5. Discusion
5.2 New implications of homeodomain proteins in HSC generation
Preface
The first who likened painting and poetry to each other must have been a man of delicate perception, who found that both arts affected him in a similar manner. Both, he realized, present to us appearance as reality, absent things as present; both deceive, and the deceit of either is pleasing.
A second sought to penetrate to the essence of the pleasure and dis-covered that in both it flows from one source. Beauty, the conception of which we at first derive from bodily objects, has general rules which can be applied to various things: to actions, to thoughts, as well as to forms.
A third, who reflected on the value and the application of these general rules, observed that some of them were predominant rather in painting, others rather in poetry; that, therefore, in the latter poetry could help out painting, in the former painting help out poetry, with illustrations and examples.
The first was the amateur; the second the philosopher; the third the critic.
There is a useful commentary on the Laoco¨on in Lessing’s Werke, edited by Herbert G. G¨opfert,
vols. (Munich, –), , –. The fullest collection of drafts, variants and background materials is still that in Hugo Bl ¨umner’s edition of Lessing’s Laokoon, second edition (Berlin,).
In the present translation, those of Lessing’s long and learned footnotes which are now of only antiquarian interest are omitted. Where his footnotes contain material essential to his argument or to an understanding of the text, their substance is incorporated in the notes which follow here.
The two former could not easily make a false use either of their feeling or of their conclusions. But in the remarks of the critic, on the other hand, almost everything depends on the justice of their application to the individual case; and, where there have been fifty witty to one clear-eyed critic, it would have been a miracle if this application had at all times been made with the circumspection needful to hold the balance true between the two arts.
Supposing that Apelles and Protogenes in their lost treatises upon painting confirmed and illustrated the rules of the same by the already settled rules of poetry, then one can certainly believe it must have been done with the moderation and exactitude with which we still find Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, in their writings, applying the prin-ciples and practice of painting to eloquence and poetry. It is the pre-rogative of the ancients, in everything to do neither too much nor too little.
But we moderns in several things have considered ourselves their bet-ters, when we transformed their pleasant little byeways to highroads, even if the shorter and safer highroads shrink again to footpaths as they lead us through the wilds.
The startling antithesis of the Greek Voltaire,that painting is a dumb poetry, and poetry a vocal painting, certainly was not to be found in any manual. It was a sudden inspiration, such as Simonides had more than once; the true element in it is so illuminating that we are inclined to ignore what in it is false or doubtful.
Nevertheless, the ancients did not ignore it. Rather, whilst they confined the claim of Simonides solely to the effect of the two arts, they did not omit to point out that, notwithstanding the complete similarity of this effect, they were yet distinct, both in their subjects and in the manner of their imitation (uílh kaª troépoiv mimsewv).
But entirely as if no such difference existed, many of our most recent critics have drawn from that correspondence between painting and poetry the crudest conclusions in the world. Now they force poetry into the narrower bounds of painting; and again, they propose to painting to fill
Greek painters of the fourth century.
The Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos,– .
‘They differ in their objects and mode of imitation.’ The quotation, used by Lessing as a motto on the title page of his work, is from Plutarch, ‘Whether the Athenians were more Famous for their Martial Accomplishments or for their Knowledge’, chapter.
the whole wide sphere of poetry. Everything that is right for the one is to be granted to the other also; everything which in the one pleases or displeases is necessarily to please or displease in the other; and, obsessed by this notion, they utter in the most confident tone the shallowest judgements;
and we see them, in dealing with the works of poets and painters beyond reproach, making it a fault if they deviate from one another, and casting blame now on this side and now on that, according as they themselves have a taste for poetry or for painting.
Indeed, this newer criticism has in part seduced the virtuosos them-selves. It has engendered in poetry the rage for description, and in painting the rage for allegorizing, in the effort to turn the former into a speaking picture without really knowing what she can and should paint, and to turn the latter into a silent poem without considering in what measure she can express general concepts and not at the same time depart from her vocation and become a freakish kind of writing.
To counteract this false taste and these ill-founded judgements is the primary object of the pages that follow. They have come together inci-dentally, according to the order of my reading, instead of being built up by a methodical development of general principles.They are, therefore, rather unordered collectanea for a book than themselves a book.
Yet I flatter myself that even as such they are not wholly to be despised.
Of systematic books there is no lack amongst us Germans. Out of a few assumed definitions to deduce most logically whatever we will – this we can manage as well as any nation in the world.
Baumgarten confessed that for a great part of the examples in his Æstheticshe was indebted to Gesner’s Dictionary.If my argument is not as conclusive as Baumgarten’s, at all events my examples will taste more of the original sources.
As I started, as it were, from Laoco¨on and return to him several times, I have desired to give him a share in the superscription. Some other little digressions concerning various points in the history of ancient art contribute less to my purpose, and they only stand here because I cannot hope ever to find for them a more suitable place.
This claim is not strictly true.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (–), the founder of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline (Aesthetica,).
