Authors: Erich Auerbach,Edward W. Said,Willard R. Trask
Mimesis (97 page)
6
What is said there occasionally about the questions, which were also dealt with by Edelstein and Regenbogen, will not be discussed again here. That the “rustic, serious, and sober” Hesiod has nothing to do with the realism of the Gospels is perfectly clear. And that alone matters, not words that have been taken out of context and that can be interpreted variously.
7
Some observations about this: I do not find a mention of the especially poetic theory of three styles of Heracleides of Pontos ([as transmitted by] Philodemos), which is to be regarded as a source of Horace, as presented by Christian Jensen (“Herakleides vom Pontos bei Philodem und Horaz,”
Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
[Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1936], Phil.-Hist. Klasse 23, pp. 292ff.; pp. 304ff. on the three styles)—a significant work, of which I was made aware by Curtius himself (
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
, p. 439, note 14).
The concept of the
prepon
appears for the first time not in Theophrastus but instead already in Aristotle (
Rhetoric
3.2.1404 b).
“Good taste” and “neatness” are however probably too general translations of
elegantia
and
munditia
in Cicero,
Orator
23.79; it has to do with linguistic purity in a puristic sense, as emerges from what follows: “sermo purus erit et latinus” (“the language will be pure Latin”). Compare Quintilian 8.3.87 and also many passages in Cicero himself, for example the one cited by Curtius later,
De optimo genere oratorum
4. On the significance of
elegantia
, see George Lincoln Hendrickson, “The Origin and Meaning of the Ancient Characters of Style,”
American Journal of Philology
26 (1905) 249-290; on
elegantia
, pp. 263-264. I hope later to return to some medieval material.
It might also be noted as far as method is concerned that an assembly of rhetorical expert opinions is a somewhat single-track way to clarify the situation. A picture of the truly living ideas can be gained only through the study of terms, as for example
altus, gravis, sublimis, suavis, dulcis, subtilis, planus, tenuis, privatus, humilis, remissus, pedester, comicus
, and so forth; this can now be done with the help of the
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
[Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1900- ].
8
[These two phrases refer pointedly to the title and subtitle of an excursus in
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
. In the handling of these two phrases and in all page references, I follow the English translation as found in
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series 36 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953; rept. 1990).]
9
As witness (so says Curtius ironically, but inaccurately) I cited Montaigne. It would not be so wrong, if I had done it. Montaigne, after all, was traveling on the road from Rome.
10
Curtius maybe still remembers the passage cited by him (
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
, p. 417) from Wilhelm Schmid,
Geschichte der griechischen Literature
, vol. 1/2 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1934), p. 85.
11
The special situation of Old Comedy (Aristophanic comedy) in ancient theory, for which Curtius cites Quintilian 10.1.65, is a subject that has concerned me for a long time because it plays a role in Dante criticism from the sixteenth up to the eighteenth century, in Vico too. But there was no room for it in
Mimesis
.
12
A selection of additional, infrequently cited testimonies: Seneca,
Epist
. 100.10; Donatus,
Commentum Terenti
, ed. Paul Wessner (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1902-1908), passim (e.g.,
Adelphoe
638
, Hecyra
611);
Anthologia latina
, ed. Franz Buecheler and Alexander Riese, vol. 1/2 (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1894-1926), nos. 664 and 664a; quite similarly Ausonius,
Opuscula
, ed. Rudolf Peiper (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1886), p. 412, no. 367, ll. 2-3.
13
In the process Cicero (and likewise Quintilian) gives an exact formulation of stylistic differentiation: “in tragoedia comicum vitiosum est, et in comoedia turpe tragicum” [“in tragedy the comic is faulty, and in comedy the tragic is indecent”].
14
Now reprinted by Francke in Bern. [“Figura” is available in English, translated by Ralph Manheim, in Erich Auerbach,
Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays
(New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1959; rept. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1973), pp. 11-76.]
15
Compare Mimesis, p. 557. I was able to write the works on figura and
passio
because an entire set of Migne’s
Patrologia
was located in an attic-level library room of the Dominican monastery of San Pietro di Galata. The monastery library was not public, but the apostolic delegate, Monsignor Roncalli (now papal nuncio in Paris and a cardinal), had the kindness to grant me use of it. [Born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in 1881, the man to whom Auerbach referred as Monsignor Roncalli was apostolic delegate in Turkey and Greece from 1934 to 1944, when he was promoted to new—and difficult—duties as papal nuncio to occupied Paris. In 1953 he was created a cardinal. Later, in 1958, Roncalli was elected to the papacy, as rope John XXIII. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was the achievement for which he is best known. He died on 3 June 1963.]
16
“Ursprung und Sinn der Typologie als hermeneutischer Method,” in
Pro regno, pro sanctuario: een bundel studies en bijdragen van vrienden en vereerders bij de zestsigste verjaardag van Prof. Dr. G. Van der Leeuw
, ed. W. J. Kooiman and J. M. Van Veen (Nijkerk: G. F. Callenbach, 1950), pp. 89-100, also in
Theologische Literaturzeitung
, (1950) 205ff. I have been in contact with Bultmann for over two decades—contact that was interrupted only by the war; I owe much to his counsel, as well as recently to that of Erich Dinkier.
