E.R. Curtius and the Rhetoric of Visual Art
Kristin
Bliksrud Aavitsland
The
Norwegian Institute in Rome
In common usage, the word «rhetoric»
often indicates superficial, exaggerated or inauthentic speech.
Ernst Robert Curtius´ major work, Europäische Literatur
und lateinische Mittelalter, provided
for a re-evaluation of the term. In his book (referred to in
the following as Europäische Literatur),
Curtius recognised the classical tradition of rhetoric and its
enormous impact on European literature from the Middle Ages
to romanticism. Europäische Literatur is aiming to show to what extent the teaching of Latin
and the reading of a canonical corpus of texts by auctores have dominated and formed the horizon of expectation
of what we could call the European mind. Thus Curtius has made
an important contribution not only to literary studies, but
to intellectual history in general, and the book has, after
its publication in 1948, become a classic of literary history
and the history of ideas.
Curtius´ subject in Europäische Literatur is
«the survival into and beyond the Middle Ages of the rhetorical
topos». He describes
how classical patterns of literary form and content have been
conveyed and transformed from one generation to the next through
the Latin curriculum texts in the medieval schools. What is
essential about Curtius´ description is not so much his specific
arguments for the unbroken rhetorical tradition as the methodological
intention underlying it. His goal is not only that of reassessing
a forgotten corpus of Latin texts in the study of literature.
He also wants to provide his discipline with an ample method.
Since classical rhetoric was a method for the writing and composing
of texts, Curtius aims to use it as a method for the «reading»
of texts. In his view, the rhetorical tradition can successfully
be used as an analytical tool; or even, be considered as the
very key to the understanding of canonical European literature.
This view is an alluring one, because Curtius has the empirical
evidence on his side. The existence of rhetorical patterns and
employment of fixed topoi
and metaphors in medieval and Renaissance texts can be easily
proved. As Peter Goodman points out in his epilogue to the English
edition of Europäische Literatur from
1990:
About the importance of his theory Curtius was,
from the outset, in no doubt. Unlike the groundless abstractions
of Geistesgeschichte, here was a comprehensive cultural explanation
founded on fact.
To fully understand the methodological implications
of Europäische Literatur one
would need to take into consideration the fact that Curtius
writes his book partly as a polemic against the dominating literary
theories of his time. This polemic, however, is not the focus
of my essay. As an art historian my concern is whether it, being
the book which taught literary history to classify verbal images,
can be of interest in the study of visual images. For art historians
concerned with iconography, that is the study of fixed motives and their interpretation
in historical art,
Europäische Literatur may
be read as a bright and entertaining introduction to the literary
tradition from which so many works of art from the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance pick their themes. The work has been characterised
as «ein grob angelegter Topos-Katalog»,
and as such it is a storehouse of useful references for the
study of iconography. But it is also profitable reading to art
historians from another perspective: the methodological one.
In my opinion, Curtius´ study of verbal images intersect with
the study of iconography on a fundamental level. I will try
to elaborate this in the following.
Curtius himself would probably not appreciate my claim
that the rhetorical tradition may be a valuable methodological
tool for art historians. On the contrary, in his introduction
to the work, Curtius explicitly warns against interdisciplinary
loans of methods in general. In his view, such loans reveal
a superficial attitude towards one´s own discipline and «eine
dilettantische Vernebelung von Sachverhalten» (p. 21).
Curtius criticizes literary scholars who reject the established
philological and historical methods in favour of methods and
models borrowed from other disciplines, such as philosophy,
sociology, psychoanalysis and, «vor allem»: art
history (ibid.). At the time, Heinrich Wölfflin´s «formalist»
art theory had a great impact on the study of literature, and
Wölfflin´s style-describing concepts were often applied
to the description of literary texts. According to Curtius,
the application of imported art historical terms becomes a handmaid
of the pseudo-philosophical, schematic and anti-empirical abstractions
of Geistesgeschichte, and gives birth to such airy beings as the «Gothic
man» and the «Baroque man». Curtius´ polemic
is to be understood as a crusade in favour of the empiric foundations
of literary scholarship.
