Chapter XXIII: Conclusion (12)

The same reaction against the abuse of ornament, against "Spanish and Italian conceits" (whose supporters had been Gracian in Spain and Tesauro in Italy), took place in France. "... _Laissez à l'Italie De tous ces faux brillants l'éclatante folie"; "Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement. Et les mots, pour le dire, arrivent aisément._"[28] Among the sharpest critics of conceits was the Jesuit Bouhours, already quoted, author of the _Manière de bien penser dans les œuvres d'esprit._ The rhetorical forms were the subject of warm controversy. Orsi, on national grounds the opponent of Bouhours (1703), asserted that all the ornamental devices of wit rested on a middle term and could be reduced to a rhetorical syllogism, and that wit consists of a truth which appears false or a falsehood which appears true.[29] If this controversy produced no great scientific result at the time, at least it prepared the mind for greater liberty; and, as we have remarked elsewhere,[30] it may have influenced Vico, who, in framing his new concept of poetical imagination, recognized that it necessitated a wholesale reconstruction of the theory of rhetoric and the conclusion that its figures and tropes are not "caprices of pleasure" but "necessities of the human mind."[31]

[Sidenote: _Du Marsais and metaphor._]

We find the theory of rhetorical ornament jealously kept intact by Baumgarten and Meier, while in France it was as vigorously assailed by César Chesneau du Marsais, who published in 1730 a treatise on _Tropes_ (the seventh part of his _General Grammar_)[32] wherein he develops, on the subject of metaphor, the observation already made by Montaigne: indeed he was perhaps inspired by Montaigne, although he does not mention his name. Du Marsais remarks that it is said that figures are modes of speech and turns of expression removed from the ordinary and common; which is an empty phrase, as good as saying "the figured differs from the non-figured and figures are figures and not non-figures." On the other hand it is wholly untrue that figures are removed from ordinary speech, for "nothing is more natural, ordinary and common than figures: more figures of speech are used in the town square on a market-day than in many days of academical discussion"; and no speech, however short, can be composed entirely of non-figurative expressions. And Du Marsais gives instances of quite obvious and spontaneous expressions in which Rhetoric cannot refuse to recognize the figures of apostrophe, congeries, interrogation, ellipsis, prosopopœia: "The apostles were persecuted and suffered their persecutions with patience. What can be more natural than the description given by St. Paul? _Maledicimur et benedicimus; persecutionem patimur et sustinemus; blasphemamur et obsecramus._ Yet the apostle makes use of a fine figure of antithesis; cursing is the opposite to blessing; persecution to endurance; blasphemy to prayer." But further, the very language of the figure is figured, since it is a metaphor.--But after such acute observations, Du Marsais ends by himself becoming confused and defines figures as "manners of speech differing from others in a particular modification by which it is possible to reduce each one to a species apart, and give a more lively, noble or pleasing effect than can be gained by a manner of speech expressing the same content of thought without such particular modification."[33]

[Sidenote: _Psychological interpretation._]

But the psychological interpretation of figures of speech, the first stage towards their æsthetic criticism, was not allowed to drop here. In his _Elements of Criticism,_ Home says that he had long questioned whether that part of Rhetoric concerning figures might not be reduced to rational principles, and had finally discovered that figures consist in the passional element;[34] he set himself therefore to analyse prosopopœia, apostrophe and hyperbole in the light of the passional faculty. From Du Marsais and Home is derived everything of value in the _Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres_ of Hugh Blair, professor at Edinburgh University from 1759 onwards;[35] published in book form, these lectures had an immense vogue in all the schools of Europe including those of Italy, and replaced advantageously, by their "reason and good sense," works of a much cruder type. Blair defined figures in general as "language suggested by imagination or passion."[36] Similar ideas were promulgated in France by Marmontel in his _Elements of Literature_.[37] In Italy Cesarotti was contrasting the logical element or "cypher-terms" of language with the rhetorical element or "figure-terms," and rational eloquence with imaginative eloquence.[38] Beccaria, though a shrewd psychological analyst, held to the view of literary style as "accessory ideas or feelings added to the principal in any discourse"; that is, he failed to free himself from the distinction between the intellectual form intended for the expression of the principal ideas, and the literary form, modifying the first by the addition of accessory ideas.[39] In Germany an effort was made by Herder to interpret tropes and metaphors as Vico had done, that is to say as essential to primitive language and poetry.

[Sidenote: _Romanticism and Rhetoric. Present day._]

Romanticism was the ruin of the theory of ornament, and caused it practically to be thrown on the scrap-heap, but it cannot be said to have gone under for good or to have been superseded by a new and accurately stated theory. The chief philosophers of Æsthetic (not only Kant, who as we know remained in bondage to the mechanical and ornamental theory; not only Herder, whose knowledge of art seems to have been confined to a little music and a great deal of rhetoric; but such romantic philosophers as Schelling, Solger and Hegel) still retained the sections devoted to metaphor, trope and allegory for tradition's sake, without severe scrutiny. Italian Romanticism with Manzoni at its head destroyed the belief in beautiful and elegant words, and dealt a blow at Rhetoric: but was it killed by the stroke? Apparently not, judging by the concessions unconsciously made by the scholastic treatise-writer Ruggero Bonghi, whose _Critical Letters_ assert the existence of two styles or forms, which at bottom are nothing else than the plain and the ornate.[40] German schools of philology have pretty generally accepted the stylistic theory of Gröber, who divides style into logical (objective) and affective (subjective):[41] an ancient error masked by terminology borrowed from the psychological philosophy in fashion at modern universities. In the same spirit a recent writer rechristens the rhetorical doctrine of tropes and figures by the title "Doctrine of the Forms of Æsthetic Apperception," and divides them into the four categories (the ancient wealth of categories reduced to a paltry four!) of personification, metaphor, antithesis, and symbol.[42] Biese has devoted an entire book to metaphor; but one searches it in vain for a serious æsthetic analysis of this category.[43]

The best scientific criticism of the theory of ornament is found scattered throughout the writings of De Sanctis, who when lecturing on rhetoric preached what he called anti-rhetoric.[44] But even here the criticism is not conducted from a strictly systematic point of view. It seems to us that the true criticism should be deduced negatively from the very nature of æsthetic activity, which does not lend itself to partition; there is no such thing as activity type _a_ or type _b,_ nor can the same concept be expressed now in one way, now in another. Such is the only way of abolishing the double monster of bare form which is, no one knows how, deprived of imagination, and ornate form which contains, no one knows how, an addition on the side of imagination.[45]

[1] For Gorgias' saying see Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 18.

