The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index
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The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index
Literature -- Collections
Yet what is this but the acknowledgment that language by itself is
here without power; that poetry falters and eloquence grows speechless
unless art in some measure serve them as an interpreter?
But, it will be said, does not poetry lose too much if we deprive
her of all objects of typical beauty? Who would deprive her of them?
Because we would debar her from wandering among the footsteps of her
sister art, without ever reaching the same goal as she, do we exclude
her from every other, where art in her turn must gaze after her steps
with fruitless longings?
Even Homer, who so pointedly abstains from all detailed descriptions
of typical beauties, from whom we but just learn that Helen had white
arms and lovely hair, even he, with all this, knew how to convey to us
an idea of her beauty which far exceeds anything that art is able to
accomplish.
_III.--Beauty and Charm_
Again, another means which poetry possesses of rivalling art in the
description of typical beauty is the change of beauty into charm.
Charm is beauty in motion, and is for this very reason less suitable
to the painter than to the poet. The painter can only leave motion to
conjecture, while in fact his figures are motionless. Consequently,
with him charm becomes grimace.
But in poetry it remains what it is, a transitory beauty which we would
gladly see repeated. It comes and goes, and since we can generally
recall to our minds a movement more easily and vividly than forms
or colours, charm necessarily in the same circumstances produces a
stronger effect than beauty.
Zeuxis painted a Helen, and had the courage to write below the picture
those renowned lines of Homer in which the enraptured elders confess
their sensations. Never had painting and poetry been engaged in such
contest. The contest remained undecided, and both deserved the crown.
For just as a wise poet showed us the beauty which he felt he could not
paint according to its constituent parts, but merely in its effect, so
the no less wise painter showed us that beauty by nothing but those
parts, deeming it unbecoming for his art to resort to any other means
for aid. His picture consisted of a single figure, undraped, of Helen,
probably the one painted for the people of Crotona.
In beauty a single unbecoming part may disturb the harmonious effect
of many, without the object necessarily becoming ugly. For ugliness,
too, requires several unbecoming parts, all of which we must be able
to comprehend at the same view before we experience sensations the
opposite of those which beauty produces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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