Stones of Venice, Volume 3 — Chapter 03, Grotesque Renaissance, part 2

§ XXII.

When the traveller has sufficiently considered the meaning of this façade, he ought to visit the Church of St. Eustachio, remarkable for the dramatic effect of the group of sculpture on its façade, and then the Church of the Ospedaletto (see Index, under head Ospedaletto);

noticing, on his way, the heads on the foundations of the Palazzo Corner della Regina, and the Palazzo Pesaro, and any other heads carved on the modern bridges, closing with those on the Bridge of Sighs.

He will then have obtained a perfect idea of the style and feeling of the Grotesque Renaissance.

I cannot pollute this volume by any illustration of its worst forms, but the head turned to the front, on the right-hand in the opposite Plate, will give the general reader an idea of its most graceful and refined developments.

The figure set beside it, on the left, is a piece of noble grotesque, from fourteenth century Gothic; and it must be our present task to ascertain the nature of the difference which exists between the two, by an accurate inquiry into the true essence of the grotesque spirit itself.

§ XXIII.

First, then, it seems to me that the grotesque is, in almost all cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful;

that, as one or other of these elements prevails, the grotesque falls into two branches, sportive grotesque and terrible grotesque; but that we cannot legitimately consider it under these two aspects, because there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both elements; there are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to exclude all ideas of jest.

But although we cannot separate the grotesque itself into two branches, we may easily examine separately the two conditions of mind which it seems to combine; and consider successively what are the kinds of jest, and what the kinds of fearfulness, which may be legitimately expressed in the various walks of art, and how their expressions actually occur in the Gothic and Renaissance schools.

First, then, what are the conditions of playfulness which we may fitly express in noble art, or which (for this is the same thing) are consistent with nobleness in humanity?

In other words, what is the proper function of play, with respect not to youth merely, but to all mankind?

§ XXIV.

It is a much more serious question than may be at first supposed; for a healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a healthy manner of work: and because the choice of our recreation is, in most cases, left to ourselves, while the nature of our work is generally fixed by necessity or authority, it may be well doubted whether more distressful consequences may not have resulted from mistaken choice in play than from mistaken direction in labor.

§ XXV.

Observe, however, that we are only concerned, here, with that kind of play which causes laughter or implies recreation, not with that which consists in the excitement of the energies whether of body or mind.

Muscular exertion is, indeed, in youth, one of the conditions of recreation; "but neither the violent bodily labor which children of all ages agree to call play," nor the grave excitement of the mental faculties in games of skill or chance, are in anywise connected with the state of feeling we have here to investigate, namely, that sportiveness which man possesses in common with many inferior creatures, but to which his higher faculties give nobler expression in the various manifestations of wit, humor, and fancy.

With respect to the manner in which this instinct of playfulness is indulged or repressed, mankind are broadly distinguishable into four classes: the men who play wisely; who play necessarily; who play inordinately; and who play not at all.

§ XXVI.

First: Those who play wisely.

It is evident that the idea of any kind of play can only be associated with the idea of an imperfect, childish, and fatigable nature.

As far as men can raise that nature, so that it shall no longer be interested by trifles or exhausted by toils, they raise it above play; he whose heart is at once fixed upon heaven, and open to the earth, so as to apprehend the importance of heavenly doctrines, and the compass of human sorrow, will have little disposition for jest; and exactly in proportion to the breadth and depth of his character and intellect, will be, in general, the incapability of surprise, or exuberant and sudden emotion, which must render play impossible.

It is, however, evidently not intended that many men should even reach, far less pass their lives in, that solemn state of thoughtfulness, which brings them into the nearest brotherhood with their Divine Master; and the highest and healthiest state which is competent to ordinary humanity appears to be that which, accepting the necessity of recreation, and yielding to the impulses of natural delight springing out of health and innocence, does, indeed, condescend often to playfulness, but never without such deep love of God, of truth, and of humanity, as shall make even its slightest words reverent, its idlest fancies profitable, and its keenest satire indulgent.

Wordsworth and Plato furnish us with, perhaps, the finest and highest examples of this playfulness: in the one case, unmixed with satire, the perfectly simple effusion of that spirit--in "Which gives to all the self-same bent, Whose life is wise, and innocent;"

Plato, and, by the by, in a very wise book of our own times, not unworthy of being named in such companionship, "Friends in Council," mingled with an exquisitely tender and loving satire.

§ XXVII.

Secondly: The men who play necessarily.

That highest species of playfulness, which we have just been considering, is evidently the condition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but so habitually trained to intellectual labor that it can bring a considerable force of accurate thought into its moments even of recreation.