[2] Cicero, _Orat. ad Brut.,_ introd.

[3] Quintilian, _Inst. orat._ xii. c. i.

[4] Fran. Patrizzi, _Della rhetorica,_ ten dialogues, Venice, 1582, dial. 7; Tassoni, _Pensieri diversi,_ bk. x. ch. 15.

[5] _De causis corruptarum artium,_ 1531, bk. iv.; _De ratione dicendi,_ 1533.

[6] Cicero, _De or at:_ i. chs. 10-11; Quintil. _Inst. oral._ iii. ch. 5.

[7] _De orat._ ii. chs. 16-17.

[8] P. Ramus, _Instil, dialecticæ,_ 1543; _Scholæ in artes liberales,_ 1555 etc.; Talæus, _Instit. orator.,_ 1545.

[9] _Della rhetorica,_ dial. 10, and _passim._

[10] _Ration. Philos.,_ part iii. _Rhetoricorum liber unus juxta propria dogmata_ (Paris, 1636), ch. 3.

[11] _Theoretische Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen überhaupt,_ Halle, 1744.

[12] _Kritik d. Urtheils kraft,_ § 53 and _n._

[13] H. F. Ortloff, _Die gerichtliche Redekunst,_ Neuwied, 1887; R. Whately, _Rhetoric,_ 1828 (for _Encyd. Brit._); Ital. trans., Pistoia, 1889.

[14] Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 1.

[15] Quintil. _Inst. orat._ viii. ch. 3.

[16] _Rhet._ iii. ch. 10.

[17] _Poet._ chs. 19-22; cf. _Rhet._ iii. cc. 2, 10.

[18] See above, pp. 68-69.

[19] Quintilian, _Inst. orat._ viii. ch. 6; ix. ch. 1.

[20] Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 2; _Poet._ ch. 22.

[21] _De sublimitate_ (in _Rhet. græci,_ ed. Spengel, vol. 1. § 32.)

[22] Giulio Camillo Delminio, _Discorso sopra le Idee di Ermogene_ (in _Opere,_ Venice, 1560); and trans. of Hermogenes (Udine, 1594).

[23] _De causis corruptarum artium, loc. cit._

[24] _Della rhetorica,_ dial. 6.

[25] _Diálogo de las lenguas_ (ed. Mayans y Siscar, _Origines de la lengua espanola,_ Madrid, 1873), pp. 115, 119.

[26] _Essais,_ i. ch. 52 (ed. Garnier, i. 285); ci. _ibid._ chs. 10, 25, 39; 10.

[27] Croce, _I trattatisti italiani del concettismo,_ pp. 8-22.

[28] Boileau, _Art poétique,_ i. 11. 43-44, 153-154.

[29] G. G. Orsi, _Considerazioni sopra la maniera di ben pensare,_ etc., 1703 (reprinted Modena, 1735, with all polemics relating thereto).

[30] See above, pp. 230-231.

[31] See above, pp. 225-226.

[32] _Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un même mot dans une même langue._ Paris, 1730 (_Œuvres de Du Marsais,_ Paris, 1797, vol. i.).

[33] _Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un même mot dans une même langue,_ part i. art. 1; cf. art. 4.

[34] _Elem. of Criticism,_ iii. ch. 20.

[35] Hugh Blair, _Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres_ (London, 1823).

[36] _Lect. on Rhet. and belles lettres,_ lecture 14.

[37] Marmontel, _Éléments de littéral,_ (in _Œuvres,_ Paris, 1819), iv. p. 559.

[38] Cesarotti, _Saggio sulla filos. del linguaggio,_ part ii.

[39] _Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile_ (Turin, 1853), ch. 1.

[40] R. Bonghi, _Lettere critiche,_ 1856 (4th ed., Naples, 1884), pp. 37 65-67, 90, 103.

[41] Gustav Gröber, _Grundriss d. romanischen Philologie,_ vol. 1. pp. 200-250, K. Vossler, _B. Cellinis Stil in seiner Vita, Versuch einer psychol. Stilbetrachtung,_ Halle a. S., 1899; cf. the self-criticism of Vossler, _Positivismus u. Idealismus in der Sprachwissenschaft,_ Heidelberg, 1904 (It. trans., Bari, Laterza, 1908).

[42] Ernst Elsteb, _Principien d. Literaturwissenschaft,_ Halle a. S., 1097. vol. i. pp. 359-413.

[43] Biese, _Philos, des Metaphorischen,_ Hamburg-Leipzig, 1893.

[44] _La Giovinezza di Fr. de S._ chs. 23, 25; _Scritti varî,_ ii. pp. 272-274.

[45] See above, pp. 67-73.

II

HISTORY OF THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY KINDS

[Sidenote: _The kinds in antiquity. Aristotle._]

The theory of artistic and literary kinds and of the laws or rules proper to each separate kind has almost always followed the fortunes of the rhetorical theory.

Traces of the threefold division into epic, lyric and dramatic are found in Plato; and Aristophanes gives an example of criticism according to the canon of the kinds, particularly that of tragedy.[1] But the most conspicuous theoretical treatment of the kinds bequeathed us by antiquity is precisely the doctrine of Tragedy which forms a large part of the Aristotelian fragment known as the Poetics. Aristotle defines such a composition as an imitation of a serious and complete action, having size, in language adorned in accordance with the requirements of the different parts, its exposition to be by action and not by narration, and using pity or terror as means to free or purify us from these same passions;[2] he gives minute details as to the six parts of which it is composed, especially the plot and the tragic character. It has been often said, ever since the days of Vincenzo Maggio in the sixteenth century, that Aristotle treated of the nature of poetry, or particular forms of poetry, without claiming to give precepts. But Piccolomini answered that "all these things and other similar ones are shown or asserted with no other purpose but that we may see in what way their precepts and laws must be obeyed and carried out," just as, to make a hammer or saw, one begins by describing the parts of which they are composed.[3] The error of which we take Aristotle as representative lies in transmuting abstractions and empirical partitions into rational concepts: this was almost inevitable at the beginnings of æsthetic reflexion, and the Sanskrit theory of poetry employed the same method independently when, for example, it defines and legislates for ten principal and eighteen secondary styles of drama; forty-eight varieties of hero; and we know not how many kinds of heroines.[4]

[Sidenote: _In the Middle Ages and Renaissance_.]