So as to mention a Catholic point of view on the topic as well, compare William F. Lynch in
Thought
(New York) 25 (1951) 44-47.
17
I will take this occasion to communicate to the readers of this periodical, most of whom are not theologians, those points in my presentation that could give rise to controversies. Both of them relate to the early Christian period.
1. In my presentation of the beginnings of Christian typology, the role of Paul is perhaps emphasized too exclusively. Of course people in the Middle Ages were of my view. Compare, for example, such representations as the one of “St. Paul Grinding the Corn of the Doctrine of the Prophets in His Mill” on a capital in Vézelay, in Joan Evans,
Cluniac Art of the Romanesque Period
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), fig. 175b. [Abbot] Suger had the same representation painted on a window of Saint-Denis and had the following verses placed there (Erwin Panofsky,
Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures
[Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1946]; 2d. ed. by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel [Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979], pp. 74-75):
Tollis agendo molam de furfure, Paule, farinam.
Mosaicae legis intima nota facis.
Fit de tot granis verus sine furfure panis,
Perpetuusque cibus noster et angelicus.
[By working the mill, you, Paul, take the flour out of the bran.
You make known the inmost meaning of the Law of Moses.
From so many grains is made the true bread without bran,
our and the angels’ perpetual food.]
On the same window is found a representation, on which the veil has been taken from Moses’ face, with this distich:
Quod Moyses velat, Christi doctrina revelat;
Denudant legem, qui spoilant Moysen.
[What Moses veils the doctrine of Christ unveils;
They who despoil Moses bare the Law.]
2. Furthermore, there appears sometimes in more recent, specialized works the tendency to ascribe to Origen a significant role for typology, whereas I counted him among the abstract-allegorical interpreters. That is a decisive problem for the conception of typology. I believe that I am right without any alteration of my view, but I must leave the clarification of the question to theologians.
18
[The reference is to
Patrologiae cursus completus; series latina
, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1844-1864).]
19
[For a study, see Yakov Malkiel, “Ernst H. Kantorowicz,” in
On Four Modern Humanists: Hofmannsthal, Gundolf Curtius, Kantorowicz
, ed. Arthur R. Evans, Jr. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 146-219.]
20
[By translating the German phrase “antiquarisch spielenden” (which Auerbach quotes) as “antiquarianizing,” Trask loses a nuance of playfulness.]
21
[Translated into English by Ralph Manheim,
Dante, Poet of the Secular World
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961).]
22
[After passing the
Staatsexamen
in 1922, Auerbach acquired training in library science. From 1924 to 1929 he was salaried as a librarian at the Prussian State Library in Berlin. After completing an abridged translation of Giambattista Vico’s
The New Science
in 1924, a collaborative translation of Benedetto Croce’s introductory study of Vico in 1927, and a book of his own on Dante in 1929, Auerbach was transferred to the University Library in Marburg. In 1920 he was appointed to a professorship in Romance philology at the University of Marburg.]
23
“Romantik und Realismus,” in
Neue Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung
9 (1933) 143ff., and “Über die ernste Nachahmung des Alltäglichen,” in
Travaux du Séminaire de Philologie Romane
, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, 1937), 262ff.
24
An unfriendly and also unpleasant review begins with the claim that
Mimesis
has been greatly discussed and praised especially abroad [outside German-speaking countries]. That gives a false impression. Of the reviews and other extensive assessments that I have seen up until now, over half appeared in Germany or in German-speaking Switzerland; of the remaining foreign ones, once again almost half (mostly in the U.S.A.) were composed by such individuals who had spent their youth in Germany and received their education there. The rest are distributed among Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, the Spanish-speaking world, and Turkey. Only a few remarks have come to my attention from France, not a single one from England.
INDEX
Adam (
Mystère d’Adam
),
143
-
159
,
258
Alexius:
Chanson d’Alexis
,
111
-
119
; Latin legend,
116
-
119
,
178
,
180
allegory,
13
,
261
;
see also
figural interpretation
Amyot,
308
Antoine de La Sale,
see
La Sale
Anzengruber, Ludwig,
516
Arthur, King, and the Round Table,
128
-
142
Aucassin et Nicolete
,
141
Augustine,
66
-
74
,
119
,
153
-
155
,
158
,
196
,
199
,
300
,
305f
background,
see
perspective
Balzac, Honoré,
31f
,
370
,
426
,
468
-
482
,
485f
,
490
,
496f
,
502
,
503
,
505
,
512
,
515
,
516
,
519
,
535
,
554
Bédier, J.,
103
Bernard of Clairvaux,
150
-
155
,
162
-
165
,
232
Boccaccio,
187
,
203
-
231
,
259
-
261
,
322
Boethius,
311
Boiardo,
355
Boileau,
110
,
362
-
367
,
388
,
486
,
515
Bonnet, Ch.,
474
Bonnet, M.,
82
Bretagne (Brittany), see
matière de Bretagne
Brouwer, Adriaen,
509
Brunetto Latini,
181
Brunot, F.,
161
Buck, Pearl,
552
Büchner, Georg,
453
Buffon,
474
Burckhardt, Jacob,
519
Burgundy, the duchess of,
417
,
421f
,
430
Caesar,
84f
Calderón,
331
Castiglione, Count Baldassare,
140
Castro, A.,
356
Cavalcanti, Guido,
183