Therefore, Curtius seems almost hostile to any exchange
between the disciplines literature and art history. In his opinion
the disciplines have nothing to teach each other, because the
discrepancies between the experience of visual art and that
of literature are too fundamental to be overcome:
Einen Tizian «habe» ich nicht weder
in der Photographie noch in der vollendesten Kopie & Mit
der Litteratur aller Zeiten un Völker kann ich eine unmittelbare,
intime, ausfüllende Lebensbeziehung haben, mit der Kunst
nicht. Kunstwerke mub ich in Museen aufsuchen. Das Buch ist um vieles
realer als das Bild. Hier liegt ein Seinsverhältnis vor
und die reale Teilhabe an einem geistigen Sinn. (p. 24)
A literary work is spread «in unzähligen
Exemplaren», whereas a work of art is unique and must
be experienced in situ.
Accordingly literature is more accessible than visual art
and, according to Curtius, appears to be of greater substance.
This view is a peculiar one for a philologist and historian.
Curtius seems to ignore the fact that access to texts and images
is historically determined. Only if you live in a time and at
a place where books are mass produced and you yourself master
the art of reading and have access to libraries and bookshops,
«die Litteratur aller Zeiten un Völker» will
be accessible. Artefacts of the kind we today label «visual
art» have not always had their places in museums. Curtius´ statement quoted above inevitably creates an image of the
great philologist in his modern studio, sitting in his armchair
with every great literary work at hand, too comfortable to take
the inconvenience of getting up and visiting museums to study
art.
Curtius´ dislike for a juxtaposition of literature and
art is clearly expressed in his introductory chapter. Here Curtius
seems to vindicate the word´s primacy over the picture and
thus the greater dignity of the student of literature to that
of the art historian. It takes hard work and knowledge in depth
to master literature, Curtius claims. No intuition or theoretical
contemplation on the «Wesen» of literature can replace
philological knowledge. Art history, however, does not demand
anything of that sort from its students. «Sie arbeitet
mit Bildern und Lichtbildern. Da gibt es nichts Unverständliches»,
Curtius asserts (p. 24). Art historians would of course protest
immediately against this quite provocative assertion. A profound
understanding of the complex universe of images in historical
art does not cost less intellectual effort and less historical
and linguistic insight than the struggle with Greek or Latin
syntactical problems, they would respond. But Curtius ascertains:
Pindars Gedichte zu verstehen, kostet Kopfzerbrechen;
der Parthenonfries nicht. Die Bilderwissenschaft ist mühelos,
verglichen mit der Bücherwissenschaft. (p. 24)
Therefore, it seems likely that Curtius himself
would disagree with my claim that his «rediscovery»
of the rhetorical tradition is relevant to art history and the
study of iconography. However, his dedication on the book´s
frontispiece indicates something else. One of the two dedicatee
of the book is actually an art historian, namely the Jewish
German scholar Aby Warburg (1866-1929), whom Curtius also quotes
several times in his work. According to
Peter Goodman, «the significance of this dedication was
not purely personal; it also implied an adherence to a particular
view of scholarly method». At the beginning
of the 20th
century, Warburg had investigated the classical heritage in
Italian Renaissance art and discussed problems in the field
of art history similar to those Curtius was to take up in the
field of literature one generation later. Like Curtius, Warburg
scrutinized the conventions of form and content that the Middle
Ages inherited from Classical and Christian Antiquity, transmitted
through texts and images and applied to new works of art, both
literary and visual. Art historians recognize Aby Warburg as
one of the «fathers» of the discipline. He is known
as the founder of the iconological method, first introduced
in a paper given in Rome in 1912 on the wall paintings in Palazzo
Schifanoia at Ferrara.
