleties.[29]

[Sidenote: _Piccolomini and Pinciano._]

In opposition to Robortelli, who asserted the identity of the probable and the false, Piccolomini held that the probable (_verisimile_) is inherently neither false nor true, only by accident becoming one or other.[30] Of the same mind is the Spaniard Alfonso Lopez Pinciano (1596), who says the scope of poetry "_no es la mentira, que seria coincider con la sophística, ni la historia que seria tomar la materia al histórico; y no siendo historia porque toca fabúlas ni mentira porque toca historia, tiene por objeto el verisimil, que todo lo abraza. De aqui resulta que es un arte superior á la metaphysica, porqué comprende mucho mas, y se extiende a lo que es y á lo que no es._"[31] What may lie behind this notion of probability is still indefinite and impenetrable.

[Sidenote: _Fr. Patrizzi_ (_Patricius_).]

Moved by a wish to place poetry on a foundation other than the probable, Francesco Patrizzi, the anti-Aristotelian, composed his _Poetica_ between 1555 and 1586 in refutation of all Aristotle's main doctrines. Patrizzi notes that the word "imitation" is given many meanings by the Greek philosopher, who uses it now to denote a single word, now to describe a tragedy; at times it stands for a figure of speech, at others for a fiction: whence he draws the logical conclusion (from which, however, he shrinks alarmed) "that all philosophic and other kinds of writing and speaking are poetry, since they are made of words which themselves are imitations." He observes further that, according to Aristotle, it is impossible to distinguish between poetry and history (since both are imitations), or to prove that verse is not essential to poetry, or that history, science and art are unsuitable material for it; since Aristotle in several passages says that poetry may comprise "fable, actual occurrences, belief of others, duty, the best, necessity, the possible, the probable, the credible, the incredible, the suitable" as well as "all things worldly." After these objections, some sound, others sophistical, Patrizzi comes to the conclusion that "there is no truth in the dogma that poetry is wholly imitation; and even if it be imitation at all, it belongs not to poets alone, nor is it mere imitation of any kind, but something else not mentioned by Aristotle nor pointed out by any one else, nor yet borne into the mind of man. The discovery may possibly be made in course of time, or some one may hit upon the truth and bring it to light"; but up to the present "such discovery has not been made."[32]

Yet these confessions of ignorance, these endeavours, though vain, to escape from the Aristotelian circle of ideas, and the great literary controversies of the sixteenth century concerning the concept of poetic truth and the probable had their use in that they stimulated interest by directing attention to a mystery still unsolved. Thought had once more begun to move upon the æsthetic problem, and this time it was not destined to be broken off or to lose itself.

[1] _Confess,_ iv. x. ch. 13; _De Trinitate,_ vi. ch. 10; _Epist._ 3, 18; _De civitate Dei,_ xxii. ch. 19 (in _Opera,_ ed. dei Maurini, Paris, 1679-1690, vols. i. ii. vii. viii.).

[2] _Summa theol._ I. 1. xxxix. 8; I. 11. xxvii. I (ed. Migne, i. cols. 794-795; ii. col. 219).

[3] Comparetti, _Virg. nel medio evo,_ vol. i. _passim._

[4] _De vulg. eloq._ (ed. Rajna), bk. ii. ch. 4.

[5] _Vita nuova,_ ch. 25.

[6] _Convivio,_ i. 1.

[7] _Prohemio al Condestable de Portugal,_ 1445-1449 (in _Obras,_ ed. Amador de los Rios, 1852), § 3.

[8] _De vulg. eloq._ bk. i. ch. 3.

[9] Lately reprinted under the editorship of padre M. Fernandez Garcia, Ad claras Aquas (Quarracchi), 1902.

[10] Windelband, _Gesch. d. Phil._ ii. pp. 251-270; De Wulf, _Philos, médiév.,_ Louvain, 1900, pp. 317-320.

[11] _Dialogi di amore, composti per Leone, medico ...,_ Rome, 1535.

[12] _Libro di natura e d' amore,_ Venice, 1525 (Ven. 1563).

[13] _De divina proportione,_ Venice, 1509.

[14] G. P. Lomazzo, _Trattato dell' arte della pittura, scultura ed architettura,_ Milan, 1585, i. I, pp. 22-23.