After Aristotle, the theory of poetic kinds does not seem to have been completely or elaborately developed in antiquity. The Middle Ages may be said to have expressed the doctrine in treatises of the kind known as "rhythmic arts" or "methods of composition." When the Aristotelian fragment was first noticed, it is curious to see the way in which the paraphrase of Averroes distorted the theory of kinds. Averroes conceives tragedy as the art of praise, comedy as that of blame, which amounts to identifying the former with panegyric, the latter with satire; and he believes the _peripeteia_ to be the same thing as antithesis, or the artifice of beginning the description of a thing by describing its opposite.[5] This distortion demonstrates afresh the merely historical character of these kinds and their unintelligibility by the methods of pure logic to a thinker living in times and under customs different from those of the Hellenic world. The Renaissance seized upon Aristotle's text, partly expounded it, partly distorted it and partly thought it out afresh, and thus succeeded in establishing a long list of kinds and sub-kinds rigidly defined and subjected to inexorable laws. Controversy now began over the correct understanding of the unities of epic or dramatic poetry; over the moral quality and social standing proper to the characters in this kind of poem and in that; over the nature of the plot, and whether it includes passions and thoughts, and whether lyrics should or should not be received as true poetry; whether the material of tragedy should be historical; whether the dialogue of comedy may be in prose; whether a happy ending may be allowed in tragedy; whether the tragic character may be a perfect gentleman; what kind and number of episodes is admissible in the poem, and how they should be incorporated in the main plot; and so on. Great anguish was caused by the mysterious rule of catharsis found in black and white in Aristotle's text, and Segni naïvely predicted that tragic poetry would be revived in its perfect spectacular entirety for the sake of experiencing the effect spoken of by Aristotle, that "purgation" which causes "the birth of tranquillity in the soul and of freedom of all perturbation."[6]

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the three unities._]

Amongst the many undertakings brought to a glorious end by the critics and treatise-writers of the sixteenth century, the best known is the establishment of the three unities of time, place and action. One cannot indeed see why they are called unities, for in strictness they could at most be spoken of as shortness of time, straitness of space and limitation of tragic subjects to a certain class of action. It is well known that Aristotle prescribed unity of action only, and reminded his hearers that theatrical custom alone imposed on the action a time-limit of one day. On this last point the critics of the sixteenth century accorded six, eight, or twelve hours according to individual taste or humour: some of them (amongst them Segni) allowed twenty-four hours, including the night as particularly propitious to assassinations and the other acts of violence which usually form the plot of tragedies; others extended the limit to thirty-six or forty-eight hours. The last, and most curious, unity, that of place, was slowly developed by Castelvetro, Riccoboni and Scaliger until the Frenchman Jean de la Taille joined it as a third to the existing two in 1572, and in 1598 Angelo Ingegneri finally formulated it more explicitly.

[Sidenote: _Poetics of the kinds and rules. Scaliger._]

The Italian treatises were widely read and regarded as authoritative all over Europe, and awakened the first effort towards a learned theory of poetry in France, Spain. England and Germany. A good representative of his class is Julius Cæsar Scaliger, who has been considered, with some exaggeration, as the true founder of French pseudo-classicism or neo-classicism; as one who (it has been said) "laid the first stone of the classical Bastille." But if he was neither the first nor the only one, he certainly helped greatly to reduce "to a system of doctrines the principal consequences of the sovranty of Reason in works of literature," with his minute distinctions and classifications of kinds, the insurmountable barriers he erected between them, and his distrust of free inspiration and imagination.[7] Scaliger numbers among his descendants (beside Daniel Heinsius) d'Aubignac, Rapin, Dacier and other tyrants of French literature and drama: Boileau turned the rules of neo-classicism into neat verses.

[Sidenote: _Lessing._]

It has been noticed that Lessing entered the same field; his opposition to the French rules (which was an opposition of rule to rule, in which he had been forestalled by Italian writers, for example by Calepio in 1732) is anything but radical. Lessing maintained that Corneille and other authors had misinterpreted Aristotle, to whose laws even the Shakespearian drama could be shown to conform;[8] but on the other hand he strongly opposed the abolition of all rules and those who shouted "genius, genius," placing genius above the law and saying that genius makes the law. For the very reason that genius is law, replied Lessing, laws have their value and can be determined: negation of them would entail the confinement of genius to its first trial flights, making example or practice useless.[9]

[Sidenote: _Compromises and extensions._]

