The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

tibly. Therefore Virgil makes Laocoon cry out like the bellowing of an ox that l^s broken^ loose after being struck by *1116 axe ; and Homer |[il. xx. 48—^ 3} makes Mars an^MIherva shriek horribiy, without derogati^ Irom tneir divine ' digiiit^ OT beauty. The same with acting ; Laocoo^iT"dn"tire s£a^ would certainly have to shriek.

Sophocles makes TliiToctetus* cry out, and, on th^ ancient stage at any rate, he must actually have done sbr As a case in point, I remember having seen in London the great actor Kemble play in a piece called Pizarro, translated from the German. He took the part of the American, a half-savage, but of very noble character.

When he was wounded he cried out loudly and wildly, which had a great and admirable effect, for it was exceedingly characteristic and therefore assisted the truth of the representation very much. On the other hand, a painted or sculptured model of a man shrieking, would be much more absurd than the painted music which is censured in Goethe’s Propvlaen.

For shrieking does far more injury to the expression and beauty of the whole than music, which at the most only occupies the hands and arms, and is to be looked upon as an occupation characteristic of the person ; indeed thus far it may quite rightly be painted, as long as it demands no violent movement of the body, or distortion of the mouth: for example, St. Cecilia at the organ, Eaphael’s violin-player in the Sciarra Gallery at ’Rome, and others.

Since then, on account of the limits of the art, the pain of Laocoon must not be expressed by shrieking, the artist was obliged to employ every other expression of pain; this he has done in the most perfect manner, as is ably described by Winckelmann (Works, vol. vi p. 104), whose admirable account thus retains its full value and truth, as soon as we abstract from the stoical view which underlies it.^

^ This digression is worked out more fully in the '?6tli Chapter of Supplement.

p. 296

§ 47. Because _beauty accompanied with grace is the prii^pal object of sculpture, it loves nakedness, and allows clothing only so far as it does not conceal the form. It makes use of drapery, not as a covering, but as a means of exhibiting the form, a method of exposition that gives much exercise to the imderstanding, for it can only arrive at a perception of the cause, the form of the body, through the only directly given effect, the drapery. Thus to a certain extent drapery is in sculpture what fore-shortening is in painting. Both are suggestions, yet not symbolical, but such that, if they are successful, they force the understanding directly to perceive what is suggested, just as if it were actually given.

I may be allowed, in passing, to insert here a comparison that is very pertinent to the arts we are discussing. It is this : as the beautiful bodily form is seen to the greatest advantage when clothed in the lightest way, or indeed without any clothing at all, and therefore a very handsome man, if he had also taste and the courage to follow it, would go about almost naked, clothed only after the manner of the ancients ; so every one who possesses a beautiful and rich mind will always express himself in the most natural, direct, and simple way, concerned, if it be possible, to communicate his thoughts to others, and thus relieve the loneliness that he must feel in such a world as this. And conversely, poverty of mind, confusion, and perversity of thought, will clothe itself in the most far-fetched expressions and the obscurest forms of speech, in order to wrap up in difficult and pompous phraseology small, trifling, insipid, or commonplace thoughts; like a man who has lost the majesty of beauty, and trying to make up for the deficiency by means of clothing, seeks to hide the insignificance or ugliness of his person under barbaric finery, tinsel, feathers, ruflfles, cuffs, and mantles. Many an author, if compelled to translate his pompous andp. 297 obscure book into its little clear content, would be as utterly spoilt as this man if he had to go naked.