Johann Matthias Gesner (–), humanist and antiquary; the work referred to is his Novus linguae et eruditionis romanae Thesaurus.
I would further remind the reader that under the name of Painting I include the plastic arts in general, and am not prepared to maintain that under the name of Poetry I may not have had some regard also to the other arts whose method of imitation is progressive.
I
The general distinguishing excellence of the Greek masterpieces in paint-ing and sculpture Herr Winckelmann places in a noble simplicity and quiet greatness, both in arrangement and in expression. ‘Just as the depths of the sea’, he says,
always remain quiet, however the surface may rage, in like manner the expression in the figures of the Greek artists shows under all passions a great and steadfast soul.
This soul is depicted in the countenance of the Laoco¨on, and not in the countenance alone, under the most violent sufferings.
The pain which discovers itself in every muscle and sinew of the body, and which, without regarding the face and other parts, one seems almost oneself to feel from the painfully contracted abdomen alone – this pain, I say, yet expresses itself in the countenance and in the entire attitude without passion. He raises no agonizing cry, as Virgil sings of his Laoco¨on; the opening of the mouth does not per-mit it: much rather is it an oppressed and weary sigh, as Sadoleto describes it. The pain of the body and the greatness of the soul are by the whole build of the figure distributed and, as it were, weighed out in equal parts. Laoco¨on suffers, but he suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles: his misery touches us to the soul;
but we should like to be able to endure misery as this great man endures it.
The expression of so great a soul goes far beyond the fashion-ing which beautiful Nature gives. The artist must have felt in him-self the strength of spirit which he impressed upon the marble.
Greece had artist and philosopher in one person, and more than one Metrodorus.Wisdom stretched out her hand to Art and breathed more than common souls into the figures that she wrought, etc., etc.
Jacopo Sadoleto (–), Italian cardinal and author of a Latin poem on the Laoco¨on group.
Metrodorus of Athens, a philosopher and painter of the second century. On his dual accom-plishment cf. Pliny’s Natural History,, .
The remark which is fundamental here – that the pain does not show itself in the countenance of Laoco¨on with the passion which one would expect from its violence – is perfectly just. This, too, is incontestable, that even in this very point in which a sciolist might judge the artist to have come short of Nature and not to have reached the true pathos of the pain:
that just here, I say, his wisdom has shone out with especial brightness.
Only in the reason which Winckelmann gives for this wisdom, and in the universality of the rule which he deduces from this reason, I venture to be of a different opinion.
I confess that the disapproving side-glance which he casts on Virgil at first took me rather aback; and, next to that, the comparison with Philoctetes. I will make this my starting-point, and write down my thoughts just in the order in which they come.
‘Laoco¨on suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles.’ How, then, does the latter suffer? It is singular that his suffering has left with us such different impressions – the complaints, the outcry, the wild curses, with which his pain filled the camp and disturbed the sacrifices and all the sacred functions, resounded no less terribly through the desert island, as it was in part they that banished him thither. What sounds of anger, of lamentation, of despair, by which even the poet in his imitation made the theatre resound! People have found the third act of this drama dis-proportionately short compared with the rest. From this one gathers, say the critics, that the ancient dramatists considered an equal length of acts as of small consequence. That, indeed, I believe; but in this ques-tion I should prefer to base myself upon another example than this. The piteous outcries, the whimpering, the broken, , feÓ, ttata±, ß moi, moi!the whole long lines full ofpapa, papa,of which this act con-sists and which must have been declaimed with quite other hesitations and drawings-out of utterance than are needful in a connected speech, doubtless made this act last pretty well as long in the presentation as the others. On paper it appears to the reader far shorter than it would to the listeners.
To cry out is the natural expression of bodily pain. Homer’s wounded warriors not seldom fall to the ground with cries. Venus scratched screams loudly; not in order that she may be shown as the soft goddess of pleasure, but rather that suffering Nature may have her rights. For even the iron
Exclamations of pain. See note.
Mars, when he feels the spear of Diomedes, screams so horribly, like ten thousand raging warriors at once, that both hosts are terrified.
However high in other respects Homer raises his heroes above Nature, they yet ever remain faithful to her when it comes to the point of feeling pain and injury, and to the utterance of this feeling by cries, or tears, or abusive language. By their deeds they are creatures of a superior order, by their sensibilities mere men.
I am well aware that we Europeans of a wiser posterity know better how to control our mouth and our eyes. Politeness and dignity forbid cries and tears. The active fortitude of the first rude ages has with us been transformed into the fortitude of endurance. Yet even our own ancestors were greater in the latter than in the former. Our ancestors, however, were barbarians. To conceal all pains, to face the stroke of death with unaltered eye, to die smiling under the teeth of vipers, to bewail neither his sin nor the loss of his dearest friend, are the marks of the ancient Northern hero.
Palnatokogave his Jomsburgers the command to fear nothing nor once to utter the word fear.