But the "kinds" and their "limits" could be maintained for centuries solely by means of infinitely subtle interpretations, analogical extensions and more or less concealed compromises. The Italian Renaissance critics, while working at their Poetics in the style of Aristotle, found themselves confronted with chivalric poetry, and had to make the best of it; this they did by assigning it to a kind of poem not foreseen by antiquity (Giraldi Cintio).[10] Here and there indeed a rigorist was heard protesting that romances were in no way different from heroic poetry, and were only "badly written heroics" (Salviati). And since it was impossible to deny a place in Italian literature to Dante's poem, Iacopo Mazzoni, in his _Defence of Dante,_ overhauled once more the categories of Poetics in order to find a niche for the sacred poem.[11] Farces made their appearance at this time, and Cecchi (1585) declares "Farce is a third novelty, occupying a place between tragedy and comedy ..."[12] The _Pastor fido_ of Guarini was published, neither tragedy nor comedy, but tragicomedy; and discovering no heading among the kinds deduced from moral or civil philosophy suitable for the intruder, Jason de Nores proceeded to rule it out of existence; Guarini made a valiant defence and claimed special protection for his beloved _Pastor_ under a third, or mixed, style, representative of real life.[13] Another rigorist, Fioretti (Udeno Nisieli) proclaimed the poem "a poetic monster, so huge and deformed that centaurs, hippogriffs and chimæras are comparatively graceful and charming ..., fit to bring a blush to the cheek of the muse, a disgrace to poetry, a mixture of ingredients in themselves discordant, inimical and incompatible";[14] but will this bluster drive the delicious _Pastor fido_ from the hands of lovers of poetry? The same thing occurred in the case of Marino's _Adone,_ described by Chapelain as "a poem of peace" for want of a better definition, though other supporters called it "a new form of epic poem";[15] and the same thing happened again in the case of the comedy of art and musical drama. Corneille, who had called down a furious tempest from Scudéry and the Academicians on the head of his _Cid,_ remarked in his discourse on Tragedy, though basing his position on that of Aristotle, that there was necessity for "_quelque modération, quelque favorable interprétation,... pour n'être pas obligés de condamner beaucoup de poèmes, que nous avons vu réussir sur nos théâtres." "Il est aisé de nous accommoder avec Aristote_..."[16] he says in another place: a piece of literary hypocrisy which startles by its verbal resemblance to "_les accommodements avec le Ciel_" of the Tartuffian ethics. The following century saw the accepted kinds augmented by "bourgeois tragedy" and pathetic comedy, nicknamed "lachrymose" by its enemies; de Chassiron[17] attacked, and Diderot, Gellert and Lessing[18] defended the new arrival. In this way the schematism of the kinds continued to suffer violence and to cut a very poor figure; nevertheless, in spite of adversity, it made every effort to retain power even at the sacrifice of dignity: just as an absolute king turns constitutional by force of circumstance, and chooses the lesser evil of squaring his divine right with the will of the nation.

[Sidenote: _Rebellion against rules in general._]

This retention of power would have been more difficult had any success attended the attempts at rebellion against all laws, against law in general, which broke out in varying degrees at the end of the sixteenth century. Pietro Aretino made mock of the most sacred precepts: in a prologue to one of his comedies he remarks derisively, "If you see more than five characters on the stage at once, do not laugh; for chains which would fasten water-mills to the river could not hold the fools of to-day."[19]

[Sidenote: _G. Bruno. Guarini._]

A philosopher, Giordano Bruno, entered the lists against the "regulators of poetry": rules, said he, are derived from poetry: "there are as many genera and species of true rules as there are genera and species of true poets"; such an individualization of kinds dealt them a deathblow. "How then" (asks the interlocutory opponent) "shall veritable poets be recognized?" "By their singing of verse" (answers Bruno); "of that which, being sung, either delights or instructs, or delights and instructs at the same time."[20] In much the same way Guarini defended his _Pastor fido_ in 1588, declaring "the world is the judge of poets; against its sentence there is no appeal."[21]

[Sidenote: _Spanish critics._]

Amongst European countries, Spain was perhaps the sturdiest in her resistance to the pedantic theories of the writers of treatises; Spain was the land of freedom in criticism from Vives to Feijóo, from the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century when decadence of the old Spanish spirit allowed Luzán, with others, to introduce neo-classical poetry of Italian and French origin.[22] That rules must change with the times and with actual conditions; that modern literature demands modern poetics; that work carried out contrary to established rule does not signify that it is contrary to all rule or unwilling to submit itself to a higher law; that nature should give, not receive, laws; that the laws of the three unities are as ridiculous as it would be to forbid a painter to paint a large landscape in a small picture; that the pleasure, taste, approbation of readers and spectators are the deciding element in the long run; that notwithstanding the laws of counterpoint, the ear is the true judge of music; these affirmations and many like them are frequent in Spanish criticism of the period. One critic, Francisco de la Barreda (1622), went so far as to compassionate the strong wits of Italy bound by fear and cowardice (_temerosos y acobardados_) to rules that hampered them on every side;[23] he may have been thinking of Tasso, a memorable case of such degradation. Lope de Vega wavered between neglect of rules in practice, and obsequious acceptance of them in theory, alleging in excuse for his conduct that he was forced to yield to the demands of the public who paid money to see his plays; he said, "when I write my comedies, I lock and double-lock the door against the precept-mongers, that they may not rise up and bear witness against me"; "Art (that is, Poetics) speaks truth which is contradicted by the vulgar ignorant"; "may the rules forgive us when we are induced to violate them."[24] But a contemporary admirer of Lope's work writes of him that "_en muchas partes de sus escritos dice que el no guardar el arte antiguo lo hace por conformarse con el gusto de la plebe ... dicelo por su natural modestia, y porqué no atribuya la malicia ignorante à arrogancia lo que es politica perfeccion._"[25]

[Sidenote: _G. B. Marino._]

Giambattista Marino also protested "I assert that I have a more thorough knowledge of the rules than have all the pedants in the world; but the only true rule is to know how to break the rules at the right place and time, and to conform with the custom and taste of the day."[26] The drama of Spain, the comedy of art, and other literary novelties of the seventeenth century caused Minturno, Castelvetro and other rigid treatise-writers of the preceding century to be looked at with contemptuous pity as "antiquaries"; this may be seen in Andrea Perucci (1699), the theorist of improvised comedy.[27] Pallavicino criticized the writers on "the disciplines of beautiful speech" on the ground that they "generally base their precepts on observing by experience what things in writers give pleasure, rather than pointing out what would naturally conform to the particular affections and instincts implanted by the Creator in the souls of men."[28]

[Sidenote: _G. V. Gravina._]