[15] Aug. Niphi, _De pulcro el amore,_ Rome, 1529.

[16] _Il Minturno o vero de la belleza_ (in _Dialoghi,_ ed. Guasti, vol. iii.).

[17] _Ration. philos._ part iv.; _Poeticor._ (Paris, 1638), art. vii.

[18] Fr. Robortelli, _In librum Arts, de arte poet, explicationes,_ Florence, 1548; Lud. Castelvetro, _Poetica d' Aristotele vulgarizzata ed esposta,_ 1570 (Basle, 1576), part i. particella iv. pp. 29-30.

[19] Bern. Segni, _Rettor. e poet. trad._ Florence, 1549; Vinc. Madii, _In Arist.... explanationes,_ 1550; Petri Victorii, _Commentarii,_ etc., Florence, 1560.

[20] _Poetica,_ 1561 (ed. 3, 1586), i. I; vii. 3.

[21] _Annotationi net libro della Poetica,_ Venice, 1575, preface.

[22] _Gerus. lib._ i. 3.

[23] _Poetic,_ ch. I, art. 1.

[24] _Poetica trad_. preface.

[25] _Pensieri diversi_, bk. x. ch. 18.

[26] La Ménardière, _Poétique_, Paris, 1640; Le Bossu, _Traité du poème épique_, Paris, 1675.

[27] Borinski, _Poet. d. Renaiss._ p. 26.

[28] Hyeron. Frascatorii _Opera,_ Venetian edition, Giunti, 1574, pp. 112-120.

[29] _Poet., ed. cit._ i. 1; ii. 1; iii. 7; v. I (pp. 64, 66, 71-72, 208, 580).

[30] _Annotationi,_ preface.

[31] _Philosophia antiqua poetica,_ Madrid, 1596 (reprinted Valladolid 1894).

[32] Francesco Patrici, _Della poetica, la Deca disputata,_ "in which by history, by reason, by authority of the greatest worthies of antiquity, is shown the falsity of the most received opinions concerning Poetry down to our own day." Ferrara, 1586.

III

FERMENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: _New words and new observations in the seventeenth century_]

Interest in æsthetic investigation increased rapidly in the early years of the following century, owing either to the popularity acquired by certain new words or to the novel meanings given to words already familiar, which emphasized new aspects of artistic production and criticism, complicating the problem and rendering it thereby more puzzling and attractive. For example: wit, taste, imagination or fancy, feeling, and several others, which must be examined rather closely.

Wit (_ingegno_) differed somewhat from intellect. Free use of the word arose, if we mistake not, from its convenience in Rhetoric as conceived by antiquity; that is to say, a suave and facile mode of knowledge, as opposed to the severity of Dialectic; an "Antistrophe to Dialectic," which substituted for reasons of actual fact those of probability or fancy; enthymemes for syllogisms, examples for inductions; so much so that Zeno the Stoic figured Dialectic with her fist clenched and Rhetoric with her hand open. The empty style of the decadent Italian authors in the seventeenth century found its complete justification in this theory of rhetoric; their prose and verse, Marinesque and Achillinesque, professed to exhibit not the true but the striking, subtly conceited, curious or nice. The word wit, _ingegno,_ was now repeated much more frequently than in the preceding century; wit was hailed as presiding genius of Rhetoric; its "vivacities" were lauded to the skies; "_belli ingegni_" was a phrase seized upon by the French, who rendered it as "_esprit_" or "_beaux esprits_."[1] One of the most noteworthy commentators on these matters (although opposed to the literary excesses of the times), Matteo Pellegrini of Bologna (1650), defines wit as "that part of the soul which in a certain way practises, aims, and seeks to find and create the beautiful and the efficacious";[2] he considers the work of "wit" to be the "conceits" and "subtleties" noted by him in a previous pamphlet (1639).[3] Emmanuele Tesauro also descants at considerable length in his _Cannochiale Aristotelico_ (1654) upon wit and subtleties, not alone "verbal" and "lapidary" conceits, but also "symbolic" and "figurative" (statues, stories, devices, satires, hieroglyphs, mosaics, emblems, insignia, sceptres), and even "animated agents" (pantomimes, play-scenes, masques and dances): all things which may be grouped under "polite quibbling" or rhetoric as distinct from "dialectic."

