DOI Artikel:
Charles H. [Henry] Caffin, Symbolism and Allegory
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30586#0038
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present , so many of the symbolists hark back to the voice of ancient myth
and legend. Rossetti finds his inspiration in Dante; Burne-Jones and
William Morris in classic, gothic, and Provençal sources ; a group of Irish
authors in the Celtic past. Some, too, have revealed that old instinct of
humanity, to invest certain natural or invented forms with an association of
spiritual significance. The rose, poppy, dagger, eagle, dove, and the
swastika, are but a few of the numerous symbols that have been rehabilitated.
Other symbolists, however, reject all such, as artificial aids to suggestion
verging on the allegorical. But with all, as with the idealists in landscape, a
new motive is at work. It is to address themselves, not to that faculty in
man of getting to the bottom of things, but to his consciousness of the
mystery all about him—the indefinable, impenetrable, limitlessness of spirit.
Hence the distinctive characteristic of modern painting is subtlety of
expression.
It has its counterpart in the other arts. A Rodin, for example, exhibits
it in sculpture; a Wagner, Tschaikowski, or a Strauss in music, while
modern literature is informed with it. Indeed, language itself has become
impregnated with a new symbolism. Words ever have been but symbols :
names for things or imperfect pictures of ideas. But, instead of an effort at
concise and definite diction, to call a spade a spade, we now essay to shade
our thoughts off into veiled suggestiveness. The barriers are down, that
once separated the various groups of terminology. The terms of music are
borrowed by the pictorial and plastic arts, and vice versa; while the growth
of science has added new words or invested old words with new meaning.
Thus to the writer, as well as to the reader, a word is no longer a plane
mirror but a diamond of innumerable facets ; speech, no longer merely
obvious, but infinitely suggestive. Thought, in its turn, is shaping itself to
a new realization of the spiritual. Charles H. Caffin.
22
and legend. Rossetti finds his inspiration in Dante; Burne-Jones and
William Morris in classic, gothic, and Provençal sources ; a group of Irish
authors in the Celtic past. Some, too, have revealed that old instinct of
humanity, to invest certain natural or invented forms with an association of
spiritual significance. The rose, poppy, dagger, eagle, dove, and the
swastika, are but a few of the numerous symbols that have been rehabilitated.
Other symbolists, however, reject all such, as artificial aids to suggestion
verging on the allegorical. But with all, as with the idealists in landscape, a
new motive is at work. It is to address themselves, not to that faculty in
man of getting to the bottom of things, but to his consciousness of the
mystery all about him—the indefinable, impenetrable, limitlessness of spirit.
Hence the distinctive characteristic of modern painting is subtlety of
expression.
It has its counterpart in the other arts. A Rodin, for example, exhibits
it in sculpture; a Wagner, Tschaikowski, or a Strauss in music, while
modern literature is informed with it. Indeed, language itself has become
impregnated with a new symbolism. Words ever have been but symbols :
names for things or imperfect pictures of ideas. But, instead of an effort at
concise and definite diction, to call a spade a spade, we now essay to shade
our thoughts off into veiled suggestiveness. The barriers are down, that
once separated the various groups of terminology. The terms of music are
borrowed by the pictorial and plastic arts, and vice versa; while the growth
of science has added new words or invested old words with new meaning.
Thus to the writer, as well as to the reader, a word is no longer a plane
mirror but a diamond of innumerable facets ; speech, no longer merely
obvious, but infinitely suggestive. Thought, in its turn, is shaping itself to
a new realization of the spiritual. Charles H. Caffin.
22