A note of distrust towards the fixed kinds may be heard in the _Discorso sull' Endimione_ (1691), wherein Gravina severely blames the "ambitious and miserly precepts" of rhetoricians, and makes the penetrating comment: "No work can see the fight without finding itself confronted by a tribunal of critics specially convened to examine it, and questioned firstly as to its name and nature. Next begins the action which lawyers call prejudicial, and controversy arises as to its status, whether it is a poem, a romance, a tragedy, a comedy, or another of the prescribed kinds. And if the said work have ignored the slightest precept ... they decree forthwith its exile and perpetual banishment. And yet, however they recast and expand their aphorisms, they will never be able to include all the different kinds that can be freshly created by the varied and ceaseless motion of human wit. For this reason I cannot see why we should not free ourselves from this insolent curb on the soaring grandeur of our imaginations, and allow them to follow an open road amongst those immeasurable spaces they are fitted to explore." He remarks on the work of Guidi which forms the subject of his discourse, "I know not whether it be tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, or anything else invented by rhetoricians. It is a representation of the loves of Endymion and Diana. If those terms have sufficient breadth of extension, they will comprehend this work; if they have not, let another be framed (a power which may be granted to any one in so unimportant a matter); if no such term can be invented, let us not, for want of a word, deprive ourselves of a thing so beautiful."[29] These remarks have quite a modern ring, but Gravina can hardly have thought out their implications very deeply, for later on he wrote a special treatise on the rules of the tragic kind.[30] Antonio Conti too declared at times his antagonism towards the rules, but he referred to the Aristotelian rules only.[31]

[Sidenote: _Fr. Montani._]

More courage was displayed by Count Francesco Montani of Pesaro in the polemic roused by Orsi's book against Bouhours; in 1705 he wrote: "I know that there are immutable and eternal rules, founded on such sound good sense and solid reason as will remain unshaken as long as mankind lives. But these rules, whose incorruptibility gives them authority to guide our spirits to the end of time, are rare enough to be counted with the nose, and it seems to me somewhat arbitrary to claim to test and regulate our new works by old laws now wholly abrogated and annulled."[32]

[Sidenote: _Critics of the eighteenth century._]

In France the rigorism of Boileau was followed by the rebellion of Du Bos, who unhesitatingly declared that "men will always prefer poetry which moves them to that composed according to rule,"[33] and the like heresies. In 1730, De la Motte made war against the unities of time and place, asserting as the most general, and even superior to that of action, the unity of interest.[34] Batteux tended to make free with the rules; and Voltaire, though he opposed De la Motte and declared the three unities to be the "three great laws of good sense," uttered some bold sentiments in his _Essay on Epic Poetry,_ and it was he who remarked that "_tous les genres sont bons hors le genre ennuyeux,_" and that the best kind is "_celui qui est le mieux traité._" Diderot was in certain respects a forerunner of Romanticism, and with him must be mentioned Friedrich Melchior Grimm, who was influenced by him. A breath of liberty was wafted into Italy by Metastasio, Bettinelli, Baretti and Cesarotti: in 1766 Buonafede notes in his _Epistola della libertà poetica_ that when erudite persons "define epic poetry, or comedy, or odes, they ought to frame as many definitions as there are compositions and authors."[35] In Germany the first to rise in rebellion against the rules (opposing Gottsched and his disciples) were the representatives of the Swiss school.[36] In England, after examining the definitions by which critics endeavoured to distinguish epic poetry from other compositions, Home wrote, "It affords no little diversion to watch so many profound critics hunting after that which does not exist. They presuppose--without shadow of proof--that there exists a precise criterion by which to distinguish epic poetry from all other kinds of composition. But literary compositions melt one into another like colours: and if in their stronger shades it is easy to recognize them, they are susceptible of such variety and of so many different forms that it is impossible to say where one ends and another begins."[37]

[Sidenote: _Romanticism and the "strict kinds": Berchet, V. Hugo._]

Literary thought between the late eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth century, that is to say from" the period of genius" to that of romanticism properly so called, rose in rebellion against separate individual rules and against all rules as such. But to describe the battles fought, and their more important episodes; to recount the names of captains victorious or discomfited, or to deplore the excesses committed by the conquerors, is no part of our present task. Upon the ruins of the strict kinds, the "_genres tranchés_" beloved by Napoleon[38] (a Romanticist in the art of war, but a Classicist in poetry), flourished the drama, the romance and every other mixed kind: upon the ruins of the three unities, flourished the unity of _ensemble._ Italy made her protest against rules of style in Berchet's famous _Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo_ (1816); and France made hers somewhat later in Victor Hugo's preface to _Cromwell_ (1827). Henceforth men discussed not the kinds, but Art. What is the unity of _ensemble_ but the demand of art itself, which is always an _ensemble,_ a synthesis? What else is the principle, introduced by August Wilhelm Schlegel and adopted by Manzoni and other Italian romanticists, to the effect that form of component parts must be "organic not mechanical, resulting from the nature of the subject and its interior development ... not from the impress of an external and extraneous stamp"?[39]

[Sidenote: _Their persistence in philosophical theories._]

But it would be quite wrong to suppose that this victory over the rhetoric of kinds was either the cause or the consequence of a final victory over its philosophical presuppositions. In pure theory, none of the critics above named wholly abandoned the kinds and the rules. Berchet admitted four elementary forms, that is four fundamental kinds, in poetry; lyrical, didactic, epic and dramatic, claiming for the poet only the right of "uniting and fusing together the elementary forms in a thousand fashions."[40] Manzoni's only real quarrel was with those rules "founded on special facts instead of on general principles; on the authority of rhetoricians instead of reason."[41] Even De Sanctis was satisfied with a concept somewhat vague, though true enough at bottom: "the most important rules are not those capable of being applied to every content, but those which draw their force _ex visceribus caussæ,_ from the very heart of the content itself."[42] Even more diverting than the spectacle which had delighted Home, is the sight of German philosophy according the honour of a dialectical deduction to the empirical classification of kinds. We shall give two examples, each representing one extreme end of the chain:

[Sidenote: _Fr. Schelling._]

Schelling at the beginning of the century (1803), and Hartmann at the end (1890). One section of Schelling's _Philosophy of Art_ is devoted to "the construction of individual poetic kinds"; in it he remarks that were he to follow the historical order, Epic would come first; whereas in the scientific order the Lyric occupies the first place: indeed, if poetry is the representation of the infinite in the finite, the Lyric, in which difference prevails (the finite, the subject), is its first moment, corresponding with the first power of the ideal series, reflexion, knowledge, consciousness, whereas Epic corresponds with the second power, action.[43] From Epic, which is _par excellence_ the objective kind (as being the identity of subjective and objective), derive the Elegy and the Idyl if subjectivity be placed in the object and objectivity in the poet: if objectivity be placed in the object and subjectivity in the poet, didactic poetry results.[44] To these differentiations of the Epic, Schelling adds the romantic or modern Epic, the poem of chivalry; the novel; and the experiments in an epic of ordinary life such as the _Luisa_ of Voss and the _Hermann and Dorothea_ of Goethe; and, co-ordinate with all the foregoing, the _Comedia_ of Dante, "an epic kind in itself" (_eine epische Gattung für sich_). Finally, from the union on a higher plane of Lyric with Epic, liberty with necessity, arises the third form, the Drama, the reconciliation of antitheses in a totality, "supreme incarnation of the essence and the in-itself of all art."[45]

[Sidenote: _E. von Hartmann._]

In Hartmann's _Philosophy of the Beautiful,_ poetry is divided into spoken poetry and read poetry. The former is subdivided into Epic, Lyric and Dramatic, with further subdivisions of Epic into plastic Epic, or strictly epic Epic, and pictorial or lyrical Epic; of Lyric into epical Lyric, lyrical Lyric and dramatic Lyric; of Dramatic into lyrical Drama, epic Drama and dramatic Drama. Read poetry (_Lese poesie_) is again subdivided into predominantly epical, lyrical or dramatic form with tertiary partitions of the affecting, the comic, the tragic and humorous; and into poems "to be read at a sitting" (like the short story) or to be taken up again and again (like the novel).[46]

[Sidenote: _The kinds in the schools._]

Without these highly philosophical trivialities the divisions of kinds still wander through the books called _Institutions of Literature,_ written by philologists and men of letters, and the ordinary school-books of Italy, France and Germany; and psychologists and philosophers still persist in writing about the Æsthetic of the tragic, of the comic and of the humorous.[47] The objectivity of literary kinds is frankly maintained by Ferdinand Brunetière, who looks on literary history as "the evolution of kinds,"[48] and gives sharply defined form to a superstition which, seldom confessed so truthfully or applied so rigorously, survives to contaminate modern literary history.[49]

[1] _Republic,_ iii. 394; see also E. Müller, _Gesch. i. Th. d. Kunst,_ i. pp. 134-206; ii. pp. 238-239, note.

[2] _Poet._ ch. 6

[3] _Annotazioni,_ introd.

[4] Cf. for Sanskrit poetry S. Levi, _Le Théâtre indien,_ pp. 11-152.

[5] Cf. Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ I., i. pp. 126-154, 2nd ed.

[6] Introd. to his tr. of the _Poetics._

[7] Lintilhac, _Un Coup d'état,_ etc., p. 543.

[8] _Hamburg. Dramat._ Nos. 81, 101-104.

[9] _Op. cit._ Nos. 96, 101-104.

[10] G. B. Giraldi Cintio, _De' romanzi, delle comedie e delle tragedie,_ 1554 (ed. Dælli, 1864).

[11] Iacopo Mazzoni, _Difesa della commedia di Dante,_ Cesena, 1587.

[12] G. M. Cecchi, prologue to _Romanesca,_ 1585.

[13] Cf. besides the two _Veratti,_ the _Compendio della poesia tragicomica,_ Venice, 1601.

[14] _Proginn. poet.,_ Florence, 1627, iii. p. 130.

[15] Cf. A. Belloni, _Il seicento,_ Milan, 1898, pp. 162-164.

[16] _Examens,_ and _Discours du poème dramatique, de la tragédie, des trois unités,_ etc.

[17] _Réflexions sur le comique larmoyant,_ 1749 (trans. by Lessing, _Werke, vol. cit._).

[18] Gellert, _De comædia commovente,_ 1751; Lessing, _Abhandlungen von den weinerlichen oder rührenden Lustspiele,_ 1754 (in _Werke,_ vol. vii.).

[19] Prologue to the _Cortigiana,_ 1534.

[20] _Degli eroici furori_ in _Opere italiane,_ ed. Gentile, ii. pp. 310-311.

[21] _Il Veratto_ (against Jason de Nores), Ferrara, 1588.

[22] Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. pp. 174-175 (1st ed.), i.

[23] Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. p. 468 (2nd ed.).

[24] _Arte nuevo de hacer comedias_ (1609), ed. Morel Fatio, 11. 40-41, 138-140, 157-158.

[25] Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. p. 459.

[26] Marino, letter to G. Preti, in _Lettere,_ Venice, 1627, p. 127.

[27] _Dell' arte rappresentiva meditata e all' improvviso,_ Naples, 1699; cf. pp. 47, 48, 65.

[28] _Trattato dello stile e del dialogo,_ 1646, preface.

[29] _Discorso su l' Endimione_ (in _Opere italiane, ed. cit._), ii. pp. 15-16.

[30] _Della tragedia,_ 1715 (_ibid._ vol. i.).

[31] _Prose e poesie, cit.,_ pref. and _passim._

[32] In Orsi, _Considerazioni, ed. cit._ ii. pp. 8, 9.

[33] _Réflexions, cit._ sect. 34.

[34] _Discours sur la tragédie,_ 1730.

[35] _Opuscoli_ of Agatopisto Cromaziano, Venice, 1797.

[36] Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 206 _seqq._

[37] _Elements of Criticism,_ iii. pp. 144-145, note.

[38] See conversation of Napoleon with Goethe, in Lewes, _The Life and Works of Goethe,_ ii. p. 441. [ F9] Manzoni, _Epistol._ i. pp. 355-356; cf. _Lettera sul romanticismo, ibid._ pp. 293-299.

[40] _Lettera di Grisostomo, opere,_ ed. Cusani, p. 227.

[41] _Lettera sul romanticismo, ibid._ p. 280.

[42] _La giovinezza di F. de S._ chs. 26-28.

[43] _Philos, d. Kunst,_ pp. 639-645.

[44] _Op. cit._ pp. 657-659.

[45] _Op. cit._ p. 687.

[46] _Philosophie d. Schönen,_ ch. 2, § 2.