Amongst such treatises, product of their age, one written by the Spaniard Baltasar Gracian (1642) became celebrated throughout Europe.[4] Wit became in his hands the strictly inventive or artistic faculty, "genius"; _génie,_ "genius" were now used as synonyms of wit, _ingegno_ and _esprit._ In the following century Mario Pagano[5] wrote: "Wit may be taken as equivalent to the _génie_ of the French, a word now commonly used in Italy." To return to the seventeenth century, Bouhours, a Jesuit writer of dialogues on the _Manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit_ (1687), says that "'heart' and 'wit' are greatly in fashion just now, nothing else is spoken of in polite conversation, and all discourse is at last brought round to _l'esprit et le cœur._"[6]

[Sidenote: _Taste._]

The word _taste_ or _good taste_ was equally widespread and fashionable, signifying the faculty of judgement brought to bear on the beautiful, distinct to some extent from intellectual power, and sometimes divided into active and passive, so that it was usual to speak of one kind of taste as "productive" or "fertile" (thus coinciding with "wit"), and of another as "sterile."

[Sidenote: _Various meanings of the word taste._]

From the rough notes which we possess as to the history of the concept of taste, several meanings of the word, not all of equal importance as indications of the development of ideas, detach themselves in a somewhat confused manner. "Taste," meaning "pleasure" or "delight," was an old-established word in Italy and Spain, as is shown in such phrases as "to have a taste for, to be to one's taste"; when Lope di Vega and other Spaniards speak continually of the drama of their country as seeking to please the popular taste ("_deleita el gusto_"; "_para darle gusto_") they mean only the "pleasure" of the populace. In Italy there was a very ancient use of the word in the metaphorical sense of "judgement," either literary, scientific, or artistic; numberless examples of this use occur in writers of the sixteenth century (Ariosto, Varchi, Michæl Angelo, Tasso). To take but one of these: the lines in _Orlando Furioso_ where it is said of the Emperor Augustus, "_L' aver avuto in poesia buon gusto La proscrizione iniqua gli perdona,_" "For having had good taste in poetry he shall be forgiven his iniquitous proscriptions"; or the remark of Ludovico Dolce that' some person "had such exquisite taste, he sang no verses save those of Catullus and Calvus."[7] The word "taste," in the sense of a special faculty or attitude of mind, appears to have been used for the first time in Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century by Gracian,[8] the moralist and political writer already quoted. It is evidently to him that the Italian author Trevisano alludes in a preface to a book by Muratori (1708) when he speaks of "Spaniards, above all others cunning in metaphor," who express themselves in "that eloquent and laconic phrase, good taste"; touching further on taste and genius he quotes, "that ingenious Spaniard," Gracian,[9] who gave the word the sense of "practical wit," enabling one to perceive the "true signification" of things; his "man of good taste" becomes in our language "a man of tact" in the affairs of life.[10]

The transference of the word to the domain of æsthetic seems to have taken place in France during the last quarter of the century. "_Il y a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme de bonté ou de maturité dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime a le goût parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deçà ou au delà, a le goût défectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goût, et l'on dispute des goûts avec fondement,_" writes La Bruyère[11] (1688). As attributes or variants of taste it was usual to mention _delicacy_ and _variety_ or _variability._ Bearing its fresh critical--literary content, but not freed from the encumbrance of its earlier practical and moral significance, the word spread from France into other European countries. Thomasius introduced it into Germany in 1687;[12] and in England it becomes "good taste." In Italy it appears as early as 1696 as title of a large book written by Camillo Ettori, the Jesuit, _Il buon gusto ne' componimenti rettorici_.[13] The preface notes: "The expression 'good taste,' proper to those who rightly distinguish good from bad flavour in foods, is now in general use and claimed by every one as a title in connexion with literature and the humanities"; it reappears in 1708 at the beginning of Muratori's[14] book already quoted: Trevisano treats of it philosophically: Salvini discusses it in his note upon the _Perfetta Poesia_ of Muratori above mentioned, where the subject of good taste occupies several pages,[15] and finally it gives its name to the Academy of Good Taste founded at Palermo in 1718.[16] Scholars of the day who took up the discussion of the theme, recollecting some passages scattered throughout the ancient classics, placed the new concept in relation with the "_tacitus quidam sensus sine ulla ratione et arte_" of Cicero; and with the "_indicium_" which "_nec magis arte traditur quam gustus aut odor_" of Quintilian.[17] More particularly Montfaucon de Villars (1671)[18] wrote a book on "Delicacy"; Ettori strove to find some definition more satisfactory than those current at the time (_e.g._ "it is the finest invention of wit, the flower of wit and extract of beauty's self," and similar conceits);[19] Orsi made it the subject of his _Considerazioni_ written in reply to Bouhours' book.