This is not possible, unless so much repose of mind and heart are enjoyed, even at the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the system is diffused over the whole life.

To the majority of mankind, such a state is evidently unattainable.

They must, perforce, pass a large part of their lives in employments both irksome and toilsome, demanding an expenditure of energy which exhausts the system, and yet consuming that energy upon subjects incapable of interesting the nobler faculties.

When such employments are intermitted, those noble instincts, fancy, imagination, and curiosity, are all hungry for the food which the labor of the day has denied to them, while yet the weariness of the body, in a great degree, forbids their application to any serious subject.

They therefore exert themselves without any determined purpose, and under no vigorous restraint, but gather, as best they may, such various nourishment, and put themselves to such fantastic exercise, as may soonest indemnify them for their past imprisonment, and prepare them to endure their recurrence.

This sketching of the mental limbs as their fetters fall away,--this leaping and dancing of the heart and intellect, when they are restored to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by their captivity, and unable to turn themselves to any earnest purpose,--I call necessary play.

It is impossible to exaggerate its importance, whether in polity, or in art.

§ XXVIII.

Thirdly: The men who play inordinately.

The most perfect state of society which, consistently with due understanding of man's nature, it may be permitted us to conceive, would be one in which the whole human race were divided, more or less distinctly, into workers and thinkers; that is to say, into the two classes, who only play wisely, or play necessarily.

But the number and the toil of the working class are enormously increased, probably more than doubled, by the vices of the men who neither play wisely nor necessarily, but are enabled by circumstances, and permitted by their want of principle, to make amusement the object of their existence.

There is not any moment of the lives of such men which is not injurious to others; both because they leave the work undone which was appointed for them, and because they necessarily think wrongly, whenever it becomes compulsory upon them to think at all.

The greater portion of the misery of this world arises from the false opinions of men whose idleness has physically incapacitated them from forming true ones.

Every duty which we omit obscures some truth which we should have known; and the guilt of a life spent in the pursuit of pleasure is twofold, partly consisting in the perversion of action, and partly in the dissemination of falsehood.

§ XXIX.

There is, however, a less criminal, though hardly less dangerous condition of mind; which, though not failing in its more urgent duties, fails in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the degree, and directs the choice, of amusement, at those times when amusement is allowable.

The most frequent error in this respect is the want of reverence in approaching subjects of importance or sacredness, and of caution in the expression of thoughts which may encourage like irreverence in others: and these faults are apt to gain upon the mind until it becomes habitually more sensible to what is ludicrous and accidental, than to what is grave and essential, in any subject that is brought before it; or even, at last, desires to perceive or to know nothing but what may end in jest.

Very generally minds of this character are active and able; and many of them are so far conscientious, that they believe their jesting forwards their work.

But it is difficult to calculate the harm they do, by destroying the reverence which is our best guide into all truth; for weakness and evil are easily visible, but greatness and goodness are often latent; and we do infinite mischief by exposing weakness to eyes which cannot comprehend greatness.

This error, however, is more connected with abuses of the satirical than of the playful instinct; and I shall have more to say of it presently.

§ XXX.

Lastly: The men who do not play at all: those who are so dull or so morose as to be incapable of inventing or enjoying jest, and in whom care, guilt, or pride represses all healthy exhilaration of the fancy;

or else men utterly oppressed with labor, and driven too hard by the necessities of the world to be capable of any species of happy relaxation.

§ XXXI.

We have now to consider the way in which the presence or absence of joyfulness, in these several classes, is expressed in art.

1. Wise play.

The first and noblest class hardly ever speak through art, except seriously; they feel its nobleness too profoundly, and value the time necessary for its production too highly, to employ it in the rendering of trivial thoughts.

The playful fancy of a moment may innocently be expressed by the passing word; but he can hardly have learned the preciousness of life, who passes days in the elaboration of a jest.

And, as to what regards the delineation of human character, the nature of all noble art is to epitomize and embrace so much at once, that its subject can never be altogether ludicrous; it must possess all the solemnities of the whole, not the brightness of the partial, truth.

For all truth that makes us smile is partial.

The novelist amuses us by his relation of a particular incident; but the painter cannot set any one of his characters before us without giving some glimpse of its whole career.

That of which the historian informs us in successive pages, it is the task of the painter to inform us of at once, writing upon the countenance not merely the expression of the moment, but the history of the life: and the history of a life can never be a jest.

