Now, if the purpose of all art is the communication of the apprehended Idea, and this Idea is then grasped by the man of weaker susceptibility and no productive capacity through the medium of the artist’s mind, in which it appears isolated and purged of everything foreign; further, if starting from the concept is objectionable in art, then we shall not be able to approve, when a work of art is intentionally and avowedly chosen to express a concept; this is the case in allegory. An allegory is a work of art signifying something different from what it depicts. But that which is perceptive, and consequently the Idea as well, expresses itself immediately and completely, and does not require the medium of another thing through which it is outlined or suggested. Therefore that which is suggested and represented in this way by something quite different is always a concept, because it cannot itself be brought before perception. Hence through the allegory a concept is always to be signified, and consequently the mind of the beholder has to be turned aside from the depicted representation of perception to one that is quite different, abstract, and not perceptive, and lies entirely outside the work of art. Here, therefore, the picture or statue is supposed to achieve what a written work achieves far more perfectly. Now what we declare to be the aim of art, namely presentation of the Idea to be apprehended only through perception, is not the aim here. But certainly no great perfection in the work of art is demanded for what is here intended; on the contrary, it is enough if we see what the thing is supposed to be; for as soon as this is found, the end is reached, and the mind is then led on to quite a different kind of representation, to an abstract concept which was the end in view. Allegories in plastic and pictorial art are consequently nothing but hieroglyphics; the artistic value they may have as expressions of perception does not belong to them as allegories, but otherwise. That the Night of Correggio, the Genius of Fame of Annibale Carracci, and the Goddesses of the Seasons of Poussin are very beautiful pictures is to be kept quite apart from the fact that they are allegories. As allegories, they do not achieve more than an inscription, in fact rather less. Here we are again reminded of the above-mentioned distinction between the real and the nominal significance of a picture. Here the nominal is just the allegorical as such, for example, the Genius of Fame. The real is what is actually depicted, namely a beautiful winged youth with beautiful boys flying round him; this expresses an Idea. This real significance, however, is effective only so long as we forget the nominal, allegorical significance. If we think of the latter, we forsake perception, and an abstract concept occupies the mind; but the transition from the Idea to the concept is always a descent. In fact, that nominal significance, that allegorical intention, often detracts from the real significance, from the truth of perception. For example, the unnatural light in Correggio’s Night, which, although beautifully executed, has yet a merely allegorical motive and is in reality impossible. When, therefore, an allegorical picture has also artistic value, that is quite separate from and independent of what it achieves as allegory. Such a work of art serves two purposes simultaneously, namely the expression of a concept and the expression of an Idea. Only the latter can be an aim of art; the other is a foreign aim, namely the trifling amusement of causing a picture to serve at the same time as an inscription, as a hieroglyphic, invented for the benefit of those to whom the real nature of art can never appeal. It is the same as when a work of art is at the same time a useful implement, where it also serves two purposes; for example, a statue that is at the same time a candelabrum or a caryatid; or a bas-relief that is at the same time the shield of Achilles. Pure lovers of art will not approve either the one or the other. It is true that an allegorical picture can in just this quality produce a vivid impression on the mind and feelings; but under the same circumstances even an inscription would have the same effect. For instance, if the desire for fame is firmly and permanently rooted in a man’s mind, since he regards fame as his rightful possession, withheld from him only so long as he has not yet produced the documents of its ownership; and if he now stands before the Genius of Fame with its laurel crowns, then his whole mind is thus excited, and his powers are called into activity. But the same thing would also happen if he suddenly saw the word “fame” in large clear letters on the wall. Or if a person has proclaimed a truth that is important either as a maxim for practical life or as an insight for science, but has not met with any belief in it, then an allegorical picture depicting time as it lifts the veil and reveals the naked truth will affect him powerfully. But the same thing would be achieved by the motto “Le temps découvre la vérité.” 117 For what really produces the effect in this case is always only the abstract thought, not what is perceived.
