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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Description as commonly understood is portrayal in language; specifically, poetical description is the esthetic representation of objects through the medium of speech. I shall assume for the purposes of the following discussion that such representation is possible, that poetry is, though not exclusively, a “representative” art. Such an assumption does not equate poetry and painting, since the media of an art determine the substance and form of that art. Now the media of poetic representation, mental images, have indeed many points of likeness to the actual sense perceptions through which the painter affects us, since mental images have their origin in percepts; otherwise they would be poor means of representing objects. But there exist also many obvious differences between images and percepts, such as different degrees of intensity, permanence, specificness. These differences condition differences between poetry and painting. There are other differences. The formative artist, for example, is confined to an appeal to the sense of sight, while the poet knows no such limitation. I shall take occasion in the course of the following discussion to call attention to such matters, when the examples are before us.
1 Notably 72 ff., 240 ff., 370 ff., 843 ff.
2 Backmann, Die Anfänge der Medeadichtung, Weida, 1910, pp. 54 and 77.
3 Gr. is at considerable pains to impress the reality of Medea's beauty upon us (Gst., 253 ff., Arg., 902, 1315).
4 The form is perhaps a reminiscence of Rudenz's lines in Wilhelm Tell (1694 ff.):
The most striking parallel is Sappho 48 ff., where the poetess tells her compatriots that her newly-won laurels are meaningless to her everywhere except in Lesbos. Her words are thus both an expression and a proof of the enduring hold of early environment.
5 Sauer speaks somewhere of the “genial skizzierter Hintergrund” of the trilogy. There is little to add to his generalization.
6 Gr. claimed that the contrast between Greece and Colchis formed “die Grundlage der Tragik” in the trilogy (Werke, Cotta, xix, p. 101).
7 Of. J. Cohn, “Die Anschaulichkeit der dichterischen Sprache,” Zeitschr. für Aest., ii (1907), pp. 182 ff.
8 E. Elster, Prinzipien der Literaturwissenschaft, ii. Band, Stilistik, Halle, 1911.
9 Cf. O. Harnack, Essais, Braunschweig, 1899, pp. 20 ff.
10 A. Bartels, Literaturges., Leipzig, 1909, ii, p. 83. O. Harnack, op. cit., p. 11.
11 Werke, Cotta ed., xvi, pp. 68, 98.
12 Ed. Alfred Noyes, Everyman's Library, p. 111,
13 Werke, Cotta edition, i, p. 165.
14 Laokoon, Chap. x.
15 Laokocm, Chap. xi.
16 André Tibal, Études sur Gr., Paris, 1914, p. 21.
17 Sap., 222 ff.; Hero, 622 ff.