[47] See, _e.g.,_ Volkelt, _Ästh. d. Tragischen,_ Munich, 1897; Lipps, _Der Streit über Tragödie,_ etc.

[48] See his other works, _L'évolution des genres dans l'histoire de la littérature,_ Paris, 1890 _seqq.,_ and _Manuel de l'hist. de la littér. française, ibid.,_ 1898.

[49] Croce, _Per la storia della critica e storiografia letter,_ pp. 23-25.

III

THE THEORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE ARTS

To Lessing must be ascribed the merit and the sole glory of having discovered that every art has its special character and inviolable limits. But his merit lies not in his own theory, which, in itself, is scarcely tenable,[1] but in having, though by an error, aroused discussion of a highly important æsthetical point till then wholly overlooked. After some slight notice from Du Bos and Batteux, some preparation of the field by Diderot[2] and Mendelssohn,[3] and long disquisitions by Meier and other Wolffians upon natural and conventional symbols,[4] Lessing was the first to raise clearly the question of the value attaching to the distinction between the various arts. Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had enumerated the arts according to denominations of current phraseology, and had composed numbers of technical hand-books distinguishing major and minor arts; but in Aristoxenus or Vitruvius, Marchetto da Padova or Cennino Cennini, Leonardo da Vinci or Leon Battista Alberti, Palladio or Scamozzi, it would be vain to look for the problem proposed by Lessing, for the spirit of these technical treatise-writers is entirely different. Some rudiments of the question may be detected in the comparisons made, and the questions of precedence raised, between poetry and painting or painting and sculpture, to be found now and then in stray paragraphs of their books (Leonardo da Vinci pressed the claims of painting, Michæl Angelo those of sculpture): the theme eventually became a favourite one for academic discussion, and was not despised by Galileo himself.[5]

[Sidenote: _The limits of the arts in Lessing. Arts of space and arts of time._]

Lessing was induced to raise the question in the attempt to controvert the strange views of Spence concerning the close union between painting and poetry among the ancients, and of Count Caylus, who held that the excellence of a poem must be judged by the number of subjects it offers to the brush of the painter. He was further instigated by the comparisons between poetry and painting upon which were commonly founded the most ridiculous rules for tragedy: the maxim _Ut pictura poësis,_ whose original motive was to emphasize the representative or imaginative character of poetry, and the community of nature among the arts, had been converted by superficial interpretation into a defence of the most vicious intellectualistic and realistic prejudices. Lessing argued in this wise: "If painting in its imitations employs precisely a medium or symbol different from that of poetry (the former employing spatial forms and colours, the latter temporal articulated sounds), since the symbol must certainly be in close relation with that which is signified, coexistent symbols can only express coexistent objects or parts of objects, and consecutive symbols can only express consecutive objects or parts of objects. Objects mutually coexistent, or having mutually coexistent parts, are called bodies. Bodies, then, through their quality of visibility, are the true objects of painting. Objects successively consecutive amongst themselves, or whose parts are consecutive, are called in general actions. Actions, then, are the suitable objects of poetry." Painting, undoubtedly, may represent action, but only by means of bodies which indicate it; and poetry may represent bodies, but only by indicating them by means of actions. When a poet using language, _i.e._ arbitrary symbols, sets himself to describe bodies, he is no longer a poet but a prose-writer, since a true poet only describes bodies by the effect they produce on the soul.[6] Retouching and developing this distinction, Lessing described action or movement in a picture as an addition made by the imagination of the beholder; so true is this, says he, that animals perceive nothing save immobility in a picture. He further studied the various unions of arbitrary with natural symbols, such as that of poetry with music (in which the former is subordinate to the latter), of music with dancing, of poetry with dancing, and of music and poetry with dancing (union of arbitrary consecutive audible symbols with natural visible symbols): of the pantomime of antiquity (union of arbitrary consecutive visible symbols with natural consecutive visible symbols): of the language of the dumb (the only art that employs arbitrary consecutive visible symbols): and, lastly, of imperfect unions, such as that of painting with poetry. If not every use to which language is put is poetic, Lessing holds that not every use of natural coexistent signs is pictorial: painting, like language, has its prose. Prosaic painters are those who represent consecutive objects notwithstanding the character of coexistence in their signs, allegorical painters those who make arbitrary use of natural signs, and those who pretend to represent the invisible or the audible by means of the visible. Desirous of preserving the naturalness of symbolism, Lessing ended by condemning the custom of painting objects on a diminished scale, and concludes: "I think that the aim of an art should be that only to which it is specially adapted, not that which can be performed equally well by other arts. I find in Plutarch a comparison which illustrates this admirably: he who would split wood with a key and open the door with an axe not only spoils both utensils but deprives himself of the unity of each alike."[7]

[Sidenote: _Limits and classifications of the arts in later philosophy._]

The principle of limitations or of the specific character of individual arts, as laid down by Lessing, occupied the attention of philosophers in later days, who, without discussing the principle itself, employed it in classifying the arts and arranging them in series.

[Sidenote: _Herder and Kant._]

Herder here and there continued Lessing's examination in his fragment on _Plastic_ (1769);[8] Heydenreich wrote a treatise (1790) on the limits of the six arts (music, dance, figurative arts gardening, poetry and representative art), and criticized the _clavecin oculaire_ of Father Castel, a contrivance for the combination of colours which should act in the same way as the series of musical notes in harmony and melody,[9] Kant appealed to the analogy of a speaking man, and classified the arts according to speech, gesture and tone as arts of speech, figurative arts, and arts producing a mere play of sensations (mimicry and colouring).[10]

[Sidenote: _Schelling._]

Schelling differentiated the artistic identity according as it consisted in the infusion of the infinite into the finite, or of the finite into the infinite (ideal art or real art): into poetry and art proper. Under the heading of real arts he included the figurative arts, music, painting, plastic (which comprehended architecture, bas-relief and sculpture): in the ideal series were the three corresponding forms of poetry, lyrical, epical and dramatic.[11]

[Sidenote: _Solger._]

With a similar method, Solger placed poetry, the universal art, side by side with art strictly so called, which is either symbolical (sculpture) or allegorical (painting), and, in either case, is a union of concepts and bodies: if you take corporality without concept, you have architecture; if concept without matter, music.[12] Hegel makes poetry the bond of union between the two extremes of figurative art and of music.[13]