Not so the Greek! He both felt and feared; he uttered his pain and his trouble; he was ashamed of no human weaknesses; but none must hold him back on the way to honour or from the fulfilment of duty. What with the barbarian sprang from savagery and hardness, was wrought in him by principle. With him heroism was like the hidden sparks in the flint, which sleep quietly so long as no outward force awakes them, and take from the stone neither its clearness nor its coldness. With the barbarian, heroism was a bright devouring flame, which raged continually and consumed, or at least darkened, every other good quality in him. When Homer leads out the Trojans to battle with wild outcries, and the Greeks, on the other hand, in resolute silence, the commentators remark with justice that the poet in this wishes to depict those as barbarians and these as civilized people. I am surprised that they have not remarked in another passage a similar characteristic contrast. The opposing hosts have concluded a truce; they are busy with the burning of their dead, which on neither side takes place without hot tears:dkrua qerm contev.But Priam forbids his Trojans to weep;ouìdì ea klaiéein Priéamov mgav.He forbids them to
Danish hero and legendary founder of the town of Jomsburg.
‘shedding hot tears’. ‘but the great Priam forbade them to weep’.
weep, says Dacier,because he dreads that they will weaken themselves too much and return to battle on the morrow with less courage. Good!
But I ask, Why must Priam dread this? Why does not Agamemnon, too, give his Greeks the same command? The sense of the poet goes deeper.
He would teach us that only the civilized Greek can at the same time weep and be brave, whilst the uncivilized Trojan in order to be so must first stifle all human feeling.Nemessämaié ge mn ouìdn klaiéein, in another place, he puts in the mouth of the understanding son of wise Nestor.
It is worthy of remark that amongst the few tragedies that have come down to us from antiquity two pieces are to be found in which bodily pain is not the smallest part of the calamity that befalls the suffering hero: there is, besides the Philoctetes, the dying Hercules.And even the latter Sophocles represents complaining, whining, weeping and crying aloud. Thanks to our polite neighbours, those masters of the becoming,
today a whimpering Philoctetes, a screaming Hercules, would be the most laughable, the most unendurable persons on the stage. It is true one of their latest dramatists has ventured on Philoctetes.But would he venture to show them the true Philoctetes?
Amongst the lost dramas of Sophocles is numbered even a ‘Laoco¨on’.
Would that Fate had only granted us this Laoco¨on also! From the slight references made to it by some ancient grammarians it is not easy to gather how the theme was handled. Of one thing I feel sure: that the poet will not have depicted Laoco¨on as more of a stoic than Philoctetes and Hercules.
All stoicism is untheatrical, and our pity is always proportionate to the suffering which the interesting subject expresses. If we see him bear his misery with greatness of soul, then indeed this greatness of soul will excite our admiration, but admiration is a cold emotion, whose passive wonder excludes every other warmer passion as well as every other more significant representation.
And now I come to the inference I wish to draw. If it is true that outcries on the feeling of bodily pain, especially according to the ancient Greek way of thinking, can quite well consist with a great soul; then the expression of such a soul cannot be the reason why, nevertheless, the artist in his
Anne Lef`evre Dacier (–), philologist and translator of classical texts, including the Iliad (Paris,).
‘I in no way condemn weeping.’ In the Trachiniae of Sophocles. The French.
Jean Baptiste Vivien de Chateaubrun (–), author of the drama Philoct`ete ().
marble refuses to imitate this crying: there must be other grounds why he deviates here from his rival, the poet, who expresses this crying with obvious intention.
II
Whether it be fable or history that Love prompted the first attempt in the plastic arts,it is at least certain that she was never weary of lending her guiding hand to the ancient masters. For if painting, as the art which imitates bodies on plane surfaces, is now generally practised with an unlimited range of subject, certainly the wise Greek set her much straiter bounds, and confined her solely to the imitation of beautiful bodies. His artist portrayed nothing but the beautiful; even the ordinary beautiful, beauty of inferior kinds, was for him only an occasional theme, an exercise, a recreation. In his work the perfection of the subject itself must give delight; he was too great to demand of those who beheld it that they should content themselves with the bare, cold pleasure arising from a well-caught likeness or from the daring of a clever effort; in his art nothing was dearer to him, and to his thinking nothing nobler, than the ultimate purpose of art.
‘Who will wish to paint you, when no one wishes to see you?’ says an old epigrammatist concerning an extremely misshapen man. Many a more modern artist would say, ‘Be you as misshapen as is possible, I will paint you nevertheless. Though, indeed, no one may wish to see you, people will still wish to see my picture; not in so far as it represents you, but in so
‘Who will wish to paint you, when no one wishes to see you?’ says an old epigrammatist concerning an extremely misshapen man. Many a more modern artist would say, ‘Be you as misshapen as is possible, I will paint you nevertheless. Though, indeed, no one may wish to see you, people will still wish to see my picture; not in so far as it represents you, but in so