Whatever part, therefore, of the sportive energy of these men of the highest class would be expressed in verbal wit or humor finds small utterance through their art, and will assuredly be confined, if it occur there at all, to scattered and trivial incidents.

But so far as their minds can recreate themselves by the imagination of strange, yet not laughable, forms, which, either in costume, in landscape, or in any other accessaries, may be combined with those necessary for their more earnest purposes, we find them delighting in such inventions; and a species of grotesqueness thence arising in all their work, which is indeed one of its most valuable characteristics, but which is so intimately connected with the sublime or terrible form of the grotesque, that it will be better to notice it under that head.

§ XXXII.

2. Necessary play.

I have dwelt much in a former portion of this work, on the justice and desirableness of employing the minds of inferior workmen, and of the lower orders in general, in the production of objects of art of one kind or another.

So far as men of this class are compelled to hard manual labor for their daily bread, so far forth their artistical efforts must be rough and ignorant, and their artistical perceptions comparatively dull.

Now it is not possible, with blunt perceptions and rude hands, to produce works which shall be pleasing by their beauty; but it is perfectly possible to produce such as shall be interesting by their character or amusing by their satire.

For one hard-working man who possesses the finer instincts which decide on perfection of lines and harmonies of color, twenty possess dry humor or quaint fancy; not because these faculties were originally given to the human race, or to any section of it, in greater degree than the sense of beauty, but because these are exercised in our daily intercourse with each other, and developed by the interest which we take in the affairs of life, while the others are not.

And because, therefore, a certain degree of success will probably attend the effort to express this humor or fancy, while comparative failure will assuredly result from an ignorant struggle to reach the forms of solemn beauty, the working-man, who turns his attention partially to art, will probably, and wisely, choose to do that which he can do best, and indulge the pride of an effective satire rather than subject himself to assured mortification in the pursuit of beauty; and this the more, because we have seen that his application to art is to be playful and recreative, and it is not in recreation that the conditions of perfection can be fulfilled.

§ XXXIII.

Now all the forms of art which result from the comparatively recreative exertion of minds more or less blunted or encumbered by other cares and toils, the art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

And it is noble or inferior, first, according to the tone of the minds which have produced it, and in proportion to their knowledge, wit, love of truth, and kindness;

secondly, according to the degree of strength they have been able to give forth; but yet, however much we may find in it needing to be forgiven, always delightful so long as it is the work of good and ordinarily intelligent men.

And its delightfulness ought mainly to consist _in those very imperfections_ which mark it for work done in times of rest.

It is not its own merit so much as the enjoyment of him who produced it, which is to be the source of the spectator's pleasure;

it is to the strength of his sympathy, not to the accuracy of his criticism, that it makes appeal; and no man can indeed be a lover of what is best in the higher walks of art, who has not feeling and charity enough to rejoice with the rude sportiveness of hearts that have escaped out of prison, and to be thankful for the flowers which men have laid their burdens down to sow by the wayside.

§ XXXIV.

And consider what a vast amount of human work this right understanding of its meaning will make fruitful and admirable to us, which otherwise we could only have passed by with contempt.

There is very little architecture in the world which is, in the full sense of the words, good and noble.

A few pieces of Italian Gothic and Romanesque, a few scattered fragments of Gothic cathedrals, and perhaps two or three of Greek temples, are all that we possess approaching to an ideal of perfection.

All the rest--Egyptian, Norman, Arabian, and most Gothic, and, which is very noticeable, for the most part all the strongest and mightiest--depend for their power on some developement of the grotesque spirit; but much more the inferior domestic architecture of the middle ages, and what similar conditions remain to this day in countries from which the life of art has not yet been banished by its laws.

The fantastic gables, built up in scroll-work and steps, of the Flemish street; the pinnacled roofs set with their small humorist double windows, as if with so many ears and eyes, of Northern France; the blackened timbers, crossed and carved into every conceivable waywardness of imagination, of Normandy and old England; the rude hewing of the pine timbers of the Swiss cottage; the projecting turrets and bracketed oriels of the German street; these, and a thousand other forms, not in themselves reaching any high degree of excellence, are yet admirable, and most precious, as the fruits of a rejoicing energy in uncultivated minds.

It is easier to take away the energy, than to add the cultivation; and the only effect of the better knowledge which civilized nations now possess, has been, as we have seen in a former chapter, to forbid their being happy, without enabling them to be great.

§ XXXV.

It is very necessary, however, with respect to this provincial or rustic architecture, that we should carefully distinguish its truly grotesque from its picturesque elements.

