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

§ XLIV.

Now the things which are the proper subjects of human fear are twofold; those which have the power of Death, and those which have the nature of Sin.

Of which there are many ranks, greater or less in power and vice, from the evil angels themselves down to the serpent which is their type, and which though of a low and contemptible class, appears to unite the deathful and sinful natures in the most clearly visible and intelligible form; for there is nothing else which we know, of so small strength and occupying so unimportant a place in the economy of creation, which yet is so mortal and so malignant.

It is, then, on these two classes of objects that the mind fixes for its excitement, in that mood which gives rise to the terrible grotesque; and its subject will be found always to unite some expression of vice and danger, but regarded in a peculiar temper; sometimes (A) of predetermined or involuntary apathy, sometimes (B) of mockery, sometimes (C) of diseased and ungoverned imaginativeness.

§ XLV.

For observe, the difficulty which, as I above stated, exists in distinguishing the playful from the terrible grotesque arises out of this cause; that the mind, under certain phases of excitement, _plays_ with _terror_, and summons images which, if it were in another temper, would be awful, but of which, either in weariness or in irony, it refrains for the time to acknowledge the true terribleness.

And the mode in which this refusal takes place distinguishes the noble from the ignoble grotesque.

For the master of the noble grotesque knows the depth of all at which he seems to mock, and would feel it at another time, or feels it in a certain undercurrent of thought even while he jests with it; but the workman of the ignoble grotesque can feel and understand nothing, and mocks at all things with the laughter of the idiot and the cretin.

To work out this distinction completely is the chief difficulty in our present inquiry; and, in order to do so, let us consider the above-named three conditions of mind in succession, with relation to objects of terror.

§ _XLVI_.

(A).

Involuntary or predetermined apathy.

We saw above that the grotesque was produced, chiefly in subordinate or ornamental art, by rude, and in some degree uneducated men, and in their times of rest.

At such times, and in such subordinate work, it is impossible that they should represent any solemn or terrible subject with a full and serious entrance into its feeling.

It is not in the languor of a leisure hour that a man will set his whole soul to conceive the means of representing some important truth, nor to the projecting angle of a timber bracket that he would trust its representation, if conceived.

And yet, in this languor, and in this trivial work, he must find some expression of the serious part of his soul, of what there is within him capable of awe, as well as of love.

The more noble the man is, the more impossible it will be for him to confine his thoughts to mere loveliness, and that of a low order.

Were his powers and his time unlimited, so that, like Frà Angelico, he could paint the Seraphim, in that order of beauty he could find contentment, bringing down heaven to earth.

But by the conditions of his being, by his hard-worked life, by his feeble powers of execution, by the meanness of his employment and the languor of his heart, he is bound down to earth.

It is the world's work that he is doing, and world's work is not to be done without fear.

And whatever there is of deep and eternal consciousness within him, thrilling his mind with the sense of the presence of sin and death around him, must be expressed in that slight work, and feeble way, come of it what will.

He cannot forget it, among all that he sees of beautiful in nature; he may not bury himself among the leaves of the violet on the rocks, and of the lily in the glen, and twine out of them garlands of perpetual gladness.

He sees more in the earth than these,--misery and wrath, and discordance, and danger, and all the work of the dragon and his angels;

this he sees with too deep feeling ever to forget.

And though when he returns to his idle work,--it may be to gild the letters upon the page, or to carve the timbers of the chamber, or the stones of the pinnacle,--he cannot give his strength of thought any more to the woe or to the danger, there is a shadow of them still present with him: and as the bright colors mingle beneath his touch, and the fair leaves and flowers grow at his bidding, strange horrors and phantasms rise by their side; grisly beasts and venomous serpents, and spectral fiends and nameless inconsistencies of ghastly life, rising out of things most beautiful, and fading back into them again, as the harm and the horror of life do out of its happiness.

He has seen these things; he wars with them daily; he cannot but give them their part in his work, though in a state of comparative apathy to them at the time.

He is but carving and gilding, and must not turn aside to weep; but he knows that hell is burning on, for all that, and the smoke of it withers his oak-leaves.

§ XLVII.