Together with his follower Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), Warburg
established iconology as a new approach in art history. Whereas
art historians of the 19th century had focused mainly
on stilistic problems and on the personal expression of the
different artists in the great periods of European art, the
methodical iconology of Warburg and Panofsky became a means
to investigate the content and the ideas underlying their paintings
and sculptures. As such it meant an impetus to study the relations
between texts and images. What is significant in this context,
is the fact that Panofsky´s almost revolutionary iconological
studies are concurrent with Curtius´ philological investigation
of rhetoric, topics and metaphors. As the Danish scholar Jens
Hougaard has recently pointed out, Curtius and Panofsky, belonging
to the same generation, have similar declared intentions: They
both aim «to investigate how stable formulations´ are
generated and then separated from the tradition». Curtius aims
to find images in the texts, whereas Panofsky aims to find texts
in the images. The concurrence of Panofsky´s iconology with
what we could call Curtius´ rhetorical-hermeneutical theory
of literature goes back to a common source of inspiration: Aby
Warburg.
The most explicit trace of Aby Warburg in Curtius´ opus
magnum, is the author´s eagerness to prove the influence
of classical rhetoric on visual art. In his pioneering writings
on Italian renaissance art, Warburg showed that the interest
of Florentine humanism in classical rhetoric and poetry had
a certain influence on contemporary painting. Warburg´s analysis
of works such as Botticelli´s Primavera shows
that the iconographical programme is founded on rhetorical and
literary knowledge (p. 87). Curtius also draws attention to
the architect and rhetorically and literarily learned art theorist
Leon Battista Alberti, who recommended painters to study the
auctores carefully in order to invent new subjects for their paintings and to
learn to give them a proper form (p. 87). At the same time,
however, Curtius claims that while literature is the medium
of ideas «Träger von Gedanken» visual art
is not and can never be. Seen in the light of his respect for
and deliberate use of Warburg´s writings, Curtius here seems
to be self-contradictory in his view on visual art. How is this
then to be understood?
I would claim that Curtius´ apparent self-contradiction
in reality represents a consistent view that he also shares
with the art historians of his generation. Curtius seems to
suggest that if a work of art actually does express thoughts
and ideas, there has to be a written text behind it. The paintings
and sculptures of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are illustrations. Thus, the visual image itself is not a «Träger
von Gedanken», but a pointer to a text. Thoughts and ideas
are expressed in the language, not in images. In other words,
Curtius seems to presuppose the existence of a textual source
for the Primavera as created by Botticelli. The painting itself is secondary
to its text.
Curtius shares this view on images with his contemporaries
within the field of art history: Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky,
and the school of iconology. Critics of the Warburg school have
attacked the iconological method on exactly this point: The
search for textual sources to explain the «literary»
meaning of paintings, sculpture and even architecture inevitably
reduces the visuality of visual art. However, these critics have often fallen
into the opposite extreme. Their responses to the text-ridden
iconology have often been a sort of «anti-iconographical»
stripping of meaning in the visual arts. They tend to suggest
that the paintings of the Italian Renaissance have no literary
meaning at all; mythological or biblical motives being used
only as a pretext for an interest in formal and aesthetic qualities.
Thus, art history has become a unnecessarily disintegrated discipline,
divided into two distinct fields of interest: formal, stylistic
or aesthetic matters on the one side, iconography and interpretation
of meaning on the other.
A reason for this polarisation in art history might be
precisely the hypothesis that thoughts and ideas i.e. meaning
only can be expressed in language, not in visual images. This
hypothesis is at the core of Curtius´ argumentation in Europäische
Literatur, as it indeed is in many of the writings of Warburg,
Panofsky and also indirectly in the critics of iconology.
They all presuppose that the intellectual tradition of Antiquity
and the Middle Ages is handed down to modern Europe primarily
by means of verbal language. Yet, a survey of the medieval theories
of language, images, meaning and learning teaches us that this
hypothesis is an insufficient one. Curtius certainly is right
when he convincingly argues that for the authors of the Middle
Ages, rhetoric is a tool for generation of ideas and structuring
of thoughts. However, rhetoric was not the only «argumentative
tool» at their disposal. The theorist of the liberal arts,
Hugh of St. Victor (1097-1141), ascribes this function to another
of the artes, namely geometry. In his significant introductory work on the study of the arts, Didascalicon, Hugh calls geometry «fons sensuum et origo dictionum»,
that is the «fount of perceptions and the source of utterances».