[Sidenote: _Schopenhauer._]

We have already seen how Schopenhauer destroyed the accepted limitations of art and built them up again, following the order of the ideas which they represent.[14] Herbart clung to Lessing's two groups, simultaneous arts and successive arts, and defined the former as "permitting themselves to be inspected from every side," the latter as "rejecting complete investigation and remaining in semi-darkness": in the first group he placed architecture, plastic, church music and classical poetry; in the second ornamental gardening, painting, secular music and romantic poetry.[15]

[Sidenote: _Herbart._]

Herbart was implacable against those who look in one art for the perfections of another; who "look on music as a sort of painting, painting as poetry, poetry as an elevated plastic and plastic as a species of æsthetic philosophy,"[16] while admitting that a concrete work of art, such as a picture, may contain elements of the picturesque, the poetic and other kinds, held together by the skill of the artist.[17]

[Sidenote: _Weisse. Zeising._]

Weisse divided the arts into three triads, intended to recall the nine Muses.[18] Zeising invented-a cross-division into figurative arts (architecture, sculpture, painting), musical arts (instrumental music, song, poetry), and arts of mimicry (dance, musical mimicry, representative art), and into macrocosmic arts (architecture, instrumental music, dance), microcosmic arts (sculpture, song, musical mimicry) and historical arts (painting, poetry and representative art).[19]

[Sidenote: _Vischer._]

Vischer classified them according to the three forms of imagination (figurative, sensuous and poetic), into objective arts (architecture, plastic and painting), a subjective art (music) and an objective-subjective art[20] (poetry). Gerber proposed to recognize a special "art of language" (_Sprachkunst_), distinguishable alike from prose and poetry and consisting in the expression of simple movements of the soul. Such an art would correspond with plastic in the following scheme: arts of the eye--(_a)_ architecture, (_b_) plastic, (c) painting; arts of the ear--(_a)_ prose, (_b)_ the art of language, (c) poetry.[21]

[Sidenote: _M. Schasler._]

The two most recent systems of classification are furnished by Schasler and Hartmann, who have also submitted the schemes of their predecessors to searching criticism. Schasler[22] arranges the arts in two groups, adopting the criterion of simultaneity and succession: the arts of simultaneity are architecture, plastic and painting; of succession, music, mimicry and poetry. He says that by following the series in the order indicated, it will be seen that simultaneity, originally predominant, yields place to succession, which predominates in the second group and subordinates without wholly displacing the other. Parallel with this, another division is evolved, deduced from the relation between the ideal and material elements in each separate art, between movement and repose; which begins with architecture "materially the heaviest, spiritually the lightest of all the arts," and ends with poetry, in which the opposite relation is observed. Curious analogies are established by this method between the first and second group of arts: between architecture and music; between plastic and mimicry; between painting in its three forms of landscape, _genre_ and historical, and poetry in its three forms of lyric (declamatory), epic (rhapsodic) and drama (representative).

[Sidenote: _E. v. Hartmann._]

Hartmann[23] divides the arts into arts of perception and arts of imagination: the former tripartite into spatial or visual (plastic and painting), temporal or auditory (instrumental music, linguistic mimicry, expressive song) and temporal-spatial or mimic (pantomime, mimic dances, art of the actor, art of the opera-singer); the second contains but one single species, which is poetry. Architecture, decoration, gardening, cosmetic and prosewriting are excluded from this system of classification and lumped together as non-free arts.

[Sidenote: _The supreme art. Richard Wagner._]

Parallel with this search for a classification of the arts, the same philosophers were led into the quest of the supreme art. Some favoured poetry, others music or sculpture; others again claimed the supremacy for combined arts, especially for Opera, according to the theory of it already advanced in the eighteenth century[24] and maintained and developed in our day by Richard Wagner.[25] One of the latest philosophers to raise the question "whether single arts, or arts in combination, had the greater value," concluded that single arts as such possess their own perfection, yet the perfection of united arts is still greater, notwithstanding the compromises and mutual concessions enforced upon them by their union; that single arts, from another point of view, have the greater value; and lastly, that both single and combined arts are necessary to the realisation of the concept of art.[26]

[Sidenote: _Lotze's attack on classifications._]

The capriciousness, emptiness and childishness of such problems and their solutions must have excited feelings of impatience and disgust, but we rarely find a doubt thrown on their validity. One such dissentient is Lotze when he writes: "It is difficult to see the use of such attempts. Knowledge of the nature and laws of individual arts is but little increased by indication of the systematic place allotted to each." He further observed that in real life the arts are variously conjoined, forming themselves into no systematic series, while in the world of thought an immense variety of orders can be created; he therefore selected one of these possible orders, not because it was the sole legitimate one, but because it was convenient (_bequem_). His series begins with music, "the art of free beauty, determined only by the laws of its matter, not by conditions imposed by a given task of purpose or of imitation"; followed by architecture, "which no longer plays freely with forms, but subjects them to the service of an end"; and then by sculpture, painting and poetry, excluding minor arts which cannot be co-ordinated with the others, since they are incapable of expressing with any approach to completeness the totality of the spiritual life.[27] A recent French critic, Basch, opens his treatise with the following excellent remarks: "Is it necessary to show there is no such thing as an absolute art, differentiating itself later by means of one knows not what immanent laws? What exists is the particular forms of art, or rather artists who have striven to translate, as best they can, according to the material means at their command, the song of the ideal in their souls." But later on he thinks it possible to effect a division of the arts by starting "from the artist, instead of the art in itself," by proceeding "according to the three great types of fancy, visual, motor and auditory"; and as for the debated point of the supreme art, he thinks it must be settled in favour of music.[28]

Schasler is not altogether wrong in his spirited counterattack on Lotze's criticism; he protests against the principle of indifference and convenience, and remarks that "the classification of the arts must be regarded as the real touchstone, the real differential test of the scientific value of an æsthetic system; for on this point all theoretical questions are concentrated and crowd together to find a concrete solution."[29]

[Sidenote: _Contradictions in Lotze._]