[Sidenote: _Fancy or Imagination._]

In Italy in the seventeenth century we find imagination or fancy placed on a pinnacle. What do you mean by talking of probability and historical truth (asks Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino in 1644), of false or true in connexion with poetry; which deals not with fiction, fact or historical probability but with primary apprehensions which assert neither truth nor falsehood? Following this line of argument, imagination takes the place of that probable, neither true nor false, advocated by some commentators of Aristotle; a theory strongly criticized by Pallavicino, here agreeing with Piccolomini, whom however he does not name, and in opposition to Castelvetro whom he explicitly mentions. He who goes to the play (continues Pallavicino) knows quite well that the scenes acted on the stage are not real; although he has no belief in them yet they please him greatly. For "if poetry desired to be mistaken for truth, the end she had in view would be a he, by the laws of nature and of God doomed inevitably to perish: for a lie is nothing but an untruth uttered in the hope that it may be mistaken for truth. How then should an art so tainted be allowed to flourish in the best-regulated republics? How should it be commended and used by the very writers of Holy Scripture?" _Ut pictura poësis_: poetry is like painting, which is a "diligent imitation" aiming at a close copy of the features, colours, acts, nay, even the hidden motives, of the objects it represents: and it "does not pretend that fiction is truth." The sole aim of poetic tales is "to adorn our understanding with imagery, that is to say, with sumptuous, novel, marvellous and splendid appearances. And this is known to diffuse so useful an influence on mankind that humanity insists on rewarding poets with praise more glorious than is bestowed on any other men; their books are protected from the ravages of time with greater solicitude than is shown to scientific treatises or productions of any other art; in the end the names of poets are crowned with adoring veneration. See how the world thirsts for beautiful first apprehensions, although these are neither laden with science nor are they vehicles of truth."[20]

Sixty years later these ideas, although expressed by a Cardinal, seemed all too daring to Muratori, who could not bring himself to allow poets so much latitude, or to enfranchize them from their obligations to the probable. Nevertheless Muratori allows a large space to imagination, "an inferior apprehensive faculty" which, without caring whether things be false or true, confines itself to apprehending them, and "represents" the truth merely, leaving the task of "cognition" to the "superior apprehensive faculty" or intellect.[21] Even the stony heart of Gravina yields to the charm of imagination: he admits it occupies a considerable place in the realm of poetry and suffers his own arid prose to describe it as "a sorceress, but beneficent," "a delirium which cures madness."[22]

Earlier than either of these, Ettori commended it to the good rhetorician, "who in order that he may awaken images" must "familiarize himself with whatever is subject to bodily feeling" and "encounter the genius of imagination, which is a sensuous faculty," to these ends using "species rather than genera (since the latter, being more universal than the former, are less sensible), individuals rather than species, effects than causes, the number of the greater rather than the number of the less."[23]

As far back as 1578 the Spaniard Huarte had maintained that eloquence is the product of imagination rather than of intellect or reason.[24] In England Bacon (1605) ascribed science to intellect, history to memory and poetry to imagination or fancy:[25] Hobbes inquired into the procedure of poetry:[26] Addison (1712) devoted several numbers of his _Spectator_ to analysis of the "pleasures of imagination."[27] Somewhat later, the importance of imagination was felt in Germany, where it found advocates in Bodmer, Breitinger and other writers of the Swiss school, who owed much to the influence of the Italians (Muratori, Gravina, Calepio) and the English: acting in their turn as teachers of Klopstock and the new German critical school.[28]

[Sidenote: _Feeling._]