Hugh´s definition reveals what we could call a geometric
way of thinking, characteristic of the High Middle Ages. Geometry
is applied as a productive expressive form, in literature and
the visual arts alike. The manuscripts of many of the works
that Curtius analyses in Europäische Literatur consist of two components: written text and geometrical
diagrams. The diagrams either simple figures or carefully
composed iconography are almost as a rule «censored»
in printed versions of the works.
The diagrams are a kind of «applied geometry» and
a visual language with an expressive potential different from
that of verbal language. The properties of geometry can express
relations between a totality and its parts, between high and
low, large and small, significant and insignificant, and do
so in a more elegant and «economical» manner than
words can do. If a circle or wheel rota
is divided into concentric spheres, it visualises a hierarchical
relation between centre and periphery. If it is divided into
sectors, it depicts a continuous, cyclical movement. Argumentative,
geometrical schemes were widely spread already in the Early
Middle Ages, above all in the influential works of Isidore of
Seville (d. 636). Isidor employed different circular diagrams
to such a degree that his work Etymologiae simply went under the name Liber rotarum. The qualities of geometrical figures
make them speak and transform them into rhetorical figures.
The visual language of medieval art employ these figures deliberately.
Thus, the development of Christian iconography provides telling
examples. From its very beginning Christian art has established
a language which is able to visualise complex theological ideas
very concisely. If we take Hugh of St. Victor´s statement seriously
that geometry is the «fount of perceptions and the source
of utterances» it would be wrong to perceive images
as secondary illustrations to thoughts already formulated verbally.
On the contrary, images reproduce the very structure of thought.
If it is right to interpret Hugh in this way, Curtius´ claim
that visual art never can be «Träger von Gedanken»
is in conflict with the very literary tradition that is the
subject of his book.
However, my intention is not to make geometry play the
role in visual arts that Curtius makes rhetoric play in literature.
In that case I would have to postulate two parallel means of
thought-production and thought-mediation; one for visual expression
and another one for verbal expression. My intention here is
the opposite. I want to point out that the medieval view on
geometry as medium for thoughts, formulated by Hugh of St.Victor,
tears down the traditional divide between visual and verbal
expression, and with that the assumption of Curtius and the
«iconologists» that images are derived from words.
Hugh borrows his description of geometry from the field of rhetoric:
The expression «fons sensuum et origo dictionum»
is also the conventional definition of topics (topica),
as found in Cassiodirus or Isidor of Seville.
We are therefore to interpret geometry in light of the rhetorical
topos, to which Curtius devotes so much attention in his
work: Geometry is a commonplace, a locus communis,
a site where patterns of argumentation are available.
The mental, creative process behind any discursive work i.e.
inventio in the terminology of classical rhetoric employs
both verbal (rhetorical) and visual (geometrical) topoi. Accordingly, the product of inventio can be both verbal and visual.
The inciting force behind inventio
is the human ability to memorise sensual perceptions as images
of the mind. This ability is, according to Hugh of St. Victor
in the first book of Didascalicon, unique to the human rational mind. It is the foundation
of all arts and it enables man to store and put together notions,
imaginationes, of all things in his mind. It is a power of the soul
that allows man to «exercise things present, understand
things absent or investigate things unknown Aristotle named this image-producing ability
energeia, that
is mental creative force or activity. The medieval scholars
translated the Aristotelian notion into terms such as expressive
force or imagination. Within
the medieval «psycho-rhetorical» theory of intellectual
creativity, text and image are equivalent manifestations of
energeia.
I believe medieval rhetoric can offer important methodological
insights to art history on this point and probably also to the
study of Medieval literature. A monumental decoration of a medieval
town hall and a didactic poem written by a clerk at the cathedral
school next to it are both to be understood as manifestations
of energeia and products
of inventio. Both
works are argumentative, «poetic» and intellectual
structures built on material from the same source. The conceptual
distinction between textuality and visuality seems not to be
an essential one in the medieval rhetorical tradition. Therefore,
despite Curtius´ insistence on the visual arts´ inferiority
to literature, his Europäische Literatur und
lateinische Mittelalter
is disseminated by a method relevant not only to the study of
literature, but to an almost equal degree to the study of visual
art.
Illustrations
Fig. 1:
Fig. 2:
