Intermedial Dominants: from Antiquity to Modernity
ANNOTATION
The given article presents the analysis of major intermedial tendencies
in the history of art and literature from Antiquity until postmodernism, the
understanding of which is crucial for the application of hermeneutic method and
the close reading technique in the course of the analysis of literary works
with synthetic elements. The comparative-historic approach with the application
of the elements of cultural-historic method allowed us to draw a conclusion
that each artistic epoch tried to unite all arts around certain syncretic
dominants (Antiquity – sculpture and theatre, Middle Ages – architecture,
Renaissance – painting, Enlightenment – theatre, Romanticism – music, Realism –
literature, fin de siècle and
Modernism – painting and literary art, Postmodernism – literature). At the
initial stages of the development the so-called ‘mechanical or technical’ arts
became the syncretic dominants (i.e. painting, sculpture and architecture),
while starting from the XVII century they were the so-called ‘muse’ arts –
literature, music and theatre.
Key words: intermediality, art synthesis, syncretism, dominant medium, integral medium,
syncretic dominant.
At different stages of the development of the European
arts there appeared and developed different types of intermediality, certain
media[1]
dominated. It is impossible to identify the exact time when intermediality
appeared as a wilful desire to return the lost synthesis of arts of Ancient times;
however, there should be no doubts that ekphrasis, as an attempt of one medium
to describe form and content of another medium, got extensive spreading during
the epoch of Antiquity. Though with the appearance of first ekphrastic
description in Homer’s Iliad (e.g.
the pictorial fragment describing the Achilles’s shield) the intermediality as
a phenomenon already existed, although, theoretically, yet non-reflected.
The art of Antiquity, having left the womb of
mythology, did not manage to preserve initial integrity and, therefore, split
into several artistic streams and types: verbal arts (epos, lyrics and drama,
art of eloquence), decorative arts (mosaics, frescoes, stone carving, vase
painting, etc.), theatre, music, sculpture and architecture. According to
M.S. Kagan and A.F. Losiev, the separation process in the arts is
confirmed by the following ‘specialisation’ of muses: thus, for instance,
originally there was only one goddess named Muse in the Ancient Greek
mythology, however, later on, there were three and afterwards, during the
classics time, nine of muses [3, pp. 11-12]. Although, along the separation
tendency there existed an organically opposite tendency – of unification –
which altogether creates the dialectics of the development of arts in general.
During Antiquity the role of the integral medium could
have been adopted by literature, as three of its kinds – epos, lyrics and drama
– together with art of dancing, orchestrics, comprised the golden quarter of
‘muse’ arts, i.e. proper arts from the perspective of that time; they were
opposed by ‘technical’ arts (or crafts) – painting, sculpture, architecture,
etc. that, according to M.S. Kagan, have never been considered proper arts
[3, pp. 188-189].
Literature and music synthesis is a very bright sample
of separation-unification processes in the history of art synthesis and, most
likely, the very first one. As A.E. Makhov puts it, musical and verbal
origins, after having got their ‘autonomous worlds’, took the opposite sides,
which, at certain moments of history did not prevent music from becoming verbal
and the words from seeking realisation in musical [5, p. 11]. Having left the
historic unity with the poetry, the music created itself similarly to it – the composition
of a musical piece is very alike to the one of a literary work, and at later
stages of art history some literary texts have been built according to music
canons, having built literary symphonies and other unconventional genres [5, p. 37].
As for the synthesis of verbal and pictorial, the
separation-unification relationship between these two arts have been indicated by
Simonides of Ceos in V century BC. Philosophers of Antiquity, as well as the
representatives of later epochs operated with the notions of one art for the
definition of another, i.e. painting is
the dumb poetry, poetry is the blind/talking painting [1, p. 6].
Despite the aesthetic discussion that appeared at the epoch of Antiquity painters
and writers shared the understanding of imagery nature of painting and poetry,
therefore, the category of a literary image still remains one of the most
conventional and stable.
Due to the above mentioned typological
contradictions between literature and other arts sculpture became the dominant
medium of Ancient Greece. Sculpture conveyed all the aesthetic beliefs of the
epoch. Classic theatre also played crucial role, being itself a synthetic art.
Having united various literary forms, the theatre became a de-facto integral
medium of the epoch, tied together other arts and served the ideological
purposes of the state-cities.
Among the most important achievements of Antiquity is
the appearance and recording in literary forms of almost all basic plots and
fables that later on became the basis for various types of intermediality in
arts: siege/city defence and the death of main character – Trojan war and the
destiny of Achilles; journey back home – adventures of Odyssey; the artefact
search – journey of Jason and Argonauts; transition between the world – going
to the Hades' underworld; self-sacrifice – story of Prometheus, Heracles, and
many other.
Normative art of Middle Ages, opposite to syncretic
art of Antiquity, is characterised from the positions of intermediality by two
periods: art synthesis (unison of arts
– Romanesque art) and art separation (polyphony
of arts – Gothic art).
Intermedial synthesis of Middle Ages took place due to
the appearance and spreading of Christianity as the official religion of
European states, as well as due to the Holly Books recorded in writing – Old and
New Testaments.