In the "Seven Lamps" I defined the picturesque to be "parasitical sublimity," or sublimity belonging to the external or accidental characters of a thing, not to the thing itself.

For instance, when a highland cottage roof is covered with fragments of shale instead of slates, it becomes picturesque, because the irregularity and rude fractures of the rocks, and their grey and gloomy color, give to it something of the savageness, and much of the general aspect, of the slope of a mountain side.

But as a mere cottage roof, it cannot be sublime, and whatever sublimity it derives from the wildness or sternness which the mountains have given it in its covering, is, so far forth, parasitical.

The mountain itself would have been grand, which is much more than picturesque; but the cottage cannot be grand as such, and the parasitical grandeur which it may possess by accidental qualities, is the character for which men have long agreed to use the inaccurate word "Picturesque."

§ XXXVI.

On the other hand, beauty cannot be parasitical.

There is nothing so small or so contemptible, but it may be beautiful in its own right.

The cottage may be beautiful, and the smallest moss that grows on its roof, and the minutest fibre of that moss which the microscope can raise into visible form, and all of them in their own right, not less than the mountains and the sky; so that we use no peculiar term to express their beauty, however diminutive, but only when the sublime element enters, without sufficient worthiness in the nature of the thing to which it is attached.

§ XXXVII.

Now this picturesque element, which is always given, if by nothing else, merely by ruggedness, adds usually very largely to the pleasurableness of grotesque work, especially to that of its inferior kinds; but it is not for this reason to be confounded with the grotesqueness itself.

The knots and rents of the timbers, the irregular lying of the shingles on the roofs, the vigorous light and shadow, the fractures and weather-stains of the old stones, which were so deeply loved and so admirably rendered by our lost Prout, are the picturesque elements of the architecture: the grotesque ones are those which are not produced by the working of nature and of time, but exclusively by the fancy of man; and, as also for the most part by his indolent and uncultivated fancy, they are always, in some degree, wanting in grandeur, unless the picturesque element be united with them.

§ XXXVIII.

3. Inordinate play.

The reader will have some difficulty, I fear, in keeping clearly in his mind the various divisions of our subject; but, when he has once read the chapter through, he will see their places and coherence.

We have next to consider the expression throughout of the minds of men who indulge themselves in unnecessary play.

It is evident that a large number of these men will be more refined and more highly educated than those who only play necessarily;

the power of pleasure-seeking implies, in general, fortunate circumstances of life.

It is evident also that their play will not be so hearty, so simple, or so joyful; and this deficiency of brightness will affect it in proportion to its unnecessary and unlawful continuance, until at last it becomes a restless and dissatisfied indulgence in excitement, or a painful delving after exhausted springs of pleasure.

The art through which this temper is expressed will, in all probability, be refined and sensual,--therefore, also, assuredly feeble; and because, in the failure of the joyful energy of the mind, there will fail, also, its perceptions and its sympathies, it will be entirely deficient in expression of character, and acuteness of thought, but will be peculiarly restless, manifesting its desire for excitement in idle changes of subject and purpose.

Incapable of true imagination, it will seek to supply its place by exaggerations, incoherencies, and monstrosities; and the form of the grotesque to which it gives rise will be an incongruous chain of hackneyed graces, idly thrown together,--prettinesses or sublimities, not of its own invention, associated in forms which will be absurd without being fantastic, and monstrous without being terrible.

And because, in the continual pursuit of pleasure, men lose both cheerfulness and charity, there will be small hilarity, but much malice, in this grotesque; yet a weak malice, incapable of expressing its own bitterness, not having grasp enough of truth to become forcible, and exhausting itself in impotent or disgusting caricature.

§ XXXIX.

Of course, there are infinite ranks and kinds of this grotesque, according to the natural power of the minds which originate it, and to the degree in which they have lost themselves.

Its highest condition is that which first developed itself among the enervated Romans, and which was brought to the highest perfection of which it was capable, by Raphael, in the arabesques of the Vatican.

It may be generally described as an elaborate and luscious form of nonsense.

Its lower conditions are found in the common upholstery and decorations which, over the whole of civilized Europe, have sprung from this poisonous root; an artistical pottage, composed of nymphs, cupids, and satyrs, with shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables.

And the lowest of all are those which have not even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is the case in the latter Renaissance of Venice, which we were above examining.

It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque.

In a recent Italian garden, the favorite ornaments frequently consist of stucco images, representing, in dwarfish caricature, the most disgusting types of manhood and womanhood which can be found amidst the dissipation of the modern drawingroom; yet without either veracity or humor, and dependent, for whatever interest they possess, upon simple grossness of expression and absurdity of costume.