Now, the feelings which give rise to the false or ignoble grotesque, are exactly the reverse of these.

In the true grotesque, a man of naturally strong feeling is accidentally or resolutely apathetic;

in the false grotesque, a man naturally apathetic is forcing himself into temporary excitement.

The horror which is expressed by the one, comes upon him whether he will or not; that which is expressed by the other, is sought out by him, and elaborated by his art.

And therefore, also, because the fear of the one is true, and of true things, however fantastic its expression may be, there will be reality in it, and force.

It is not a manufactured terribleness, whose author, when he had finished it, knew not if it would terrify any one else or not: but it is a terribleness taken from the life; a spectre which the workman indeed saw, and which, as it appalled him, will appal us also.

But the other workman never felt any Divine fear; he never shuddered when he heard the cry from the burning towers of the earth, "Venga Medusa; sì lo farem di smalto."

He is stone already, and needs no gentle hand laid upon his eyes to save him.

§ XLVIII.

I do not mean what I say in this place to apply to the creations of the imagination.

It is not as the creating but as the _seeing_ man, that we are here contemplating the master of the true grotesque.

It is because the dreadfulness of the universe around him weighs upon his heart, that his work is wild; and therefore through the whole of it we shall find the evidence of deep insight into nature.

His beasts and birds, however monstrous, will have profound relations with the true.

He may be an ignorant man, and little acquainted with the laws of nature; he is certainly a busy man, and has not much time to watch nature; but he never saw a serpent cross his path, nor a bird flit across the sky, nor a lizard bask upon a stone, without learning so much of the sublimity and inner nature of each as will not suffer him thenceforth to conceive them coldly.

He may not be able to carve plumes or scales well; but his creatures will bite and fly, for all that.

The ignoble workman is the very reverse of this.

He never felt, never looked at nature; and if he endeavor to imitate the work of the other, all his touches will be made at random, and all his extravagances will be ineffective; he may knit brows, and twist lips, and lengthen beaks, and sharpen teeth, but it will be all in vain.

He may make his creatures disgusting, but never fearful.

§ XLIX.

There is, however, often another cause of difference than this.

The true grotesque being the expression of the _repose_ or play of a _serious_ mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the _full exertion_ of a _frivolous_ one.

There is much grotesque which is wrought out with exquisite care and pains, and as much labor given to it as if it were of the noblest subject; so that the workman is evidently no longer apathetic, and has no excuse for unconnectedness of thought, or sudden unreasonable fear.

If he awakens horror now, it ought to be in some truly sublime form.

His strength is in his work; and he must not give way to sudden humor, and fits of erratic fancy.

If he does so, it must be because his mind is naturally frivolous, or is for the time degraded into the deliberate pursuit of frivolity.

And herein lies the real distinction between the base grotesque of Raphael and the Renaissance, above alluded to, and the true Gothic grotesque.

Those grotesques or arabesques of the Vatican, and other such work, which have become the patterns of ornamentation in modern times, are the fruit of great minds degraded to base objects.

The care, skill, and science, applied to the distribution of the leaves, and the drawing of the figures, are intense, admirable, and accurate;

therefore, they ought to have produced a grand and serious work, not a tissue of nonsense.

If we can draw the human head perfectly, and are masters of its expression and its beauty, we have no business to cut it off, and hang it up by the hair at the end of a garland.

If we can draw the human body in the perfection of its grace and movement, we have no business to take away its limbs, and terminate it with a bunch of leaves.

Or rather our doing so will imply that there is something wrong with us; that, if we can consent to use our best powers for such base and vain trifling, there must be something wanting in the powers themselves; and that, however skilful we may be, or however learned, we are wanting both in the earnestness which can apprehend a noble truth, and in the thoughtfulness which can feel a noble fear.

No Divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson which that terror is sent to teach us, is the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time.

§ L.

And are we never, then, it will be asked, to possess a refined or perfect ornamentation?

Must all decoration be the work of the ignorant and the rude?

Not so; but exactly in proportion as the ignorance and rudeness diminish, must the ornamentation become rational, and the grotesqueness disappear.

