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Laocoon : an Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry

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Laocoon : an Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry p LAOCOON. L A 0 C 0 0 N : THE LIMITS OF PAINTING AND POETRY. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING, \ BY E. C. BEASLEY, ONE OF THE TUTORS OF LEAMINGTON COLLEGE. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE BEY. T. BUBBIDGE, L.L.H. MASTER OF LEAMINGTON COLLEGE. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. EDINBURGH : BLACKWOOD AND SONS. OXFORD : F. MACPIIERSON. RUGBY: CROSSLEY AND BILLINGTON, M.DCCC.LIII. REREARCH LIBRARY The Translator cannot allow the present opportunity to pass without returning his sincere thanks to his friend and principal, Dr. Burbidge, not only for the preface he has written, but also for very kind assistance received in the re- vision and correction of the text. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/laocoonessayonliOOIess INTRODUCTION. The poles between which ./Esthetic criticism has always oscillated, and will continue to oscillate, are Eorm and Expression,—the objective and the subjec- tive truths involved in Art, as in every other produc- tion of the human mind. A very ingenious and eloquent writer of the present day has had weight enough (between his reason and his passion) to bring the balance far down in the latter direction : the more need therefore to bring forward an older writer, whose learning is as decidedly, though less vehe- mently, the other way. There is a use, however, to be served, by drawing notice, in the present state of things, to a writer of the former school, greater than the mere momentary dressing of a balance, never fated to maintain more than a momentary equilibrium. These vm INTRODUCTION. variations,, referring as they do to permanent distinc- tions, must be expected to continue. Nor, however far the study of art may be carried, can we expect that it will reach a point at which it will become an exact science, independent of the bias in the direc- tion of objective or subjective truth existing in the critic’s own mind. It is not, therefore, as contesting the views of Mr. Buskin, that I venture to call at- tention to this treatise of Lessing. But a true purpose may be served by simply bringing the converse truth into the same field with that on which our eyes are at present almost ex- clusively fixed. The caricatures of the Pre- Baphaelites have already done some intentional and also some unintended service to Art. By exhibiting the reigning doctrine in its full and almost unmiti- gated results, while they have clearly shewn (as I frankly admit them to have done) the truth on which it is founded, they have as distinctly, and it may be feared to the general public more impressively, ex- hibited its inability to fulfil the mind’s requirements of Art without the aid of a counter and modifying principle. It is therefore no undesirable thing to supply so fair and acute an exponent of that counter truth as Lessing is, even if it were only to give an INTRODUCTION. IX expression and satisfaction to the revolted feelings of those whom the miserable meannesses alluded to have disgusted, and prevent them from disbelieving in the existence of Art as a subject of rational en- quiry altogether. But the advantage I meant was less this than the service which is always done to any imper- fectly ascertained science by suggesting its his- torical aspect. If Aristotle both began and completed the science of Logic, it is the single instance of such an achieve- ment. In general a long tentative process, passing through the hands of many individuals, precedes the consummation of so great a work : there must be hewing of wood and drawing of water before the very foundations are laid, and the building itself shall be conceived by David and built by Solomon. The human mind will be seen (represented by a long succession of individuals) to climb from truth to truth (as we should more correctly say, speaking of nature, from fact to fact) toward the distant summit whence the whole subject is to become visible. It is its natural tendency when any new station is gained, to be occupied with the novelty of its actual position or in the ardour of its ambition to turn its gaze X INTRODUCTION. only in the direction of its object. But if this be the wisely ordained necessity of those whose mission is to be themselves the active instruments of the achievement, undoubtedly it is equally the wisdom of the mere observer less to look forward than back- ward, less to divine what our future path may be than to compare our present position with our pre- vious course. A complete result is by supposition at present unattainable ; all we can do, therefore, is to grasp as many of the elements which will go to form that future result as possible. Every distinct impres- sion of ^Esthetic truth found to have been made either upon the general sense of men or upon our human nature represented by individuals of superior facul- ties, shews a reality, either subjective or objective, bearing upon the science, and so long as the science remains confessedly imperfect, the possession of more or less of such data becomes the closer or more distant approximation to the possession of the whole truth, seeing that when these data are sufficient they must contain the whole truth, whether the generaliza- tion which is to convert it into a science shall have actually taken place or not. Now it is as representing a class of such data which Buskin (although fully admitting their exist- INTRODUCTION. XI ence) does not seem sufficiently to keep in view that I think a work belonging to an earlier stage of the enquiry may at present be usefully studied. In his way, though scarcely as eloquent or poetical, Lessing was as acute an observer as Buskin, and his percep- tions on the objective side were as clear, and it seems to me (possibly from the more limited and exact character of objective truth) firmer and truer than those of Buskin on the subjective. I wish, however, to enter into no comparisons : either has been a true and able labourer in this field, and we must be grateful to both. A due regard to the results which both have elicited is our present wisdom as tending to keep our minds in that balanced and suspended state which alone profits the student of ^Esthetics in the present condition of that science. Bor a by- stander like myself it would be presumptuous to pretend to support either side, but I trust it is no offence against modesty to avow my own conviction to be that a substantive truth exists on either side, and that the object of the ^Esthetic Philosopher henceforth ought to be less the demonstration of facts which may be considered now to be fairly as- certained than the discovery of the law which will harmonise them. Xll INTRODUCTION. My friend, tlie Translator, having done me the honour of consulting me with regard to bringing forward this work in an English form, and having been partly influenced perhaps by my encouragement, I have not felt able to refuse his request that I should state here the grounds on which I advised the publication. T. BUEBIDGE. Leamington College, April 23, 1853. ; Xlll AUTHOR’S PREFACE. The first person who compared painting and poetry with one another was a man of fine feeling, who may be supposed to have been conscious that both produced a similar effect upon himself. He felt that through both what is absent seems as if it were present, and appearance takes the form of reality. He felt that both deceive, and that the deception is, in either case, pleasing. A second observer sought to penetrate below the surface of this pleasure, and discovered that in both painting and poetry it flowed from the same source for beauty, the idea of which we first abstract from bodily objects, possesses general laws, applicable to more than one class of things, to actions and thoughts as well as to forms. A third reflected upon the value and distribution of these are general laws ; and discovered that some XIV PREFACE. of greater force when applied to painting, others when applied to poetry. In the case of the latter laws, poetry will help to explain and illustrate paint- ing, in that of the former, painting will do the same office for poetry. The first was the amateur, the second the phi- losopher, and the third the critic. The two first could not easily make a wrong use of either their sensations, or conclusions. Qn the contrary, the value of the critic’s observations mainly depends upon the justice of their application to in- dividual cases ; and since the number of ingenious has always exceeded that of sound critics, it would have been a wonder if their strictures had always been applied with that caution, which is required to hold the balance equally between the two arts. If Apelles and Protogenes, in their lost writings on painting, confined and illustrated its laws by the previously established rules of poetry, we may feel sure that they did it with that moderation and ac- curacy, with which we now see, in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian, the prin- ciples and experience of painting applied to eloquence and poetry. It was the happy privilege of the ancients never to pass beyond or stop short of the proper limit. PREFACE. XV But in many points we moderns imagine that we have advanced far beyond them, merely because we have changed their paths into highways; although by this very change, the highways, in spite of being shorter and safer, are again contracted into paths, as little trodden as though they led through deserts.
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