gotthold ephraim lessing 1729–1781 - St. Francis Xavier University

472 / GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING
raises what was a mere figure to a higher being; but if the poet employs
these artistic trimmings, he turns that higher being into a puppet.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Homer 7 treats of two kinds of beings and actions, visible and invisible. This
distinction cannot be made in painting, where everything is visible and visible
in but one way. Hence, when Count Caylus 8 makes the pictures of invisible
actions follow the visible ones in an unbroken sequence, and when in his
paintings showing mixed actions, i.e., those in which both visible and invisible
beings take part, he does not and perhaps cannot specify how the latter
(which only we who look at the picture are supposed to discover in it) are to
be introduced so that the figures in the painting do not see them (or at least
appear not to see them)— when Count Caylus does this, I say, the series as
a whole as well as a number of single pictures necessarily become extremely
confused, incomprehensible, and self- contradictory.
Still, with the book before us it would be possible to remedy this fault.
The worst of it is that when painting erases the distinction between visible
and invisible beings it simultaneously destroys all those characteristic features
by which this latter, higher order is raised above the lower one.
For example, when the gods, who are divided as to the fate of the Trojans,
finally come to blows, the entire battle is represented in the poem as being
invisible. 9 This invisibility gives the imagination free rein to enlarge the
scene and envisage the persons and actions of the gods on a grander scale
than the mea sure of ordinary man. But painting must adopt a visible scene,
whose various indispensable parts become the scale for the figures participating
in it— a scale which the eye has ready at hand and whose lack of proportion
to the higher beings makes them appear monstrous on the artist’s
canvas.
Minerva, whom Mars 1 ventures to attack first in this battle, steps back
and with her mighty hand seizes a large, black, rough stone which the
united strength of men had rolled there for a landmark in times past:
δ’ ναχασσαμένη λίθον ελετο χειρ παχείη
κείμενον ν πεδίω, μέλανα, τρηχν τε μέγαν τε,
τν ρ’ νδρες μρτεροι θέσαν μμεναι ορον αρορης 2
In order to form a proper estimate of the size of this stone we should remember
that Homer makes his heroes twice as strong as the strongest men of his
own time but tells us that these again were surpassed in strength by the men
whom Nestor 3 knew in his youth. Now I ask, if Minerva hurls a stone which
no one man, not even one from Nestor’s youth, could set up as a landmark—
if Minerva hurls such a stone at Mars, of what stature is the goddess sup-
7. Greek epic poet (ca. 8th c. b.c.e.) to whom the
Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed.
8. Philippe de Tubières (1692– 1765), French art
critic; his Scenes from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
and Virgil’s Aeneid (1757) is the third of Lessing’s
targets.
9. Iliad 21.385 [Lessing’s note].
1. Ares, Greek god of war. Minerva: Athena, Greek
goddess of war and wisdom.
2. But Athene giving back caught up in her heavy
hand a stone / that lay in the plain, black and
rugged and huge, one which men / of a former
time had set there as boundary mark of the cornfield;
Iliad 21.403– 5 (trans. Richmond Lattimore)
[translator’s note].
3. The oldest of the Greek generals who fought at
Troy.