The noblest lessons may be taught in ornamentation, the most solemn truths compressed into it.

The Book of Genesis, in all the fulness of its incidents, in all the depth of its meaning, is bound within the leaf-borders of the gates of Ghiberti.

But Raphael's arabesque is mere elaborate idleness.

It has neither meaning nor heart in it; it is an unnatural and monstrous abortion.

§ LI.

Now, this passing of the grotesque into higher art, as the mind of the workman becomes informed with better knowledge, and capable of more earnest exertion, takes place in two ways.

Either, as his power increases, he devotes himself more and more to the beauty which he now feels himself able to express, and so the grotesqueness expands, and softens into the beautiful, as in the above-named instance of the gates of Ghiberti; or else, if the mind of the workman be naturally inclined to gloomy contemplation, the imperfection or apathy of his work rises into nobler terribleness, until we reach the point of the grotesque of Albert Durer, where, every now and then, the playfulness or apathy of the painter passes into perfect sublime.

Take the Adam and Eve, for instance.

When he gave Adam a bough to hold, with a parrot on it, and a tablet hung to it, with "Albertus Durer Noricus faciebat, 1504," thereupon, his mind was not in Paradise.

He was half in play, half apathetic with respect to his subject, thinking how to do his work well, as a wise master-graver, and how to receive his just reward of fame.

But he rose into the true sublime in the head of Adam, and in the profound truthfulness of every creature that fills the forest.

So again in that magnificent coat of arms, with the lady and the satyr, as he cast the fluttering drapery hither and thither around the helmet, and wove the delicate crown upon the woman's forehead, he was in a kind of play; but there is none in the dreadful skull upon the shield.

And in the "Knight and Death," and in the dragons of the illustrations to the Apocalypse, there is neither play nor apathy; but their grotesque is of the ghastly kind which best illustrates the nature of death and sin.

And this leads us to the consideration of the second state of mind out of which the noble grotesque is developed; that is to say, the temper of mockery.

§ LII.

(B).

Mockery, or Satire.

In the former part of this chapter, when I spoke of the kinds of art which were produced in the recreation of the lower orders, I only spoke of forms of ornament, not of the expression of satire or humor.

But it seems probable, that nothing is so refreshing to the vulgar mind as some exercise of this faculty, more especially on the failings of their superiors; and that, wherever the lower orders are allowed to express themselves freely, we shall find humor, more or less caustic, becoming a principal feature in their work.

The classical and Renaissance manufacturers of modern times having silenced the independent language of the operative, his humor and satire pass away in the word-wit which has of late become the especial study of the group of authors headed by Charles Dickens; all this power was formerly thrown into noble art, and became permanently expressed in the sculptures of the cathedral.

It was never thought that there was anything discordant or improper in such a position: for the builders evidently felt very deeply a truth of which, in modern times, we are less cognizant; that folly and sin are, to a certain extent, synonymous, and that it would be well for mankind in general, if all could be made to feel that wickedness is as contemptible as it is hateful.

So that the vices were permitted to be represented under the most ridiculous forms, and all the coarsest wit of the workman to be exhausted in completing the degradation of the creatures supposed to be subjected to them.

§ LIII.

Nor were even the supernatural powers of evil exempt from this species of satire.

For with whatever hatred or horror the evil angels were regarded, it was one of the conditions of Christianity that they should also be looked upon as vanquished; and this not merely in their great combat with the King of Saints, but in daily and hourly combats with the weakest of His servants.

In proportion to the narrowness of the powers of abstract conception in the workman, the nobleness of the idea of spiritual nature diminished, and the traditions of the encounters of men with fiends in daily temptations were imagined with less terrific circumstances, until the agencies which in such warfare were almost always represented as vanquished with disgrace, became, at last, as much the objects of contempt as of terror.

The superstitions which represented the devil as assuming various contemptible forms of disguises in order to accomplish his purposes aided this gradual degradation of conception, and directed the study of the workman to the most strange and ugly conditions of animal form, until at last, even in the most serious subjects, the fiends are oftener ludicrous than terrible.

Nor, indeed, is this altogether avoidable, for it is not possible to express intense wickedness without some condition of degradation.

Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, cannot be written upon noble forms; and I am aware of no effort to represent the Satanic mind in the angelic form, which has succeeded in painting.

Milton succeeds only because he separately describes the movements of the mind, and therefore leaves himself at liberty to make the form heroic; but that form is never distinct enough to be painted.

Dante, who will not leave even external forms obscure, degrades them before he can feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think, having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper insight into the nature of sin.

Milton makes his fiends too noble, and misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness.

His Satan possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil purpose.

Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the "Insania" of excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow and false, is a smooth and artistical, conception.

On the other hand, I have always felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable, ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning senselessly against itself, and still further debased by foulness of form and action.

Something is indeed to be allowed for the rude feelings of the time, but I believe all such men as Dante are sent into the world at the time when they can do their work best; and that, it being appointed for him to give to mankind the most vigorous realization possible both of Hell and Heaven, he was born both in the country and at the time which furnished the most stern opposition of Horror and Beauty, and permitted it to be written in the clearest terms.

And, therefore, though there are passages in the "Inferno" which it would be impossible for any poet now to write, I look upon it as all the more perfect for them.

For there can be no question but that one characteristic of excessive vice is indecency, a general baseness in its thoughts and acts concerning the body,[40] and that the full portraiture of it cannot be given without marking, and that in the strongest lines, this tendency to corporeal degradation; which, in the time of Dante, could be done frankly, but cannot now.

And, therefore, I think the twenty-first and twenty-second books of the "Inferno" the most perfect portraitures of fiendish nature which we possess; and at the same time, in their mingling of the extreme of horror (for it seems to me that the silent swiftness of the first demon, "con l'ali aperte e sovra i pie leggiero," cannot be surpassed in dreadfulness) with ludicrous actions and images, they present the most perfect instances with which I am acquainted of the terrible grotesque.

But the whole of the "Inferno" is full of this grotesque, as well as the "Faërie Queen;" and these two poems, together with the works of Albert Durer, will enable the reader to study it in its noblest forms, without reference to Gothic cathedrals.

§ LIV.

Now, just as there are base and noble conditions of the apathetic grotesque, so also are there of this satirical grotesque.

The condition which might be mistaken for it is that above described as resulting from the malice of men given to pleasure, and in which the grossness and foulness are in the workman as much as in his subject, so that he chooses to represent vice and disease rather than virtue and beauty, having his chief delight in contemplating them; though he still mocks at them with such dull wit as may be in him, because, as Young has said most truly, "'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool."

§ LV.

Now it is easy to distinguish this grotesque from its noble counterpart, by merely observing whether any forms of beauty or dignity are mingled with it or not; for, of course, the noble grotesque is only employed by its master for good purposes, and to contrast with beauty: but the base workman cannot conceive anything but what is base; and there will be no loveliness in any part of his work, or, at the best, a loveliness measured by line and rule, and dependent on legal shapes of feature.

But, without resorting to this test, and merely by examining the ugly grotesque itself, it will be found that, if it belongs to the base school, there will be, first, no Horror in it; secondly, no Nature in it; and, thirdly, no Mercy in it.

§ LVI.

I say, first, no Horror.

For the base soul has no fear of sin, and no hatred of it: and, however it may strive to make its work terrible, there will be no genuineness in the fear; the utmost it can do will be to make its work disgusting.

Secondly, there will be no Nature in it.

It appears to be one of the ends proposed by Providence in the appointment of the forms of the brute creation, that the various vices to which mankind are liable should be severally expressed in them so distinctly and clearly as that men could not but understand the lesson; while yet these conditions of vice might, in the inferior animal, be observed without the disgust and hatred which the same vices would excite, if seen in men, and might be associated with features of interest which would otherwise attract and reward contemplation.

Thus, ferocity, cunning, sloth, discontent, gluttony, uncleanness, and cruelty are seen, each in its extreme, in various animals; and are so vigorously expressed, that when men desire to indicate the same vices in connexion with human forms, they can do it no better than by borrowing here and there the features of animals.