The peculiar feature of medieval culture was the fact
that architecture became the dominant medium, although, it was not about the
general construction works, but the erection of sacral Christian buildings –
churches, cathedrals, basilicas, chapels, etc. Nevertheless, the scholiasts of
Middle Ages championed the music (as the striving for eternal harmony), having
put it on the same level with literature/poetry: the theologians of Middle Ages
separated the arts into ‘liberal’,
verbal-musical – music, literature – and other ‘mechanical’ arts [3, p. 13].
The Christianity united within itself all known
classic arts: architecture (erection of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and
chapels), painting (stained-glass windows, frescoes, altar paintings, and icons),
sculpture (figures of Catholic saints, donators, popes and bishops), music
(hymns and psalms, organ music), literature (holly texts and their
interpretations), etc. All of them have
been aimed at glorifying the church, strengthening its authority and
concentration of congregation’s life at the church, where everything praised
god in one or another artistic form [2, p. 10].
Besides, literature researchers and writers could not
avoid the problem of the structure of a literary work. Text, like any building,
has its own frame, basis, that are built by specific verbal 'bricks' – words,
phrases and literary images, which launched the discussions about the medieval
synthesis of literature and architecture, the birth of the so-called 'stone
Bible'.
The Middle Ages witnessed the further realisation of
an ancient idea of 'music of a human'. Music turned into the allegory of
person's inner world, and, later on, during the Romanticism epoch, the inner
world of a person was understood as a musical process – music became the major
category of subjectivity, while the literature, as an attempt to express the
'soul' became secondary [5, p. 26-27]. Middle Ages also gave birth to the
idea of music being the universal principle of art in general. According to A.E. Makhov,
music occupied the highest position in the system of seven liberal arts [5, p. 27-28].
The integral dominant of Renaissance was painting that
managed to impose its own laws on architecture, sculpture and the text.
Fragmentation became the specific feature of the aesthetic thoughts of the
epoch, being similar to the fragment principles of the Romanticism. Through
part, fragment artists tried to convey literary, musical or pictorial artistic
components as a whole. Such perception of the fragment as a meaningful artefact
was caused by numerous archaeological findings from the ancient times. The
fragment was no longer perceived as a deformed piece or 'chunk', but the
organic part of currently destroyed and once ideal and holistic art piece.
According to the statement of E.V. Zavadskaya, 'each epoch chooses in the past, sometimes
consciously, sometimes chaotically, traditions close to its spirit that
correlate to its own experience' [2, p. 58]. Renaissance attempts to
find the lost syncretism is characterised by the conscious search for inspiration in previous historic epochs,
willingness to imitate. Meanwhile, due to the archaeological excavations, the
artists paid sufficient interest to the arts of Antiquity. As
L.D. Liubimov puts it, the Renaissance artists 'worshipped Christian saints and praised the beauty of ancient gods',
while 'Christian theology was sometimes
understood as the new mythology',
which allowed them to glorify with their art both Apollo and Christ [4, p. 124].
XVII century, epoch of Enlightenment, is characterised
by rivalry and parallel development of four artistic approaches: Mannerism,
Baroque, Rococo and Classicism that had their own aesthetic concepts. The first
three treated art critically and chose painting, architecture and landscape
design as their dominant media.
Mannerism, as a transition between Renaissance and
Baroque, is important for its attempts to resurrect the literary-artistic
traditions of pastoral genres of Antiquity. This epoch also presented to the
world of art 'play for reading' (Lesedrama)
by John Milton (Samson Agonistes,
1671), that is characterised by M.S. Kagan as the first synthetic form of
modernity; later on it was praised and
popularised by the Romanticism poets [3, p. 219]. Baroque epoch is famous for
the appearance of natural-anthropogenic synthesis, as well as such
verbal-musical genres as opera and oratorio, musical drama that tied together
musical academism, theatre and literature. Of particular interest is also the
new genre of sound depicting plays
(e.g. Jean-Philippe Rameau's La Poule
(The Chicken), 1706, François Couperin's Les petits moulins à vent (The Little Windmills), 1713). Among the
achievements of Rococo one should indicate the rebirth of ancient pastoral
traditions with specific erotic components, which facilitated further
rehabilitation of sensual feelings and spiritual subtlety (especially in
Sentimentalism and Romanticism). In its own turn Classicism became the
normative epoch in the history of arts, it championed theatre and attempted to
re-create the syncretic art of Antiquity.
During
Romanticism the syncretic ideas of art perception were mostly spread in
Germany, where the critical search for artistic synthesis prevailed. From the
point of view of romanticists who always sought universality only music could
become an integral medium, however, in fact, the most significant genres of the
epoch have been formed in literature and music only (in particular, musical
dramas of Richard Wagner based on medieval literary epics).
