The Crown of Wild Olive
graphic beauty and the brightness of life. I have told you that no art
could be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor without
the elementary graphic art of women, in divers colours of needlework.
There has been no nation of any art-energy, but has strenuously occupied
and interested itself in this household picturing, from the web of
Penelope to the tapestry of Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras and
Gobelins.
106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery Athena put on
her own robe; "[Greek: peplon heanon, poikilon hou r aute poiesato kai
kame chersin]."
The subject of that [Greek: poikilia] of hers, as you know, was the war
of the giants and gods. Now the real name of these giants, remember, is
that used by Hesiod, "[Greek: pelochonoi]," "mud-begotten," and the
meaning of the contest between these and Zeus, [Greek: pelogonon
elater], is, again, the inspiration of life into the clay, by the
goddess of breath; and the actual confusion going on visibly before you,
daily, of the earth, heaping itself into cumbrous war with the powers
above it.
107. Thus briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena's hand, is
the contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you the
early thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be the
tracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when,
not in tapestry only--but in sculpture--and on the portal of the Temple
of Delphi itself, you have the "[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisi
giganton]," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight
from the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "[Greek:
leusso Pallad' eman theon]," my own goddess. All our work, I repeat,
will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this the
subject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato about that
embroidery--"And think you that there is verily war with each other
among the Gods? and dreadful enmities and battle, such as the poets have
told, and such as our painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn
all our sacred rites and holy places; yes, and in the great Panathenaea
themselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried up into
the Acropolis--shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthuphron,
right-minded friend?"
108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; and true for
ever: battles of the gods, not among themselves, but against the
earth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in nobler life and lovelier
imagery; creation, which no theory of mechanism, no definition of force,
can explain, the adoption and completing of individual form by
individual animation, breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits.
And to recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by which
it lives and moves and has its being--to recognize it, revere, and show
it forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry.
"Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them."
"Assuredly no," we answered once, in our pride; and through porch and
aisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes and hammers.
Who would have thought the day so near when we should bow down to
worship, not the creatures, but their atoms,--not the forces that form,
but those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the command which is
stringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less against
adoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be
reformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceased
from the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;--it is
well,--if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts.
We have learned to distrust the adorning of fair phantasms, to which we
once sought for succour;--it is well, if we learn to distrust also the
adorning of those to which we seek, for temptation; but the verity of
gains like these can only be known by our confession of the divine seal
of strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and honour in the
fervent heart, by which, increasing visibly, may yet be manifested to
us the holy presence, and the approving love, of the Loving God, who
visits the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children, unto the third
and fourth generation of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto
thousands in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments.
FOOTNOTES:
[118] I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other
writings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more
comprehensive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake,
limitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and
ignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception.
[119] "And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and
Athena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused the
moulded things to have soul (psyche) in them."--LUCIAN, PROMETHEUS.
[120] His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne,
belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower and
nearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long
withdraws and disguises herself.
[121] The Latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain prose
retains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates.
[122] The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty
of representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of
representing either a man, a horse, or a lion.
LECTURE IV.
LIKENESS.
_November, 1870._
109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of my last
lecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the apparently simple
conclusion, that sculpture must only represent organic form, and the
strength of life in its contest with matter. But it is no small thing to
have that "[Greek: leusso Pallada]" fixed in your minds, as the one
necessary sign by which you are to recognize right sculpture, and
believe me you will find it the best of all things, if you can take for
yourselves the saying from the lips of the Athenian maids, in its
entirety, and say also--[Greek: leusso Pallad' eman theon]. I proceed
to-day into the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, but
in reality imperative, law.
110. You observe, I have hitherto spoken of the power of Athena, as over
painting no less than sculpture. But her rule over both arts is only so
far as they are zoographic;--representative, that is to say, of animal
life, or of such order and discipline among other elements, as may
invigorate and purify it. Now there is a speciality of the art of
painting beyond this, namely, the representation of phenomena of colour
and shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things that
receive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of sculpture and
painting as distinct arts, but the laws which bind sculpture, bind no
less the painting of the higher schools which has, for its main purpose,
the showing beauty in human or animal form; and which is therefore
placed by the Greeks equally under the rule of Athena, as the Spirit,
first, of Life, and then of Wisdom in conduct.
111. First, I say, you are to "see Pallas" in all such work, as the
Queen of Life; and the practical law which follows from this, is one of
enormous range and importance, namely, that nothing must be represented
by sculpture, external to any living form, which does not help to
enforce or illustrate the conception of life. Both dress and armour may
be made to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by
the greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian and
Florentine schools is dependent on their treatment of drapery in this
respect; an Athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body,
by flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both its
form and gesture; a Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery
to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental
emotion: but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or
soul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic
chivalry, ennoble armour in the same way; but base sculptors carve
drapery and armour for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only,
and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern that all delight in
mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly
forbidden to sculpture;--for instance, in _painting_ the branch of a
tree, you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it,
but a sculptor must not touch one of them: they are inessential to the
tree's life,--he must give the flow and bending of the branch only, else
he does not enough "see Pallas" in it.
Or to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem,
by Edward Frere; a cottage interior, one of the thousands which within
the last two months[123] have been laid desolate in unhappy France.
Every accessory in the painting is of value--the fireside, the tiled
floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the
roof. But not one of these accessories would have been admissible in
sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. "Why"? you probably
feel instantly inclined to ask me.--You see the principle we have got,
instead of being blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you are
startled the moment I apply it. "Must we refuse every pleasant accessory
and picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures"?--Even
so: I would not assert it on my own authority. It is the Greeks who say
it, but whatever they say of sculpture, be assured, is true.
112. That then is the first law--you must see Pallas as the Lady of
Life--the second is, you must see her as the Lady of Wisdom; or [Greek:
sophia]--and this is the chief matter of all. I cannot but think, that
after the considerations into which we have now entered, you will find
more interest than hitherto in comparing the statements of Aristotle, in
the Ethics, with those of Plato in the Polity, which are authoritative
as Greek definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely hold
authoritative as constant definitions of it. You remember, doubtless,
that the [Greek: sophia] or [Greek: arete technes], for the sake of
which Phidias is called [Greek: sophos] as a sculptor, and Polyclitus as
an image-maker, Eth. 6. 7. (the opposition is both between ideal and
portrait sculpture, and between working in stone and bronze) consists in
the "[Greek: nous ton timiotaton te physei]" "the mental apprehension of
the things that are most honourable in their nature." Therefore what is,
indeed, most lovely, the true image-maker will most love; and what is
most hateful, he will most hate, and in all things discern the best and
strongest part of them, and represent that essentially, or, if the
opposite of that, then with manifest detestation and horror. That is his
art wisdom; the knowledge of good and evil, and the love of good, so
that you may discern, even in his representation of the vilest thing,
his acknowledgment of what redemption is possible for it, or latent
power exists in it; and, contrariwise, his sense of its present misery.
But for the most part, he will idolize, and force us also to idolize,
whatever is living, and virtuous, and victoriously right; opposing to it
in some definite mode the image of the conquered [Greek: herpeton].
113. This is generally true of both the great arts; but in severity and
precision, true of sculpture. To return to our illustration: this poor
little girl was more interesting to Edward Frere, he being a painter,
because she was poorly dressed, and wore these clumsy shoes, and old red
cap, and patched gown. May we sculpture her so? No. We may sculpture her
naked, if we like; but not in rags.