And when the workman is thus led to the contemplation of the animal kingdom, finding therein the expressions of vice which he needs, associated with power, and nobleness, and freedom from disease, if his mind be of right tone he becomes interested in this new study; and all noble grotesque is, therefore, full of the most admirable rendering of animal character.

But the ignoble workman is capable of no interest of this kind; and, being too dull to appreciate, and too idle to execute, the subtle and wonderful lines on which the expression of the lower animal depends, he contents himself with vulgar exaggeration, and leaves his work as false as it is monstrous, a mass of blunt malice and obscene ignorance.

§ LVII.

Lastly, there will be no Mercy in it.

Wherever the satire of the noble grotesque fixes upon human nature, it does so with much sorrow mingled amidst its indignation: in its highest forms there is an infinite tenderness, like that of the fool in Lear; and even in its more heedless or bitter sarcasm, it never loses sight altogether of the better nature of what it attacks, nor refuses to acknowledge its redeeming or pardonable features.

But the ignoble grotesque has no pity: it rejoices in iniquity, and exists only to slander.

§ LVIII.

I have not space to follow out the various forms of transition which exist between the two extremes of great and base in the satirical grotesque.

The reader must always remember, that, although there is an infinite distance between the best and worst, in this kind the interval is filled by endless conditions more or less inclining to the evil or the good; impurity and malice stealing gradually into the nobler forms, and invention and wit elevating the lower, according to the countless minglings of the elements of the human soul.

§ LIX.

(C).

Ungovernableness of the imagination.

The reader is always to keep in mind that if the objects of horror, in which the terrible grotesque finds its materials, were contemplated in their true light, and with the entire energy of the soul, they would cease to be grotesque, and become altogether sublime; and that therefore it is some shortening of the power, or the will, of contemplation, and some consequent distortion of the terrible image in which the grotesqueness consists.

Now this distortion takes place, it was above asserted, in three ways: either through apathy, satire, or ungovernableness of imagination.

It is this last cause of the grotesque which we have finally to consider; namely, the error and wildness of the mental impressions, caused by fear operating upon strong powers of imagination, or by the failure of the human faculties in the endeavor to grasp the highest truths.

§ LX.

The grotesque which comes to all men in a disturbed dream is the most intelligible example of this kind, but also the most ignoble; the imagination, in this instance, being entirely deprived of all aid from reason, and incapable of self-government.

I believe, however, that the noblest forms of imaginative power are also in some sort ungovernable, and have in them something of the character of dreams; so that the vision, of whatever kind, comes uncalled, and will not submit itself to the seer, but conquers him, and forces him to speak as a prophet, having no power over his words or thoughts.

[41] Only, if the whole man be trained perfectly, and his mind calm, consistent and powerful, the vision which comes to him is seen as in a perfect mirror, serenely, and in consistence with the rational powers; but if the mind be imperfect and ill trained, the vision is seen as in a broken mirror, with strange distortions and discrepancies, all the passions of the heart breathing upon it in cross ripples, till hardly a trace of it remains unbroken.

So that, strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always the ruling and Divine power: and the rest of the man is to it only as an instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they are stained and broken.

And thus the "Iliad," the "Inferno," the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Faërie Queen," are all of them true dreams; only the sleep of the men to whom they came was the deep, living sleep which God sends, with a sacredness in it, as of death, the revealer of secrets.

§ LXI.

Now, observe in this matter, carefully, the difference between a dim mirror and a distorted one; and do not blame me for pressing the analogy too far, for it will enable me to explain my meaning every way more clearly.

Most men's minds are dim mirrors, in which all truth is seen, as St. Paul tells us, darkly: this is the fault most common and most fatal; dulness of the heart and mistiness of sight, increasing to utter hardness and blindness; Satan breathing upon the glass, so that if we do not sweep the mist laboriously away, it will take no image.

But, even so far as we are able to do this, we have still the distortion to fear, yet not to the same extent, for we can in some sort allow for the distortion of an image, if only we can see it clearly.

And the fallen human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe round it; and the wider the scope of its glance, and the vaster the truths into which it obtains an insight, the more fantastic their distortion is likely to be, as the winds and vapors trouble the field of the telescope most when it reaches farthest.