Unicorn quartos no. 2

A book of images

In England, which has made great Symbolic Art, most people dislike an art if they are told it is symbolic, for they confuse symbol and allegory. Even Johnsons Dictionary sees no great difference, for it calls a Symbol That which comprehends in its figure a representation of something else; and an Allegory, A figurative discourse, in which something other is intended than is contained in the words literally taken. It is only a very modern Dictionary that calls a Symbol The sign or representation of any moral thing by the images or properties of natural things, which, though an imperfect definition, is not unlike The things below are as the things above of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes! The Faery Queen and The Pilgrims Progress have been so important in England that Allegory has overtopped Symbolism, and for a time has overwhelmed it in its own downfall. William Blake was perhaps the first modern to insist on a difference; and the other day, when I sat for my portrait to a German Symbolist in Paris, whose talk was all of his love for Symbolism and his hatred for Allegory, his definitions8 were the same as William Blakes, of whom he knew nothing. William Blake has written, Vision or imaginationmeaning symbolism by these wordsis a representation of what actually exists, really or unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is formed by the daughters of Memory. The German insisted in broken English, and with many gestures, that Symbolism said things which could not be said so perfectly in any other way, and needed but a right instinct for its understanding; while Allegory said things which could be said as well, or better, in another way, and needed a right knowledge for its understanding. The one gave dumb things voices, and bodiless things bodies; while the other read a meaningwhich had never lacked its voice or its bodyinto something heard or seen, and loved less for the meaning than for its own sake. The only symbols he cared for were the shapes and motions of the body; ears hidden by the hair, to make one think of a mind busy with inner voices; and a head so bent that back and neck made the one curve, as in Blakes Vision of Bloodthirstiness, to call up an emotion of bodily strength; and he would not put even a lily, or a rose, or a poppy into a picture to express purity, or love, or sleep, because he thought such emblems were allegorical, and had their meaning by a traditional and not by a natural right. I said that the rose, and the lily, and the poppy were so married, by their colour, and their odour, and their use, to love and purity and sleep, or to other symbols of love9 and purity and sleep, and had been so long a part of the imagination of the world, that a symbolist might use them to help out his meaning without becoming an allegorist. I think I quoted the lily in the hand of the angel in Rossettis Annunciation, and the lily in the jar in his Childhood of Mary Virgin, and thought they made the more important symbols,the womens bodies, and the angels bodies, and the clear morning light, take that place, in the great procession of Christian symbols, where they can alone have all their meaning and all their beauty. It is hard to say where Allegory and Symbolism melt into one another, but it is not hard to say where either comes to its perfection; and though one may doubt whether Allegory or Symbolism is the greater in the horns of Michael Angelos Moses, one need not doubt that its symbolism has helped to awaken the modern imagination; while Tintorettos Origin of the Milky Way, which is Allegory without any Symbolism, is, apart from its fine painting, but a moments amusement for our fancy. A hundred generations might write out what seemed the meaning of the one, and they would write different meanings, for no symbol tells all its meaning to any generation; but when you have said, That woman there is Juno, and the milk out of her breast is making the Milky Way, you have told the meaning of the other, and the fine painting, which has added so much unnecessary beauty, has not told it better. 10 ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 68657
Author: Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Release Date: Jul 31, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Unicorn Press
Publication Date: 1898
Publisher Country: United Kingdom

Contributors

Illustrator: Horton, W. T. (William Thomas), 1864-1919