If, then, in accordance with the foregoing, allegory in plastic and pictorial art is a mistaken effort, serving a purpose entirely foreign to art, it becomes wholly intolerable when it leads one so far astray that the depicting of forced and violently far-fetched subtleties degenerates into the silly and absurd. Such, for example, is a tortoise to suggest feminine seclusion; the downward glance of Nemesis into the drapery of her bosom, indicating that she sees what is hidden; Bellori’s explanation that Annibale Carracci clothed voluptuousness in a yellow robe because he wished to indicate that her pleasures soon fade and become as yellow as straw. Now, if there is absolutely no connexion between what is depicted and the concept indicated by it, a connexion based on subsumption under that concept or on association of Ideas, but the sign and the thing signified are connected quite conventionally by positive fixed rule casually introduced, I call this degenerate kind of allegory symbolism. Thus the rose is the symbol of secrecy, the laurel the symbol of fame, the palm the symbol of victory, the mussel-shell the symbol of pilgrimage, the cross the symbol of the Christian religion. To this class also belong all indications through mere colours, such as yellow as the colour of falseness and blue the colour of fidelity. Symbols of this kind may often be of use in life, but their value is foreign to art. They are to be regarded entirely as hieroglyphics, or like Chinese calligraphy, and are really in the same class as armorial bearings, the bush that indicates a tavern, the key by which chamberlains are recognized, or the leather signifying mountaineers. Finally, if certain historical or mythical persons or personified conceptions are made known by symbols fixed on once for all, these are properly called emblems. Such are the animals of the Evangelists, the owl of Minerva, the apple of Paris, the anchor of hope, and so on. But by emblems we often understand those symbolical, simple presentations elucidated by a motto which are supposed to illustrate a moral truth, of which there are large collections by J. Camerarius, Alciati, and others. They form the transition to poetical allegory, of which we shall speak later. Greek sculpture appeals to perception, and is therefore aesthetic; Indian sculpture appeals to the concept, and is therefore symbolical.
This opinion of allegory, based on our consideration of the inner nature of art and quite consistent with it, is directly opposed to Winckelmann’s view. Far from explaining allegory, as we do, as something quite foreign to the aim of art and often interfering with it, he speaks everywhere in favour of it; indeed (Werke, Vol. i, pp. 55 seq.), he places art’s highest aim in the “presentation of universal concepts and non-sensuous things.” It is left to everyone to assent either to one view or to the other. With these and similar views of Winckelmann concerning the real metaphysics of the beautiful, the truth became very clear to me that a man can have the greatest susceptibility to artistic beauty and the most correct opinion with regard to it, without his being in a position to give an abstract and really philosophical account of the nature of the beautiful and of art. In the same way, a man can be very noble and virtuous, and can have a very tender conscience that weighs decisions accurately in particular cases, without being on that account in a position to ascertain philosophically, and explain in the abstract, the ethical significance of actions.
But allegory has an entirely different relation to poetry from that which it has to plastic and pictorial art; and although it is objectionable in the latter, it is quite admissible and very effective in the former. For in plastic and pictorial art allegory leads away from what is given in perception, from the real object of all art, to abstract thoughts; but in poetry the relation is reversed. Here the concept is what is directly given in words, and the first aim is to lead from this to the perceptive, the depiction of which must be undertaken by the imagination of the hearer. If in plastic and pictorial art we are led from what is immediately given to something else, this must always be a concept, because here only the abstract cannot be immediately given. But a concept can never be the source, and its communication can never be the aim, of a work of art. On the other hand, in poetry the concept is the material, the immediately given, and we can therefore very well leave it, in order to bring about something perceptive which is entirely different, and in which the end is attained. Many a concept or abstract thought may be indispensable in the sequence and connexion of a poem, while in itself and immediately it is quite incapable of being perceived. It is then often brought to perception by some example to be subsumed under it. This occurs in every figurative expression, in every metaphor, simile, parable, and allegory, all of which differ only by the length and completeness of their expression. Therefore similes and allegories are of striking effect in the rhetorical arts. How beautifully Cervantes says of sleep, in order to express that it withdraws us from all bodily and mental suffering: “It is the mantle that covers the whole person.” How beautifully Kleist expresses allegorically the thought that philosophers and men of science enlighten the human race, in the verse [Der Frühling]:
“Those whose nocturnal lamp illumines all the globe.”
