Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1907 (Heft 18))

horns, like all the other details, are but accents of expression in the commin-
glement of energy and composure that the whole embodies. For the whole
conception of the figure, rousing the imagination to an inexpressible degree
of consciousness, is symbolism in a colossal form.
And the Sleeper in bandage, or bondage, twice bound, in thraldom and
sleep—the sleep of bondage and the bondage of sleep—surely this is a con-
ception too penetrating and subtle for mere allegory. Notwithstanding the
obvious allusion of the emblematic accessory, it is symbolism. Or, rather,
perhaps, the bandage is not an accessory, but the concrete starting-point of
the conception, a germ of allegory that has expanded into symbolism.
One may detect a similar growth from the one to the other in Botti-
celli's Birth of Venus. Like the so-called Allegory of Spring, its kinship with
that favorite form of entertainment, the dramatic allegory, is too marked to
be overlooked. It might have been inspired by, or designed for, a masque,
suggested by one of those arguments upon love, Platonic and otherwise, that
occupied the courtiers in Lorenzo'spalace on the slopes of Fiesole. It has
the earmarks of such scenic representations — the basin of water, frequently
introduced upon the stage; the jutting promontories, hard in outline, and
having a plastic rather than a pictorial appearance ; the large shell, very
strikingly a stage property ; the zephyrs suspended, a favorite device, and
all the figures arranged as in a tableau. So far it is pure allegory, imagined
and represented after the manner of the allegories of the stage; but the
independent genius of Botticelli is discovered in the conception of the
Venus. Her young loveliness reveals itself in lines exquisitely sensitive, a
mingling of queenly self-possession and of maidenly timidity. Her very
nudity is pathetic; it seems almost to shrink from the zephyrs’ breath ; one
trembles to think of the contact of such frail tenderness with the rude reality
of the world. For she is not only Love, tremulous with scarcely guessed
desire, floating freshly into the maiden soul of youth and maiden; but the
harbinger of later passions that inflame and perchance shrivel up the soul in
arid heat. Therefore upon her countenance is a prescient sadness ; through
all her body a shrinking from, while yet an acquiescence in, a destiny ines-
capable. But more than this, to Botticelli, her creator, she was the flame
of Hellas, that had touched the lips of poets and philosophers, and the
hands of sculptors and painters in the days of Greek supremacy, reap-
pearing once more in Italy, especially in Florence of his day. As yet it was
but the dawn; and Botticelli watched the new light creep up above the
horizon, in that stillness and suspense of feeling which prelude the full flood
of daylight.
What we may guess of the significance of the surprise of Greek thought
to the awakened intelligence of the Renaissance, what we may know in our
experience of that love-aroused tingling of a new consciousness in mind and
body, are represented in this figure. Out of allegory, bald and obvious, has
emerged a flame of symbolism, pure in essence, subtly pervading the imagina-
tion, so that while it consumes it re-creates. Possibly, the last characteristic
may be a good test of the difference between symbolism and allegory.

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