As M.S. Kagan puts it, romanticist worshipped
artistic activities as a basis of life and art that is aimed at transformation
and creation of the world, which allowed, for instance, for Hegel and Schelling
to formulate and objectivise the new intermedial paradigm architecture/sculpture – painting – music – poetry, where the
intermedial search of the history of arts was reflected: Antiquity and Middle
Ages correspond to architecture and sculpture, as during these epochs these
media became integral; painting represents Renaissance; music is of a paramount
importance for Romanticism; and poetry corresponds to Post-romanticism,
Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism [3, p. 66].
Romanticists also stressed out the complex perception
of any poetic image, as its components are 'vision,
pictorial observation, plastic image, inner person' [6, p. 238].
Therefore, any pictorial work has been treated like certain fragment, similar
to scenic mise en scene or literary
culmination, like, for instance, they saw it in the works of J.H. Füssli: 'Füssli's painting is a stage, and the
spectator has to get used to the drama that take place on the stage' [6, p. 242].
Special interest is raised by the fact that
romanticists, along with traditional non-depictive/technical and depictive/muse
arts, distinguished the third category of mixed or complex arts: (1) architectural-depictive art synthesis; (2)
music-choreographic and music-dramatic art; (3) theatrical art; (4)
music-poetic synthesis; (5) pictorial-poetic synthesis, etc. [3, p. 94].
Realism, as an epoch of normative art, is remarkable
for literature's becoming a dominant medium due to its mass publishing in XIX
century. The perception of intermediality in the aesthetics of Realism was
formulated in the creative concept of Romain Roland, representative of late
realistic tradition, which was borrowed from the philosophy of Presocratics and
Antique theatre: 'The boundaries of arts
are not as absolute, as some theorists believe, arts transform from one into
another constantly, one type of arts finds its continuation and end in another
one' [quot. from: 8, p. 252].
Fin de
siècle, transition between XIX and
XX centuries, is characterised by critic perception of art synthesis. Two arts
come to the foreground: 'muse' art – literature and 'technical' art – painting.
Special role is played by new arts, photography (1839) and cinematography
(1878). Being widely spread, the specific photographic imagery influenced
greatly the whole system of artistic creativity, facilitated the appearance of
new genres and styles and the development of documentalism in arts. In its turn
cinematic art can be considered as a synthesis of photography and literature,
from which there were borrowed plots, fables, system of motifs and symbolism,
names and various other techniques from the verbal arts.
Art of Modernism, being the period of new synthesis,
selected painting and literature as its syncretic dominants. Collage technique
also became widely popular, with author's message being conveyed by chaotic
combinations of various materials: pieces of newspapers, photographs, artworks,
notes, etc. In literature this technique was implemented via conscious use of recognisable
quotes in the text. Modernism of XX century also revived the ancient genre of
calligrammes that became synthetic (e.g. the works by Guillaume Apollinaire
should be perceived as a synthesis of words and bizarre lines). Within the
collage technique the 'sound' poems from Dadaistic and futuristic experiments
should be mentioned. Modern intermediality is also manifested in theatre and
cinema synthesis, as well as multiplication. Several researchers even state
that numerous modernistic plays, e.g. Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird/L'Oiseau bleu (1908), were created under the influence of
cinematographic art – as well as many other works of the first third of XX
century [7, p. 105]. In XX century the practice of creating cartoons and
movies based on plays and literary works has become universal.
More than that, the modernists believed that the
masterpieces of many painters, especially Van Gogh, would not exist without the
painter's ability to see pictorial in a literary way and literature – in
pictorial way. Besides, some modernist writers accompanied their texts with
self-made 'illustrations' that became inseparable parts of them (e.g. Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince/The
Little Prince, 1943), or replaced the alphabetic text with ideographic
compositions that imitated the body of text and fused with it (e.g. the works
of Henri Michaux).
Modernism epoch
also facilitated the strengthening and popularisation of such synthetic forms
as photography, cinematography, multiplication, animation, comic books,
musicals, music films, colour-music synthesis and kinetic arts.
Postmodernists, in their turn, tried to finalise the
century-long search for an integral medium. First of all they objectivised the
historic-cultural necessity of certain syntheses, such as, for instance, prose – poetry – music, painting – décor – architectonics, theatre – pantomime – dance, etc. [3, p. 292, 303, 313]. Secondly, they selected
literature (as the most holistic realisation of Text and Word) as their
integral medium that expressed and characterised other arts. In addition, there
developed the understanding of mechanisms of synthesis and understanding of
parallel ties between arts horizontally (synchronically) and vertically
(intertextual canvas), created with the help of allusions, quotes,
reminiscences, etc.
Following everything that has been stated above, we
have come to the conclusion that intermediality is a more complicated and
complex cultural phenomenon than ancient syncretism. Being the indicator of the
epochs and major artistic tendencies and connection between various arts within
the same cultural-historic period, the intermedial dominants, similarly to
keys, allow unlocking the code of authors' messages in those cases, when there
appears synthesis or artistic dialogue (due to the additional cultural and
artistic layers involved and not named directly). Therefore, understanding and
analysis of artistic works in the context of integral dominant media of each
epoch become the crucial part of complex literary and cultural researches at
the beginning of XXI century.
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[1] Medium is an integral component that forms the basis of each art, such
as a sound, a word, a colour, a dance movement, etc.