How strongly and graphically Homer describes the fatal and pernicious Ate, when he says: “She has tender feet, for she walks not on the hard ground, but only on the heads of men.” (Iliad, xix, 91.) How very effective the fable of Menenius Agrippa about the stomach and limbs was when it was addressed to the Roman people who had quitted their country! How beautifully is a highly abstract philosophical dogma expressed by Plato’s allegory of the cave at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, which we have already mentioned. The fable of Persephone is also to be regarded as a profound allegory of philosophical tendency, for she falls into the underworld through tasting a pomegranate. This becomes particularly illuminating in the treatment of this fable which Goethe introduced as an episode in the Triumph der Empfindsamkeit, which is beyond all praise. Three fairly long allegorical works are known to me; one open and avowed, is the incomparable Criticόn of Balthasar Gracián. It consists of a great rich web of connected and highly ingenious allegories, serving here as bright clothing for moral truths, and to these he thus imparts the greatest perceptiveness, and astonishes us with the wealth of his inventions. Two, however, are concealed allegories, Don Quixote and Gulliver’s Travels. The first is an allegory of the life of every man who, unlike others, will not be careful merely for his own personal welfare, but pursues an objective, ideal end that has taken possession of his thinking and willing; and then, of course, in this world he looks queer and odd. In the case of Gulliver, we need only take everything physical as spiritual or intellectual, in order to observe what the “satirical rogue,” as Hamlet would have called him, meant by it. Therefore, since the concept is always what is given in the poetical allegory, and tries to make this perceptive through a picture, it may sometimes be expressed or supported by a painted picture. Such a picture is not for this reason regarded as a work of pictorial art, but only as an expressive hieroglyph, and it makes no claims to pictorial, but only to poetic, worth. Of such a kind is that beautiful allegorical vignette of Lavater, which must have so heartening an effect on every champion of truth: a hand holding a light is stung by a wasp, while in the flame above, gnats are being burnt; underneath is the motto:
“And though it singes the wing of the gnat,
Destroys its skull and scatters all its little brains;
Light remains light!
And although I am stung by the angriest of wasps,
I will not let it go.”
To this class belongs also the gravestone with the blown-out, smoking candle and the encircling inscription:
“When it is out, it becomes clear
Whether the candle be tallow or wax.”
Finally, of this kind is an old German genealogical tree on which the last descendant of a very ancient family expressed the determination to live his life to the end in complete continence and chastity, and thus to let his race die out. This he did by depicting himself at the root of the tree of many branches, clipping it above himself with a pair of shears. In general, the above-mentioned symbols, usually called emblems, which might also be described as short painted fables with an expressed moral, belong to this class. Allegories of this kind are always to be reckoned among the poetical and not the pictorial, and as being justified in precisely this way. Here the pictorial execution also is always a matter of secondary importance, and no more is demanded of it than that it depict the thing conspicuously. But in poetry, as in plastic and pictorial art, the allegory passes over into the symbol, if there is none but an arbitrary connexion between what is presented in perception and what is expressed by this in the abstract. Since everything symbolical rests at bottom on a stipulated agreement, the symbol has this disadvantage among others, that its significance is forgotten in the course of time, and it then becomes dumb. Indeed, who would guess why the fish is the symbol of Christianity, if he did not know? Only a Champollion, for it is a phonetic hieroglyphic through and through. Therefore as a poetical allegory the Revelation of John stands roughly in the same position as the reliefs with Magnus Deus sol Mithra, which are still always being explained.118