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

Allegory has an entirely different relation to poetry from that which it has to plastic and pictorial art, and although it is to be rejected in the latter, it is not only permissible, but very serviceable to the former. For in plastic and pictorial art it leads away from what is perceptibly given, the proper object of all art, to abstract thoughts ; but in poetry the relation is reversed ; for here what is directly given in words is the concept, and the first aim is to lead from this to the object of perception, the representation 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 conception, because here only the abstract cannot be given directly ; but a conception must never be the source, and its communication must never be the end of a work of art. In poetry, on the contrary, the conception is the material, the immediately given, and therefore we may very well leave it, in order to call up perceptions which are quite different, and in which the end is reached. Many a conception or abstract thought may be quite indispensable to the connection of a poem, which is yet, in itself and directly, quite incapable of being perceived ; and then it is often made perceptible by means of some example which is subsumed under it. This takes place in every trope, every metaphor, simile, parable, and allegory, all of which differ only in the length and completeness of their expression. Therefore, in th j arts which employ language as thei^edham^^ s^^ ^egi^es are blf stiiking_e^i^ HlQSf. beautifully Cer«

THE PLATONIC IDEA : THE OBJECT OF ART 31 1

Tantes says of sleep ia order to express the fact that it frees us from all spiritual and bodily sufferinjg, “ It is a mantle that covers all mankind. How beautifully Kleist expresses allegorically TBe~Wou^iOhatghilo80^^ phers and men of science enlighten mankind, in the line.

“Those whose midnjght lainj; lights the world,” How strongly and sensuously Homer describes the harmful Ate when he says : “ She has tender feet.^r^she walks not on the hard eartli, liut treads on the heads of men ’’ (II. xix. 91.) HcTw forcibly we are "struck by Mehenni^ Agrippa’s fable of the belly and the limbs, addressed to the people of Borne when they seceded.

How beautifully Plato’s figure of the Cave, at the b^innin^ oFthe seventh book of the "Kepu51Ic”~to which we have already referred^^ expresses a very abstract philosophical. dogma.

The fable of Persephone is also to be regarded as a deeply sighnp" cant allegory of "piilosophical tendency, for sEF^beca^ subject to tbe nether~wdrTdrby~ tasting a pomegranata TKSnbecomes peculiarly entightehihg ffoiiriToetheT^^^ menF~bf~"tbe fable, as an episode in the Triumph jrfer E^^udsamlc^t, wEi^"S" beyond^ir^pfaisa detailed allegorical works are known to me, one, opien and avowed, is the incomparable “ Criticon ” of Balthasar Gracian.

It consists of aT great rich web of connected and highly ingenious allegories, that serve here as the fair clothing of moral truths, to which he thus imparts the most perceptible form, and astonishes us by the richness of his invention. The two others are concealed allegories. “ Don Quixote” and “ Gulliver’s Travels.

The first is an allegory of the life of every man, who will not, like others, be careful, merely for his own welfare, but follows some objective, ideal end, which has taken possession of his thoughts and will ; and certainly, in this world, he has then a strange appearance.

In the case of Gulliver we have only to take everything physical as spiritual or intellectual, in order to see what the “ satirical rogue,” as Hsjnlet would call him, meant by it. Such, then, in the

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BK. III.

poetical allegory, the conception is always the given, which it tries to make perceptible by means of a picture ; it may sometimes be expressed or assisted by a painted picture. Such a picture will not be regarded as a work of art, but only as a significant symbol, and it makes no claim to pictorial, but only to poetical worth. Such is that beautiful allegorical vignette of Lavater’s, which must be so heartening to every defender of trutli : a hand holding a light is stung by a wasp, while gnats we burning themselves in Hie flame above ; underneath is the mottol

‘And although it singes the wings of the gnats.

Destroys their heads and all their little hrains.

Light is still light ;

And although I am stung by the angriest wasp,

I will not let it go.”

To this class also belongs the gravestone with the bumtout, smoking candle, and the inscription —

“When it is out, it becomes clear Whether the candle was tallow or wax.”