Grossness, of one kind or another, is, indeed, an unfailing characteristic of the style; either latent, as in the refined sensuality of the more graceful arabesques, or, in the worst examples, manifested in every species of obscene conception and abominable detail.

In the head, described in the opening of this chapter, at Santa Maria Formosa, the _teeth_ are represented as _decayed_.

§ XL.

4. The minds of the fourth class of men who do not play at all, are little likely to find expression in any trivial form of art, except in bitterness of mockery; and this character at once stamps the work in which it appears, as belonging to the class of terrible, rather than of playful, grotesque.

We have, therefore, now to examine the state of mind which gave rise to this second and more interesting branch of imaginative work.

§ XLI.

Two great and principal passions are evidently appointed by the Deity to rule the life of man; namely, the love of God, and the fear of sin, and of its companion--Death.

How many motives we have for Love, how much there is in the universe to kindle our admiration and to claim our gratitude, there are, happily, multitudes among us who both feel and teach.

But it has not, I think, been sufficiently considered how evident, throughout the system of creation, is the purpose of God that we should often be affected by Fear; not the sudden, selfish, and contemptible fear of immediate danger, but the fear which arises out of the contemplation of great powers in destructive operation, and generally from the perception of the presence of death.

Nothing appears to me more remarkable than the array of scenic magnificence by which the imagination is appalled, in myriads of instances, when the actual danger is comparatively small; so that the utmost possible impression of awe shall be produced upon the minds of all, though direct suffering is inflicted upon few.

Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a single thunder-storm.

Perhaps two or three persons may be struck dead within the space of a hundred square miles; and their deaths, unaccompanied by the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momentary sadness in the busy hearts of living men.

But the preparation for the Judgment by all that mighty gathering of clouds; by the questioning of the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying angels before they draw forth their swords of fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noon-day, and the rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot-wheels of death;--on how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as great as the actual witnessing of the fatal issue!

and how strangely are the expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the apprehension of the human soul!

The lurid color, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all as true and faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger, as the moaning or wailing of the human voice itself is to our instinct of pity.

It is not a reasonable calculating terror which they awake in us; it is no matter that we count distance by seconds, and measure probability by averages.

That shadow of the thunder-cloud will still do its work upon our hearts, and we shall watch its passing away as if we stood upon the threshing-floor of Araunah.

§ XLII.

And this is equally the case with respect to all the other destructive phenomena of the universe.

From the mightiest of them to the gentlest, from the earthquake to the summer shower, it will be found that they are attended by certain aspects of threatening, which strike terror into the hearts of multitudes more numerous a thousandfold than those who actually suffer from the ministries of judgment; and that, besides the fearfulness of these immediately dangerous phenomena, there is an occult and subtle horror belonging to many aspects of the creation around us, calculated often to fill us with serious thought, even in our times of quietness and peace.

I understand not the most dangerous, because most attractive form of modern infidelity, which, pretending to exalt the beneficence of the Deity, degrades it into a reckless infinitude of mercy, and blind obliteration of the work of sin; and which does this chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God's kindness on the face of creation.

Such kindness is indeed everywhere and always visible; but not alone.

Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with the love; and in the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of Hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances, as that of Heaven.

It is well for us to dwell with thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty into darkness, and of all strength into dust, have these no language for us?

We may seek to escape their teaching by reasonings touching the good which is wrought out of all evil; but it is vain sophistry.

The good succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so also the evil to the good.

Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man, and his Futurity.

[39] § XLIII.

And because the thoughts of the choice we have to make between these two, ought to rule us continually, not so much in our own actions (for these should, for the most part, be governed by settled habit and principle) as in our manner of regarding the lives of other men, and our own responsibilities with respect to them; therefore, it seems to me that the healthiest state into which the human mind can be brought is that which is capable of the greatest love, and the greatest awe: and this we are taught even in our times of rest; for when our minds are rightly in tone, the merely pleasurable excitement which they seek with most avidity is that which rises out of the contemplation of beauty or of terribleness.

We thirst for both, and, according to the height and tone of our feeling, desire to see them in noble or inferior forms.

Thus there is a Divine beauty, and a terribleness or sublimity coequal with it in rank, which are the subjects of the highest art; and there is an inferior or ornamental beauty, and an inferior terribleness coequal with it in rank, which are the subjects of grotesque art.

And the state of mind in which the terrible form of the grotesque is developed, is that which in some irregular manner, dwells upon certain conditions of terribleness, into the complete depth of which it does not enter for the time.